Operation: KYLE

19

I put the skateboard back in its place. This is kind of harder than I expected. I looked over my shoulder, spotting Stan in the toy aisle. "You found anything, Stan?" He looks over to me, then vaguely shakes his head. I scratch the back of my head in frustration. Who knew picking out Butters' presents were hard? I could see Stan walking over to me in my peripheral vision with a disheartening expression. "Wanna go back to the last store?" He asks. I shake my head, still looking at the skateboards. "No, I feel like this place is much more better than the last ones."

I stepped back to scan over the skateboards in each section. "Hey, which of these boards do you feel like Butters would want?" I asked him. He hums as he looks over each board, then decided to point at the Hello Kitty board. "That one." I nodded shortly. "That's what I thought, too," I went ahead to pick up the skateboard, and show it to him. "But, don't you think Butters would say it's too gay?" He purses his lips, his eyebrows narrowing while thinking hard about it. "Oh, yeah, good point."

I loosen my grip on the board, almost dropping it in the process. I let out a sigh. "Ugh, I don't know what to expect from him. He likes girly things sometimes, but also say some things are gay." Stan snorts. "Well, to be completely honest, I wouldn't be surprised if he was gay." I make a strange face. "Come on." "Sorry." He apologized, putting on a regretful expression. I avert my eyes for a second. "... But, yeah, I-I wouldn't be surprised, too." I nodded. His eyes widens open beamingly. "Oh, hush." "I didn't say anything." He said in a singy-songy tune. I roll my eyes jokingly. I turned toward him.

"Did you call the others?" His eyebrows raises. "About what?" I sigh. "Butters' birthday party, genius. Did you call the others about the birthday plan?" "Oh, yeah, yeah, I did. I didn't tell Cartman, though." Stan says. He pulls out his phone, and started to scroll through his list, then showed it to me. It appeared as all the people's names we invited with check marks beside their names, except for Cartman's. I huff as I put my hands on my hips. "Good, he'll probably try to crash Butters' birthday."

"Yeah, I thought it was a bad idea, too," He stuffs his phone back in to his trousers. "Do you think he'll find out again?" "Psh. He always does, and will... somehow." I stare in to space until I eventually shake my head. "I'm gonna go look in the next section. You should go look for a present, too." I said as I starting walking to the next aisle. He doesn't answer. I stop on my tracks, confused, waiting until I hear an answer from him. "... 'Kay." He finally agreed. Stan has already started walking away, but I just stood there, and looked over my shoulder until I watched him disappear in to some aisle sections.

I don't know if it's just me, but, he's acting kind of weird. He's been... distant, lately. Did I do something wrong? Is it because I ignored his rant texts of Wendy? I attempted to shake it off, and we both parted ways, searching for gifts separately, but in reality, it's still in the back of my head. I try my best to get my mind off of him by looking at some art supplies. I don't know much about art, but I think I do pretty okay in it at school.

Speaking of art, Butters does draw sometimes, doesn't he? Sure, he doesn't do it seriously, but he does seem to like it. I run my fingers through some arranged sketchbooks smoothly. It feels quite nice, to be honest, until I bump in to something with my foot, causing me to almost slip, and fall. "Shit!" I yelled out, my voice quivering a little. I slapped my hand towards my mouth. That was loud. I lowered my head, and looked down to see what I bumped in to while hoping no one else heard me.

I blink. It was a skateboard. And not just that, it was a blank skateboard, and it was completely spotless. It's empty, I crouch down to get a better look at it. Do people even buy these kinds of boards? It looks a bit boring, if you ask me. I pick it up, stood up from the floor, and let my eyes travel to find where it came from. Luckily enough, it wasn't far from the art section. I went over there, and set it back in place. Jeez, people need to learn how to put things back. I looked at the next skateboard, but then I realized that there were more boards like these, all being blank.