A Parade of Indignities

Chapter 7: Of Cheap Shots and the Art of Keeping up Appearances

The Irken was slumped forward and gazing apathetically at the notes written on the whiteboard with both arms limply hanging at his sides.

Dib just stared at him, going so far as to wipe the sleep from his eyes, half-convinced Zim's presence was nothing more than a demented hallucination. Then, a floodgate of emotions burst through him at once, spearheaded by unfathomable relief as he clutched the edges of his desk. Without realizing it, he choked out a few incomprehensible words of disbelief, arousing the attention of the classmates sitting beside him. They glanced at him in varying states of mild amusement and annoyance before returning to their own conversations.

If Zim himself heard Dib's display of incredulity, he paid it no mind. He simply scowled at the whiteboard and swiped some of the hair from his wig out of his face. He kept his chin propped lazily on one hand and kept his gaze fixed to the front of the room.

Once Dib had collected himself enough to see through the initial shock, confusion quickly took its place. Confusion as to how Zim had gotten back alive, and confusion related to Zim's demeanor.

Something about him was unmistakably off.

His eyelids drooped wearily over his violet contact lenses and his skinny shoulders were slumped forwards over the desk. His uniform looked disheveled, as did his bouffant wig. On top of it all, he seemed to stare directly through the whiteboard, lost in his own thoughts.

Dib quirked one eyebrow and continued to stare.

Finally, Zim opened one eye a bit wider and turned to his left to look over at him, grimacing when Dib refused to break eye contact. It was the first time the two had seen each other in nearly two weeks.

At once, the silence was broken by the monotonous voice of Mr. Carrigan as he rose from behind his desk and started class. A tremor ran through both Zim and Dib as the interruption sliced the air and brought them back down to earth. Zim was the first to break his gaze, turning back to the front of the room.

"Remember, ethos is appeal to ethics. Pathos is appeal to emotions. And Logos is..." the teacher droned on as Dib unabashedly kept his entire body turned to the side in his desk, facing Zim head-on.

He looked as if he were in a stupor. After several moments of slouching in his seat and staring blankly ahead, Zim seemed to melt where he sat. His head drooped over his blank notebook, dipping downwards. He jerkily brought it back up again and returned his eyes to the whiteboard. No more than thirty seconds later, he began to droop again. It looked like he was nodding off before catching himself in the act.

Dib watched this happen a few times in utter bewilderment.

Combined with his unkemptness, Zim's behavior seemed not unusual for the classroom setting. All around them, various classmates were dozing and passing notes while the teacher's back was turned, and many of them were also sporting sweatpants and uncombed hair.

Dib knew better, though. Zim prided himself on his physical appearance. He was a blatant perfectionist in that regard.

While the class occupied themselves with their own little antics, little of which actually concerned American English, Mr. Carrigan kept his back turned and scrawled a constant stream of notes on the whiteboard in fading green dry erase marker.

Zim blinked and rested his head on his desk.

After about half an hour of failing to get his attention again, Dib tore out a sheet of lined filler paper from his notebook. With the fringe still intact, he wrote furiously on it his barely legible chicken scratch.

Where were you?

He folded it over several times. When the teacher's back was turned again, Dib poised it in front of him and flicked it across the room, watching as it landed slightly askew beneath Zim's desk.