Bye Arnold
Fifteen-year-old Helga Geraldine Pataki sulked to the refrigerator and took out an opened bottle of gin. It's not like anyone will notice, she thought bitterly. No one ever notices anything I do. She walked through the living room towards the stairs and glanced at her father asleep in the recliner. Damned old fart. He continued to snore loudly as Helga took a swig and walked up the stairs to her bedroom. Once there, she walked over to her closet and hesitates.
"This is so stupid," Helga grumbled to herself. "Helga, it's time to let go." She reluctantly opened the door to her closet and pushed the clothes out of the way, revealing the Arnold shrine she had kept secret for six years. She turned on the string of Christmas lights and stared for a moment at her life-long obsession. As tears began to well in her eyes, she took another swig of the gin, nearly finishing off the bottle.
"I loved you," she started, her voice cracking. "I thought that at first…when we were nine…my obsession was just my stupid way of distracting myself from my family." A tear rolled down her cheek and she let it stay there. No one could see her crying in the privacy of her closet. "But I was wrong. When you started to like that Princess Perfect…Lila…I realized it was real. You were the only thing in my life that was stable. You always looked on the bright side of everything and that would make me so mad that you could do that and I couldn't. Even though I pretty much threw shit at you every day and took out my frustrations on you…you never hated me, you never…gave up on me." The tears were falling faster now, and she was sobbing. Her face twisted in anguish, she sat sobbing for a moment, finally letting herself feel the pain.
Today had been the first day of high school, and everyone was talking about Arnold and Lila's hot summer romance. Rhonda even went so far as to call them "Arnila." It had really pissed Helga off, but no one really noticed because she was always angry.
"I'm always angry," Helga said sullenly. No wonder Arnold never fell for me…I was always a burden to him… She suddenly threw her arms at the shrine, dumping everything on the floor and destroying the jars of various things once belonging to Arnold, the statue, and the lights. The candles fell over, spilling hot wax on her arm. She recoiled, rubbed off the hardened wax, and picked up the candles before they caught something on fire. As Helga sat in silence around the mess of the ruined shrine, she felt the burn on her arm sting, and it felt like…control.
One of the candles was still burning, and she took the pink bow off her head and put it in the flame. As it burned, she could feel the old her slipping away. She stared at the fire and wondered why she still wore pink anyway. She hated pink. Back in elementary school, she wore pink because she wanted to be noticed by her parents. Olga always wore pink as a child… She looked at her arm, and the burn wasn't very bad, but she decided to go put something on it anyway.
She walked to the bathroom and turned on the warm water. As she put her arm under the running water, she looked up at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her cheeks were shiny with dried tears. Her stick-straight blonde hair was still in pigtails. Maybe it's time to make a change, she thought, and she let her hair down. Her hair went down to her shoulder-blades, and her bangs fell in her eyes. "That's better," she made herself say. She went back to her closet and took out all of the pink clothes. It's time to be me.