Bring The Crunch : The Aftermath

III - Under the Flickering Lights of the Gas Station

Timmy took a towel hanging on the wall and wrapped it around his shoulders, so as not to get his clothes wet. The shower building gave off something strange when there was no one in it : usually it was full of children with their eyes wide shut, due to the pain of collective showers.

Jimmy turned on the water. Sitting on a wooden stool, he mindlessly ran his fingers through his best friend's hair. He had done it many times before, but this time it was... weird. He thought about Sarah again : what was she doing now ? Had she at least seen what happened in the Mess Hall ?

Jimmy had to face the facts : she would never be interested in him. Too bad, he'll find someone else. Someone else...

Timmy hummed quietly in the shower and Jimmy recognized the tune : it was an old Edison Lighthouse hit, "Love Grows".
The manager of the South Park vinyl store often played it in her boutique, and the duo sometimes hung out there on boring Saturdays, of course without Jimmy's parents knowing.

He began to recite the words as they came into his head.

-"He talks kinda lazy and people say he's c-crazy, and his life's a mystery ! Oh but love grows, where my Timothy goes, and nobody knows like m-me !"

He laughed before even finishing his sentence, and even more so when his colleague let go a protesting "Timmeh !".

Jimmy lowered his hands from his hair to his neck and started tickling him, causing the protests to stop and change into laughter too. The attacked dragged his executioner's head under the running water with him.

-"You dirty motherfucker !"

They now both had wet hair, and Jimmy quickly called his colleague to order, telling him that he still had work to do : he didn't wash his hair with soap yet.

As he got started, the boy realized something : it's crazy how Timmy looked like Sarah. It's true ! Their hair was the same strawberry blonde and they were both slightly taller than Jimmy. He saw quite a coincidence in this resemblance.

But there were many things that Sarah didn't have : she didn't have that cacophonous laughter, that liveliness of mind and intelligence, that way of exploding in emotion. No, Sarah wasn't like that.

She was nothing like a Timmy.

The shampoo bottle fell from the comedian's hand and the other hand stopped. Jimmy stared into space in front of him, unable to process what just happened inside his head. His friend noticed and turned around, a hand on his shoulder.

-"Jimmy ?"

He came back to his senses.

-"Ah ! Yeah, yeah, don't worry ! I j-j-just had a little absence."

It was clearly not a little absence, and Jimmy knew it : everything was racing through his mind, and the only thing he was sure about just collapsed in front of him. He decided to ignore that for a moment, and turned off the water.

-"I'll let you dry th-that, I'll wait for you outside, okay Tim-Tim ?"

He went to the door of the shower building and opened it, the sudden cold in the air brushing against his face and his soggy brown curls.

He sat down on the stairs and took his head into his hands. What the hell was that ? He could not ignore that !

Jimmy was sweating in his Hawaiian shirt, and felt like he was about to cry. He didn't expect that kind of feelings, not at all !

What was he going to do now ? Well, the same thing he did before : supress them and act exactly like it never happened. It shouldn't be that hard, he thought.