When the bell rang for lunch, Jimmy grabbed his shoulder bag and gave a smirk to Cindy.
"Nice seeing you again, Cindy. Nice skirt…"
He began to walk away but Cindy grabbed her stuff and shuffled as quickly as she could in her high heels (since she couldn't run) and tried to catch up with Jimmy.
"Wait!" she called out. "WAIT!"
Jimmy stopped walking and turned, waiting for Cindy to scoot her way up to him.
"You can't just show up out of the blue like that and say 'did you miss me'! You don't call, you don't write or text or anything and then you just show up as if it's a normal day?!"
"Sorry?" he said, making a semi-apologetic look at her.
"Seriously?! There's been a lot of stuff that's happened since you left Retroville-"
"And let me guess, they're my fault?"
Cindy was a little taken back with Jimmy's response and backpedaled.
"Well… not everything but one thing is your fault."
"That is why I left in the first place. Don't you think I feel bad enough about what happened to Sheen?"
"That's not really what I was talking about… Besides, if you had stayed then it-"
"Would have made no difference whatsoever, Cindy. Just leave it be."
"I can't… Jimmy, why did you come back if you knew this was going to happen? Why didn't you just stay in High Tech City where it was "safe" for you?"
"Ironically enough, I would rather deal with all of this than stay somewhere that I can't stand. True, I missed my friend and Retroville… I missed you but even though High Tech City was great, it was not all it was cracked up to be. They had a strict 'no casual inventing' law there so I was stuck with tons of ideas that I could never accomplish. Do you know how hard it is not to be able to fulfill your scientific desires? I've got about five notebooks full of drawings and plans for inventions that I wasn't able to work on!" he said, his overdramatic personality that Cindy remembered seeming to break through whatever change had come over Jimmy.
Cindy had to smile at that, realizing that she had missed his overcharasmatic attitude more than she would let herself believe.
Since they got the hard part out of the way, there were a million questions Cindy wanted to ask but she wasn't sure how to ask any of them and so she just swayed back and forth for a second.
"So… do you live in your old house? It was rented out a lot so it didn't get run down or anything."
"Nah, my dad's duck collection got really big so he needed more space." He said with a roll of his eyes. "I told my parents about my year microwave and the ultra pressurizer and so I made a lot of pearls and gemstones and my mom makes them into jewelry… We have a better how now at the end of the road."
"Do they know about your other inventions? Your old clubhouse is still at the house and everything…"
"The top part is still there but I filled the underground part with expanding foam and left a lot of my inventions in there so that they wouldn't hurt anyone… I took my rocket and some other things but other than that, no."
"I see… Does Carl even know you're here?"
"Yeah but we haven't-"
"JIMMY!"
The two turned as Carl ran up to Jimmy and trampled him to the ground. Jimmy laughed as Cindy stepped out of the way so that they wouldn't roll on her feet.
"Jimmy, I missed you so much!" Carl said.
"I missed you too, Carl."
"Hey, how come he recognized you? You could keep up with Carl but not anyone else?"
Jimmy didn't respond as Carl kept talking on top of him.
"Man, I'm so happy to see you back. We can go on more adventures and try out your new inventions and experiments: all the stuff we used to do! Your clubhouse is still there so I mean, there shouldn't be anything out of place."
Jimmy smiled sadly as he made Carl get off of him and looked at him.
"I'm sorry, Carl, but I won't be able to do those things with you anymore."
"What do you mean? Did you use the Brain Drain and get stupid again?"
Jimmy laughed. "No, that's not it… It's just that they're too dangerous and having you involved is just a liability. It's too risky."
Carl gave him a look.
"That never stopped you before. Remember how you led the charge to save our parents from those stupid green gloop people? And when Professor Calamitous tried to take over the world all those times? Or helping out Jett Fusion? Or when Libby almost became a totalitarian bitch of the future? It was you that stopped it."
"It was me that caused them in the first place. If I hadn't sent that toaster with our exact coordinates to the Yolkians, they wouldn't have taken our parents to be sacrificed to Poultra. Because I am a genius, Professor Calamitous always wanted to destroy me and most of the things I help Jett with were because of an invention that was stolen. And what was the point of making the Megalomanium anyway? That was a stupid idea…" He got off of the ground and wiped himself off. "I appreciate your enthusiasm with my experiments and inventions and I'll still be doing them but… I just won't be showing them off like I used to. They're too dangerous."
"But Jimmy, they were always dangerous." Cindy reiterated, remembering a few of their adventures.
"Yeah but I was a kid then and didn't think about the consequences… I'm going to get some lunch so, gotta blast."
He walked away as Carl and Cindy watched him leave.
"Am I missing something? He's not the same Jimmy at all." Cindy said.
"He feels really bad about what happened to Sheen and blames himself."
"Why would he do that? Everyone knows that Sheen was a little retarded back then. He was always being an idiot and getting into things he shouldn't have. He brought it upon himself for not listening to Jimmy in the first place."
"When was Sheen ever good at listening?" Carl said with a lift of his eyebrow to Cindy. Cindy nodded in agreement. "It doesn't matter what we know about Sheen, it's the fact that it was Jimmy's invention so he thinks it's his fault. We know how Sheen is but Jimmy feels responsible."
"He's even stupider than he was five years ago."
She walked off to meet Nick for lunch.
"Hey, did you see that Nerdtron was back? Talk about a blast from the past." Nick said as he sat with Cindy at the table.
"Yeah, he's in my chemistry class and sits right next to me."
"How weird is it that he's sitting next to you in class again?"
"It's… nostalgic actually." Cindy said, setting her chin on her hand and smiling. "It reminds me of the days in Ms. Fowl's class."
"Don't get any ideas."
Cindy looked at Nick, who was giving her a look and she reached over, kissing his cheek.
"Why would I do anything? I have you so what would I want with him?"
Nick grinned as Cindy turned away and sighed quietly so he wouldn't see her.
Libby, though, wasn't stupid. She knew that Jimmy's reappearance rekindled feelings in Cindy just like Sheen did to her when he was having a good day. Libby's situation was a little unavoidable but Cindy's heart had been crushed more than anything. They left on such bad terms… Libby thought.
"Hey, where's Wheezer?" Nick asked.
"Oh, he's sitting with Jimmy and catching up with him."
"Nerds… I don't understand what you saw in cowlick-head anyway." He said to Cindy.
Cindy forced a smile. "Yeah, me neither."
"So you're really not going to show off your inventions and stuff anymore?" Carl asked Jimmy once more.
"Maybe some, but not the same extent. Most of them were a failure anyway."
Carl could tell he wanted to change the subject. If nothing else, Carl had at least learned to read situations pretty well since he started dating Libby and having to hang around Cindy and Nick. He was quite proud of his new ability.
"So, how was High Tech City? Was it everything you ever dreamed? I know were excited to go."
"It was okay for a while. I wanted to move there because I wanted to have access to a lot of their high tech tools and stuff so that I could further my inventions and make them better so that they actually worked, but you have to be eighteen or older to use any of them. That and they had a 'no casual invention' law, which made things hard. Every year they had a month dedicated to making one invention and showing it to a board of directors but none of my inventions were under code…" He frowned deeply. "So many stupid codes!"
Carl smirked. "That sounds hectic. Did you make any friends while you were there?"
"Not a lot… most of them were too smart for their own good."
Carl made a face at Jimmy, who looked at him and they burst into loud laughter. Jimmy wiped his eyes from the good laugh.
"I haven't had a good laugh in such a long time… So, you and Libby, huh? That was something I wasn't expecting."
Carl made a face. "Jimmy." Jimmy just blinked at him. "Just ask what you really want to know; enough small talk."
Jimmy frowned and sat back, moving his food around.
"Fine… how's Sheen? When was the last time you saw him?"
Carl smiled. "I told him you were coming back about a week ago and his eyes lit up. He's on another medication that makes him a little less zombielike and they believe this might be the meds for him but it'll take a while to take effect... We missed you a lot…"
"Yeah, I missed you all too… Sheen doesn't… He doesn't blame me at all, does he?"
"Jimmy, Sheen was never the brightest crayon in the box. It was his fault for getting mixed up in your stuff and going to Zeenu. It was not anyone's fault that his dad and the other adults couldn't handle Sheen's proclamation of going to another planet. We, the kids of Retroville, know that there are other aliens out there and other planets but we're not hyperactive like Sheen. He just blurts stuff out and I think that it was just too much for Mr. Estevez to handle and… Jimmy, no one blames you for anything. Not even Sheen."
Jimmy nodded but it didn't help him at all. He looked over at Cindy and Nick as he held his hand over her shoulder and they talked to Libby.
"Is she happy?"
"Who? Cindy?" He looked over at them. "She's content."
"But is she happy?"
"That's not my call. Why don't you ask her yourself?"
"Nah…" Jimmy put his hands in his red hoodie and smiled a little. "My presence is probably bad enough, I won't involve myself in her life like that. It would be pretty shitty of me after everything."
Carl nodded and then leaned in, making Jimmy give him a funny look.
"Now, about those inventions…"
Jimmy laughed and began to tell him of some of the inventions he had made while in high Tech City.
retroville is retro so high tech city is high tech... that's my thinking haha. and yeah, poor jimbo thinks he's responsible for sheen when it's really a lack of care by mr. estevez... way to go dad... and i figured they could at least make profit with some of jimmy's pretty successful inventions like the year microwave for oysters to make pearls and the year pressurizer to make gemstones and stuff. hell, i would be using them...