Chapter One:

Should've Just Stayed Home

[Dib]

The table is cold against my cheek. I stare at the thin film of my breath as it plumes across the black, grubby laminate and try not to think about the pounding in my chest or the burning of my skin. Eyes open, eyes closed - doesn't matter, the headache won't stop and the cafeteria is as loud as ever. I don't even hear the clomp of Zim's boots until his red jacket fills my view. I glance up at his exaggerated frown.

"You stink today, Dib." He glares at me through his ridiculous disguise that somehow still hasn't tipped anyone off, despite the fact that he has no nose or ears and his skin is green. "More than usual, I mean."

"Nice to see you too, Zim," I mutter. God, the lights are so bright in here. Have they always been like this?

"Zim did not greet you!" he snaps. "I insulted you - DO NOT ignore my insults!"

"Can we just not do this today?" I groan. My head is splitting open and my skin feels so hot. I must be running a fever. I should've known snooping around that old building was a bad idea - who knows what I exposed myself to in there -

Thwack!

Zim's food tray slides off my head and hits the floor with a thud, spilling the cafeteria's daily concoction all over the tile. Pain radiates across my skull and my lip tugs into a snarl.

"What the fuck?" I snap, pushing off of the attached bench.

Whoops, too fast, too fast-

The room tilts. Shit-

"I do not appreciate your mouthiness today, Dib-stink." Zim's obnoxious voice melts with the spinning room. Everything's echoing and dripping and I feel like I'm gonna be sick.

"F-fuck off, Zim…" I stumble back a few steps, gripping the bench with white knuckles. Yep, here comes the two bites of oatmeal that I managed to force down this morning. I double-over and heave out a thick splatter of bile and undigested breakfast. Zim shrieks and jumps back, yanking his tray off the ground and using it as a shield. My favorite shirt and pants (well, my only shirt and pants, really) are covered in vomit.

The room falls to silence. I can feel everyone staring at me and it's almost as if their gaze carries its own sound, its own weight, spilling into my ears and filling up my skull. A strangled groan worms up my throat, burning with the acid; I turn on my heels and make a beeline for the nurse's office.

...

"You can go back to class now."

The nurse's voice, a layered cacophony of a thousand cigarettes and cheap whiskey, grates in my ears. I lay back on the stiff excuse for a cot and wince at the bright lights above that flicker every twelve seconds.

"I don't feel fine, though," I mutter. "Can I just go home?"

She waves me off with a wrinkled hand riddled with sun spots and yellow, thinning nails. "You need parent permission to leave campus. Your father didn't answer, so you have to stay here until school lets out."

I glare back at her, wishing I could channel how shitty I feel into a tangible beam and shoot her in the face. She doesn't bother to look at me while her bony hands clack away at the keyboard. After a few moments, she clears her throat and repeats, "You can go back to class now."

"Can I at least change my clothes?" My lip curls at the sight of drying vomit as I sit up. "Aren't there backup school uniforms or shirts or whatever?"

She offers a shrug and keeps typing. "Someone stole them. Sorry."

I keep staring, but the lasers don't appear. Damn it.

"Can I have some Tylenol?"

"You already had one."

I slide off of the cot, slow and steady. "Right." My feet are tingling and I'm sweating like I just ran a marathon in the desert. My voice drips with sarcasm and annoyance. "Thanks for the help."

The only response from her hunched form is a half-assed grunt. The lights flicker and a fly buzzes lazily past before landing in her coffee mug. I hope she chokes on it.

Carefully testing weight on each foot, I manage to stand up without puking again and walk out of the office. The door shuts behind me. I slump against the frame, tilting my head up and taking a deep breath, as if that will do me any good.

Yeah...fuck this. I'm not going back to class.

"Dib-thing?"

Zim's voice startles me. I blink a couple times to clear my blurring vision and see him sitting on the bench across the hallway, watching me expectantly. His legs are stretched out in front of him as he taps the toes of his boots together rhythmically.

"Why are you here?" I ask, and then it dawns on me. "Were you...waiting for me?" His eyes narrow and he crosses his arms.

"No! I'm here for my own purposes."

I stare blankly. "...Which are?"

He throws his hands up and snarls. "Which are of no concern to you, human! Now, tell Zim what the stink-nurse wanted with you."

"I'm covered in puke," I say, almost absently.

His thin upper lip curls a bit. "Yes."

My brow knits. "...You hate puke."

"Yes, you look and smell terrible." He rolls his eyes. "This is nothing new to Zim. Now answer my question."

I glare at him for a moment as my fever continues to rise. I didn't expect the Tylenol to do much, but I hoped it would do something to stave off this awful heat. I don't have the brain power to stand here and think of all the nefarious reasons Zim would have to follow me to the nurse's office and wait, especially after I almost threw up on him. I rub my eyes and heave out a sigh.

"I'm going home, Zim. I'm sick."

I start hobbling down the hall toward the exit. Zim hops off of the bench and catches up to me, hovering near my shoulder and stretching his neck as if to search my face for some other explanation. He's almost as tall as me now, which makes his lack of respect for personal space much more uncomfortable. I thought the overpowering stench of my clothes would deter him somewhat, but he matches my pace and stays shoulder to shoulder with me.

"Zim will accompany you."

Oh, god.

"That's…" too much, annoying, suffocating, obnoxious, please leave me alone "not necessary-"

"SILENCE!"

My hands fly up to cover my ears and I snap. "Why the fuck are you being so loud today?"

He ignores me and swings his arm up to clench his fist in dramatic fashion. "Zim will decide what is necessary since you have fallen ILL with some disgusting human disease. Your sad worm brain has been compromised and therefore cannot be trusted with the decision-making."

I groan in unison with a new rush of heat. "Fine, whatever Zim. I don't have the energy to argue with you anyway."

"Good!" he shouts, flashing a grin of pointy teeth as he passes me. "You still have some brain cells left. Now come along, Zim will escort you to your filthy human hovel."

The room doubles. Triples. My feet feel strangely cold as I trail miserably behind the Irken.

"Hey…" I spy my bag clutched tight in Zim's weird finger-claws. "Did you go through my stuff?!"

"Zim is helping - you're welcome." He glances over his shoulder and gives an insidious sneer, despite how gently he's holding my worn-out backpack. The pockets and straps are thread-bare in some spots, and all of my Mysterious Mysteries patches are a small breeze away from falling off. I'd assumed he'd tear it to shreds the second he got ahold of it. I guess he isn't as chaotically impulsive as he was back in middle school.

"I was trying to find the culprit of your rather unusual stench today, but it doesn't seem to be from your bag. Or your...stomach fluids. Must be something rotting in your home. You should take extra baths today, Dib-stink."

I just need to get home. If I can do that, I can rest, and I'll wake up tomorrow and this will all be over. I'll just add it to my never-ending list of days in my life that have sucked absolute ass.

I swallow down the urge to vomit again and push past the imp, eager to bury myself in my bed sheets and sleep for as long as humanly possible. I put both hands on the door leading to the front of the school and shove it open -

The screech of metal rips through my ears and the door is no longer there. I stumble forward with too much force and a startled yelp, down the steps, missing one, two, three in a row before I fall on my side on the stained concrete. I grimace, clutching my head with one hand, fixing my glasses with the other, and I see that the door I just opened is hanging on one hinge, crushed into the sidewall as if it were a crumpled piece of tinfoil and not a massive, metal door.

Zim stands at the top of the steps, staring intensely at the busted door for a moment before his wide gaze sweeps over and narrows on me, a heap on the ground below.

My thoughts scramble. What the fuck just happened?

I try to get up, but my body fails to respond. The sun is blinding. Every fiber of my body is screaming, aching, bleeding - the breath has been ripped from my lungs. My legs suddenly weigh a thousand pounds. A frustrating cry escapes me and I feel stupid lying here, covered in vomit, aching inside and out. I just want to fucking go home. My face burns.

"God fucking dammit," I growl, slamming my fist into the pavement. I try to get up, again and again, but I can't fucking move and I feel so sick and Zim is just standing there, staring at me. I wait for him to laugh or yell insults about how weak and pathetic I am today, but he's completely silent, eyes locked on mine in…

Concern?

A strange sensation overtakes me then. The sunlight seems to bore through my skin, boiling my blood, cooking my bones. I lose feeling in my extremities and I'm suddenly very aware that I'm now lying on my back, limbs splayed, twitching slightly. Little beams of light shoot behind my eyes like meteorites smouldering through the atmosphere, losing bits and pieces as they fall . I think I hear Zim call my name, and I try to say his, but I can't see him, and the deafening rush of blood in my ears swallows all other sound. My mouth goes dry, my heart skips too many beats, the sun turns to fire and the fire turns to ash until the light burns through everything and leaves me falling into the black.