4. Things Start Looking Down and Up

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked to where Bitters was located.

This is the worst stage in the world.

Dib and Zim froze, wondering whether she would be paying attention to either of them in the moment. Their fates were unsure, but Laura was definitely in deep doo-doo.

In her distress, she brought her palm up to her face and then crossed her arms, absentmindedly staining her beanie, face, and sleeve ends with pig liquid. A wave of gasps swept the room.

Ms. Bitters bared her teeth, detracting from her unpleasant appearance more than necessary.

"Go wash that awful material off yourself, new brat. When you return, you're signing yourself up for After-Skool Detention."

A thundering silence followed that built up and ached inside Laura's head. She had to break it - her hands were beginning to shake.

"You fucking evil old bitch. Just because people listen to you doesn't mean you're right."

Jaws dropped at her display of insubordination. Nobody had ever stood up to Bitters like that before. Zim was so impressed, he started taking notes.

Ms. Bitters, of course, was not amused. She growled a gravelly "Out." and pointed out to the hallway.

The bespectacled, bloodied girl rushed out, swiping a hall pass from beside the door that deactivated the security field. Before it closed, everyone managed to get a glimpse of her flipping the bird to the skool head.

Zita and a few others tittered, but otherwise, the students of that STEM block were stunned. Nobody dared to breathe or move a muscle really.

"Get back to chopping up those pigs!" ordered Bitters, startling some in the audience. Then she, too, stormed out.

The atmosphere instantly changed, with the air filled by explosions of conversation. Everyone would be hearing about this soon. However, speech did not return to Dib until the blood came back to his face. He was thinking deeply... and feeling guilty.

The new kid was clearly intelligent. That was exceedingly rare in Hi-Skool. She had been open to the idea of even listening to him tell the true story about Zim. She treated Zim like an equal and not like some sad, sick little handicapped boy like everyone else deluded themselves into thinking. And basically she didn't shy away from him.

He could see himself opening her mind to the possibility that they were not alone in the universe, and that whoever was out there wasn't very nice, and that the world needed saving from cretins like Zim. He perceived her as a diamond in the rough, another point against the Irken's game... and because of his nausea she would be chewed up and spit out by the skool's supremely strict discipline system.

Now, he had felt only a bit guilty at the beginning of the thread of his thoughts, but taking into consideration every piece of information he had gathered on her and processed, his thoughts snowballed into a thick ball of anguish he felt right in his sternum, and there was no other way to let it out at the moment except by wringing his hands.

"Zim, I can't do this."

"Hm?" Zim looked up at him suspiciously.

"Do whatever you want. I don't care anymore."

"Okayyy..." He shrugged, took a loop of intestine from the opening with a pencil, scrutinized it, and put it back gingerly. He wouldn't be touching it anymore, either.

That was fine with both of them, putting their teammate's good work to waste.

Laura did not appear for the rest of that block. Her absence burned a patch in Dib's peripheral vision.

He wasn't as affected by the stench when someone started shooting poop out of the intestines at others, and the crap spilled in the center of the class so it contaminated the entire place. Zim had just about had it. He only needed one point of contact for a piece of pork to stick to him and sear his skin, causing him to spasm and moan and scream about "filthy... Hyoomans... and their filthy... processes!".

It took a while for him to recover, and while normally Dib would have laughed cruelly, his mind was still in another place.

At lunch, the new kid was spotted again. She seemed subdued and a good bit cleaner compared to the last time anyone had seen her. Her beanie was lower than before, obscuring her ears, and the fluorescent lights in the ceiling reflected off her glasses, so others could only tell she'd been crying from her reddish nose.

Dib quickly made a beeline for the spot behind her. Laura did not turn around, although he was sure she saw him. He wondered why he was bothered by this - was it related to the guilt he had felt earlier? Or fear that he was squandering an opportunity to work with someone who could oppress Zim and his antics? The way he saw it, it was about time he had someone on his team in the fight against imminent world domination.

"I can feel you breathing on me!" She suddenly spoke out loud, cutting into his silence. Then she wheeled around, taking a defensive stance. "What are you doing so close to me?"

"Uh, I wasn't doing anything, really- I didn't mean to-" he stuttered, shuffling backwards a bit. "It was an accident, I guess. I don't know. Excuse me."

She gave him a weird look, then the line moved forward and Laura received the inedible lunch stuff on a tray. It appeared to be a sorry excuse for breaded bologna with soggy fruitcake on the side. Instead of veering left to enter the neat rows of tables in the multi-purpose cafeteria, she kept going straight ahead, to the bathrooms.

"Hey, where are you headed?" Dib called after her in vain. He decided to ditch his place in line - the food sucked ass and he never ended up eating it - so instead he left his tray behind and caught up to her before she could open the door to the hallway.

"I'm going to the bathroom where all the toilets invited me."

Dib snickered, but stopped when he realized she wasn't also laughing.

"That's right, you don't have a clique yet," he realized, and was about to feel sorry for her - but he caught himself. At that moment, his neurons started firing together in harmony, and he produced an idea that seemed so wonderful to him, Laura doubted the light in his eyes came from the fluorescents.

He began to pace, his scythe-shaped hair bobbing ever so slightly from his frenetic steps on the linoleum floor. Laura leaned back on the door, observing him with amusement and curiosity. She checked the surroundings, wondering if anyone else was watching this unusual activity. Nobody looked up in confusion, let alone surprise. It seemed to be an everyday thing, strengthening the feeling of detachment from others in the new kid.

Dib struggled to get his words out right. He continued pacing. "What if... what if I somehow were able to convince you to sit at my table? So we could get to understand each other better? It could lead to us working together to save humanity from the horrors of outer space. We'll need to begin eliminating the extraterrestrial plague that's already landed here. This means... we can start on ZIM!"

He struck a pose, facing the rest of the cafeteria and finally drawing the attention of others. From behind, he heard Laura's rueful laughter and snapped around.

"What?" Dib asked. "What's so funny? You don't like my plan? Don't you think it's a win-win situation for both of us? You can better transition to Hi-Skool here, and I can complete my lifelong quest to keep Zim out of power."

"Oh, dude. It's not that. You just..." Laura snorted again and hid her mouth behind a hand. "You look like a stork standing like that, Dib. Straighten up."

Dib stopped posing immediately and returned to something less than his normal hunch, twiddling his thumbs sheepishly. "Okay then... moving on from that..."

"So, where exactly do you sit?"

"Oh, it's right over here. We'll just have to cut a path through the jocks or the cheerleaders and ignore the cool goths. Hopefully I can get away without anyone messing with me today," the young man shuddered.