Author's Note: Okay, this is just a ficclet to keep y'all happy while the second chapter of my fic "And Still He Stood" is in progress. The narrator of the story is really no kid in particular. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Jhonen Vasquez and dem Nickelodeon Studios done own "Invader Zim" and I don't.

Maybe He Wasn't Crazy

The house was a sad looking place, well it wouldn't look sad to just anyone, but if you knew what was tangled within the home, if you had the connotations with it that most people did after learning about the family that lived there-well, it would probably look sad to you after all.

The boy, he was never the most favored of anyone. Everyone always thought he was crazy. He believed in these things called the "paranormal" or something. He was into aliens and ghosts and Bigfoot and all that. Everybody always laughed at him. Dib was the talk of the town, so to speak, but "the town" was everyone behind his back. And it wasn't anything good they had to say. If someone learned a new joke, Dib's was the name used in it, even the cruelest jokes. It was a requirement to hate Dib if one wanted to be considered anyone by most students. The only one who would sit by the guy was his sister, and she wasn't to friendly, even to him.

Gaz was her name, feared and avoided by all but her brother. Everyone thought she was creepy, perhaps even crazy herself. She was always playing video games, and no one wanted to mess with her while she was doing so. She just had that thing about her, the thing that makes you want stay away at all costs.

Then there was the dad. I understand he was never around. He was some famous scientist, I guess, and was always either in his lab or at his studio filming another episode of his TV show. Everyone knew him by the stage name Professor Membrane. He didn't spend too much time with his kids, and I guess they were lonely.

A couple times I would see Torque, the school bully, beating Dib up, or one of the kids making fun of him, and I'd tell them to leave him alone, and they'd go right on doing it again. I guess I should've stood firm and kept at them, but I didn't. I just let them go on.

I can't say I really thought Dib was crazy or anything, with his paranormal stuff and all, I was mostly just indifferent. I knew he needed a friend, and I could've been his friend, but I never bothered to go talk to him and become friends or something.

Anyway, there was this other kid in Ms. Bitters' class named Zim who supposedly had this skin condition. Dib always said he was an alien who planned on enslaving the human race. I didn't know if he was or not, but I was basically indifferent to him too. But they did always seem to hate each other. Sometimes they'd both come to the skool late all beaten up and glaring at each other since they had been in a fight before school. But none of the students really cared.

Then one day they didn't come to school at all. And then the next day they didn't come. Everyone wondered what happened to both of them. Soon students were pressing Gaz for information, but she never told anything if she did know, so the students just backed off.

It got quiet in the playground that second day. Finally, Torque tried to liven the crowd.

"Maybe Zim kid abducted Dib and took him back to his home planet," he suggested jokingly, and chuckled to get the other kids going.

But no one else was laughing.

Author's Note: Short but makes the point. I love reviews.