The Great Chase (formerly Arnold goes to the library) began with the idea for a library trip. But since then I've been reinventing it. To be fair, someone else on this Fanfiction site came up with idea of turning Helga into a cat. They have Helga make a wish on a wishing well, then Arnold has to adopt her. In that story, she is a white cat instead of yellow. That story has merit, but to be different, this story is about Phoebe and not Arnold. I also made Helga a yellow cat, not a white one. If anyone wants to check out the original inspiration for the cat spin in this tale, please check it out under my favorites list. Thanks.
Arnold and Gerald went to the library. A not so tranquil day began with this humble fact. Going to the library was not an event to shake the centuries, but it could be baffling if you lived in Hillwood. There were quite a few eccentrics there.
The head librarian was probably responsible for the occult section which both Helga and Sid had wandered into on two separate occasions. The old book, "How to Tell is Your Friend is a Vampire" was still there, as was the book on magical diseases. There were odd objects on her desk like bats and the head librarian herself wore striped socks and pointed shoes and hat that gave Gerald the jeebies.
Thankfully, there were other more modern sections. Like the geography section. Arnold lead them to it and pulled a book down. Gerald followed suit. Arnold flopped his book down on a table and pointed to a page.
"See? I told ya Gerald! There's the map we need! Now we just gotta copy it out, then write a paragraph about it, and our homework's done!"
"Yeah! This is gonna be a breeze!" Gerald said with joy. Both he and Arnold pulled chairs up next to the table and sat down in them. Soon, two yellow pencils were scribbling away.
Arnold finished writing his paragraph first. But a little dissatisfied, he stood up and strolled to a bookshelf to find another book. Arnold yanked it away, then poked his head around the end of the aisle to see the other patrons. A man in a purple top hat was reading Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory. Rex Smith Higgins the III was reading Oliver Twist. Arnold's Grandma was reading Treasure Island while wearing her pirate costume with the fake eyepatch and pegleg.
Arnold pulled his head back round the bookshelf. Gerald was just finishing his page. He threw down his pencil in exultation.
"There!" Gerald said spreading his finger out above the finished page. "Behold the finest masterpiece that ever a fifth grader has crafted! I'll get an A for sure!"
"Um-hum," said Arnold as he cracked open his second book for himself. He added a few more lines to the paragraph he had already started. Then he lifted up the paper to his eye for one last read.
"Well, I guess that will do! Let's go, Gerald!"
"Yeah! Maybe if we hurry we can catch the promo for the Bad Breath Boys, Part 7!" Gerald declared with joy. He did like his action movies.
Arnold and Gerald hurried to the door. When they were nearly to the exit, they heard a startled squeal. It was Phoebe Heyerdahl. She had collided with another girl by the door. A good number of books lay strewn all around the two girls.
"Oh! I'm sorry, miss!" A girl about Phoebe's age said. She picked up a book, then read the cover. "Optical Eyewear Fashion Now? This one must be yours!" the slender, freckled brunette said. She handed a tattered paperback to Phoebe.
"Belching with Poltergeists? Oh, I'm sorry this one must be yours!" Phoebe said handing the stranger a heavy, hardcover tome. Both girls hunched over the ground on their knees to gather books. With a little sorting, everything that had been dropped before was lifted off the ground.
"Sorry about that!" repeated the brunnette.
"Oh! Don't worry about it!" Phoebe flustered. Gerald and Arnold made their way to their friend.
"Phoebe, babe, are you okay?" Gerald asked. Phoebe blinked behind her heavy frames.
"Yeah, I'm okay! Thanks for asking! But what are you two doing here?" Phoebe pondered before coming to a conclusion. "Are you here to do your geography homework, too?"
"Yeah, well, we're done with it now!" Gerald announced. "Do you wanna come along with us? We're headed back to Vine Street!"
"Sure!" Phoebe muttered. "I was just on my way out myself!" Gerald held open the heavy library door.
"Hm, hum, huh! You sure are carrying a lot of books with ya!"
"A little light reading," Phoebe said demurely. "It helps me sleep if I read before bedtime!"
"I'll bet!" said Gerald borrowing one of Phoebe's books from the top of its stack to read the cover.
"Traditional names for Sheep? Sounds boring to me! But let me be a gentleman and carry some of those books for you!"
"Why, thank you Gerald!" Phoebe said fluttering her lashes. She split her stack of books in two and handed off half of them to Gerald. But she started at the sight of slim blue book. She set her books gently on the ground to free her hands to examine the slim blue book in detail.
"This one isn't mine! It must belong to that other girl!"
"So return it to the library!" Arnold suggested. "I'm certain that if she wants to, she'll be able to check it out again." Arnold had given a very reasonable piece of advice. But Gerald glanced behind them. Then ahead.
"Nah! Look! We're almost to the bus stop! And there's the bus coming right now! Let's return it another time."
"Alright," Phoebe said climbing aboard the bus. Arnold paid the fare for all three of them. The bus jerked to a start and a stop. They all disembarked on Vine Street.
"Do you want help carrying all this home?" Gerald said with a flirtatious, slanted eyebrow.
"No, I...oh, look at this!" said Phoebe. She had spotted a bookmark at the top of the blue book. She set her books down on the park bench near Green's Meats to take the bookmark out of its place. She read it slowly.
"How… odd!" Phoebe said. "It's a recipe for…cat potion."
"Hm. Sounds mystical and mysterious to me!" Gerald commented. "Maybe it's one of ol' Madame Malkin's brews?" But Arnold rolled his eyes backwards, then huffed.
"I don't believe it. Things like that are all nonsense. I wouldn't pay any attention to it "
"Or conversely," Phoebe said while scratching her chin. "The best way to disprove a hypothesis is to try it out in order to see it fail."
"Sounds like a waste of time to me!" Gerald griped. He and Phoebe continued walking down the street behind Arnold's backyard. But Arnold stopped by his backyard fence. Abner was squealing with joy to see him. The pig left his doghouse to sniff Arnold's leg.
"Hm, well if you guys are going ahead, I'm gonna just go home!" Arnold announced as he scratched Abner's ears. With hooded, slightly annoyed, lowered eyelids, he gestured towards his home behind him.
"Sure thing, man!" Gerald grinned with a wink. But he followed Phoebe all the way to her front door. When her library books were safely inside her house, he knelt to kiss Phoebe's tiny, slender hand.
"Good night, mademoiselle!" Gerald cooed. Phoebe giggled.
"Oh! Goodnight…. Gerald!" The girl fluttered her lashes a tiny bit before she closed the door.
After the door had snapped shut, Phoebe turned to her great, big pile of books. The bookmark inside the blue book had caught her curiosity again, and she turned to it to read the words out loud.
"Fiber powder, sardine oil, and a sprig of catmint? Hm," Phoebe said tucking her hand under her chin. For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine. What did a cat potion do? Did it make cats multiply from other cats as fast as popcorn pops? Did it make cats talk? Did it make one sprout cat ears, whiskers, and a tail? Phoebe examined herself in the mirror.
"Nah!" she said to all her absurd imaginings. But mere minutes later, she was in the bathroom digging out a large bottle.
"Ah-ha! Fiber powder!" Phoebe said with victory. "Now for some sardine oil!" She snuck into the parent's kitchen, set up a ladder, and climbed its rungs. Then she snuck out of the kitchen again with it. Her father wandered into the kitchen, then opened the cupboard to look for something.
"Dear? Have you seen where my anchovies went?" he asked his wife, Reba.
But Phoebe had purloined her father's anchovies successfully and now, all she needed was a sprig of catmint. So she found a gardening book and compared the pictures with the backyard all around her.
"Catmint! I've found it!" Phoebe said as she found it. With enthusiasm, she plucked a sprig. Then she fled back to her room. She donned a science lab coat and goggles.
"This is it! This experiment will prove or disprove the frankly… unlikely supernatural," Phoebe said calming down from earlier. She blended all the ingredients together in a used peanut butter jar. Then she stared at her creation.
"Hm," Phoebe wondered. "How shall I test it?" Phoebe pushed opened her bedroom door and walked all the way down to the kitchen. Once there she set the jar down on the kitchen counter to think. She took out a bread knife, scooped out some of the mix on its edge, then sniffed it. It was then that she heard the doorbell ring.
"Phoebe, honey!" her mother Reba called up the staircase to her room. "Your friend Helga's here to see you!" Phoebe blinked in surprise. In the hallway, Phoebe's mom was talking to Helga.
"I was just about to go shopping, you see!" she explained. A large, colorful tote hung on her elbow. "But make yourself comfortable while Phoebe comes down!"
"I'm right here, mother!" Phoebe said exiting the kitchen. For the moment she had forgotten all about cat potions. "Helga what are you doing here?"
"Ah, just seeing if you wanted to do something. There's still lots of daylight, left ya know."
"Aw, but Helga!" Phoebe protested. "Actually, I still have a small...task left."
"You mean your homework? Pfft! I finished mine ages ago," said Helga swooping a hand down at her friend as she jaunted her hip. She then turned away to look in a tasteful, trendy, decorative mirror. With her finger curled to her lower teeth and her lip raised slightly to accomodate, she paused to look at her teeth. Then she turned back toward Phoebe.
"Look Phoebes, don't overstress it. It isn't one of your five pages papers plus bibliography and index. It's a simple assignment! Scribble a map down, whether or or not it's accurate, blab a bit about what kinds of things the country is known for, like daffodils or something, then bam! You're done. It's as easy as that! By the way, did I leave some of my comic books here?"
"You did!" Phoebe reflected. "Hold on one minute! I shall go retrieve them!" With a merry, dutiful hop, Phoebe walked upstairs to fetch a small stack of brightly colored comic books. Helga flipped through the stack.
"Yup, that's them!" Helga approved.
"Oh, well," Phoebe fidgeted with hope. "Since you're here, maybe we could do our homework together?"
"Nah, like I said, I'm done doing homework for today. So if you're busy, I'll just call you later! See you around Phoebes!" Helga uttered. She trotted out the door, lifting her hand in a friendly wave.
Phoebe blinked. Helga had come and gone like a hit and run. But she was used to that by now. The girl came then vanished with mysterious frequency. Especially if she was in the mood to bother Arnold. Phoebe stood still and silent and she forced her thoughts to recall just what she had been doing. What had she been doing?
"Oh, of course!" Phoebe blurted out loud. "The cat potion! I've got to see if it works!" Phoebe said with sudden passion. She darted back to the counter. She jolted from her head to toes when her eyes landed on the open jar but also a bit of sandwich bread lain next to it on the counter. Across the surface of the bread, the grimy goo that was Phoebe's "cat potion" had been liberally spread. A large bite had been taken out of the bread's corner. Phoebe lifted up the piece of bread and gasped.
"Oh, no! Helga! She must have mistaken the cat potion for some kind of butter! How terrible! I hope she's alright!" Phoebe flustered and fretted for a moment. Then she darted out of her house. Maybe Helga hadn't gone too far? She panted.
"Get it together Phoebe! The worst thing that could happen to Helga is that she'll get a bit of tummy ache! That or maybe she'll have better bowel movements. Dietary fiber isn't bad for you!" Phoebe reasoned with herself. But then she stared ahead of her and gasped. There on the sidewalk was a half open comic book- one of those Phoebe had returned to Helga. Phoebe didn't suspect that maybe Helga had dropped it. All she noted was that the paper wriggled and rattled. Then a yellow kitten with a pink ribbon tied around its neck popped its head out from beneath the rustling pages.
"Mew!" the cat said with a bold, happy purr. Phoebe stooped over to pick up the cat. She was horrified and convinced.
"Oh no, the cat potion! It must have transformed Helga into a cat!" Phoebe said sniffling. "Don't worry Helga! I'll take you home with me! I'll feed you and take care of you until I find a way to reverse this transformation even if it takes me my whole life!" Phoebe ranted with determination. "It's only too bad I'm allergic to cats! Achoo!"
"Me-owl!" the kitten protested at Phoebe's sneeze. It shoved its back foot against Phoebe's chest and spun out of her grasp. It then took off down the sidewalk.
"Oh, no! Helga!" Phoebe gasped with a hand outstretched. She took off after the cat as fast as her tiny feet would allow.