Water Under the Bridge, Letting the Cat out of the Bag, Everyone's Beautiful Naked, and Several Other Clichés
- Darla wastes no time getting down to business when she picks up Karl in her car. They immediately make out, and she talks about her afternoon plans of cat killing and sex.
- Darla has brought Karl a gigantic Pongo's burger, saying he needs to keep up his strength. Then, she tells him she's been thinking about this since he killed Squid's bunny in eighth grade. Geez, this is weird.
- They go down to a bridge, and Darla takes off her clothes while Karl eats. Hairball pokes his head out and starts licking the grease dripping off the burger.
- Darla says the cat is gross and understands why he wants to kill him. Without thinking, Karl tells her that he actually doesn't want to—and then realizes it's true. All of a sudden, Darla standing in front of him naked doesn't seem worth it.
- Karl asks Darla what this is really about because he's starting to think there's more to this than a cat-killing fetish.
- She tells him that when she goes to college, she wants to be a legend, with all kinds of whacked-out stories about stuff she did, and having sex with the school cat-killer was one of her ideas.
- Then, she puts the whole thing together and realizes that Karl would rather keep the cat than have sex with her.
- Darla starts talking about the whole thing with her brother and how she felt slighted and neglected when he was born before figuring out that her mom actually didn't want either of them.
- She tells a story about her brother crying in court when he realized that they were going to take him away from his hillbilly foster family, and she starts crying.
- She makes one more comment about Karl liking the cat better than her, and Karl confesses that he just can't kill Hairball. Darla thinks it's gross.
- Darla asks him to turn his back like a gentleman while she gets dressed. When he does, she kicks him in the back and screams obscenities at him, then takes off running, naked, and drives away in her car.
- To make things worse, Karl gets the sensation that someone is watching him. He looks up and sees Stacy looking over the bridge.
- Just to recap, according to the way things must look, Karl cheated on Cheryl with Paul and is now also having a side thing with Darla. Awesome.
- Karl drives home with Hairball hanging onto him for dear life and cries the whole way.
- When he gets home, he finds his mom in his bedroom and is about to freak out over her potentially taking more of his money when she makes a comment about Hairball being alive.
- Wait … How did she know what he was going to do?
- He also notices that his mom tore up his dad's directions for taking care of the house. Now, they're just staring at each other, and things are getting really awkward.
- Karl's mom tells him that she knows he's been killing the cats and even read a book about teenage boys who like to torture animals. Karl tries to explain that, for the last time, it was a raccoon, but she doesn't seem interested in believing that he just buried them.
- Then, she grabs the pillowcase, and the box cutter and shears fall out. Uh-oh. That can't look good.
- So, he does the only thing he can: As uncomfortable as it is, he tells her the whole warped Darla story.
- His mom explains where Darla got the idea that he's a cat-killer. It's summed up in one word: Neil, her on-again, off-again moron boyfriend.
- He started a rumor that Karl killed cats, and the whole town has been debating behind his back whether he's a vicious murderer of animals or just a weirdo. Awesome.
- Then, his mom confesses something else: She saw him take Hairball out of the house and went crazy over the idea that he was going to kill him and went outside and smashed all of the storm windows.
- She takes him outside and shows him. Karl, surprisingly, doesn't get mad. He says he'll get Browning to help him transport the new glass so that a hearse can pull up in front of the house of the old guy next door. Both of them have a good laugh over this.
- They try to put his dad's list of chores back together, but it's no use—the paper is too dry and practically disintegrates. Karl's mom apologizes for neglecting him and tells him that she knows the last few years have been horrible for him.
- Something snaps in Karl just then, and he runs outside and keeps running until he gets to the city park and can't run anymore. He stays there until it gets dark and he gets hungry.
- Truthfully, Karl feels ashamed of his behavior. His mom just acted like a normal mom for the first time since his dad died and he ran out of the house. That had to have sent her into a tailspin, and she's probably out getting drunk now.
- He decides it's probably best that he not go home, so he makes plans to do his shift at McDonald's and then get a room at the hotel downtown. He decides he'll figure out how to handle the situation with his mom later.
- While finishing up his McDonald's shift, Marti shows up. Her parents had a huge fight about her mom contaminating her dad's "genius blood" with "crazy drunken whore blood" and ruining Marti.
- She snapped and drove halfway to Cleveland, then realized she didn't have enough gas to make it there. Karl invites Marti to share his room at the hotel for the night, and they head over when his shift is over.
- At the hotel, Marti brings up the subject of what to do about showers and pajamas. They decide to take showers, then sleep naked to avoid having to sleep in their dirty clothes.
- Marti asks Karl to rub her acne cream into a sore on her back. He thinks two things: First, that Marti is actually beautiful, and second, God must have a serious sense of humor. He got to touch a naked girl today, after all.
- There's a thunderstorm, and Marti admits to being a little scared of them. She and Karl fall asleep holding hands.