Disclaimer: I do not own South Park and I make no profit from this work.

For the Love of a Jew

It all began at lunchtime, on a Tuesday, in school, with Bebe.

Where everybody else (bar perhaps Kenny) had matured at least a little in the intervening years, Bebe Stevens was pretty much the age at sixteen as she'd been at nine: airheaded, empty, and very shallow. Wendy was not quite sure why she still hung around with Bebe.

But then, childhood friendships had, for the most part, lasted. Red and Annie were still going around joined at the hip, and Kenny had only gotten closer to Kyle and Stan as they'd grown up. (Cartman, as always, was a different story. Still an asshole, though.) Clyde still kind of fancied himself the leader of some cool high school gang (and that was still never going to actually happen) and Butters was still socially retarded, confused and...well, Butters.

So perhaps it wasn't too surprising.

But the drift in personalities between the two girls had led to more and more arguments. By now, Wendy was pretty sure that she wasn't going to stay in touch with Bebe once she went to college (and Bebe...didn't) and got a life that didn't involve so many stupid hicks.

But it had started with Bebe interrupting herself.

"Oh my God," she said, dropping a fry and pointing sneakily at the lunch queue. "There it is!"

Wendy turned and...saw not very much.

"It?" she asked, knowing that she was going to regret it.

"That ass! That sweet, sweet Jewish ass," Bebe said.

Oh. Kyle was tying his shoelace. Okay, no, he wasn't, he was stuffing the ends into his shoe. But he was down on one knee to do it, and his jeans were pulled tighter across his ass. And Kyle's jeans were so baggy that only Kenny's jeans out-bagged them.

Wait, was that a word?

"So?" Wendy said, dismissing it.

Well, sort of. Bebe did have a point. Kyle had always had a nice ass.

"So, it's Kyle's ass!" Bebe snorted and rolled her eyes. "God, I am so getting me a piece of that ass by the end of the year. I have to. I have waited too damn long for that ass!"

"Bebe, shut up," Wendy said.

"I would totally tongue-fuck that ass. Hey, can you imagine that ass with no jeans? I would totally wear it as a..."

"Bebe, for the love of God, shut up!"

Silence.

Only when the canteen went silent did Wendy realise that she'd shouted.

Oops.

"Jesus, Wendy, no need to freak," Bebe snapped waspishly. "I just said it was a nice ass, is all!"

Wendy distinctly heard some eavesdropper, as the chatter started up again, cough 'lesbians' in that tried-and-true, blatantly not subtle manner. She went red from the chest up.

"Unless," Bebe said, leaning forward and grinning, "you're upset because you like that ass too?"

"Don't be stupid," Wendy said coolly. "Kyle and his ass are none of my concern."

"Uh-huh," Bebe said.

"They're not!" Wendy snapped.

"Okay, okay, I believe you," Bebe shrugged and returned to her fries.

But the wicked gleam in her eyes didn't go away.

In her own way, Bebe was as devious as Wendy had been. Her targets were different, and her methods very different (Bebe didn't tend to have disliked teachers shot into the sun, for example) but the results were the same: manipulation of an event or a person to her own ends.

And her ends tended to be sheer amusement.

School was that boring, she had to have something to do.

So when, on Wednesday morning by the lockers, Bebe 'accidentally' dropped her books in front of Kyle and he bent over to help her pick them up, Wendy shouldn't have been surprised that he had his back to her when it happened.

"I hate you," she told Bebe later.

"But you enjoyed the view," Bebe countered.

"Goddamnit, Bebe, I do not have a thing about Kyle's ass!" Wendy insisted.

"Uh-huh," Bebe said.

The problem was that Wendy...well, Wendy was lying.

She could even admit it to herself on a good day.

It was sheer logic resulting from facts, and therefore had to have no bearing whatsoever on Wendy's life or interactions with Kyle. But she did kind of like his ass.

Fact A: Kyle had a nice ass.

Fact B: Wendy was a heterosexual female.

Conclusion C: Wendy could appreciate, as much as any other heterosexual female (including Bebe, unfortunately), that Kyle had a nice ass.

And unfortunately, Bebe knew that. And Bebe, unlike Wendy, thought an appreciation of anyone's ass was something to be acted on - be it jumping that ass, as in the case of Kyle, or getting therapy, as in the case of Cartman.

And privately, Bebe thought that Wendy was too stuck up for her own good. And the cure for being stuck up?

Getting laid.

By the following Tuesday, Wendy had a problem.

While the rest of her brain had been, as usual, firmly rejecting everything that came out of Bebe's mouth (up to and including used air) her libido (that primitive, soul-eating, chauvinistic piece of crap somehow wedged into her hypothalamus - thanks a lot, God, you bastard) had sat up and paid attention.

And was still sat up and still paying attention.

To Kyle's ass.

This was about a hundred kinds of awkward. For a start, Wendy and Kyle had declared a kind of exasperated truce over their who-is-more-important-to-Stan war in eighth grade, after the fifty-eighth round of emo-gothicism from him. Then, Wendy and Kyle had drawn up a truce not to get so wound up over the pissy bitch, and maybe he wouldn't be such a pissy bitch if they got along.

(For the record, it didn't work.)

Since the eighth grade, when Stan had been in a pissy bitch mood, Kyle and Wendy had still been able to talk to each other without looking up curses in Ancient Hebrew (Kyle) or making calls to the guys who fired things into the sun (Wendy).

So they were...kind of friends.

And staring at your friend's ass all the time (however sweet) is just not on. No way.

Secondly, it was awkward because Wendy considered herself firmly above such petty parts of teenage life. She was going to succeed - get her grades, go to an Ivy League college, get a fantastic degree (and probably up to a doctorate) and then a high-flying, brilliant career. Probably in politics, because that was where it was at.

She did not want to be sitting around drawing love hearts on her notepaper and dreaming of Kyle's ass!

But when she woke up in the early hours of Tuesday morning, having had exactly that dream (why oh why did Bebe ever use the term 'ass as a hat'? It was traumatising!) Wendy knew she had to fix things.

And unfortunately, fixing things, when it came to Wendy's libido, meant actually doing something about it.

Oh dear.

"Hmm."

Wendy rolled her eyes.

"Aah."

She frowned.

"Nonononono, that won't...oh, no!"

"Bebe," she said, very calmly and very sedatedly. "Please stop rummaging through my wardrobe. It's not going to sort out my problem."

"Not with these clothes," Bebe agreed.

"What do my clothes...?"

"He's male, Wendy! Y chromosome, and all that comes with it!"

Unfortunately for Wendy, Bebe was the only one who would be able to help her sort out this...thing with Kyle, and not tell the entire school. It was one of Bebe's very rare moments of morality. On the down side, Bebe's ideas to catch a boy, and Wendy's ideas to catch a boy, didn't quite match up.

"You've been doing your way - the whole intelligentsia, better-than-the-other-girls, hot-because-I-don't-notice-you thing for ages," Bebe had told her firmly. "And hey, it works, loads of the boys love you for it. But boys have to notice you first if that's going to work and, Wends, Kyle hasn't noticed."

"How do you...?"

"Trust me. He hasn't."

Well, Bebe always knew who liked who and when, so Wendy had opted to trust her judgement. Which had resulted in Bebe rummaging in Wendy's wardrobe looking for 'better' clothing.

"Look," Bebe said, emerging with a pair of skinny jeans. "You remember when I hit puberty? Kyle noticed the power of the boob too, you know. Very much so. And he was the only one of the boys not to go for that really gay metrosexual thing ages ago. And he went out with Maria Marquez in the ninth grade for ages."

"So?"

"So? Wendy, Maria is the most boring airhead in the world! And has a fantastic rack!"

"Bebe, I..."

"And you don't," Bebe finished flatly, and folded her arms. "You're not going to get a man like Kyle until you get a rack like Maria's."

"Bebe, that is totally ridiculous!"

"Never," Bebe said sternly, jabbing a finger at Wendy's modest chest, "underestimate the powers of the boob. Ever!"

"Holy crap," said Stan.

The tone of his voice - sheer horror, mixed with a touch of disbelief - drew Kenny from his magazine, and Kyle from the physics homework he hadn't bothered doing last night.

"Oh holy dead-or-living Jesus," Kenny agreed.

Wendy was displaying cleavage.

Perhaps the severity of such a thing is not obvious. For clarification and comparison, Wendy with cleavage was akin to seeing a nun with cleavage. Typically, she kept herself in jeans and purple jumpers, displaying absolutely no cleavage. Furthermore, she was slim enough that none of them (bar maybe Stan, but judging by his shock, not even he) knew she had cleavage.

"Push up bra," Kenny said decidedly. "No way was she keeping that under her jumpers all this time."

The girls were getting out of Bebe's Dad's car, and while Bebe looked smug and sure of herself in her tiny skirt and boob-flashing top, Wendy simply looked uncomfortable. She wasn't even being that revealing - simply a V-neck, an alleged push-up bra, and the usual pair of jeans.

"What the hell is she doing?" Stan asked in a strangled tone. Despite the fact that they hadn't even attempted dating (again) in over a year and a half, Stan was still more than a little hung up on Wendy. And she had never whipped out her boobs for him.

"Trying to get herself a man," Kenny predicted.

"Hey, I could..."

"A man," Kenny stressed. "Not a fag."

"I am not...!" Stan began hotly.

"Stan," Cartman interjected, finally emerging from his 'second breakfast' (the never forgotten Cheesy Poofs) to air his retarded opinions, "you're faggier than the Jew, and that's saying something."

Kyle didn't even bother to comment, returning to his physics homework with a grunt of disinterest.

"Well, here the world ends," Kenny predicted, watching the girls disappear into the main building. "Wendy went pretty for a boy. Quiver in fear."

Cartman rolled his eyes: "She looks like a ho."

"Cartman!" Stan snapped.

"Dude," Kenny said, "she kind of does."

By the end of the day, Wendy was torn between two statements.

Either A: She was completely hopeless at flirting;

or B: Kyle was the most oblivious man in the universe.

It was a Wednesday. Wednesday had Kyle and Wendy in four of the same classes. Every Wednesday, without fail. She sat next to him in two of them, and opposite him in the other two. And she had obeyed every single one of Bebe's commands on what to do and when to do it.

She had folded her arms under her breasts in chemistry and leaned forward onto the bench a little, so Kyle had a perfect view of her even-more-enlarged cleavage. He hadn't even glanced up from his textbook for the entire class.

She had dropped her bag at the end of the class, and he had stayed to help her pick up her things. She had made sure to keep her chest turned towards him, and he didn't so much as falter.

She had played with her hair a lot in mathematics, playing with it and tossing her over her shoulder. She had even sat closer to him than usual, but he had been to busy (apparently) talking to Red on his other side to notice her.

She had walked with him from maths to history, trying to engage him in small talk. And surely Kyle realised how odd that was. He and Wendy always discussed the big things - religion, philosophy, politics, science, parapsychological phenomena and whether or not they truly existed - but never things so inane as the weather and what they were doing at the weekend.

By the end of the day, Wendy felt like killing Bebe, and then herself.

It was humiliating, that's what it was! It was completely embarrassing to keep fawning over him like some kind of silly, airheaded, lovesick cheerleader, to not be allowed to discuss the important things with him, to not be her. And he didn't even notice!

"It was a stupid plan," she told Bebe curtly, as they walked to the buses together. "A stupid plan and I'm not doing it again."

The worst of it?

She hadn't been able to keep her eyes from straying to Kyle's sweet, jean-clad ass all day.

God, this was worse than the Cartman fiasco.

"Dudes," Kyle said very seriously. "I think I figured what's up with Wendy."

They were crashed out on the couches in Kyle's living room. His parents were out (now that Kyle and Ike were old enough to take care of themselves, Sheila went off to fight her pious wars in Denver more often, and Gerald more-often-than-not got dragged with her) and they could hear the vague sounds of explosions from upstairs where Ike and his dorky friends were playing video games. Retro video games, not even the good shit.

Therefore, discussing things Not To Be Discussed In Front of Kyle's Mom (NTBDIFKM) was totally okay. For once.

"Shoot," Kenny said.

"She's trying to pull..."

"Told you," Kenny grinned.

"...Me."

Cartman choked on his soda.

"Ew, dude!"

"She's what?" Stan asked. Dangerously.

Kyle rolled his eyes. "Don't be such a pussy, Stan, she can try all she likes. It's not going anywhere."

"How do you figure?" Kenny asked.

"Seriously," Kyle said, "no girl has flashed me that much blatant boob since Maria Marquez in the ninth grade. And she tried to get me talking about my plans for the weekend. What the fuck, you guys?"

Stan said nothing.

"Maybe it's like the Cartman thing," Kenny said.

"Ey!"

"Maybe," Kenny continued, ignoring Cartman. "She just noticed how hot your ass is, and she's got a crush on your ass cheeks. One quick squeeze and bang, crush over and out of the system."

"Here it goes with the sweet ass again," Kyle rolled his eyes. "I fucking hate Bebe."

"Well, she's right," Kenny shrugged. "I'd totally bang your ass any day."

"Ew, Kenneh!"

Kyle tossed his empty soda can at Kenny's head. Unfortunately, even Kenny was tougher than that, and it didn't kill him.

"Wendy likes you," Stan said finally, very quietly.

"I guess so, dude."

"She likes you."

"Er, yeah, Stan, we established that," Kyle said slowly.

Stan did nothing for a few more minutes, then stood up, put his soda aside, retrieved his jacket, and left Kyle's house.

"God-fucking-damn-it," Kyle muttered.

On Friday, Wendy decided to do the honest, forthright, simple thing.

Tell Kyle, kiss Kyle, and hopefully the crush would pop like a burst balloon. And then everything could go back to being normal.

She went into school without Bebe. She went into school without uncomfortable push-up bras, silly tops, and bad makeup. She went into school as herself, and without any thoughts of the weekend or the weather.

"Dude! Stop being so fucking gay about this!"

Ah, follow the sweet, dulcet tones of Kyle's voice.

He and Stan were standing at Stan's locker, looking dangerously close to squaring off. And gathering a small audience.

"I can't do fucking anything about her!" Kyle shouted. "It's not my fucking problem! Get your head out your vagina and stop being such a fucking pussy!"

Wendy suddenly had the bad feeling that she had caused this little scene.

"She's my fucking ex, and...!" Stan began.

"NOT! MY! PROBLEM!" Kyle repeated, at top volume. "It's not fucking going anywhere; I'm not fucking interested! I have...!"

"Fun, huh?"

Wendy jumped when Kenny spoke in her ear.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Kyle figured you have a crush on him. Stan is taking it like the emo pussy Stan is," Kenny shrugged. "Easy."

Wendy sighed. Boys. They made no sense sometimes.

"Fine," she said. "I'll sort it."

She elbowed her way to the front of the gathering crowd, her sharp joints and bossy reputation carving out a path, until she shoved roughly between the two boys. She was a decent head shorter than either of them, but she brushed them apart like debris.

"Stop being so...so...so gay, Stan!" she told him sternly, then turned on her heel, threw her arms around Kyle's neck, and kissed him.

The hallway went deadly silent.

"Jesus, dude!" she heard Stan snap loudly.

She broke it off.

That was it. No fireworks, no reaction, no sunshine and love and weird emotional mess that would be so traditional and chauvinistic as to be untrue. Nothing.

And, like a burst balloon, the crush promptly upped and died.

"There," she said, letting go of him and stepping back. "Sorted. Out of my system. Sorry about that."

"No problem," Kyle said dryly. "Can I get back to my girlfriend, now?"

He shot a dirty look at Stan - who was still gaping like a stunned goldfish - and stalked off in a remarkably pissy, prissy manner.

"Your...?" Wendy asked the air where he'd been a moment before.

"Oh," Kenny said innocently, "nobody told you?"

She turned a lethal stare on him.

"Kyle and Becky Turner have been going out since the end of ninth grade," Kenny grinned.

"Becky...Turner?"

"Red."

Wendy clenched her fists.

"Yeah," Cartman agreed, "real ginger model, those two. Going to be hundreds of ginger babies. I've tried sterilising the pair of them but the technique isn't perfected..."

"I," Wendy said evenly, "am going to find Bebe and kill her. And then, Kenneth, I am going to kill you."

"Why me?" he asked easily. Death threats, after all, hadn't phased Kenny in years.

"Because you didn't stop me," Wendy hissed, "from kissing Kyle in the middle of the hall!"

Kenny's grin widened into 'shit-eating' as he said, "Yeah? Why would I? Sorted out your little problem, didn't it?"

She huffed and stormed away.

Though, loathe as she was to admit it, Kenny was right.

But Kyle still had a really sweet ass.