There were a number of things Craig Tucker did not do, and among these was sleep. Instead, he watched; he sat and watched from his window, the sill dusty and covered with old film and Red Racer figurines, rusted binoculars pressed to tired eyes, crosshair pinned on some unsuspecting civilian down below.

Sometimes he read. He read novels, poetry, old newspapers and magazines – anything he could get his hands on. A lot of the time, he thought, he just looked at the words. He liked how they looked. He never seemed to learn from any of it.

But that was how everything was to Craig, wasn't it? He looked at it, examined it, picked it apart bit by bit and scrutinized it, but he never understood. Some minds, he had decided, weren't meant for certain things. He had trouble looking at things as a whole. He could pinpoint every detail of something, but he could never explain it.

He had memorized Kenny McCormick, from the hue of his blue eyes and the faint freckles on his nose and all the little habits he had. Craig did not like that he knew so much about him, and it frustrated him that, as much as he watched, he would never understand.

He had few memories of talking to Kenny. Most of them were from his childhood, but they were clear in his mind.

And when he thought of the past, all he could see was a laughing child, grass-stained knees. All he could see was innocence, something pure – which was ironic, because now he was really all but that. He wouldn't see what had gone wrong, or where it happened, and he often wondered about this, but there was always that something in the back of his mind that told him he was better off not knowing.

How could a person be so cold? No, cold wasn't the word. That would require something to be there in the first place – and he wasn't even that. It was just emptiness. How could someone be so empty? What had drained him?

Craig didn't care. He didn't even care that he was so cold, so callous and heartless. That's what made him that way to begin with, wasn't it? If he cared, he wouldn't need to care about how he was because he wouldn't be that way at all.

Some people, though – some people cared too much, he thought, and this returned him to the topic of Kenny McCormick, who was always happy or sad or drunk or some kind of extremity. It seemed tiring to be that way; but Craig hardly felt anything at all and he was always tired.

You'd think a person would just crack after so much. Someone could only carry burdens so heavy until they fell beneath the weight. But Kenny never crumbled under the insults, the bad grades, the bad friends, the poverty. Everyone knew. Everyone knew about he and his little sister, his drunk, deadbeat parents; but no one knew better of it than Craig.

It was weird, really, that the quiet boy, the private one, would take such an interest in the kid whose business everyone knew. He had few secrets. He wore his heart on his sleeve, had little shame, and didn't blink when his personal affairs were spouted by his friends, tossed around the town with an indisputable feeling of insignificance. No one cared. It was just something to talk about. For whatever reason, Kenny felt satisfaction from this.

Craig thought bitterly of that phrase, opposites attract. It wasn't an attraction, though. It was more like gravity, how they seemed to run into each other, how they knew each other without saying anything at all. He thought of the universe, how the planets were billions, trillions of miles from each other…but if one moved too far or too close, then…

He wasn't an astronomer, but he remembered reading somewhere that it was bad. So he did not move that fatal inch. He watched. He watched from his window, gathered gossip and chatter like old coins or stamps, listened to the kids at school, and those stolen moments and overheard gossip were all he knew of Kenny McCormick.

A/N: i only have a vague idea of where this is going, so bear with me. this chapter was pretty dumb, but a good source of background. this was very difficult to write...hopefully it'll get easier!