9. Blowing This Popsicle Stand

"So I just thought you should know that I've got a new girlfriend. And she's kind of an alien, and she's taking me with her to…I'm not really sure where. But anyway, I'm leaving forever, so I figured I'd come down and say goodbye."

Dad didn't even turn around. "Have a good time, honey!" he bellowed, over the cacophony of shrieks and zaps suddenly bursting from his worktable. "Don't forget to brush your teeth!"

"I won't, Dad. See you around."

Having done that, I left the lab and headed upstairs into the living room, and from there up to my room. Tak and Mimi were in the garage, making a few final adjustments to ensure her ship was flightworthy, which left me to an arguably even more difficult task: deciding what, in a room eight times the size of her cockpit, I absolutely needed to bring. What I would need, what I might want, what I would have to flip deuces for the last time.

To the third category, I consigned almost everything I owned: my books, my magazines, my posters and figurines. My zombie unicorn statuette. My army of guardian plushies, laser-loaded eyes staring diligently down from every surface in my room. Most of the makeup scattered across my dresser, and most of the clothes in its drawers. Figuring Tak's first priority wasn't equipping her ship with universal outlets, I said sayonara to my laptop and my iPod, sparing them the undignified demise of running out of juice somewhere between here and the Milky Way.

Into my backpack, I stuffed a pair of jeans, a pair of black-and-white-striped tights, my favorite skirt, my nightshirt, a T-shirt, a tank top and a sweater, plus a small armful of underwear. That took up the biggest compartment, so I put the smaller stuff in one of the outside pouches: my hairbrush, a tube of lipstick, an eyeliner pencil, a few hair ties and a travel packet of tissues (what for? I wasn't sure, but hey, you can always use a travel packet of tissues).

Having raided the kitchen earlier that day, I filled the remaining space with snacks, sodas, and water bottles (all of which I had already promised not to whip out without warning), figuring they would tide me over until I learned to stomach the fruits of the universe.

And other than that—what? My toothbrush and shower stuff would be fairly useless, with no more water than I could drink in a few days; I had to assume that, if Tak was as superior a being as she said she was, she'd have some other way of getting clean. Preferably a way that didn't melt human skin.

It was a safe bet my phone wouldn't get service outside Earth's atmosphere. If I'd had a mom, she'd probably have been hovering around telling me to pack a coat and stuff like that – but number one, I didn't, and number two, if I didn't even know where we were going, how was I supposed to know if it'd be cold there?

Thus, with my life from now on slung over my shoulder, I closed my door for the last time, and traipsed back down the stairs to the garage.

"Ready?" I said, tossing my backpack into what was, I guess, the cabin of her ship – the space between the cockpit and the rear storage panels, which would fit exactly me and Mimi and not a molecule more.

"Ready." Tak climbed out of the cockpit on her spider-legs, an unpleasant gleam in her eyes. "Let's go have a word with Dib."

Together, we went back upstairs, Tak nearly outpacing me on her spider-legs. I knocked on his door. "Dib, get your ass out here!" I hollered. "I need to talk to you!"

"Okay, okay," I heard him grumble from inside. "Just give me a…"

When he opened the door, his griping faded midsentence, his mouth hanging open and his eyes going wide. I could almost hear the gears in his giant head clicking as he struggled to process what was going on, reconciling what his eyes could see with what his brain couldn't believe.

Tak, of course, was more than happy to take advantage of his mental short. She shoved him back with her spider-legs and stalked into the room after him, backing him into the wall like she had me in the garage, looking more than ever like an honest-to-God spider chasing her prey into her web. When his head hit the wall, one of the limbs shot out and wrapped itself around his neck, squeezing until his face turned blue.

I leaned against his doorframe. "For fuck's sake, Tak, don't kill him," I sighed, feeling that taking off with a dead body on our hands would be the wrong way to begin our little adventure.

"I'll do whatever I want to him!" she spat. But she did shoot me a glance over her shoulder, however narrow-eyed, and she loosened her grip to let him gasp for air. "I deserve to," she hissed as she turned back to Dib, more to him than to me. "You ought to die, you filthy thieving rat. You can't even comprehend how reprehensible you are. What you did—what you did!—if we were in Irken territory, you'd be executed for war crimes. Can you understand that, mud-sucking Earth ape?

"I pieced that ship together from the wreckage of planet Dirt. Built her, over years, with my own two hands. Did you think I nearly worked myself to death so that you could vandalize and defile her, so that when I next climbed into the cockpit, she wouldn't even know me anymore? Did you think I developed a state-of-the-art interface program so that you could vomit your disgusting brain cells into her drive?"

As he sputtered and flailed, she lifted him up by his neck and slammed him back into the wall, hard, her voice mounting from a snarl to a near-shout. "Or do you just have so little sense of honor, so little concept of respect, that you just suppose that the moment a person is forcibly torn from her property, it's your right to begin using it to your own ends? Are you too much of a failure to understand that some people actually create things of worth, and they don't want those things SPAT UPON by VERMIN LIKE YOU?!

"I SHOULD TEAR YOU LIMB FROM LIMB, YOU BEASTLY LITTLE INGRATE!" she was shrieking at him now, dashing him against the wall like she thought he was a piñata. "I SHOULD DESTROY YOU LIKE YOU DESTROYED HER! THAT WOULD TEACH YOU TO—"

"All right," I said, sliding up behind her, elbowing her pak just so to make the limb constricting Dib's throat retract. Despite Tak's best efforts to keep the workings of her pak a secret, I'd learned through trial and error that a good sharp jolt to certain pseudo-pressure-points could be very helpful at times like this, when I really would've preferred she didn't outright murder my brother in a fit of rage. "That's enough of that."

"Unconscionable," she muttered as she backed off, still flaying Dib with her eyes. "Unforgivable. Even a newborn smeet would know—if there's one thing you never do—it's like—it's like—" She growled under her breath. "There's no human crime vile enough to compare."

"Just cool off a minute, would you? I think you've made your point."

I had to admit I was a little surprised. I hadn't expected her to move on so quickly, from being angry at me for not telling her Dib had her ship to being angry at him for having it in the first place. I'd have liked to flatter myself by attributing that to my intentions being better (which they weren't, really; I never relished drawing parallels between Dib and I, but we'd both been as selfish as Bloaty's pizza was greasy), or to my having decided to tell her, or to her actually liking me.

But listening to her ream him out, I realized I'd just landed on the safe side of her cultural priorities. Lying was one thing, I guess, but stealing someone else's ship was something any self-respecting Irken just didn't do. Sort of like rape for humans: the kind of crime that's intrinsically worse than any other, no matter what.

Not that I was complaining. Better Dib than me.

Having crashed to the floor when Tak let go of him, he sat gasping and coughing against the wall, rubbing his neck where she'd near-strangled him. "Where did she come from?" he finally choked out, his eyes rolling up to meet mine.

"The lemon factory in the industrial district," I said. "But that's neither here nor there. I came up here to tell you we're leaving tonight – as soon as we're done here, actually – and you'd better not mess with my stuff while I'm gone, because I set my dolls to Kill Mode and they'll fry you if you do."

"Leaving?" he said hoarsely, confused. "Leaving for where?"

I shrugged. "Fuck if I know."

"With her?"

"It would seem that way, wouldn't it?"

"Why?"

"Isn't that the million-dollar question. Anyway, at least now you'll be able to park your car in the garage." Figuring that was about all there was to say, I motioned to Tak and we turned to head back out into the hall, her still fuming and skulking around on her spider-legs, me calling over my shoulder, "If we run into Mars, we'll send it back your way, 'kay?"

"Wait!" Suddenly, I felt him grab my arm, and whirled around to see him blinking helplessly at me. "I don't understand," he said, still a little breathless, as I jerked my arm out of his grip. "What's going on?"

I sighed. "Look, Dib. Is it really going to make you feel any better to know you and Zim are such idiots that Tak came after me, for being the only one who actually did anything to screw up her plan when we were kids? Is it really going to make you feel any better to know that it's a damn good thing she did, because I'm the only one who'd have stood a chance against her even laid low like she was, or that she's been living across the hall from you for a couple of months now?"

As his eyes grew wide – a little more so with each blow I dealt – I lifted my eyebrows and my hands, backing, palms-up, out of the room. "I didn't think so."

We were back down in the garage before he poked his big head in again, still looking as shell-shocked as a carnival goldfish dumped into the sea. "So you're just…what?" he said, as Tak hopped into the cockpit to initiate launch procedures. "Taking off? Into space? Just like that?"

"That's what I said. How many times do I have to explain it to you?"

"And you're taking the ship."

"No, we're taking a hot-air balloon." I rolled my eyes. "Yes, we're taking the ship. You got a problem with that?"

"Well, it's just that it seems a little unfair," he said, sounding sort of wounded, casting her ship a wistful gaze, "after everything I—"

Before he could finish the thought, a blast from the ship's laser cannon clipped his ear on its way into the wall, leaving a melon-sized hole burnt clean through to the kitchen and the tang of singed skin wafting through the air. "Another word," Tak snapped from the cockpit, glowering, "and that's your gargantuan head."

Apparently realizing the foolishness of directing it at her, Dib frowned at me, and again, I raised my eyebrows. "You did know, didn't you?" he said. "What you did to make it fly, back when we were kids."

"So what if I did?"

"So you knew, all this time, and you never showed me."

"I figured you didn't need any more opportunities to get yourself into trouble." By then, I was more than tired of going through his with him, and beginning to regret having told him we were going. "Can we go already?" I said to Tak over my shoulder, taking a few steps back in the hope that he wouldn't try to stop me. "I think I'm starting to understand what you meant by 'the sickening stench of humanity.'"

No such luck. "Are you coming back?" Dib said, the question as good as a lasso – or maybe a noose – around my neck.

"Not planning to."

"So…this is the last time I'll ever see you."

"Yup."

We stood there staring at each other a moment, our feelings surely entirely inappropriate for a brother and sister saying goodbye forever. I wasn't feeling bad for him, or trying to memorize his face, or remembering all of the good times we'd (never) shared, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't anticipating missing me.

More likely, he was equal parts pissed we were swiping his (least-promising, mostly-abandoned, yet somehow still important) project, and jealous that I was about to live the dream I'd never even had. Still, we took one last look at each other, for what I guess was ceremony's sake.

Look at it, Gaz. We've only seen what's come to us from up there. Don't you want to fly out there and see it all?

He shook his head slowly, deflated. "I can't believe that you…are…"

I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Life's a bitch."

With that, I turned my back on him and climbed into Tak's ship, next to Mimi in the space behind the cockpit. I could feel the hum, the heat of the engine under and all around me, like and yet completely different from when I'd last felt it six years ago. I heard the windshield whrr as it lowered, and the laser cannon click as Tak reset its trajectory.

Then, without warning – without my having thought to glance once more around the garage, already a world away through her windshield, or at Dib standing dejectedly in the doorway – she hit the trigger, vaporized the garage roof, and pealed out through a column of smoke.

Before I knew it, the ground was a dizzying distance below us, and growing farther with every second. For the first minute – while I could still see the Earth receding, the houses and towns and forests and oceans blending together like fingerpaints, a million once-brilliant colors swirling into greenish-brown – I pressed my face to the glass, watching our ascent.

But soon enough it was all stars, and endless, dream-filled night. Soon enough there was nothing left to see, but a turquoise speck I could almost flick off the windshield, and that was when I turned around – turned and saw Mimi, perched on the back of the pilot's chair, looking happier than a popped toaster amid her sister tech. I watched her watch Tak, her face lit by the dash display, her eyes reflecting the possible courses scrolling by on the screen. All the places we could go. All the great and terrible things we could do.

Not that I could read Irken any better than I could earlier that day. I just knew instinctively, and my instincts were always right.