This idea came to me when I was thinking of my multi-chapter story, "Dib in the PITS," and it occurred to me that it would have made sense to have Gretchen (with her crush on Dib) join his paranormal club. So, rather than go back and edit her in (as I did with Keef) I decided to write this tie-in story. Please note, though, that you do not have to read "Dib in the PITS" to read and understand this story, though I fully encourage you to do so.Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Swollen Eyeball Junior Investigators Club!

Come investigate the wonderful world of paranormal phenomena and learn about monsters, spirits and extraterrestrials!

First meeting held at 4:00 PM Monday in Room 106. For information, please see Dib (No Last Name Given).

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

She had been walking down the hallway with Keef when she first spotted the flier, one of several, she later saw, that Dib had put up all around the skool. It stood out easily against the other papers on the wall, with its clip-art alien heads in each corner and its strange eyeball symbol placed carefully under the writing; but Gretchen had to admit that it had been that name on the bottom that had most caught her attention.

That seemed to be Keef's main interest too. "Oh, cool!" he had exclaimed, taking the flier in his hand and passing it to Gretchen. "Dib's starting a club up! Do you wanna go?"

"Er— I don't know," she had answered tersely, eyes falling to rest on that three-letter name near the end of the writing.

"Well, I'm going!" Keef had exclaimed, and chatted happily about the idea the rest of the way to lunch. That was Keef for you. Always excited about a new chance to make some friends.

Now Gretchen reread the flier for the thousandth time, standing outside the door to Room 106, glancing nervously from the flier in her hand to the closed wooden door to the clock on the wall proclaiming that the club was set to start in five minutes' time. "Oh," she moaned, hands shaking and nearly tearing the wrinkled-up paper in two. She turned back towards the door and glanced through the window little window set in the top, peering once again at the people already gathered inside.

Keef was there, of course; so were three other kids whom Gretchen didn't know, a girl with blue hair, a small boy sitting beside her, and a plump boy sitting off on his own, who seemed to be muttering to himself with the occasional twitch. Keef was talking endlessly, switching his address rapidly from one person to another, smiling and laughing, though with the exception of the girl none of them seemed very interested in what he had to say.

Gretchen envied him. The way he could just open up right away, talk loudly and animatedly to anyone he met without thinking. Shutting up was something he just didn't know how to do; in his mind, anybody was his best friend, even if the person did nothing but loathe him in return.

Gretchen was just about the opposite of him. Contrary to Keef's apparent belief, both of them were generally considered "unpopular," but while for Keef it was because of his relentlessly over-gushing joy and neediness, for Gretchen it was simply a matter of not doing anything to bepopular, or for that matter noticeable. She did not lack friends for any real reason, other than the fact that she had never tried very hard to make them. She did not sit at the geeks' table for lunch because she was shunned from any other table, but merely because she headed there first, not bothering to try anywhere else. It was a kind of self-imposed exile, to spare herself the likely risk of a real one. It actually worked out fairly well, most of the time; Keef was reviled by just about everyone, while Gretchen had the honor of being simply ignored. If somebody did notice her, they would generally be friendly; if somebody noticed Keef, though, they usually hid.

So normally, Gretchen would not even have really considered coming to this club, or any club, let alone pacing up and down outside the door, worrying and fretting and debating whether or not she dared to enter. After all, why should she risk embarrassing herself in front of a bunch of people she didn't know, for a club about the paranormal, a subject she had absolutely no interest in?

Well, of course there was a reason.

Gretchen sighed. Dib.

He wasn't in the room yet. She glanced down the hallway every few seconds, wondering when he would appear, that moment when she would have to make a decision and not be able to turn back. Her heart beating rapidly, she glanced down at the flier yet again, eyes falling automatically to those three little letters that made her breath catch in her throat.

Like her and Keef, Dib was a geek. That was undeniable. But he was— in Gretchen's mind, anyway— the coolest geek ever, with his intense amber eyes, his raven black hair swept back in that strange spike that broke all the laws of physics, his long black cloak that made him look so cool and mysterious without even trying...

It was just like Dib to want to start up a club about his paranormal obsession, Gretchen thought; because, like Keef and unlike her, he could not be happy being set off to the sidelines, could not accept the thought of being unnoticed or unimportant. He was constantly mocked, constantly ridiculed and reviled; everybody agreed he was crazy, a weirdo, and that his head really was far too large to be realistically supported by his neck. And Gretchen had to agree they had some good points about all of that.

But what made Dib so amazing to Gretchen— and made him so different from either her or Keef— was that, as much as he wanted people to believe him, in another way he didn't really care.

Gretchen was a loner; Keef was a follower. Dib was a leader who had nobody to lead. He believed in all the insane things he believed in— aliens and Bigfoot and ghosts and all the rest of it— and had absolute conviction he was right about them. He was the prophet of the weird, refusing to bow to ridicule or mocking.

That was what Gretchen admired about Dib. It wasn't that she believed any of his crazy theories about evil spirits or government conspiracies or Zim being an alien (though she had to admit that one was at least more plausible than most of his other stories). What she liked about him was how sure he was he was right, and how he would not be silenced. His sense of being driven, of having a purpose. His rants might have been long and crazy, but that look she saw in his eyes when he was ranting, strong, glaring, challenging, half-mad with rapture, made whatever he was saying almost irrelevant. He was the opposite of all those stupid people she saw every day, who lived such petty, meaningless lives without ever stopping to care how petty and meaningless they were. Dib was above them all.

And now, as she looked up at the clock again and saw mere seconds before the meeting was scheduled to start, she asked herself:

Would she go in there, join Keef and those other kids in listening to another one of those ridiculous and amazing rants, conquering her usual shyness and get to know some new people, even, she thought, that boy who made her swoon?

Or would she run away and go home and let this chance go by?

She stood there, unsure.

And then she heard a noise.

She looked up, startled. Dib was coming down the hall, carrying his backpack, which seemed full to bursting and was clanking with every step he took. Dib himself was looking at his feet, muttering to himself as he usually did when he lacked a real audience, completely unaware of Gretchen's presence.

The moment of irremeable truth had arrived.

Gretchen gave out a squeak, turned, and threw herself into an opened locker beside the door, slamming it shut behind her.

Dib walked by, not noticing. A moment later Gretchen heard the door to Room 106 open and close. She let out a sigh, slumping against the cold metal wall.

"Just perfect," she muttered, her face burning with shame. Then she slowly climbed out of her hiding place and made her way home.

Poor Gretchen. :-( Somehow this story wound up being as much about Keef as Dib, which wasn't what I originally intended. Oh well, I think it works. Though it was a bit creepy to write--I felt like I was channelling a fangirl for some parts. 8-o

Anyway...

CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT! Now that you've read the story, you have a chance to win a prize! Whoever is the first person to review this story will get a special mention of some sort in the next chapter of "Dib in the PITS," which will update...pretty much as soon as someone reviews this, because the chapter is already edited and everything. So, hurry and do it! Now! Do it now! Assuming, you know, anybody cares. If nobody does...well, whatever.

So, I hope you all enjoyed. Keep reading and bye for now!