Chapter Text
A stack of unpaid bills are on the kitchen table. In a moment, yet another one will be added on top of them. The sound from the television, beeps, boops, and obnoxious music, will drive everyone in the home insane. The oldest child, an eighteen year old high school dropout, will be the target of a barrage of insults. A twelve year old girl will hear this from her bedroom and cover her ears, wishing that everybody could just be nice to each other.
And alone, in the most rundown room in the house, the middle child will be getting ready to leave. Her hair is blonde, it reaches just above shoulder length. She hopes that one day, it’ll be long enough for braids. Her outfit consists of a cropped white tank top and a very short denim skirt. But because it’s cold outside, she throws on an old orange and brown parka. She wouldn’t be out in the cold for very long anyway. Or so she hopes.
“Will you please turn that damn game down?!” A woman’s shrill voice screams at the top of her lungs. But at least she said please.
“I already did, you can barely hear it!” The voice of a whiny teenager yells back, just not as loud. “You’re smokin’ crack, you’re just hearin’ shit that ain’t there!”
A booming voice silenced both of the others, “HEY! You don’t talk to your goddamn mother like that!”
“I talk to her any way I fuckin’ want!”
Kenny takes a deep breath and holds it. She wonders, sometimes, if holding her breath could kill her. Would she want to die like that, though? There are so many more interesting ways to go.
After applying her makeup, which is really just dark eyeshadow from a makeup palette she stole from the mall and her little sister's cherry flavored lipgloss, she opens her bedroom door to take in the full brunt of the argument happening in the living room. Over some damn game.
“We’re takin’ the game system and sellin’ it, you little bastard!” Stuart McCormick, Kenny’s father, had always had a special kind of distaste for the oldest child. Sometimes, he doubted that he was even his own. Despite the fact that they were nearly identical.
Kevin, “Oh, so you can buy more crack with the money?!” is Kenny’s older brother. He dropped out during his Junior year of high school. He would have been graduating soon, had he stayed.
“Shut the fuck up, both of ya! I have a headache!” Carol McCormick, who is laying on a good majority of the couch, has never been as bad as her husband. That is, she never beats or threatens any of her children.
And Karen, who is hiding in her room, is by far the most sensitive member of the household. Hell, the entire family.
Kenny is... leaving. She pushes past the argument, as if it isn't even happening. Her parents don’t care. They never notice nor care about her absence unless it affects them, in some way. The air outside nips on the exposed parts of her skin, but she ignores it. The parka is keeping her arms warm, and that’s all that matters. There are times when Kenny is actually grateful she hasn't physically grown much since elementary school, the malnutrition has kept her small enough to wear the same parka well after any other fourteen year old would have completely grown out of it. Now, it's only a little too small, but she can still force her arms into the sleeves.
It isn’t long before she finds the spot she’s looking for, a street corner near the park. Due to the cold, children just aren’t playing outside much at the moment. After only ten minutes of standing on the sidewalk and waiting, a black car pulls up in front of her. He rolls his driver’s seat window down. “Are you a girl?” His question seems very… accusatory.
Kenny isn’t offended, however. She smiles and bends down to better see the gentleman in the car. “Yeah, of course I am.”
“Don’t sound like one.” The man’s voice is gruff, he sounds much older than he looks. Probably chainsmokes worse than her parents.
But she perseveres, “What do I sound like, then?”
“A pansy in drag.” After that, the man shoots off in his car.
Kenny chokes on the smoke from his tailpipe. That was fucking rude, she thinks. She’s beginning to freeze when someone else finally comes along. The man inside of the next vehicle is far more timid than the first, far more nervous. “This… I don’t usually do this.” He tells Kenny after she’s already inside his car. “I-I have a wife… and kids!”
“Mhm…” Kenny pretends to listen. She’s heard this sob story before, all it does is kill the vibe.
And no matter what they say, she always ends up with their money tucked into her back pocket.
By the time she gets home, it’s nearly dark. Her gloss has long since been wiped, or licked, she could never tell, off of her lips. Her hair is a frizzy mop, and she feels filthy. She adds the money she received to a folded stack of bills she’s been saving in a hidden spot inside of her closet.
At the very least, she could help chip away at some bills the family has been getting demolished with over time. Soon enough, they weren’t going to have any power or running water, and she just wouldn’t let her little sister live like that. She couldn’t. Not if she could help it.
☆
“Show us your boobs!” Some frat boy yells out at Kenny as she walks home. When she ignores him, he continues. “Hey! Hey, baby!”
She snaps her head around to stare him and all of his stupid friends down. They’re far older and bigger than her, yes, but she can be intimidating when she tries to be. “I’m not gonna fucking do that.”
Another guy shouts, “You dress like a whore but won’t act like one?” All of his friends laugh.
Fine. Fine. Kenny shuts them all up by lifting her shirt. Unsurprisingly, there’s nothing there. It’s something she’s a little annoyed about herself. The frat boys continue to poke fun at her appearance, even after she gives them what they want. “She’s fucking flat, dude!” They laugh even more wildly amongst each other.
Whatever. She doesn’t care. She’s been through much worse than some probably drunk college students catcalling her. If anything, she should be happy that they find her attractive enough to want to see her hypothetical boobs. One day, she’ll actually have them, and she'll charge thousands for even a glance.
Kenny knows her worth. When she gets home, she adds her newest wad of cash to the stack.
☆
At school, Kenny dresses like normal. An ill-fitting t-shirt along with a pair of baggy jeans that are probably her brother’s. She doesn’t put through any effort to wear makeup, it is just school. Besides, she’s a little… undercover, as she calls it. She still hasn’t told her friends.
Except for one. But, she and Butters Stotch aren’t really on the best terms at the moment. He has his own issues she can't help with, maybe she doesn't want to help. It had been a mistake for her to suggest doing so in the first place.
The conversations her friends have are always boring high school drabble. She doesn’t care about what Wendy did, or what Rebecca McArthur said to her in art class. And she certainly doesn’t care to hear Kyle whine about his "bad" test scores. A ninety-three percent is a perfectly fine score, yet the boy finds a way to complain about it! If Kenny puts in more an effort in class, she could score that high too. She doesn't, what reason does she have to do so? Nobody expects her to ever go to college, right?
“What about you and Powder?” Stan asks Kenny. She wasn’t listening to anything he’d said before that.
“Hm? What about us?”
“Are you two going to the dance together?”
Kenny wants to burst out laughing, but she holds it in. “No, no… that wasn’t… a thing.”
“Why not? I thought you liked her!”
“…Not like that.”
Honestly, Kenny has never put a lot of thought into her relationship with sexuality. She likes girls, that’s always been obvious. But she also doesn’t mind guys. Or specifically, older men. As that has been, so far, her only experiences with any group other than girls her own age.
Tammy Warner, in fourth grade, was her first real girlfriend. She was a year older, she had experience. Kenny stopped seeing her after… well, you know. And she moved away within the next year. Kenny would go on to have multiple different girlfriends, or whatever they'd called the relationship, with girls everyone knew. She even got with Bebe Stevens once during the summer between eighth and ninth grade, while Bebe and Clyde were broken up.
She had never considered what she had with Powder to be love. Maybe she’s just too grown up now, her new experiences have made her too mature for dumb childish things like boyfriends and girlfriends. She’ll have sex with whoever she wants to, who cares about love?
☆
Kenny fixes her clothes after she climbs into the passenger’s seat of a stranger’s car. Her shirt got a little mangled, her skirt severely did. She wipes her mouth with her fist and looks back at it to see the back of her hand covered in glittery lipgloss. Well, at least that’s all there is. She suppresses a giggle.
The man whose car she’s in adjusts his pants before getting into the driver’s seat. “Do you need a ride home?” He asks her.
What a gentleman! She thinks. “You can drop me back off at the park.”
“Alright, then.”
They don’t have to drive far. It was just a quick thing, just a one time thing. The stranger hands off the money before Kenny exits the car. After she blows him a kiss and pretends to walk away, he drives off. Because it’s still early, really, the last guy was such a quick client that it was almost laughable, Kenny decides to try to find at least one more before it gets too dark out. Maybe someone who wouldn’t mind that she already looks a bit used.
Fifteen agonizing minutes pass, the longer she stands there, the more the soreness starts to catch up to her. Kenny considers just calling it a night and going home. That is, until somebody finally drives up right in front of her. “Hey little lady, what are you doing alone out here?” A man in an expensive looking silver car asks her.
He has to be rich, so she turns on the charm. “Just waiting for someone like you to pull up.”
The man is a tad bit thrown off by her voice. She doesn’t have the most feminine voice in the world, but it also hadn’t dropped in the same way her friends’ voices had. It's raspy, still boy-ish. “Your uh... throat hurt?” He asks.
She giggles playfully, but internally she’s already getting irritated. “No, that’s just how I sound!” Just like the scene she’d scripted within her head, Kenny lets a sleeve of her shirt slide down to reveal her shoulder. “Should I just get in?”
Shocked with her excitement, the man nods wide-eyed and motions for her to sit in the passenger’s seat. “How old are you, anyway?” He asks her.
“How old do you think I am?”
“Eighteen?” The man says as a joke.
Kenny smiles back, “Then, I’m eighteen.”
Soon enough, the drive that typically never takes longer than five minutes to get to the closest inn starts going on ten minutes. And then fifteen. Until after almost twenty minutes, they park outside of a fancy looking hotel. Not a rundown, rat-infested, motel. A luxury, con-holding, hotel! When they get inside, the man shows his ID in order to prove that he’s allowed to be there. Kenny catches the name Gerald on the card, and she has to force herself not to feel nauseous. That’s the name of one of her best friend’s fathers… She opts not to think about it any further as he leads her into the elevator and up to his hotel room.
It’s really nice! There’s a large couch, with a television right across from it. A kitchenette complete with a, Kenny can assume, stocked mini fridge. And the bed… is huge. It must be one of those king sized beds she’s heard so much about.
Kenny is so stunned by how magical everything looks, that she nearly forgets why she’s there in the first place. The man locks the door behind them and wastes no time getting into it. He grabs her hips before moving his hands up to attempt to pull her shirt off for her.
She does so herself and half expects him to kick her out when he sees her build. But seemingly, he doesn’t care. He just leads her towards the giant bed, where he strips his own clothing off. He touches the inside of her underwear, and it’s only then that it really hits him.
His breathing is heavy when he asks, “You’re a boy?” So, the voice really hadn't tipped him off before.
“No… girl.” Kenny tries to explain through an uncomfortable lack of physical attention being paid to her body.
“A transgender?”
She wants to smack herself in the face. “Y-Yeah. Yes.” No time to correct him, she just needs him to continue.
“Okay… alright, okay.” Gerald psyches himself up before he keeps going.
Aside from the sex, Kenny’s mind focuses on how soft the bed is. The covers, the mattress… it’s like fucking on a cloud. She really wouldn’t mind coming back to this place. Or seeing Gerald again. She cringes when she thinks about the man’s name.
As far as she is truly concerned, his name is John.
The client gives her about two hundred dollars for that. Two hundred. That was more than she’d gotten from ten regular guys. Maybe even twenty regular guys! She puts it together in her money clip.
Tomorrow, she’ll give her brother some of the money so that he can take it to the bank to pay the bills. Kenny sleeps well knowing that she’s done some good in the world.
☆
“Where the hell did you get this?” Kevin asks when Kenny hands him eight hundred dollars in cash.
“I just saved it up.” She pulls a half-drunk bottle of soda out of the fridge and decides to drink the rest of it. No idea who it had previously belonged to.
“Ken, this is an insane amount of money to ‘just save up’.”
“What do you wanna hear? Do you think I stole it or something?”
“No!” Kevin goes quiet before squinting his eyes at his sister and asking, “Did you?”
“I got that money from working, dumbass.”
“You have a job? At fourteen?”
“Yeah, and you don’t, at eighteen. Take that money to the bank already and don’t get robbed.”
Though he still has questions, Kevin listens to her and takes the money straight to the bank, leaving Kenny and Karen home alone. This is fine for both of them, because they’re used to it. In fact, there had been plenty of times throughout Kenny’s elementary years that she’d have to take care of Karen alone. Just two babies taking care of each other.
Nowadays, Karen can care for herself. She catches Kenny in the middle of getting ready to go out. “What are you wearing?” She asks her.
Startled, Kenny jumps and drops her eyeshadow palette on the floor. Some of it cracks, other colors that were practically already used up turn to dust and get all over the carpet. “Karen, Jesus, knock!” She shouts.
“Oh, sorry…” Seeing that she wasn’t wanted, and clearly had ruined Kenny’s makeup, Karen begins to sulk away. Likely to her bedroom, she doesn’t play outside much anymore.
“Ugh, Karen, wait.” Kenny salvages the cracked pieces of eyeshadow and ignores the ones staining the carpet for now. “I’m just getting ready to go out, you’re okay being home by yourself, right?”
“Where are you going?” Karen sounds like she’s about to cry.
“I’m just going to hang out with a friend, it’s fine. Kevin will probably be back soon, anyway.”
“A-Alright…”
Kenny kisses her sister on the top of her head before she leaves the house. Because it’s sunny, it isn’t as freezing cold as it could be. Although, winter is still right around the corner.
It doesn’t matter, Kenny wears a skirt anyway. It's the only one she has, stolen straight from her mother's dresser drawer.
A client picks her up, and they do the deed in the backseat of his car inside an empty parking lot. Then he drops her right back off at the park he’d met her in. Another day’s work done. She almost considers going home, until a familiar shiny silver car pulls up next to her.
“You again?” The man inside of it says when he rolls down his window. Gerald.
“Yep.” Kenny shrugs, she feels strangely comfortable around this man. Like they’re friends or something.
“I’m only in town for a few more days… what do you say?”
She doesn’t want to come off as desperate, though she does desperately need money. The last thing she ever wants to become is a beggar. “Y-Yeah! Sure!” She walks around to the passenger’s side of the car and gets in.
The seats are leather, and they're even heated when you sit down. Everything is clean, there’s no trash in the cup holders or inside of the doors. Not to mention, pristine floor mats. How is that even possible? They’re supposed to get dirty!
Kenny watches as buildings fly by past the car. Or, more accurately, the car flies past the buildings. The same huge, fancy, hotel from the previous night finally comes into view, and she feels her hands start to sweat. The car parks, and she and Gerald get out of it. He leads her into the building again, up into the elevator, and inside of his hotel room.
As soon as the door locks, the man starts to remove his clothing. His suit jacket, his shirt, his belt and his suit pants. Kenny tries to keep up with how quickly it’s all happening, but it’s too fast. And then, before she even notices, the man is stripping her of her own clothes. And she’s on the big comfy bed that she nearly sinks into. Everything is fine.
When Kenny’s eyes open next, she’s staring up at a white ceiling. For a moment, she almost panics, but then she remembers just where she is.
The hotel room. With Gerald.
However, the man isn’t around. He’d seemingly left her there to sleep while he went out and did some work. Upon inspection of the room, he’d accidentally left his wallet next to the kitchenette sink. So of course, Kenny robbed him. Why wouldn’t she? Clearly this man was rich enough to drop two hundred dollars on a prostitute, which he had put on top of the bedside table next to Kenny’s side of the bed. He would live if someone stole a couple hundred more.
The only issue she has now is getting back home.
Despite her ragged appearance, it only takes a few minutes of walking on the sidewalk for somebody to truly notice her. “Hey!” It’s yet another college-aged boy at least four, maybe five, years her senior. “Where’re you goin’?”
Kenny purses her lips, she tries her best not to respond to people like that anymore. All they want is some attention, and she can’t afford to give her’s away for free.
“Come on, hang out for a little bit.” The guy caresses her backside, which causes her to jump and him to laugh.
“Fuck off!” Kenny shouts. She’s used to cat-calling, but nobody has ever touched her like that before.
She tries to cover herself with her hands, but the college boy moves them away. “What are you dressed like that for?” He places his own hands on either side of her hips.
“Leave me alone.”
“Just hang out for a while…”
“I’m fourteen!” She yells. The admission of her age causes the guy to finally set her free and dash off, scared of anybody noticing, probably.
Because she really has no idea where she’s going, she stands still on the sidewalk and sticks out her thumb in an attempt to hitchhike. Very few people want to stop for her. Maybe she looks scary. But she’s not that threatening, is she? She’s short, not quite frail but pretty skinny. Not much muscle. And she’s in a skirt.
After a while, when she begins to rub her arms for warmth and her thumb starts to get tired, a truck pulls up next to Kenny. “You need a ride?” Asks a gruff voice from inside of it.
“Yes, please.” Kenny’s voice is soft, like she’s trying to come on cuter than she looks.
“Alright, hop in.”
She listens and takes a seat in the passenger’s side of the truck. There’s not much space. The radio is playing eighties music mixed with static. “Um. I live… just drop me off at the thrift store, please.”
“Going shopping?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
Just before dropping Kenny off, the truck driver has a stop to make. He pulls into a secluded spot behind a building. The main road is still visible. “I'm gonna need some payment for this ride.” He states.
Kenny’s eyes dart between the man and the money she has in her pocket. “Huh?”
“You know what I mean.” He unbuckles his seatbelt. And his pants.
“I don’t… no.”
“You look no different from any of the other street walkers, honey.” The man grabs the back of Kenny’s neck with force. “Now do what you’re good for.”
He pushes her face between his legs, and she’s only able to struggle for a little while before she just has to give in. With her head being grasped the entire time, it’s not like she has a choice. Kenny focuses on the music in the background.
When the man is finally satisfied, he shoves her head away. And he continues driving.
By the time Kenny makes it to the thrift store, she’s exhausted. She rinses her mouth out in the bathroom and, for the first time in a while, takes a good look at herself in the mirror. Her hair is messy, her face is tear-stained. The black eyeshadow has smudged, or maybe it's looked like that the entire time. The glittery lipgloss is long gone. She looks and feels extremely frazzled, and she just wants to go home.
Another set of bills paid, another day full of selling her body in the backseats of cars and random motel rooms. Kenny straightens her clothing as she stands back on the street corner she works on. It’s getting dark, and she doesn’t have to keep doing this. But that morning, her father almost broke her neck pushing her against the kitchen table during an argument she wasn't even initally part of. So she isn’t really rushing to get home.
Shockingly, a very familiar shiny car makes an appearance. As does the voice from the driver’s seat. “What are you doing out here, girl? It’s freezing.”
Kenny smiles, whether or not it’s genuine, even she herself doesn’t know. “Waiting for you.”
“Oh, I’m sure not.” Gerald unlocks the doors and tells Kenny to get inside. He doesn’t even have to say it twice. “Don’t you have a home to get to?”
“Why does that matter?”
“It’s late… It's cold. You’re not homeless, are you?”
Kenny blows air out of her mouth like the question was insane to ask. “Of course I'm not homeless. Do I look homeless?”
“Well…” upon seeing Kenny’s offended face, Gerald laughs. “I’m joking. But, you could use some new clothes.” Perhaps he's grown tired of seeing her in the same shirt and cropped top she wears like a uniform.
“I don’t have the money for that.”
“Then, I’ll buy some for you.”
“Oh… you don’t have to do that.” Blood rushes to her cheeks, she’s partially embarrassed. The fact that he knows she’s too poor to afford new clothes makes her want to hide her face in shame. But instead, she smiles through it.
“It’s no problem. I want you to look good, anyway.”
She doesn’t have time to ask for what, because the car throws her forward and nearly causes her to knock out some teeth on the dashboard.
Kenny expects them to go to a thrift store, or somewhere else that sells clothes for cheap, but Gerald pulls up to a store she’d never seen before. There are mannequins in the windows with red velvet curtains draped behind them, to keep up the mystique of the store, perhaps. The man gets out of the car and walks around to the other side to open the door for Kenny. Her face is beet red by the time they are both standing in front of the building.
Inside, there are walls covered from top to bottom with beautiful dresses, gowns even. Silky ones, glittery ones, some covered in frills and others sleek and shiny. It almost feels wrong for Kenny to be there. Everything is so expensive, she can read it on the tags. She shouldn’t be anywhere near this store… and yet, she is.
As much as she wants to look around at every little piece of clothing, her eyes land on a scarlet dress. “That one. Uh, please.” She tells the man paying for everything. He calls over an employee to take it off the rack for her. One dress alone is hundreds of dollars. Kenny feels a little nauseous looking at the total. She almost tells him to put it back.
But Gerald wants her to dress nice… right? That’s why he’s doing all that he’s doing, isn’t it? The cashier folds the dress into a gorgeous bag. Kenny wants to save it. Maybe, she can hide all of her more feminine clothes inside of it. She and Gerald get back into his car.
“It’s a beautiful color, I’m sure it’ll look great on you.” He tells her.
“T-Thank you.” Her face gets red enough to match the dress.
After a quick stop at a shoe store and another to buy some ruby jewelry to tie everything together, Kenny finally realizes what all of the shopping was for. They arrive at the hotel she had already been to multiple times, and they quickly take the clothing and jewelry up to Gerald’s room.
“Time for us both to get dressed.” The man explains.
“Where are we going?”
“You’re my date tonight.” He leans down to plant a kiss on Kenny’s lips, which she reciprocates. “Now, get ready.”
It’s some sort of banquet that Gerald had been invited to. Of all people, of all girls, he chose Kenny to go with him? Maybe it’s just better than going completely single. And besides, for one night, Kenny can eat all the fancy food she wants. She can pretend that this high life is her life. As a flirty and playful thank you, she strokes the man’s leg with her own underneath the table.
About twenty minutes afterwards, when the speeches and everything are finally done, Gerald takes Kenny into the men’s restroom to release the tension she’d been building up in his pants. Throughout the party, Gerald convinces Kenny to drink. As much as she wants to push back on it, explain why she really hates alcohol actually, she's reminded of the fact that she's wearing the most expensive outfit she's ever touched. So, she feels obligated.
The night circles back to Gerald's hotel room, and as much as Kenny would like to say she remembers how it ended, she can't.
☆
Gerald somehow got her address. Maybe Kenny had drunkenly given it out like candy during the party, or he did some light stalking of his own, she doesn’t know. What she does know, however, is that she has a package. It’s already open when she gets home.
“Oh, yeah, I looked at what you got in case I wanted it.” Kevin admits from the living room couch. “It’s just a bunch of frilly clothes, did you get that stuff for Karen?”
“Uh, no, I didn’t buy anything.”
Kevin shrugs and keeps his attention on the television. Kenny takes the package to her bedroom. Once the door is closed, she rifles through the fabric inside of it and pulls out the clothing piece by piece.
Cropped tops, short shorts, fluffy coats… even some pairs of lacy underwear. It doesn’t take Kenny long to realize who had sent her this package.
“I see you got the mail.” Gerald says as he pulls up to the sidewalk and stops for Kenny to get inside of the car.
She’s wearing a few items he had given her, namely a pair of shorts and a furry coat, so of course he could tell that she’d gotten the mail. “I did.”
“How do you like it? Does everything fit?”
“Not everything, I guess…” Kenny’s voice trails off, the look in her eyes is insinuating something.
Gerald glances down at her lap, then back up to her face. When she innocently bites her lip, he takes it as a sign to speed off as quickly as possible. Get to the hotel, rip the clothes off of Kenny, and see what exactly she's having a hard time fitting into.
Afterwards, Gerald unsubtly brings up some pretty important information. “By the way, I’ve only been here for a business trip. I have to go back home soon.”
“Where are you from?”
“Well, my family is Italian…” The man jokes, gaining an amused eye roll from Kenny. “Denver, actually. You should visit sometime.”
“…Maybe.”
☆
For Christmas, Kenny gifts Karen a doll. She isn’t actually sure if Karen is still into that sort of stuff, but she’d appreciate any gift she’s given, so it doesn’t even matter. Kevin’s gift, from Kenny, is an old handheld game system that she found for cheap and got a smart kid, Kyle Broflovski, to hack a bunch of free games onto. For their parents… Kenny buys nothing. She, in fact, steals beer out of the fridge to trade to Stan for some of his father’s weed.
It’ll be a merry Christmas to her, and to everyone else? Goodnight.
Stuart and Carol aren’t dumb enough to not see through Kenny’s scheme, considering they had been unwillingly sobered up for a little while due to the lack of money to pay for drugs. They can tell when one of the few beers they had in the fridge have disappeared.
“Who the fuck took my beer?!” Stuart yells from the kitchen.
Kenny’s door is closed, so she ignores it. She lights the joint between her fingers.
“I didn’t fuckin’ take it, Stuart, I’ve been with you the whole goddamn day!” Carol’s voice booms in defense of herself.
Kenny breathes in the smoke, and as soon as she breathes out she feels infinitely more relaxed. Are her parents fighting in the other room? Maybe. Does she care? No.
The only thing that matters is her getting high enough to ignore it properly.
At some point, after the chaos of her parents being sober and upset about it, she gets a text on her phone. It’s from an unknown number, but the messenger reveals their identity quickly.
Hello, Kenny. It’s Gerald.
She is immediately skeeved out, how did this man get her number? Maybe, she’d left her phone unattended for long enough that he unlocked it and grabbed it from her contacts list? Scary, no matter how he did it.
Kenny texts back, yes?
She doesn’t know why she’s shaking while watching the three little dots bounce up and down to signify that the man on the other side is typing. After a minute, he responds: It’s my last night in town.
And Kenny knows what that means.
She stands on the same corner she always does. Snow falls against the orange parka and melts upon contact. Her legs are freezing, because she’s wearing the shortest skirt she’s ever worn before. Hey, it’s Gerald’s last night in town… she has to make it special, right?
As soon as the car pulls up, Kenny hops right in without even a word. Maybe it’s because she had gotten high beforehand that she’s as anxious as she is. Maybe it isn’t. The typical hotel they had gone to before is about twenty minutes away, Kenny knows that, so she doesn’t think about it when she closes her eyes to nap.
However, the hotel never comes. Kenny is awoken from her sleep by a strange feeling. It’s dark outside when her eyes open, she can see it from where she’s laying in the seat of the car. The seat is reclined so far back that it’s touching the one behind it. And a hand is underneath her shirt. Somebody’s mouth is somewhere it shouldn’t be.
“Wha…?” It could be the fact that she’s still tired, still high, a little disoriented. Kenny remains in a stupor, unable to fully take in what exactly is happening.
On the drive back, Kenny doesn’t say anything. Gerald plants a kiss on the top of her head. She flinches when he goes to touch her shoulder. It’s still snowing when she leaves the car, her legs are shaking as she walks. And when the man’s car disappears, she stops in her tracks to cry.
☆
The New Year comes and goes, Kenny spends it in her bedroom. Gerald hasn’t tried to contact her since Christmas. She isn’t sure if that makes her happy or not.
Because of the man’s absence, Kenny has to work twice as hard to make anything near the amount of money he would pay her. Sometimes she thinks she might just be too willing to do almost anything. It’s pretty pathetic when she agrees to put a stranger’s genitals inside of her body for twenty dollars, isn’t it? Shouldn’t she ask for more money?
She should know her worth by now. She’s been to a fancy business party, inside of a luxury car, at an expensive hotel… her body should cost more to use. She shouldn’t just settle for anything.
But that’s easier thought about than done.
“I can give you ten.” A man, who pulled up in front of her, attempts to negotiate.
“Ten? I wouldn’t jerk you off for ten!” She lies. She’s done more for less.
“Fifteen? Come on, my daughter’s recital is in, like, thirty minutes.”
“Twenty.” That’s her final offer. It isn’t that much higher, it isn’t what she deserves. But the man agrees.
He takes Kenny to a nearby motel to do “business,” she leaves the building feeling like her soul has been siphoned out of her. She isn’t so sure she can handle any more in one day.
But she does it anyway.
By the time she’s walking back home from the park, her body is so sore she reasons that she’ll just skip school the next day. Though, when that day comes, she still forces herself out of bed to get back on her corner. In fact, she works the entire day away. Surely nobody would notice her absence if she didn’t go to school the next day again…
“Dude, Kenny, where have you been? We thought you died.” Stan says on the bus ride to school in the morning.
Kenny rolls her eyes and gives a light chuckle, everything's better when it’s played off like a joke. “I was just sick, okay? I couldn’t get out of bed.”
Kyle pipes up, “You should’ve told us to grab your homework, you’re gonna be so behind, man.”
“Whatever. I didn’t even think I’d make it to high school, I’ll be surprised if I actually finish.”
Kyle elbows her in the ribs playfully, it stings like she’d been stabbed in the lung. “Don’t say that about yourself, you’d better graduate. We’re all gonna walk the stage together.”
Kenny smiles through the pain in her side, “Yeah, okay. I’ll try.”
At school she sees Butters Stotch. And clearly he can see her, but he avoids her like she’s going to attack him. As if she’s some wild rabid beast. She wants to talk. She wants to show him that, look, she is actively trying to fix herself. She’s outwardly calling herself a girl to the clients she meets off the streets, she’s wearing feminine clothing… She's doing exactly what Butters wanted her to. Right?
Well, he doesn’t want to speak. It’s like he moves on autopilot, like some tiny creature is telling him to just walk from class to class without talking to anybody. He’s like a robot. Kenny knows it’s stupid, but she can’t help but believe that it’s partially her fault. Maybe, if she had heard him out, took his batshit insane babbling as it was instead assigning a new meaning to it… Maybe then they’d still be friends.
☆
Kenny speaks to Butters for the first time in months, and he acts like he doesn’t even know her.
“I’m doing better, look, I’m comfortable being a girl!” She had grabbed his hands to try to keep him from walking away.
But he pulled them back with a scowl, “Okay.” His voice was flat.
“I’m… better.” Her voice sounded whiny, like she was pleading. It took everything in her not to beg, please, take me back.
“Okay.” Butters said again before turning his back on her.
Now, she ruminates on the interaction to keep her mind occupied. The position she’s in is uncomfortable, something is digging into her spine, and the man towering over her has callused hands. She almost can’t remember how she got into this situation.
Whatever, she gets paid at the end anyway.
Kenny clearly isn’t doing enough to appease Butters. If she were, he would have said so. She was doing this all for him, right? She needed to be better, accept herself, work on herself, fix herself. Then she could be there for him. She wasn’t going to be able to help him if she couldn’t help herself.
So she gathers up the courage to actually go out dressed in one of the outfits she’d made with the clothing Gerald had graciously gifted her. Shorts that barely cover her thighs, a tank top that is both loose and tight in the right places, and a fuzzy white coat. In case she gets cold.
Kenny looks at herself in the mirror, and she doesn’t like her own reflection. She doesn’t feel like herself. She doesn’t look like Kenneth Noah McCormick. But she ignores her own doubts and brushes through her blonde hair. It’s down to a little past her shoulders now.
It’s still cold outside, it’s still winter. The snow on the ground is unmelted even after days of no snowfall. And Kenny is walking through town dressed like she lives in Southern California. Of course, she gets stares. But if she's going to live her life as a girl, she should get used to that, shouldn’t she? Everybody gawks at girls on the street. Besides, she should take it as a compliment.
Somebody calls out to her as their car speeds past. A man sitting at the bus stop ogles her when she walks by, she can tell. His eyes moved in a familiar motion from her chest to between her legs, like they were analyzing her.
When a person says to her face, “You’re so beautiful.”
Her face contorts itself into a smile, and she responds, “Thank you.”
But when he asks for her number, and she refuses, he shouts profanities after her as she walks swiftly away.
Maybe she isn’t so cut out to be a girl.
☆
“So, are you a virgin?” The man who had just picked Kenny up inside of his beat up old truck asks her.
She tries to look innocent, the rosy blush on her cheeks helps to achieve that. “Of course not.”
“When did you lose it then, little lady?”
She considers telling him the truth. When she was eight, because of a Hollywood star talk show host. And she was so desperate for money she didn’t even care that what she was doing was wrong. She still hates herself for that.
Instead, she lies, “A year ago.”
The man chuckles, it makes Kenny’s stomach churn. “And how old were you then?”
A trick question, maybe. “Seventeen.”
“Oh, right. You’re eighteen. ” The driver says with emphasis on the number.
“Exactly.”
“You know, I don’t really believe that. Nobody does. How old are you, really?”
Why does he want to know so badly? “F-Fourteen.” Kenny admits. She isn’t sure why.
“See, I love honesty. Truth is, I’ve always wanted to bang a middle schooler.”
Wait, what? What? “I-I’m not in middle school.” That was only one part of the problem Kenny found with his sentence. “And… what?!”
“Hm? Oh, please don’t tell me you didn’t know that already.”
“That you’re a pedophile?!”
“You’re a fourteen-year-old prostitute, all of your clients are.”
Kenny wants out, out of the car, out of the job, out of the town filled with these perverts. She never thought about it like that. She wasn’t taken advantage of when she was eight because she was a child, it’s because she was willing. And the people who paid for her services… they just wanted somebody to have sex with. It wasn’t because she was a teenager, was it?
She stays quiet the rest of the car ride to the motel. She doesn’t speak a word when they get inside, when the door locks, when the lights turn down. She doesn’t even correct the man when he refers to her as an eighth grader.
She feels completely shut off before, during, and after. She doesn’t even realize that the man leaves her alone in the motel room as he drives off into the night.
At that moment, she opens her phone.
She messages the man she hasn’t spoken to in over a month: Hey.
Surprisingly, he responds back quickly: Kenny, it’s good to hear from you.
The conversation feels forbidden. Like they should have quit while they were ahead long ago. But they don’t.
Gerald orders her a ride home after lecturing her about being careful getting in a car with just anybody. Kenny assures him that she’s alright when she gets home, thanks him for paying for the ride, and tells him to have a good night.
It’s through texting over days and weeks that Kenny actually learns anything about Gerald. He’s a director, but his passion lies in indie films. Ones that are gritty, and black and white. And he believes in showing, not telling. Which is why he would rather send boxes of clothing to Kenny’s house than to tell her that he loves her.
But she knows he does. She can feel it.
Tragically, she doesn’t think that she loves him. And the last thing she wants is to be in a loveless relationship. So they’re not in one.
☆
The next time Kenny and Butters speak, it is after the boy doesn’t come to school for days. Weeks. She’s concerned. So she works up the courage to don an outfit good enough to prove how much better she’s gotten, and visits the Stotch family residence.
A woman, who Kenny knows is Linda, Butters’s mom, answers. She lets her know where to find her son, up the stairs and in his bedroom. Kenny fakes a smile when she thanks her.
She’s nervous as she climbs the stairs, a little terrified of how Butters will react seeing her look so different. But, that’s what he had wanted.
“Why do you look like that?” The boy asks. Her heart buoys.
She plays it off, “You told me to work on myself before I tried to help you… so, I did.” She shrugs, nonchalant.
As if this moment isn’t one that she’d been imagining, dreaming about, for months. This reunion.
She’s allowed to reinvent herself in the moment and act like she had it all figured out a long time ago. She doesn’t. She’s barely comfortable in the clothing she’s currently wearing, and they’re still nowhere near as revealing as her other outfits. But she has to exude confidence. He can’t see through her façade.
The next time they get a chance to speak to each other, it’s in the boy’s bathroom after school. Butters reveals something horrific that happened over the recent holiday. It happened again. Again. His uncle had ripped his soul to shreds again. Kenny feels sick listening to him recount the situation.
“He drove into a parking lot, I don’t know where, and then it just happened. I don’t remember it, the… you know, itself. I have, or I think I have, this disorder. It stops me from remembering certain things. Which is why there’s more people inside of my head.”
“More meaning…?”
“The little girl. You remember?”
Yeah, she remembers. “Mhm… you think you have a disorder?”
“There’s no other way. I’m not just imagining these people, I’m telling the truth.”
“I believe you.” Kenny reaches for Butters’s hand and squeezes it reassuringly when it’s in her palm. “I believe you.” She repeats.
Though it does sound completely insane, she tries her best to believe him. She doesn’t want to lose him again.
☆
Karen McCormick sits on the floor of her older sister’s bedroom, her hair being tied into pigtails by said sister’s friend, Butters Stotch. She asks for a braid, but he doesn’t know how to do braids.
Kenny walks out of her closet wearing an old oversized white t-shirt. She smiles at Karen when she asks, “Do you want some makeup?”
“Really? You can do makeup?” Karen’s eyes gleam.
“I can try.”
She grabs the palette of eyeshadow off of the broken dresser inside of her closet and gently paints hot pink onto her baby sister’s eyelids with her fingers. Then she places a light blushing of red onto her cheeks. Honestly, it looks a lot like clown makeup, but Karen loves it.
Kenny allows her to wear a piece of clothing she really doesn’t wear often at all herself, a scarlet red dress. Butters laughs upon seeing Karen all dolled up, she looks like a toddler who found her mommy’s makeup.
To all of them, it’s cute, it’s silly. To Kenny’s parents…
“What in the hell are you wearing?!” Their mother yells.
Karen freezes up immediately, as do the other two kids in the room. Butters almost shuts down completely, but Kenny jumps to her sister’s defense.
“She’s playing dress up, okay? Leave her alone! Look, we’ll wash the makeup off, it’s fine-“
“You, young man, shut your mouth.” Her father interrupts. It’s like a shot in the chest.
Kenny doesn’t think she ever once liked being called a young man. Nobody is a young man or even a young woman, they’re just kids. But that was the issue, wasn’t it? Kenny’s had to be a young adult ever since she was old enough to know how to scavenge the kitchen for stale cereal and frozen waffles. Ever since she started being more of a parent to her sister than their actual mother and father.
It’s possible that Kenny has never been a child, after all.
☆
The weekend is the only real time Kenny has to do some “work.” When she stumbles back inside the house after a long, and very rough, day… she’s immediately hit with the sound of her parents shouting. At each other, at someone else, she doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. At first it doesn’t.
Kevin is sitting on the couch watching a cop show, probably praying that the police would show up to their home to take their parents away. Karen is in her bedroom, Kenny can tell because Kevin isn’t in there. Karen is a little scared to be alone with him. She’ll never tell anybody, but Kenny knows the reason behind it is because he looks so much like their father.
Kenny takes it as a compliment that the same fear doesn’t extend to her. Maybe she looks more like their mother. At least Carol is pretty. Or, she used to be, before her skin finally started to take damage from all of the substance abuse over the years.
When she reaches her own bedroom, she shuts the door behind her. Usually, nobody bothers to knock. But tonight, somebody is trying to knock it down. “Kenny, open this door!” The familiar sound of her father’s booming voice is only slightly muffled by the way he’s slamming on it.
She isn’t exactly… dressed to face her family right now. Still wearing makeup, still in a skirt hiked so far up that it might as well just be a belt. She tells herself, maybe, they won’t notice. But it’s the first thing mentioned when she does open the door.
“Why are you dressed like a girl?” Her father asks. She can already smell the alcohol on him.
Kenny shrugs, “I don’t know.”
“A trashy whore, too.” The man clicks his tongue against his teeth as if to say, wow, you choose to be a girl and you chose to be a trashy slut prostitute. Like, as if it would have been fine with him so long as his “son” was dressed like a modest woman.
“I guess.”
“We’re having a-a fuckin’... family meeting! Get the family together!” Her father stumbles over his words and his feet as he turns back around. Probably to go bother Karen, too.
Family meeting? Kenny rolls her eyes and shuts her door, she quickly peels the tight clothes off of her body and throws on a pair of sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt. Before joining the rest of her family in the living room, she splashes her face with water from the bathroom sink and scrubs the makeup off with her bare hands.
In the living room, Stuart and Carol McCormick are standing by the couch in front of the TV. Kevin sits on said couch with his arms crossed because his parents have shut off the show he had been watching, and Karen sits as far away from him as possible on the opposite side of the couch. Kenny sits between them.
“Okay, family meeting!” Carol announces, as if the entire family isn’t already in the same room. “Me and your dad talked, argued a little, but we finally decided that all of you need to get a job.”
“What?” Kevin asks first. “Why don’t you two get jobs? You’re the parents!”
“I got a damn job, boy, listen to your mother!” Stuart fires back.
Carol continues, “We need more money, and if y’all are gonna stay here, you’re gonna need to contribute. All of you.”
Karen raises her hand, it’s jittering. Her whole body is shaking. “How… Do I do that?”
“Bake sale? Lemonade stand? I don’t know, Karen, figure it out! I had a job when I was your age!”
Kevin snorts out a laugh, “Being used as pedo-bait so that your parents could sell crack in their basement isn’t a real job.”
That comment earns Kevin a smack in the face from his father. And immediately, he hits the man back. Before it can turn into an all-out brawl, Kenny speaks up, “Uh, I actually do have a job. I’ve been helping you pay these bills for months now.”
“What kinda job?” Her father asks. Clearly, he doesn’t believe her.
“That… I mean, why does it matter? Why do you care?”
“It’s a fuckin’ question, son. I’m not a cop.”
Police or not, that isn’t the issue. She was never going to admit to anybody the type of work she was doing. Maybe a close friend, but… definitely not her family.
“Part-time, at… City Wok. You know, cleaning.”
Stuart rolls his eyes, that’s nothing to brag about. Nothing worth keeping a secret about either.
☆
Kenny hates the talking part. Usually, her clients don’t want to talk. But when they have nothing better to do, she supposes, it’s bound to happen. She just wishes they wouldn’t ask the same questions each time. “So, why did you start doing this?”
What do they want to hear? Do they get off on the fact that she’s so poor she has to sell her body in order to keep the lights on at home? There’s no way it’s a genuine question every time. Kenny answers it like it is, “...I was raped when I was eight.”
“What?” The man beside her laughs in shock. He doesn’t believe her. But Kenny isn’t laughing. “Wait, really?”
“Why would anyone lie about that?”
“No, but… really?” What, was he asking if she really got raped? Or if what happened was really rape? Who knows, it could’ve been all her fault, at age eight.
“Fucking yes, what aren’t you getting? A man put his dick inside of my mouth when I was eight years old.”
The man blinks, still stunned by the whole admission. “And that’s why you’re a whore now?”
Well, kind of. It’s part of the reason why. The biggest reason is to help pay the bills. But Kenny thinks, oftentimes, that if she hadn’t chosen to do those sexual acts for money when she was eight, she probably wouldn’t have thought of it as her best bet. Not a day goes by where she doesn’t reflect on that decision.
Yes, she has enough sense to call what had happened to her rape, but she doesn’t necessarily see herself entirely as a victim. She did choose to get into that situation, she chose to prostitute herself. You could argue that, being eight years old, she wasn’t in her right mind to agree to do anything like that… but she knows she could have just said no.
Why didn’t she just say no? Why can’t she, now?
“Wait- wait wait wait wait wait!” Kenny pleads, already out of breath. “Wait, please, stop- stop it!”
Her heart is pounding when the man over top of her finally listens to her and stops. They sit like that for a while, unmoving. Kenny considers backing out of this session, telling the man to keep his money and just let her go. She’d find her own way back home.
But the man plants a soft kiss on her forehead before she can say anything, “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” He asks her.
She can’t tell him what because it’s embarrassing. And aside from how embarrassed it will make her, it’s also deeply personal. She doesn’t want to have that kind of connection with a stranger. She doesn’t want to reveal why her brain has overreacted to the same stuff she’s been doing for months. Yet, she can’t help it. The tears well in her eyes and overflow like a broken faucet before she even knows it.
“I just– I can’t–!” She’s having a hard time catching her breath.
“Calm down, honey.” The man still towering above her whispers. He’s stopped, but he’s still making her stomach twist and turn. He’s still in there.
“I-I’m sorry… please, just… forget this. You don’t have to pay me anything, I just need to go home now.”
“Oh, but,” He shifts, her stomach tightens, “I already paid for the room. I need to, at least, be repaid for that.”
Kenny is close to tears again, the feeling in her stomach just won’t go away. “I-I can… do something else, but… I can’t do this.”
Ironically, the alternative makes her feel worse. Kenny shocks herself that she manages to make it through the rest of the session without vomiting. When she finally arrives back home, she drudges straight to her bedroom and passes out in bed before she can even take her mangled clothing off.
☆
The sun beams down hot through the tattered cloth in front of Kenny’s window. Her bedroom door is open and it smells like something is cooking– or burning– in the kitchen. She’s still in the clothes she wore the previous night, so she strips them off and throws on something more casual. When she reaches the hallway, the smell can easily be identified as burning eggs. Eggs? When was the last time they had eggs in the house?
Upon turning the corner, Kenny spots her brother Kevin attempting to scrape blackened eggs off of a pan and onto a paper plate. “What the hell?” She says out loud.
That catches Kevin’s attention, “I made breakfast, you want some?”
“No thank you… where did you get the eggs?”
“From the store. Well, I didn’t buy them, Mom and Stuart did.”
And where did Carol and Stuart get the money for such luxury? Kenny’s heart sinks.
While Kevin is nonchalantly making burnt breakfast, Kenny is in her bedroom closet searching high and low for her stash. Her money stash. There has to be hundreds of dollars in there, and it’s completely missing. She tears her whole room apart looking for it now.
“Goddammit… God fucking dammit!” She screams, her fist lands hard against the closet wall, nearly cracking it open.
Those bastards… they stole her fucking money! Of course they did, her father didn’t believe that she had actually been helping around the house, the two of them sneaked into her room and stole from her. They stole everything! Kenny can’t keep herself together anymore. They stole everything.
She’s had enough. Enough of being treated like her sacrifices mean nothing. If they only fucking knew how much she did for them. If only they knew what she put herself through so that the two of them would have a roof over their heads to run back to after shooting up all night. They have no idea that the reason the lights are still on and the water still runs warm is because their daughter is forcing herself to be okay with people doing whatever they please with her body.
They don’t even know that deep down, somewhere inside of her, is an eight year old boy whose heart just plummeted to the center of the Earth. They don’t even know that he’s so small he doesn’t even have to get on his knees. They don’t know that that same child applies the same favors to get out of jail that night.
They don’t understand how much that money means to her. They never will.
Gerald? She’s typing at the speed of light while walking briskly down the side of the road. Her backpack she’d dumped all of her schoolwork out of is full of clothes and anything else she’ll need. How fast can you get here?
Gerald meets her at the church. It’s not a busy part of town, and possibly less suspicious to outsiders who would otherwise think that a child getting into a car with a man, who doesn’t look related at all, would be. They don’t talk about the reason they’ve been brought together again, they don’t talk about anything. Gerald just drives, and Kenny just rides.
When they arrive in Denver, hours later, Gerald takes it upon himself to reintroduce the spark in their relationship they had at the start. He’s kissing Kenny aggressively before they even leave the parking garage they’re in.
“Okay, wait, wait a second—"Kenny is shut up by Gerald’s mouth before she can get her words out.
She’s out of breath by the time he pulls away, though the bombarding of affection doesn’t end. His lips are on her chest, they make a wet trail down to the hem of her pants. Kenny doesn’t want to do this.
“Stop!” She yells. It echoes throughout the parking garage. Now she feels bad. “I just… I don’t want to right now.”
“Payment for everything I’ve done for you.” Gerald states. "And did you think I didn't notice you stole from me? So, this is payment for that too."
And she can’t argue with that. Or, she can, but not very well.
So she lets it happen, like she always does. Just let it happen. It’s going to feel good, anyway. There isn’t a problem if it feels good.
Gerald leaves her stranded on the side of the road a day later. He was going somewhere for a minute, something to do with work, and then he never came back. Kenny pulls out her phone to text him, but the message is unable to be sent because her number is blocked. So she stands there, on the sidewalk, in an unfamiliar city, alone. She is completely and utterly alone.
Thank God she had some money stowed away in her bag for times like this. She takes a bus to the nearest motel where she pays upfront for a week. They don’t ask her where she comes from, where she got the money from. As long as nobody asks, she won’t tell.
She can’t sleep. It’s her first time being alone in such a new place, so it’s impossible to relax enough to allow her body to go unconscious. So Kenny scrolls on her phone until the sun comes up. Only then, is she too tired to stay awake.
There’s a gas station down the street from the motel, so when Kenny wakes up she takes a quick trip to it. A carton of milk, one of those bowls of dry cereal already pre-packaged, and a spork she grabbed from the counter for free. She stands outside the building to eat, observing anybody else who might walk in.
A larger man with seemingly uncharacteristic looking long hair walks in wearing the same kind of shirt as the cashier who had just checked Kenny out. So he works there, Kenny notes within her head. “Alright! Damn!” She hears a high pitched voice shout from inside of the store. She considers running, but her body just won’t move. Not an inch.
Less than a minute later, the long-haired man walks back outside, dragging along a young girl. Kenny tenses up immediately, but something inside her gives her the strength to actually move. She throws down the rest of her breakfast on the sidewalk.
“What are you doing?” She asks the man, attempting to block him from moving any further.
“Taking this dumbass home, move.”
The man pushes past her, but she moves in front of him again. “How do you know her?”
“She’s my sister, mind your fucking business.”
Again, he knocks Kenny to the side so he can continue getting past. She stands still, intensely staring at the girl who seems reluctant to be going anywhere. Kenny notes her brown hair, how it’s streaked with black and blonde highlights. The flash of her face that she sees for a brief moment sends a chill down her spine. Dark eyeshadow, thick eyeliner, glossy lips, and near invisible freckles dotting her skin.
Scary. That’s what that girl is.
Kenny returns to her motel room. She can’t help but think about that girl. Something about her was strangely… familiar.