Dumped

Jimmy Neutron was sitting by himself in the remotest corner of the Candy Bar. There, alone at a table for two, he glumly held his head with one hand while devouring spoonfuls of ice cream with the other. Some of the kids sitting on the booths and chairs nearby took notice, but none said or did anything. One girl thought that Jimmy was depressed over a break-up with Betty Quinlan (the two had been dating for a month), but that was only based on a rumor. If they did break up, he probably did not want to be reminded. Jimmy's love life however was not too compelling, as no sooner did Jimmy's neighbors observe him and perhaps ponder a thought or two did they return to their sundaes, frozen custards, and milkshakes.

If any of the kids had been sitting closer to Jimmy, they would have heard the sullen phrases muttered under his breath. Things like "cursed shortness," and "mixed signals," and "lousy pheromones," were to be heard, interspersed by a few more colorful words. Whatever Jimmy was muttering about, it had his undivided attention. His eyes remained cast down on the tabletop while he absentmindedly consumed his atomic-choco blast. He was so miserable that he failed to notice the arrival of a second individual at his table. It was several minutes before this newcomer said anything.

"Are you gonna do that for another five minutes, or are you gonna surprise me?" Cindy Vortex asked. Jimmy's spoon froze for a second before resuming its melancholy pace.

"Do what Vortex?" He said monotonously.

"Do this!" Jimmy's gaze finally lifted to see Cindy half closing her eyes and bringing an imaginary spoon up to her lips, all at a ridiculously slow speed. Jimmy glared at her.

"Stop that, it's not funny."

"Yes it is." Cindy repeated her imitation. "See, that's what you look like, like this." She did her imitation once more, this time even slower and with her eyes crossed. Jimmy kept eating, his lip curling as it sometimes did when he was irritated. Cindy sighed and leaned over the table, trying to get Jimmy to look her in the eyes. "Aw come on Neutron, you know I'm just kidding!"

"I already told you, it's not funny. Why don't you leave me alone?"

"As soon as you stop acting like a two year old and get over your break up with Betty." Jimmy dropped his spoon with a noisy clatter.

"How am I supposed to do that?!" he snapped.

"Well gee," Cindy said, staring at the ceiling and stroking her chin. "It can't be that hard considering she's a giant bimbo!" Cindy's fists pounded on the table as she said this. Anger rippled down Jimmy's face.

"She is not a giant bimbo Cindy! Wh-Why do you always have to say that?!"

"Say what?!"

"Snide remarks about Betty! Always with the verbal assaults; you can never lay off, ever since we first met her."

"So what's wrong with that?!"

"Oh I don't know, all that hostility harbored towards one individual over the years, let me think," Jimmy now stroked his chin, "maybe a little jealous are we?!" Jimmy threw a cruel grin at Cindy. To his dismay, the blonde merely cocked her head to the side and scoffed.

'"Me? Jealous of Betty Quinlan? You're off your rocker on that one Freakbrain."

"Am I? Then why do you hate her so much?"

"Cause she's a giant bimbo, do I have to spell it out for you?"

"Why is she a giant bimbo?" Jimmy asked. He interlaced his fingers and rested his chin on top of them, smiling pleasantly at the blonde.

"I'd thought you'd never ask!" Cindy said. Jimmy's grin widened. He had led her right where he wanted. Before elaborating, Cindy glanced to her sides, spotting an unused spoon. She snatched it and immediately dug into Jimmy's atomic choco-blast. The boy genius's grin inverted.

"Hey, I was eating that!" he protested. Cindy shook her head.

"You've eating it way too slow," she said through a mouthful of vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce.

"That's because it's my ice cream and I'll eat it however I see fit!" Jimmy retorted. He grabbed the bowl and dragged it closer to him, out of Cindy's reach. This did not work however. The blonde only bent forward to carve out another scoop of Jimmy's treat. Jimmy sighed, letting his face fall.

"Back to Quinlan," Cindy garbled, chocolate sauce dribbling down the corner of her mouth, "it's not so much that the girl is stupid, it's just that she has no personality. I mean, just look at her sense of fashion. She dresses like something out of the 1950s; all nice and neat, skirt well below the knees, proper sleeves, the works." Cindy was gesturing with her left hand and eating with her right. "Even her stupid hair, ribbons and all belongs buried in some time capsule from fifty years ago. How can people find that attractive?" Jimmy noted the strained pitch of Cindy's voice as she finished her last sentence. Something clicked in his head, although he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Well I think Betty is a lovely woman," he said nobly. "Sure, her style of dress may be a tad outdated, but simple attire can never compromise timeless beauty." Cindy's spoon became wedged in between her lips, and soon a mixture of melting ice cream and chocolate flooded down her chin and onto the table. In contrast to Betty, Cindy was now very unbeautiful, covered in messy desert and glowering at Jimmy.

"What?!" Cindy roared, sending even more ice cream and chocolate onto the table.

"Do you disagree?" Jimmy said calmly. "Trendy clothing, make-up and accessories can only accentuate the beauty that lies within. True beauty finds these things unnecessary. Likewise, these things can only hide but not eradicate that natural beauty." Cindy violently whipped the spoon out of her mouth and frowned so hard that her nose wrinkled.

"So what, you think you're Sappho now?" Jimmy shook his head lightly.

"Actually, I'm more partial to Socrates."

"Then stick to philosophizing and leave the poetry to the experts!" Cindy snapped.

"Can't I be a philosophical poet? My previous statement was more of a combination of the two."

"No you can't!" Cindy bellowed. Brandishing her spoon, she took a rather savage lunge at Jimmy's choco-blast and shoveled the contents down her throat. Jimmy raised his eyebrow.

"I'm starting to think you need that more than me," he said plainly. Cindy shot him a dark look before tearing into more of Jimmy's mountainous desert.

"Think just 'cause you're a genius you know everything," she burbled while eating. Jimmy tried his best to understand her, however due to sheer volume of ice cream traveling down Cindy's throat, this was near impossible. His gaze moved over Cindy's seated form and found that she reminded him of someone. From her slouching posture, the matted, mossy quality of her hair, and the tendency for her to look off to the side or down, it gave him some indirect feeling of déjà vu.

Then it hit him. Three days ago, after school on the day that Betty had dumped him, when he had sat at this same table with Sheen and Carl, they had brought up all of those things. The slouch, the flattened hair and the sidelong looks. Jimmy, gingerly at first and then more intently, gazed into Cindy's eyes. They were slightly glazed. Not from any current crying, for there were no tears or tearstains, but from what must have been roughly a half-an-hour ago's crying. He paused for a moment.

"Cindy, are things going okay with Nick?" he asked gently. Even though he had not wanted to pose that question, he felt it was the right thing to do. He braced himself for Cindy's response. In spite of this, a shiver ran down his spine like when something surprising happens, which did when Cindy's face, spoon once more stuck between her lips, melted into weeping and sobbing.

"Oh Neutron," she howled, before continuing in a hoarse voice, "Nick dumped me after school today!" She dropped the spoon and covered her face with her hands. Jimmy sighed, glancing ahead at the kids sitting at the other tables, who were now watching him and the distraught blonde. Guess that makes two of us. Well, I can't just let her carry on like this. He reached for Cindy's arm.

"Don't cry Cindy, it's not that bad," he said, trying to pull her hand away.

"Yes it is," Cindy moaned, "Nick dumped me and now you probably hate me 'cause I came here and ate all your ice cream, and now I'm crying." In a sudden transition to anger, Cindy slammed her arms down on the table, causing Jimmy to flinch. Ice cream and chocolate sauce splattered everywhere. Cindy lifted her arms to see that she had slammed them on top of all that choco-blast she had dribbled on the table earlier, and her arms were now covered in chocolate. Her face quivered for a few seconds before breaking into fresh sobbing.

"I have chocolate on me!" she cried pitifully. Jimmy (careful to avoid the parts slicked with the gooey brown substance) grabbed Cindy's hand and patted it.

"Hey, come on Cindy, you'll get over this." Cindy shook her head.

"I'm sorry Neutron," she sniffed. Her voice made her sound like she had a terrible cold. "After Nick dumped me, I cried a little bit, but…then I got over it. Then…I heard Carl tell Sheen that you were still depressed over Betty, so I…I thought I'd try to find you and cheer you up, b-but now…now I just made everything worse, and… …I have brainfreeze!" She covered herself with her hands once more, her body jerking with painful quakes. Moved by emotion, and perhaps remembering his own sorrow over Betty, Jimmy rose out of his chair and hauled it beside Cindy's so that he could sit right next to her. Cindy let her head fall onto Jimmy's shoulder and resumed sobbing, while Jimmy put his arms around her.

"It's okay Cindy, you didn't make everything worse." He felt the back of Cindy's head bob up and down, which meant that she was nodding. "No, not at all. In fact, us getting together and exchanging our grief has probably provided some much-needed cathartic release, which they say is healthy. Then again, most psychologists don't accept that component of Freudian theory anymore, but still, one never knows." He patted Cindy's back after feeling her sobs intensify. "Don't worry Cin." Cindy raised her head to look at Jimmy.

"Would you dump me too?" she asked in a nose-plugged voice. Jimmy's brows lifted compassionately.

"Of course not." Cindy nodded and buried her head back into Jimmy's shoulder. A second later, she pulled her head back up to look at Jimmy again.

"Even if I got chocolate on your shirt?" Jimmy peered down at his shirt, which had acquired a thick smudge of chocolate. Cindy must have had some still stuck to her chin. He looked at her and smiled.

"Especially if you got chocolate on my shirt." Cindy nodded a second time, and returned to Jimmy's shoulder. He held her for several minutes, frowned at the increasing number of kids who were watching them, and waited for her to finish. No words were said. After what seemed like the longest silence Jimmy could ever remember, Cindy pried herself from his arms and sat up in her chair. She rubbed her eyes forcefully with the backs of her fingers, drying off the remainder of her tears.

"Neutronic hankie?" Jimmy asked, producing a white handkerchief from his pocket. "Designed to dry all body fluids in one simple wipe." Cindy shook her head.

"I'm okay," she said quietly. A few seconds later, her eyes began to well again with tears, and she tore the tissue out of Jimmy's hand and mashed it over the bridge of her nose and into her eyes. Jimmy carefully plucked the tissue back out of Cindy's grip.

"No, no, like this." Very gently, he brought the tissue over Cindy's eyes and guided it over her face. When he took it off, all her tears were gone. She smiled weakly at him.

"Thanks Jimmy," she said. She took in a deep breath and let out a loud huff. "Well that was fun." Jimmy opened his mouth to say something but was cut off. "I'm sorry Jimmy, I didn't mean to fall apart like that, it's just, this whole thing with Nick, it…" she stopped here. She sighed a second time. "He kind of left me for Betty." Jimmy frowned.

"What do you mean?" he said in a concerned voice. Cindy let out yet another sigh and turned her large, sad emerald eyes on Jimmy.

"Well, to be honest I don't know if he ever really liked me." Cindy's voice faltered for a moment but then quickly recovered. "Looking back on it, I think he just wanted a girlfriend and thought that I was a good catch. But he always had a thing for Betty, ever since the fifth grade."

"I see," Jimmy said. That something that had clicked in his mind earlier now resonated with clarity. "So when I started praising Betty's looks, that's what got you all worked up." Cindy stuck her chin onto her palm.

"Guess so," she mumbled, gazing downward. Jimmy's face brightened.

"Well, I think you're pretty!" he said perkily. A shy smile inhabited Cindy's features.

"Thanks Neutron," she said, grinning. Jimmy smiled back. He found that cheering Cindy up made him a lot happier as well. A different kind of happy than he experienced with scientific breakthroughs, but a deep and satisfying happy nonetheless. Suddenly, his failure with Betty seemed less severe.

"What happened with you and Betty?" Cindy asked. Jimmy cringed when he heard this, but in the silence that followed, his breakup once more felt like a lesser calamity. Jimmy made a note to ponder this later.

"Betty just thought we weren't working out," Jimmy said honestly. "It was that simple. She was very kind about it, so I suppose I'm lucky in that respect. She was never crude or insensitive." Cindy fought to suppress a sneer.

"I guess she's got more class than I thought," she said, settling on an awkward smile. Jimmy smiled and nodded, half to himself. In spite of this, his shoulders succumbed to a slump, and a fatigue set into him, the kind that occurs after ones nerves have been expended. Across from him, Cindy mirrored his movements. "So what now?" she said, still smiling and staring at Jimmy. The boy genius upturned his lip and shrugged.

"I don't know. Take things easy I guess. I'm definitely not in the mood for another relationship anytime soon."

"Here, here," Cindy added. A strange sort of silence passed between them. He didn't know if the same was true for Cindy, but during this silence, Jimmy's own mind was cranking furiously. He wasn't sure why, but he had that same feeling he had earlier that some realization just occurred to him, but it went away before he could fully grasp it. Gas planet, twice in one day, Jimmy thought. I better do more crosswords.

"Well, it was nice talking to you Jimmy," Cindy said. "I guess I didn't cheer you up like I had planned, but at least you helped me out."

"On the contrary Vortex, I think you helped me out a great deal," Jimmy replied. His eyebrows then arched upwards in a very scholarly, very Jimmy Neutron type of way. "An outward expression of one's troubles makes the inward turmoil less distressing, or so they say." Cindy rolled her eyes, though not in her usual annoyance. She did less of that these days. More and more, that aspect of Jimmy's personality struck her as charming. Jimmy felt something similar regarding Cindy's eye-rolls. Both children however found this very confusing and swiftly cast it from their minds.

"Well," Cindy began after another strange, chemical silence, "We should probably get going." The two arose from their chairs and started for the door to the Candy Bar. "It may be cutting the grieving process short, and maybe you don't care who graduates top of the class until high school, but I have plans to lead the pack this year Neutron."

"Don't plan on it Vortex," Jimmy said in a playful tone. "It's our last year of middle school, and as a prelude to high school, I ought to get you used to finishing in second place."

"Ah Jimmy, let not your tongue do the talking but your pen, and pencil, and resultant GPA," Cindy replied in her most intellectual manner.

"But Cynthia, what are the hallmarks of intelligence if they cannot be utilized in an applied context," Jimmy stated.

"All right, all right," Cindy said, "knock it off Poindexter!" Yet another very peculiar silence occurred, during which each preteen withdrew to his or her thoughts. Perhaps these silences were not so uncomfortable or strange after all. When they had realized this, they found themselves within feet of the exit. They stopped walking and stared at the ground.

"Well, see ya around Cindy," Jimmy said. He put his hands in his pockets, tilting around a bit on his feet.

"See ya Jimmy," Cindy replied. Keeping her eyes pasted to the floor, she did some tilting herself and put a hand on the door, all the while feeling Jimmy's gaze follow her. Cindy found herself faced with a choice she had struggled with terribly in the past. Should she continue walking and toss this encounter with Jimmy from her mind, or should she turn around and try and say something. And furthermore, what would he say? This had always been Cindy's great battle, and every time it felt like she let herself and Jimmy down. And yet again, despite this mental conflict warring inside her head, and being fully aware of the mistake she might be making, Cindy opened that door and put one foot outside of it. She hesitated. A grimace. Her heart beat so fast, it felt impossible to make a rational decision.

Before Cindy knew it, like someone else was controlling her body, she had retraced her step and craned her neck backward so that she was staring at the big-haired genius. "H-hey Neutron," she breathed, hoping she didn't sound as nervous as she felt. "When are you gonna buy me another atomic-choco blast?" This was not what she wanted to say, but Jimmy smiled nevertheless.

"I don't know, when would you like another one?" he said.

"Definitely not tomorrow, I don't think my arteries can take it," Cindy said. Her eyes sparkled. "But maybe sometime next week, if you want. We can both see how each other are doing, you know, from the breakups and stuff?"

"Sounds like a plan," Jimmy said. He had been personally hoping that Cindy would want to talk more tomorrow, but he knew this would be rushing things. They didn't have that many classes together, and had grown apart somewhat over the past couple of years. At times (like now), Jimmy longed for the closeness of their relationship as ten-year olds, despite the many arguments.

"Well, bye," Cindy said.

"See ya," Jimmy responded. While Cindy headed out the door, he stood rooted to the spot, the many gears in his great brain hammering like pistons. Then, as sudden as a brainblast, he flung himself out the door and caught up to Cindy.

"What a minute Cindy, what are we doing?!" he exclaimed, gazing into the blonde's eyes. "We live across the street from each other!" Cindy went still for a moment before breaking up into laughter. When Jimmy heard this, for some reason, he knew everything was going to be all right.

Then, side by side, the two resumed their conversation and made their way home.

Disclaimer - I do not own Jimmy Neutron, it characters, nor any other shows, characters, music, and/or movies that may be referenced.

Author's Note: Hey guys. Hope some of you liked this story. I don't know what to think of it myself; sometimes I don't like it, other times...meh, it's okay. It's been sitting around in my computer for a year or two. Sort of a different story, but I thought I'd give it a shot. Let me know what you think!