NEON HEARTS

Chapter Two

Dib woke up on his own, a long while before he necessarily had to to get to skool. He had only gotten home yesterday, and he was already expected to go into Hi Skool. Hooray.

He was already basically dressed, deciding to stick with his cropped hoodie, fishnets and Tripp pants, frebreeze’d into freshness. He dug around his stuff to find his piercings (he had to take them out before he was picked up the day before) and put in his snakebites, eyebrow piercing and the five piercings up his ears. He slipped his old laptop, phone and journal into his messenger bag and figured he was ready for Skool.

He went down to hang in the living room, watching some brainless reality show on mute while he waited. He was like, half through watching a monkey rip off a guy’s face when Gaz came down and sat next to him.

"Are you actually going to skool like that?" She asked, looking him over.

"You're lucky I bothered to shower today, I'm not wearing my good clothes to skool." He looked at her, "Are you going to skool like that?"

"I know what I like." She glared at him, and turned away.

~~~~~~~

Dib left before Membrane’s tablet had the chance to come down to see them off. He didn't wait up for Gaz, just hoofed it off in the general direction he remembered the Hi Skool being. Hey, maybe he'd get lost and just not make it in. Couldn't be worse than the alternative.

His headphones up, clove hanging out of his mouth, he wandered almost aimlessly, just looking around The City. He stopped at Krazy Taco for a soda, but otherwise, kept to himself. After a while, he saw more people out on the street, Kids walking to skool, adults heading to bullshit jobs, stray dogs begging for scraps, the usual crowd. The few people who bothered to look up at him, tall, angry, pulled into himself, either didn’t recognize him or didn’t care to. Good.

He hadn’t cared what anyone else thought when he was a kid, or, when he was younger, anyways. He was still a kid. All he wanted was to be right, to save the world, be recognized. Fat lot of good that did. If these people were too stupid to see what was going on after everything that had happened, that was their fault. Why would he bother anymore? He already had proof of paranormal activity, he had shared a class with an alien, been in space, opened a portal into his own mind and been on Mysterious Mysteries. As far as he was concerned, that was enough to be satisfied. Dib has seen the things that make this city cheer and he doesn’t want to be one of them.

He turned a corner to start heading in the general direction of the Hi Skool, might as well get it over with, when he ran face first into a gangly ball of pink, green, and fishnets. They both fall back, hitting the ground with a nasty thud. Dib immediately tried to push the other away to grab at his bag, making sure he hadn’t broken his phone, before he really registered who it was he had fallen into.

“Zim?” He questioned, almost coughing up a lung when he did so. He wouldn’t lie, he hasn’t done much running around the past few years. That and the smoking haven't exactly helped his lungs.

“I- Dib?” The other looks down on him, hovering over him where he’d caught himself. "When did you get back?"

"Like, yesterday?" Dib actually bothered to look over Zim, “What... what are you wearing?”

The alien blustered, picking himself up ‘stealthily’ with his PAK arms, and then Dib could really see what he was wearing. The first thing his eyes were drawn to was all the pink. Not just the old pink dress thing he used to wear, but bright neon pink in his hair (wig?) hanging over his face and down his shoulders in racoon tails. The same pink on a pleated skirt with little chains hanging off of them and pink and black striped detached sleeves. It took him a second to take in the black crop top, fishnets that reached up above his skirt to his waist, all pulled together by frankly massive black boots.

Honestly, the whole thing almost hurt to look at, especially against his green skin and the dark, dingy concrete. Too bright.

"ZIM...doesn't know what you're talking about." He grimaced, looking around them both, like he thought someone would be watching them.

"Did you lose a bet or something?" Dib picked himself up, stepping back to get his bearings.

"What? Zim's outfit is-!!"

They were both interrupted by an arm coming out from Zim's PAK, coming out in front of his face as a speaker.

"Hey, Zim?" A voice over the speaker spoke, "Your PAK registered a fall, is everything good? You didn't eat it tripping over your boots did you?"

"Shut up, Skoodge," he hissed.

"MASTER!!! If you bit it you can tell us!" Zim’s weird little robot dog called out on the other end.

"Gir, get off the phone!" Zim crossed his arms, very pointedly not looking at Dib. "Go find minimoose and do what Skoodge says."

"Aaaaaaugh! But I wanna watch TV! Can't I watch TeeeVeeee?"

"Fucking... fine. Go watch TV. But if you're given an order you follow it."

"Okay!! Bye!!"

“See you back at home, Zim.”

Zim huffed, ignoring their byes and zipped the speaker arm back into his PAK. He just stood there, like he was waiting for him to say something. Dib didn't think he'd ever seen Zim so self aware, let alone self conscious.

Dib turned around and walked away.

It took a second for him to start hearing clunky steps following after him, and Zim rounded in front of him, stopping him in his tracks.

“Thats all?” He frowned, grabbing on to Dib’s sleeve. “You have nothing to say to Zim? Make tasteless jokes about his fashion? Ask about his evil plans? Call him alien scum? Ask about his new evil henchman?”

“If you were going to destroy the world you would have done it while I was gone.” Dib tried to pull his arm away, “And I’m done caring. Do whatever you want, just don’t drag me into it.”

“But Dib-human! You-”

“God, look at them.”

“What are they wearing?”

“Isn't that Dib? When did he get back?”

Dib’s eyes went straight to where the sound was coming from, two girls standing across the street, watching them. Talking about them. With them came another girl, then a boy, then another, until there was a small group, standing around and pointing at them. Fucking hell.

Zim's eyes darted between him and the crowd, but Dib didn't want to stand around and wait for him to find something to say. He pulled his sleeve out of Zim's claws and left as fast as he could.


~~~~~~~~~~

Dib got into skool just before the bell rang, sliding into his first period silently, hoping that no one would notice him. He got a good five seconds of hope before his new teacher, Mr. Dennis was calling him up to the front of the class.

"Everybody pay attention, please. We have a new student in class," He announced in a bored monotone."Please say hello to... Deeb Membrane."

"It's Dib." The huffed, putting his hands down his pockets. When Mr. Dennis motioned for him to introduce himself, he sighed. "And this is stupid, you all know me already."

"Well, does anyone have any questions for Dib?"

"Yeah! Is it true you got sent to prison for attacking a kid?" The Letter M called up to the front of the class, followed by a murmur spreading around the rest of them.

"I heard you got sent to a crazy house again!"

"I heard you were in a coma cus all your screaming gave you a stroke!"

"Did you really get sold to a circus?"

This was getting absolutely nowhere very quickly. Dib rolled his eyes and said that they could believe whatever they wanted to, just don't bother him about it. He went to sit down and ignore the rest of the class for the day, but the fucking second he sat down, the door was slamming open.

Zim slid into the room, almost eating it again when he tripped over his boots. You’d think if he’d been wearing them, he’d be a little more graceful, but whatever. He came and sat down at the desk beside Dib (just his luck). If Zim tried to talk to him at all that class period, Dib wouldn't know. He kept his headphones up, did whatever worksheets were slipped in front of him, and when he felt the bell ring, he was the first out of the classroom.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Two periods of putting up with other people later, it was finally lunch. Dib skipped the cafeteria and went straight to the back of the school, not hungry in the least. At least he could hang out between the dumpsters without being bothered like everywhere else in this fucking school. He lit up a dart and was barely taking his first drag when his phone went off. Luckily for him, only three people know his phone number.

“How goes life on the outside?” He heard Squee’s voice on the other end.

Squee was Dib’s foster brother and roommate back at Mr. Olivarez’ place. He was quiet and smart and his real name was Todd apparently, but Dib had only ever heard him called Squee. Apparently his parents gave him up to the state as soon as they realized it was an option and he’d been passed around foster homes ever since.

“About how you’d expect,” He said, blowing out smoke. “And you?”

“It’s been boring with you gone.”

“At least you have Pepito,” Dib frowns. When Squee got sent to Mr. Olivarez’ place, he brought an entourage with him. A kid he grew up with and who totally didn’t have a crush on him, Pepito, and some weird grown man who Dib swears he’s seen hovering outside their window at night to ‘check on him’. “All I’ve got is my old laptop and my phone.”

“What about that alien guy, Zim?” He could hear Squee’s lighter flicking on the other end. “Isn’t he still running around out there? Abducting cows and probing homeless people or whatever?”

“You’d think so. But I’ve only seen him a couple times and he’s been... weird.”

“Weird like, aliens weird?”

“Try fishnets and mini skirts weird.”

“Ooooh, spill.”


Dib spent a good amount of his lunch break recounting his inhumanly awkward conversation with zim and getting laughed at for being an edgy little shit. They talked until the bell rang and Dib had to go inside or get caught loitering by the cafeteria workers and then they talked even longer because Dib decided going to algebra was much less important than catching up with his only friend. He walked back into the building while the halls were packed wall to wall, slipping into a bathroom and locking the door behind him. If there was anyone in there before him, they could get fucked.

Dib held his phone between his shoulder and his cheek, picking himself up to sit on one of the sinks (cringing when his hand came back sticky.)

“Still there?” Squee asked on the other end.

“Yeah, just wishing I wasn’t,” he grimaced, running his hand under the faucet for a second. “I thought Skool was bad as a kid, Hi Skool might just kill me.”

“Come on, if you haven’t died yet, I think you’re gonna be okay.”

“You say that now, but the only people I’ve talked to today were my sister and Zim.” Dib rolled his eyes, “If anything, I’ll die of boredom.”

“Oh, did you see the news?” Squee perked up over the phone, “Literally hours after you left, those four pizza places that were fighting for the spot next to the mall? Their mascots started a bare knuckle brawl over it. Imagine being bored watching that.”

“Oh come on! The day I leave?” He knocked his head against the mirror behind him. “That’s some bullshit. I thought you didn’t like violence, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t.” Squee said. “But it’s hard not to be interested when a cheesy chicken is getting his teeth knocked out by an anchovy alligator.”

“Anchovey alligator got a good hit in? I knew he-”

Dib swore he heard a creak.

“Oh, he fought the good fight, sure, but that weird clown got him pinned.”

Another weird sound?

“Are you still there, man?”

Another!

“Hold on, I swear I heard something-”

CRASH