"Adversity is the midwife of genius." I think that was Napoleon who said that. Even if that applied to me, I doubt it every day.... Even if that was the case, I start to wonder, when does the adversity stop and the "genius" start paying off? You can be a god damned child prodigy all day long – Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ, you can save the world every day – and they'll still call you a freak.

I walk a lonely road

The only one I have ever known

Been three weeks since I left. No, it wasn't another stupid dispute between Gaz and I about her GameSlave or her pizza. I guess getting beaten up does take a toll on you at some point, but that's minor in comparison. If that was the case, I'd have dropped out of school at 5 years old. It's Dad. That pretentious, workaholic egomaniac. Somehow, he can say he knows what's best for me, flush hundreds of dollars down the toilet on therapy for his "poor insane son," and yet he spends all of two minutes around me per month. This sounds harsh, but....

I hate him. I hate him and all those touchy-feely shrinks he pays to confirm what he already thinks. That I'm an incurable head case. The whole school believes it, my family believes it, the teachers do. Why does he need yet another opinion? Any hope he has for me being interested in "real science" is a waste of his oh-so-precious energy. I.... I'll become greater than he EVER was. Dib. Savior of Earth. Sounds good.

Don't know where it goes But it's only me, and I walk alone

"So the green child you talk of - "

"The ALIEN. ZIM."

She rolls her eyes and smiles, trying to seem like the reasonable one. "Right. The.... ALIEN. Do you feel you have to protect the world for him because you have to prove yourself?"

"Maybe." I shrug, glaring at her, hoping to pierce through her thick skull with just a look. "You wouldn't know, but having to deal with being called crazy and weird every day grates on you after 12 years or so."

"Your father. Do you think he'd like you more if you did something to match his fame?"

"What does it matter. He doesn't notice I exist anyway."

"Is that hostility in your voice, young man?" I despise her condescension. She continues all the same. "Maybe if you followed his advice, he'd be happier? You'd be happier, too. It's a win-win situation, you see."

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP, DAMN YOU!" Wow. Even I notice how flushing the medicines I'm given affects me. "I know how you're hired by my dad, and NO, I'm not playing into it! You think I'm stupid, you think I'm crazy, you think they're synonymous!"

She simply blinks. Nothing breaks her, no matter what proof I give her that she and Dad both are utterly wrong. "....Obsession, paranoia, heightened anger. I'm bumping your meds up from 150 milligrams to 200 on the mood stabilizer, and another 100 milligrams on the anti-anxiety med." That's it. No say.

I walk this empty street

On this Boulevard of Broken Dreams

It was a few nights after that I heard the echo of Dad's dramatic gasping from the bathroom, and he comes out, doing his best to play at being the responsible but stern father. "Son, what was in the toilet?"

"The toilet? What about it?" I asked without a glance up at him, reading the Crop Circles Magazine I'd received in the mail that day.

An obviously faked sigh, and then "Son, you know as well as I that you NEED those medications. How else will you become LESS insane and instead evolve into a WORLD-FAMOUS SCIENTIST like me?"

"Is this why Mom left?" I said pointedly.

The world famous scientist stopped in his tracks. He might be good at making Super Toast, but he's not ready for a challenge. After what seems like a day, he grabs my magazine, rolls it up and whaps me across the head with it. He then tosses it into the trash with nothing short of disdain.

Maybe, just maybe, I overreacted. But he had no right to touch me or my property. I mean, come on! He goes out to dinner once a year with Gaz and I! What gives him the authority? So I left. I took my school bag and my laptop, and left into the surrounding city. Maybe, just maybe, I'd find a vampire or werewolf there to hunt down. Or perhaps another soul stealer, smarter than the last one.

Where the city sleeps

And I'm the only one and I walk alone

Believe it or not, I stayed away from Zim for three whole days. Maybe to prove that I wasn't the obsessive that psychiatrist thought I was. The third day, I went to check at the Skool, though. I told myself I wanted to see how Gaz was, but I knew that wasn't the real reason.

Oh greeting of greetings I got upon entering the playground.

"FAGGOT! Where've you been for three days, four eyes? Crying over the last beating we gave you?" Torque and his posse, again. If I'd thought he was a jerk in elementary school, that was only training for what he was now. I had the immense urge to retort something along the lines of "you missed me that much?", but I thought better of it. I'd only get pummeled worse.

I sprinted anyways. No match for four jocks, but it was worth a shot. And what better of a time for Zim, that alien menace to Earth, that megalomaniacal midget, to show up right in front of me. I couldn't stop fast enough, and slammed right into him. Not enough to knock him over, but he looked stunned, alright.

He recovered long before I did. I didn't like the smirk on his face, not a bit. He hoisted my stunned form from the ground, and skewered the collar of my favorite trench coat with one of his spider legs. I don't know how that flimsy piece of metal was able to hold a 15-year old human above the ground, but it did. Even with my cursing and flailing above the ground, the alien metal piece wouldn't even bend the slightest bit. For a moment, the group of jocks was paralyzed with laughter at this. I felt like murdering every last one of them. It was them who'd do me damage though. Once they were able to regain their composure, they proceeded to do what they did every day: beat the living shit out of me.

When they were done, I could only guess that my entire face was a mess of blood and a couple other fluids, from the wetness I felt on my face and the barely-disguised shock on some of the more squeamish kids' faces. It felt like a few bones were broken too, but I didn't have time to dwell on it before Zim dropped me from where I was suspended onto the concrete ground. The jocks burst out laughing at this, and patted Zim on the back roughly, and promised to refrain from giving him wedgies for a month.

The Irken feigned appreciation, smirking with pride at his victory over me. If it had been a few years back, he'dve been screaming something along the lines of "HAH! PI-TI-FUL HUMAN! Now do you see that I, ZIM! Of the Irken empire is the superior being?!" But he knew he didn't need to say anything to make me feel like shit.

In fact, that silent smirk was worse. He knew it too.

Perhaps the worst part of the matter for me, worse than every bruise and scrape I got out of that whole scene is that Zim, who'd destroy every last one of them, was school hero for helping to put the "crazy freak" in his place. Even as I washed my face up to ready myself for class, I could hear them laughing, recounting to their incredulous friends all that happened. Needless to say, I was seriously wondering what the purpose of chasing down that alien was if people were this thankless.

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me

My shallow heart's the only one that's beating

The rest of the day only made me feel stupider for showing up. Miss Bitters (who had somehow lived this long and was now the 10th grade teacher.... I think she used her spooky zombie powers to intimidate the principal) singled me out for my "unexcused absence" and lectured the class on how people like me were doomed, doomed, doomed to work in a MacMeaties' for all eternity. And man, did the class get a laugh at my expense at that. It wasn't even that funny.

Another place I'd never return to.

I almost changed my mind there, just for a moment. Despite the torment, despite the berating, there was one thing... or person, rather... that almost stopped me.

Braces. Purple hair, not in bangs like my sister's, but in pigtails. Pale skin. Nice enough eyes. She was plain, but what do appearances matter.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry about what she said to you."

"You laughed too. I heard you."

"Well..." she blushed, trying to come up with an excuse. "Laughter's contagious, you know..."

Bad excuse, but I decided to give her a chance. "Is that all you wanted to say?"

"You're leaving," she said. "I can tell. Your absences, your look, you don't care anymore."

"Well, I know I'm leaving, so why tell me again?" I could be a regular jerk when I wanted to. And right then, they all deserved it. So I felt.

"Don't. Don't do it, Dib, you're the smartest of them, you're –" She stopped there, right as I was about to cut her off anyways.

"The most hated? The crazy one? The one that should spend a life in the Crazy House for Boys? What kind of status is that? You sound like.... You sound like everyone I know!"

Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me

Till then, I walk alone

"Why not try to change that?"

"You think I haven't tried? Numerous times? Why else would I try to save you from that Napoleon wannabe of an alien?!"

"If you just recognized that aliens don't..." I tuned out there. Like I always do. I knew what came next, and I'd heard it hundreds of times over.

"I have to go," I said abruptly, curtly, half way through her talk.

"So that's it? You're giving up."

"No, Gretchen, if I was going to give up, I'd listen to you. I'd listen to my Dad and to Gaz and to Bitters, and all of them. I'd stay in this wreck of a life I have, I'd take up 'real science,' I'd continue my dad's science empire. No, I'm not giving up. See ya."

I walk along the line of what divides me somewhere in my mind;

On the borderline of the edge, and where I walk alone

Maybe I am crazy. I mean, not crazy, paranoid-schizophrenic, obsessive-compulsive, delusional sort of crazy like people think, but the kind of crazy where I refuse help just because I know I need it. I probably knew that, then, too, that even if aliens did exist, Gretchen was at least partly right. About staying in school and all. But my kind of crazy doesn't let me act on what I think a lot.

So I went to the only place I knew to go otherwise, where I'd been told never to come by my superiors after the last incident involving a waffle-eating "dog" and his "normal" owner.

Not Zim's house, not by far. The Swollen Eyeballs' headquarters was where I was headed.

It was not a bad place. Not huge, but it looked professional, something that might be compared to a modest storefront, and not the dingy, darkly lit place that would be most likely attributed to a bunch of supposedly wacky conspiracy theorists like the Swollen Eyeballs. It was mid-afternoon, so most people, except for the regular staff, Tuna Ghost, Disembodied Head, and Spontaneous Combustion, weren't around. To my dismay, their eyes followed me with scorn. Even among my own "group," I was seen as a pariah of sorts.

And then there was the last person besides maybe Zim that I wanted to see right then. The dark green trench coat, the sunglasses over the eyes, the slicked back hair... I recognized him for them long before I heard him babbling about zombie llamas that were influencing the Cuban government, or whatever it was. I made a dive behind a chair to avoid being seen by that disgrace, but, you guessed it, I didn't escape.

"YOU! You saw that vile Cocofang, how he escaped to perform his nefarious tasks elsewhere, tell her what you saw!"

I groaned, approaching the desk with as annoyed of an expression as I could muster at will. "Look, I don't –"

The woman behind the desk, Tuna Ghost, squinted at me. "Oh, Mothman... we know of you. Don't bother."

"I was just saying ...!"

"Forget it, these fascists are intent on persecuting us for our beliefs, so let them! We'll prove them wrong in the end," Bill cut me off. I felt embarrassed for him as well as myself. That is, before he grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the building, at which point I just screamed my lungs out.

"Quiet!" He ordered after we'd walked some ways, or rather he dragged me. "If we're going to do this right, we'll need to do it stealthily. Who knows when those Nazis will try to interfere!"

"Interfere? With what, with you making my reputation even worse?!"

"Don't be ashamed of what you know to be true, boy!"

My own species' stupidity never failed to amaze me. So I spelled it for him, as clearly (and as loudly) as I could manage.

"I. DON'T. CARE. About Count Cocofang, about mutant livestock, about anything you believe in, you pathetic excuse to the paranormal field!"

"So you've turned skeptic, have you? Gone to the dark side?"

I had to keep from laughing, if only to seem more pissed off than, in fact, I really was. You can only be so upset until you start to laugh at your own grief, your own frustration, even your humiliation. I wanted him to realize I thought less of him than even hating. I had contempt, disgust for him. I stared at him straight in the eye, telepathically willing him to know what I thought of him.

As if I mattered all that much.

Having the small, sad sense of satisfaction that I'd conveyed what I wanted to, I headed back to the headquarters. I can't say I had much hope, but I didn't have many other places to look for acceptance.

"FINE! Be a numbskull, like the rest of them! I'll show you, I'll show you all when I show you that the llamas really are controlling your minds!" Bill shouted after me. Once he couldn't hear me, once I was sure of it, I practically bawled with laughter.

Read between the lines of what's fucked up, and everything's alright

Check my vital signs to know I'm still alive, and I walk alone.

Tuna Ghost was none too happy to see my face again. She gave me that stare I know so well now, of "How much would I have to pay you to leave me alone?" I ignored it, as usual.

"I know what you're gonna say, but hear me out. I know that guy's a moron, and I told him off and everything. I'm out of my house, and I need a job, or even a place to stay..."

Tuna Ghost rolled her eyes. "Look, buddy, even if you were still a member of our group, we're an investigation group, not a hotel."

"I've been participating in this group since I could use a computer, and you ban me because of a misunderstanding? What about helping out fellow members? Come on, please, you've gotta have some sort of job I can do!"

"We banned you for wasting our time and resources with meaningless and incomplete reports, false alarms and improvable theories. If you were me, would you give another person like you a job?" Before I could explain that it was not my fault, never, that my plans to expose the alien menace were ruined, she said, "I thought not. So, OUT."

And so OUT I went.

I walk this empty street

On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

For hours that seemed like days, and then a few days that seemed like years, I tried to figure out what to do with the life that I had so successfully messed up.

I wanted to spy on Zim, but I didn't have a reason.

I wanted to check on Gaz, but I didn't want to deal with Dad.

I wanted another chance at skool, but I didn't want to prove Gretchen right.

I spent two days going back and forth not only between options in my mind, but two areas. During the day, I'd spend time downtown, looking with only mild interest for signs of paranormal activity. All my thoughts on it were tainted, though, with my rejection. At night, I'd stay in the rides in the abandoned fairground nearby, or in a 24/7 fast food restaurant, until they kicked me out for one reason or another.

Where the city sleeps,

And I'm the only one, I walk alone

The last day I spent there, I saw Zim. Zim and his green android-dog, the latter probably having dragged his "master" there for food I can't imagine either of them would need. Zim was looking livid, which, I have to admit, I still found quite amusing. Then he caught sight of me, and his features narrowed and contorted into a sadistic expression, one that I remember finding terrifying at one point. Now, though, it was just annoying.

"DIB WORM!" yelled the alien. "You've been missing. What have you been plotting? TELL ME..." His commanding me to give away a strategy I didn't even have, as well as his typical overdramatic tone, was hilarious now. So I laughed. Right in his face. His eyes bugged out, in this freakish way that I guess only an alien could manage.

"Really, filth creature, what is your plot? Tell Ziiiiim! Tell Zim or –"

"Which empty threat is it this time, Zim? 'Invoke your wrath!'? 'Suffer the doom of the mighty Zim stomping boot!'?"

He looked rather surprised at my accuracy, as if he didn't actually repeat himself 500 times a week. "Your insolence and PATHETIC attempts at mind tricks do nothing to confound the almighty ZIM, pitiful Dib monkey! But really, if you have a plan, you might as well tell me because.... Um.... I'll find out anyways if you don't! YES! I will use my Irken powers of ZIM to foil your simplistic plans of filth, whatever they are!" Cue the overdone evil laughter. I snickered along with him. At him, rather. He stopped laughing immediately.

"Are you mad, more so than before, stink beast?! I'm here to destroy you, and you laugh?"

"You're pathetic, Zim. You." I would've given my full psychoanalysis of him, how he needs a rivalry to give him meaning, how he enjoyed this more than he'd admit, crap like that, but there was no use.

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me

My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating

"I'M NOT MR. THOU!" screamed Zim's android, as the Irken just seethed with indignation. I laughed at him again, and left the Crazy Taco building.

I felt like I had no obligation anymore. An incredible sense of freedom swept over me, like some asphyxiating cloud had been lifted. Zim WAS pathetic, and uninteresting too. There was a sudden nostalgia for the good old days of hunting bigfeet, vampires and unnamed, simpler villains, not having to worry about the fate of the world and whatnot. I was so caught up, thinking and running aimlessly, I didn't realize my course. My feet carried me to my street, to my front lawn and finally into my house, where Gaz and Dad sat at the dining room table for a rare meal together. I considered stopping, listening to see if I was mentioned, but I was noticed before I could do so.

"SON?! We thought you'd left the country!"

"We thought you'd died," Gaz corrected, sounding thoroughly dismayed that this wasn't the case. I expected nothing else from her, but grinned like an idiot all the same.

"Not the case, is it?"

"So," Gaz said with disdain to me after a few moments of Dad's theatrical expressions of relief, "What'd you come back for? Money? Food? Forgiveness?" She leaned in, waiting for a response.

And I made her wait. And when the answer came, I'm sure it was a letdown for her.

"My camera."

I gathered my equipment, and ran out the door, leaving the two as confounded as they were a couple of minutes ago, when I first entered.

And boy, did this seem like a great day for sasqatch hunting.

Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me

Till then, I walk away.

THE END