The other day, some one slapped him. Neutron got owned!
But I'd never slap Jimmy.
Somebody out there owns Jimmy Neutron! It's not me, but I still congratulate them.
I'd like to thank all of you who've been honest and really thought out their reviews.
I'd also like to give my personal recommendation to Dr. Phil for those of you who've focused more on personal attacks rather than truthfully reviewing.
Your support means a lot to me; special thanks go out to Plooshes, CindyVBrat, deStig, and The Legendary Frob, who've all been very affectionate and considerate in their reviews.
Ms. Gildred seemed like a nice woman. She wasn't much different from Ms. Fowl, truthfully, but she did a have a quaint sense of humor that Ms. Fowl was precariously lacking.
The home period class warmed up to each other as they shared what they did over summer vacation.
Jimmy listened to all of the fascinating things the kids did. One kid went to Brazil. Some one else had a new baby brother. Another one learned how to operate a trolley.
Jimmy didn't do anything. He wondered what he'd say when the teacher came to-
"You. Your name is?"
Jimmy was caught off guard. "Uh, Jimmy. Neutron. My name's Jimmy Neutron."
"Well, Mr. Uh Jimmy Neutron, what did you do over summer vacation?"
Scrubbed floors. "I spent time in my laboratory inventing." That probably sounded really lame, but it's true.
"Really? What kind of things do you invent?" Ms. Gildred made everything sound fascinating with her optimistic disposition. Suddenly all the children were paying close attention.
"Well, I was working on something extravagant, but I became impatient when it didn't work."
Sheen interrupted, "Yeah, he gave it to me!" He pulled the Periphery Eliminator 9000 out of his backpack and held it up with pride, "It's called the Poofy Liberator Thingy Nine Million, and it can make fake stuff turn real!"
Jimmy raised an eyebrow, but Ms. Gildred was allured by the brilliance of its design, "May I see it?" Sheen handed the PE9000 to her and she held it in awe. She must've known Sheen had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, so she asked again. "What is it called again, Jimmy?"
"The Periphery Eliminator 9000. It erases the boundary lines between parallel universes, allowing anything to cross through a portal it generates."
Cindy's curiosity was aroused, "So it basically performs the same procedure as that machine you invented for the disappearing act in your magic show."
"Close, but not quite. That machine allowed us to cross over into parallel dimensions. The PE900 is used for crossing over into parallel universes."
"But it doesn't work, huh?" asked Ms. Gildred, still holding the machine.
"No, it doesn't."
"That's too bad, but I must admit, it looks very professional- much better than some of the crayon-coated cardboard tubes I've seen in my day."
Some of the children looked hurt.
"Of course, they're all very creative," she added. "So, did you do anything else?"
"Not really. I got braces," he didn't bother to see if people responded to it or not. He figured Libby was right about his braces. All that matters is what he thinks matters, and he thinks it doesn't matter about what he looks like on the outside.
"And they look very charming," Ms. Gildred reassured. "All right, moving down the row, "You, green shirt."
Cindy stood up pridefully, "Well, I didn't do anything as glorious as the PE9000, but I held a few slumber parties with my best friend."
"And who's that?"
"Libby Folfax. She's in Cunningham right now."
"Oh yes, I remember reading her name in the attendance for one of my later classes. I'll keep an eye out for her."
"Oh, and I got braces too," Cindy smiled and showed them off.
"My, my, my, you both have braces, and you both just happened to sit next to each other. That's funny!"
"Actually, we happen to know each other," Jimmy broke in.
"Oh you do?"
"Yeah, Cindy lives across the street from me."
"Mhmm, we're friends."
He looked over and said in a rather breathless voice, "We are?"
"I thought so," she replied casually.
Jimmy cleared his throat, "I mean yes, yes we are."
Ms. Gildred smiled, "Well, that's nice. As long as you two don't talk too much, I'll let you stay there." She paused, "Next we'll have, Red." She motioned to Carl.
Sheen stood up quickly, "His name's Carl. He lost his voice and can't talk for awhile. I'm his translater."
Ms. Gildred giggled, "Okay, and you are?"
"My name's UltraSheen, and over vacation I went to Tokyo to watch TV." Sheen tried to read Carl's body language, "Mr. Wheezer would like to use the chalkboard, so he can help translate himself."
"All right, then. Since it's the first day of school, and there's nothing written on the board, I'll let you. However, from now on, you'll have to find something else to help you along in conversation."
Carl curtsied at this and Sheen was prudent to reply, "Don't worry, ma'am. He has note cards that he'll be able to use."
Carl walked up to the board with dignity and wrote in chalk, "My name's Carl and I like llamas. I had a bad experience with a llama though, and that's why I can't talk right now. I also got braces over the summer. Huzzah!"
Then Carl walked back to his seat contentedly as the class read what he wrote.
The rest of the period went on like this, and before they knew it, class was over.
Many of the kids rushed out of their classrooms to find their next period teachers. The principal came over the loud speaker, "Please, children, be in no hurry. To those of you who don't know, no running in the halls. We've decided to give you your recess now, so you can find where all your classes are without worry." All the kids cheered. "Happy first day of school."
Jimmy and Cindy walked down the corridors for awhile, finding all their classes. "So, when did you decide we were friends?"
"When you gave me that pearl; that kind of made it official."
"I know, but a lot's happened since then."
Cindy smiled, "A lot hasn't happened too." She grabbed his hand.
Jimmy just grinned; he didn't really know what to say.
Butch turned around and looked at them. "What are you two brace faces smiling about?"
Their smiles faded. "What's it to you, Butch?" Jimmy soon realized he should've just kept his mouth shut. Butch's face turned sour.
He picked Jimmy up by the shirt collar, "What'd you say, punk?" The bell to class rang, but they all ignored it.
Cindy sassed, "Drop the big head, now!"
Butch didn't drop Jimmy, but now he ganged up on Cindy. Jimmy looked fearful.
"You want him?"
Jimmy broke in, trying to sound persuasive, but his voice quivered, "Butch, don't do anything stupid!"
"I don't know how to do anything else! Big Mouth's gotta learn her lesson." He yanked open the utility closet door and threw Jimmy and Cindy in it. Butch could be heard stomping away down the halls, laughing.
"Darn! Locked!"
"I didn't even get to go all tai chi on him!" Cindy complained.
The late bell rang.
"Great, everyone's in their classes by now. No one will know we're in here."
"Not to worry, Cindy. My watch has a- Oh no! My watch! It must've fallen off when Butch shoved us in here! Looks like we're stuck here until lunchtime and someone will be able to find us."
Cindy didn't seem surprised. Things like this always happened when she hung around with Neutron, "Well, at least it couldn't get worse than this."
They sat there for awhile in silence. When they were first shoved in there, the closet seemed pitch black. Now there eyes were adjusted to the dark, and they could see more clearly.
Cindy broke the prolonged silence, "Jimmy, I just wanted to let you know, I was really disappointed when you didn't show up for my party."
"Cindy, I tried to throw you a party, but when the rug mites-"
"Not my birthday party. My piano recital."
Jimmy thought for awhile. Cindy's piano recital? Come to think of it, I recall getting an invitation, but how long ago was that?
"The summer you moved here, before I knew you were a genius and before you knew I was competitive, I really liked you."
Huh?
"I invited you to my piano recital. I won an award for most talented song. I wrote it for you, so you wouldn't feel unwelcome, like you didn't have any friends, but you never showed up."
Jimmy couldn't have imagined how that must have felt. He looked into Cindy's eyes, but they showed no emotion. She was once again, staring at anything but him. His eyes, however, expressed hurt and disbelief. How could I have been so insensitive?
She laughed a little, "I know it doesn't matter anymore, but I just wanted you to know." She sighed, "I never really got over that. It's funny, how some things never change." She gazed up at him for once.
"It's funny how they do." Jimmy paused, as if waiting fort the right moment, "Cindy, I just have to know something…"
"What?"
He gathered up his courage, "Can I…. Can I kiss you?"
"What?"
"It would be really quick. Just like that," he snapped his fingers.
"Well, okay," she could barely believe this was all happening so fast, let alone happening at all.
Reluctantly, they puckered up, and they actually kissed.
He lied. He said it would be really quick, but aw well…
So this is what this is like. Hmm… It's kind of nice.
It seemed like they'd been lip-locked for ages. It was only a matter of seconds. They couldn't pull away though. It was like they were sealed together.
All of a sudden, a light bulb shattered. Jimmy and Cindy's eyes fluttered open. Carl could be seen emerging from behind a mop, waving his arms violently.
Wait a second, they really couldn't pull away.
"Mhumamuhum!" was all they could manage to get out.
Carl rushed over to their aid.
"Nweutwon! Wut's hwappwening?"
"Owuhr bwaces! They mwust bwe stwuck togethuh!"
"Wuttuth?"
"I thed: Owuhr bwrACESS! Thwey moost beay stwuckkk tooogethuhr!"
"OWWW! I hwerd you thwe fwirst time! Stwop mwovin' your bwig head! It hurts mwy teeth!"
Carl held up an index card and shook it in their faces.
"Stwop shwakin' it! I cwan't read it!" Cindy was becoming extremely flustered.
Carl did his best to hold it still. The card read, "Don't you guys know anything? You can't kiss when you have braces! Haven't you ever watched General Post Office?"
"Onwy woozers watch thwat show, Wheezer! Why dwidn't you wet us know?"
He scribbled onto another index card, "Oh yeah, well why would I even need to tell Jimmy Neutron and Cindy Vortex not to kiss?"
Jimmy and Cindy gave exchanged utterly confused glances, then looked at Carl the same way.
The index card read, "I thought so."
"Cwarl! Why dwidn't-"
"Ow! Watch it!"
"Sowwy. Why dwidn't you wet us know you were hewuh earwier?"
He scribbled onto another card, "Butch threw me in here earlier, because my braces were poisoning his perfect world. I guess he threw me in so hard that I landed unconscious, and when I woke up, you two were in here talking."
"So why dwidn't you write swumthin' on a note cward, to at weast wet us know you're here?"
He wrote something else, "Because that's interrupting, and interrupting is rude."
"Wewwuhh, what do we do? We cwan't jwust wait fowur someone to open thwe dwoor and find us, wewwuhh, wike this!" Cindy motioned to her and Jimmy's current lip-locked state.
Carl pulled the janitor's keys out of his back pocket.
"Cawurhl! Where'd you find thwose?"
He held up a card, "My mom asked the principal ahead of time if I could have access to this closet. They keep all my allergy medications in here, because the school doesn't like the idea of me carrying them all around with me."
The lunch bell rang. Wow. Time flies when you're in a sickened state of torment.
"Now evweyone will bwe in the cafeterwia eatin' wunch! We can't go out thwere!"
"Cindy, thwe sooner thwe bwetter. We could permanentwy damage owuh teeth if we don't do swumthing soon."
"Thwen how do we go out thwere without evweyone seein' us?"
They both looked to Carl, who was, umm, jiggling.
"Cawurhl! What in Einstwein's name awer you doin'?"
He held up a card, "I really got to go to the bathroom."
"Cawurhl's got to go now, and they're hwis keys. We have to gwet out now."
Cindy's eyes widened in terror.
"Dwon't worry. Wike you swaid, evweyone will be in thwe cafweteria. If we just take the hallways to the nurse's office, no one will see us."
Cindy opened her mouth to object, but Carl had already banged open the door and bolted to the restroom.
"Come on, we gwot to gwo!" Jimmy was about to bolt out the door too, when his head jerked backwards and they both screamed in pain.
"OWWW! OW! OW! OW! Nweutron! We're stuck twogethwer, remembwer?"
"Eheh. Sowwy. Okay, hwold hwands, and twake steps at the swame time." They grabbed hands and stepped in unison. "Okway, right, weft, right, weft. Just kweep it at that pace."
"Jwimmy, Bwitney's mom is the nwurse."
"So?"
"What if Bwitney hwelps out in the offwice at wunch?"
They kept walking down the corridor. "What mwakes you say thwat?"
"I ovwerheard hwer talking abwout it to Nissa while you were asking that one girl abwout owuh cwasses."
"Wet's just take thwings as thwey come, okway?" He checked to make sure no one was coming. The nurse's door was wide open. "All wight, Cindy, the dwoor's wide open. Jwust go over thwere, and ask fowur the nurse. If Bwitney's thwere, we'll just mwake a run fowur the exit."
"Why do I have to dwo it?"
"Bwecause we can't wet anyone see us, and you're in the position needed to jwust pwoke you're head in and out. I can't position myself that way, because the dwoor opens in the opposwite diwection. Jwust dwo it!"
Cindy sighed, and they both crept up next to the doorway. Jimmy whispered, "Go on. Dwo it!"
Cindy rolled her eyes and leaned her head over as far as humanely possible next to the edge of the doorway, that is, as far as humanely possible without revealing Jimmy. Only the top portion of her head above the tip of her nose showed. Jimmy cringed. This was a very uncomfortable position to hold.
Britney stared out at Cindy as if she were a creature from the deep. "What do you want?"
Cindy tried her best to smile with her eyes, "Is your mom thwere?"
"No, she's at the teacher's luncheon. I'll ask again; what do you want, Vortex?"
Stay calm. Stay cool. I'm not going to kill her… I'm not gonna attack her. I'm just going to do what I came here to do and- Jimmy nudged Cindy.
"Hello? What do you want? Why don't you come out from behind the doorway? Everyone knows you have braces. You don't have to hide them from me."
Jimmy saw Cindy's fingers ball up into fists, and he could have sworn steam blew out of her ears. Her grabbed her by the shoulders and forced them to start running before she blew their cover.
"What the?" Britney could be heard saying from inside the nurse's office.
Jimmy did his best to imitate Cindy's voice, "Sowwy! Uh, peace out! Girl power!"
They kept running, or more like quickly-paced crab-walked to the exit of the school.
Cindy quickly forgot her rage at Britney, because her mouth was beginning to ache severely. They ran out the school doors and down the streets.
They caught a few looks from passersby, but they didn't care anymore. Their teeth were hurting so badly by now that crab-walking straight seemed a near impossibility.
"So where are we hweading to?"
"Dr. Suotimalwac's offwice."
"Who?"
"Thwe orthodontwist!"
They arrived at the orthodontist's office soon enough, and luckily, not many people were there. The woman at the desk greeted them while reading a magazine, "Check in at the computer please."
"Ma'am, this is an emergwency."
"Aren't they all?"
"Wook, Wady, we have a serwious probwem!" Cindy snorted.
She looked up at the two as if to snap back, but then she gasped, "Oh my! Doctor! Doctor!"
Dr. Suotimalac appeared with a purple flurp, apparently on his lunch break, "Well, what do we have here? So, the braces actually turned out to be a girl magnet, eh, Jimmy?"
Jimmy blushed and laughed nervously, but Cindy scowled and rolled her eyes. Just when things were starting to work out, too.
"Don't worry. I'll have you two separated in no time... And when I say no time, I mean, you'll probably have to miss the rest of the school day…" He walked into the operating room.
Jimmy and Cindy hurried over as quickly as they could manage.
He laid them down as best as he could onto the operating bed, "All right. I'm just going to give you two a sedative, and then I'll separate you and tighten your braces."
It seemed like they woke up right after they fell asleep, but they couldn't have. When Cindy opened her eyes, her and Jimmy were no longer conjoined, and her braces felt a little funny.
"Wow, my mouth feels… tight," Cindy rubbed her mouth.
"Yes, it may take a little while to get over the funny feeling, but it should dissipate in a few days. Oh, and Jimmy," Jimmy looked up, "I called both of your parents. I had to. They're the ones paying the bills. I talked to them about this, and they asked me to install electro shockers into both of your braces. They told me all about your little 'braces eliminator' as they called it."
"How would they know about that? I didn't tell them what it was."
"I recommend checking for surveillance devices in your laboratory. Anyways, they don't want you trying anything stupid or getting yourself killed over this silly corrective dentistry device. Whenever you try to remove your braces, you will receive a small electric shock. I wouldn't recommend trying it."
They both winced at the thought.
"Well, I'll see you in awhile for your next checkup; in the meantime, no more kissy-kissy!"
Jimmy and Cindy exited the room and walked down the street to their neighborhood.
"You said it would be quick! Just like that!" Cindy snapped her fingers.
"I'm sorry! I didn't know our braces would get caught! Next time I'll do my research."
"What makes you think there is a next time? I've learned my lesson, Neutron. I don't care what other people think. I was afraid I'd strangle Britney! If you think you can go messing things up like you did today and get a second chance just because you didn't make a scene, you've got another thing coming!"
"Ah, why do I bother with you, Vortex?"
"I'd like to say the same for you!"
They went on squabbling, while Dr. Suotimalac cackled in his office.
Dr. Suotimalac or rather, a suit built to resemble a human being, split in half, revealing…
Professor Calamitous!
He laughed and pulled up a monitor showing Jen Delstohks. "Haha, Delstohks! The transmitters and video cameras have been installed into Jimmy Neutron and Cindy Vortex's braces. We can now record every move they make, that is unless there mouths are closed and they block out the video cameras. Judging by how the screen keeps going black though, I'd imagine that they're arguing. I'm afraid that along the lines of luring them into our trap, we've forced them to start over at ground zero. It seems that all traces of any bonding between the two were destroyed during the mess."
"Nonsense! Do you think I would've paid Butch to lock the three of them in that closet if all hope was lost? Never! Jimmy and Cindy are much more complex than that. Their relationship is just a little weathered. Not to worry, though! Tomorrow, we start planting…"
"No turnips?"
Delstohks sighed, "No turnips."