Chapter Nine: Skool Dance
Mel walked into Dib's room, only to see him lying facedown, apparently thinking about something.
"Go away," he said, sinister in tone.
"I'm sorry, Dib, I just--"
"JUST GO! You horrible monster! How dare you do that, you...TRAITOR!"
"I'm not a traitor, Dib. Though I received the abilities that I could easily use to destroy this planet, I never intended upon using them like that. Remember when I used it three days ago? I saved your life. Please, listen. I would NEVER stab you in the back like that. As I said before, I don't harm my friends. That includes emotionally, too."
"Then...you didn't have any choice?"
"Of course I didn't have any choice! Why do you think I've been here this whole time? It's not my option. Zim was the one who wanted to use my powers to conquer Earth, not I," Mel lied, knowing that Zim really did like her.
"I...I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted." There was a pause, and they sat there, doing nothing but thinking of what to do. "Can you believe that Zim ACTUALLY had the nerve to ask me to the dance? I mean, he's an alien!" Under normal circumstances, this would be fine, but she had forgotten about his being an alien, and that made it an insult to Dib. "Oh, I'm so sorry...I didn't mean the Falish, I meant Irkens. They're the monsters. I like the Falish. You're a wonderful Falen."
It wasn't going to fly, and she knew it. If her plan had been to get him to ask her to the dance before she, she failed in every sense of the word. A long pause. "I'm sorry; really, I am. It's just...well, I'm not used to terminology adjustments. I mean, do you REALLY think that if I thought you were a monster that I'd be trying to get you to ask me to the dance?" She covered her mouth up. In trying to cover up the mistake in what she had said, she let her cover get blown. 'Oh, man...how stupid of me! I shouldn't have paid for the dress before I actually got accepted!'
"You...want me to ask you to the dance?" In nervousness, she blushed.
"Yeah...I thought that it might help your vengeance against Zim and help get back at some of the idiots at skool." The truth wasn't convincing enough to him.
"Sure...yeah, vengeance. That's it." For some reason, she felt that he didn't believe her about that.
"Well...what do you say?"
"Hmm...I'll think about it. Why don't you wait outside the room? I've got 'a lot' of thinking ahead." She left, and waited on the living room couch. Of course, the threat of being killed had been lifted, for the Falish bandits behind it had been dealt with. Apparently, it seemed, worthy minds were wanted by some other creatures in exchange for rewards. However, Dib's mother took care of it by sewing a special thread inside of Dib's clothes--it repelled anyone who was not human, Irken, or Seraul within ten miles, not to mention the other measures that had been taken, of which they knew nothing.
"You can come in now!" Dib yelled a minute later, and she walked into his room.
"Well?"
"I've thought it over, and I've made my decision."
"And that decision is..."
"That depends on your answer to this question."
"Yes...?"
"Do you want to go to the dance with me?"
"Okay." The next day at skool, when Dib said he was going, Zim announced that he, too, was going to the dance, and had an 'adequate female human meat bag.' Finally, the day of the dance was upon them. Mel changed into her dress, which was long and made of a light blue silk material. She had her hair up with hair spay and perfume, along with a necklace and lipstick.
"Whoa...I don't think I've even seen you not wearing black; you look completely different, you're...you're beautiful!"
"Geez, Dib, you're real nice."
"No, that's not what I meant! You always look pretty, but you see, I meant that--"
"Ah, forget it. No harm done. You got a little dressed up yourself, now that I think of it. How much did that suit cost you?"
"Not much...something in the realm of...oh, about fifty bucks."
"For all I know about clothing--which is very little--that's pretty expensive...just for a little dance?" He nodded. "Wow..." A limousine pulled up just as they walked outside, and they got in. Mel began to assess the situation in her mind. 'Okay...I'm in a limo with my favorite cartoon character, but he's alive and real here, and we're on our way to a dance where Zim will be, and Zim has a crush on me but hates Dib and doom usually follows everywhere he goes. Not to mention the fact that Dib possibly likes me and thinks that I like him back. Not good.' We exited the limousine, by far the best entrance, and saw a crowd of kids, shocked at the fact that he even showed up. Some girls in the back started asking questions.
"Who's that in the limo? Do they even go to our skool? I don't remember that boy, and I ESPECIALLY don't remember that girl! I know everyone at skool!"
"Will you shut up? Wait...they DO go to our skool...and isn't that...isn't that...Dib?!"
"What? With a girl? No way!"
"See for yourself."
"No WAY!"
"No way!"
"Like, no way!"
"No way!" They continued this for a bit, but that's beside the point. Mel and Dib entered, enjoying how those horrible children looked. Finally, they made their way into the cafeteria. All of the children in there gasped in surprise. Zim glared at Dib, obviously jealous. Gretchen, the girl who had come with Zim as second choice when learning that Dib had a date, cried a little, but Zim hardly noticed.
"Why?! Why did you leave me?!" she yelled out in reference to Dib.
Zim, not being adept in the whole 'caring' thing, shrugged her off, saying, "Yeah, sure, whatever." She ended up running out of the cafeteria in tears.
"Why don't you go cheer her up, Dib? She seems awfully distressed."
"Yeah, maybe I should talk to her. I'll be back soon." He went out the back way, where she had gone, and Zim devised an evil plot, beating him to her.
"Human, what's wrong?" Zim asked, feigning kindliness.
"D-D-Dib, he's got...a GIRLFRIEND!" she began to sob more, and Zim talked gently in false sympathy once more. Invaders were trained well in this.
"There, there. The Dib is coming here this very moment to apologize to you, and you know what?"
"W-what?"
"He wants to kiss you. BADLY."
"He does?!" Her spirit lifted.
"Yess...and he wanted to tell you that the other girl was just a cover-up for his REAL pathetic feelings he has for you. So, how will you surprise him?"
"I'm gonna kiss him!"
"Yes, and HOW are you going to kiss him?"
"On the cheek!"
"No! Stupid human...I mean...girl...you'll kiss him on the lips, with the tongue, everything you can imagine."
"All right!"
"Yes. You go do that. He should find you any moment. I'll just hide in these bushes to make SURE that everything turns out NICELY...oh, how nice it will be..." Zim began to laugh maniacally, but quickly stopped and hid. Dib came near.
"Gretchen? I'm sorry that I went with Mel instead of you, but it's going to be okay."
"Of course it will!" Gretchen pulled him close to her and kissed him, but no matter how much he struggled against her, she was struggling with him more. From his hiding spot, Zim snapped pictures. Lots and LOTS of pictures.
"This is TOO good..." Zim said to himself and he snapped pictures that looked real and scandalous. "When I show these photos to Mel, Dib will suffer and be humiliated. And, on top of all that, he'll lose the only girl he likes...heh, heh, heh..." Finally, Zim ran out of film, and kept the pictures for later.
Back in the cafeteria, Mel inquired Dib on why he looked so ruffled up. "Geez, Dib, what happened to you?"
"Oh, I...had a little...trouble." For the most part, they sat there talking, drinking punch, and enjoying the envious eyes of those who thought he would never get a date in his life.
"Well, if nothing else, tonight's a spirit-lifter."
"Yeah." A song began to play with the sounds of nature at the beginning, elevating to sophisticated guitar music. The popular children, who had never heard the likes of this music before, were dumbfounded and did not know how to dance to it. "Care to dance?"
"Sure." The song was about eighteen and a half minutes long, but it passed quickly. Some of the children actually caught on and liked it. "I guess that none of the kids here have heard Close to the Edge." The next song was called 'And You and I', another song by the group Yes. This song was for the dance contest. The main lights dimmed and several spotlights were placed on the couples participating. When they messed up in their step, the lights went off, signifying that they're out of the running. One by one, the lights went out, as the two kept with the rhythm. At one point, Dib spun her around, making it seem like they really knew what they were doing. Eventually, as the song neared its end, there was only one spotlight, and it was on them.
"And we have a winner!" a voice yelled out. "It's...Dib and Mel?"
"We won!" A little later, after accepting their award (and a couple others, too), the award for the best couple was handed out.
"The winner is...yet again, Dib and Mel." Since they were already up on the stage thingy, they merely took the award and had more pictures taken of them. "Now, why don't you two kiss each other?" Mel concealed the fact that her stomach churned at the thought of kissing her friend.
'But what can I do? He'd probably think that it's just because he's an alien, which is incredibly wrong. I don't want to disappoint him or ruin the night, but I can't kiss him. I couldn't kiss him. I know! I'll pretend to kiss him! How do I do that?' At that moment, Zim came crashing into the door. 'Finally,' Mel thought. 'Finally this comes in handy.' She was dead wrong.
"Wait! Stop this filthy Earth show!" They pulled away from each other, Mel glad to get a break. "I think that this Earth-monkey," Zim said, gesturing his hand to indicate Mel, "would like to see something before she kisses this scum."
"Don't call her an Earth-monkey! And what are you talking about?"
"Oh, wouldn't you like to know, Dib. They're just pictures that INCRIMINATE YOU!"
"Incriminate me? For what?"
"Hmm...maybe...CHEATING!" The crowd gasped. Zim showed Dib the pictures he'd taken of Gretchen kissing Dib, but they looked like he was taking part in a little more than kissing.
"Let me see this!" Dib snatched the photos from Zim, and frowned. "Zim, this is ridiculou--" He looked to his side, where Mel was crying. "Why are you crying, Mel?" Zim had given her some copies of the pictures.
"This!" She showed him one of them. "I can't believe you!"
"He's lying! I didn't do anything like that!"
"Does the camera lens lie, Dib? It looks like you're doing a lot more than comforting her!"
"No! She was the one who started kissing me, and I was trying to get AWAY!"
"You seem to be enjoying it here!"
"I wasn't! Please, don't believe Zim! He's just trying to trick you!"
"How do I know that? Huh? How do I know?!"
"I wouldn't be so horribly malicious to you!" Zim cut in.
"Mel, I thought you said you didn't even like the pitiful Earth creature."
"I don't, but--"
"What? You don't like me?"
"Not in a romantic way."
"You DON'T like me...and you wanted me to go to the dance with you...it doesn't make sense."
"What about you?! As soon as we get here, you go to the back of the skool and make out with some other girl! What's your problem?!"
"If you don't like me, then why should you care? Besides, I didn't even touch her!"
"The reason I care is because we're friends, and you THOUGHT we were in a relationship. You don't care about me enough."
"That's not true! Zim set me up! He tried to make it LOOK like I was kissing her! Please, believe me! Don't let him fill you with lies! Don't let him win!"
"That's all you care about, isn't it? Winning. Winning against Zim, winning me...you just want to win, win, win!"
"That's not all that I care about!"
"I'm leaving. And there's not one word you can say to stop me."
"Wait, Mel!" Zim chuckled to himself, seeing the pain in Dib's eyes. "You! I swear, Zim, I'll kill you!" Dib kicked Zim to the ground and stomped on his squeedily spooch repeatedly. "You MADE Gretchen do that, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?! Answer me, Irken!" This caught Zim's attention. Dib nearly always called him 'alien', or 'space boy', or something of that nature. Rarely did he ever address Zim as 'Irken'.
"All right! I did! So what? You can't do anything about it now. She might've started to like you, but so long as I keep pitting you two against each other in argument, eventually she'll just give up."
"Maybe. But I won't. You just wait and see." Dib ran outside, where he found Mel sitting on a bench, looking blue. Surprisingly, some of the popular girls were consoling her.
"I know what it's like to be lied to," a girl said. Mel thought, 'How come these girls who are mean and uncaring all the time are suddenly being nice to me? Is it because they see me in pain some way that they have experienced? How very strange...'
"Mel! Mel!" It was Dib. She could tell his voice from a mile away. "Mel, this is just a misunderstanding!"
"I don't want to see your face. Not now, not ever. You're not my friend, and you're most CERTAINLY not anything more! You're less! You're horrible! Why? It doesn't make any sense! It's not like you to do something like this."
"I didn't do anything! Zim set it up! He admitted it!"
"Stop it! Stop trying to cover your own mistakes!"
"I'm not! Please! You must BELIEVE me! Please? I wouldn't do that! Zim just wanted to ruin tonight. And it looks like he's succeeded."
"I...I don't know. I don't know what to believe. I'd like to believe you. I'd like to know that there's someone I can trust. And if I expect you to trust me, I should trust you as well. I believe you."
"Wait--you do?"
"Yes. I'm so sorry about what I said. You will forgive me, right?"
"Yeah. Of course."
"Thank you."
"The limo is still waiting for us. We can go home right now, if you'd like."
"Okay."
Misunderstanding, fear, and hate are the most painful and deadly killers.
--Invader Mel's Diary of Perception.