Hearing her alarm shrieking the words rise and shine over and over again she reached over and turned it off. It's the first day of school and school is merely a necessary evil for her. Unlike her best friend who feels her most energized and excited on school grounds, Helga usually feels indifferent. However, today she actually feels excited because this is the first day of our last year. Now a seventeen-year-old she is finally entering her senior year; which means she's not too far off from being independent and eventually leaving this city.
She lives with her now a single dad, you remember him. How could you not? He is Robert "Big Bob" Pataki the beeper king. Now his business; while still open isn't anywhere near as lucrative, despite jumping into the cell phone lane. As for her mom, well she made some positive changes. She stops drinking and with her fully sober mind she met and fell in love with a wealthier man and divorced her father. Unfortunately, it also felt like she divorced Helga at the same time; since it isn't often that they speak.
She gets dressed and conducts her usual routine of fixing breakfast and waking up her father. "Morning, Dad! It's 7 am in the morning and you need to get up."
As usual, he groans and argues against breaking away from the comfort of his bed but eventually he rolls out of bed and grouchily slumps into the kitchen to shove down the breakfast she prepared.
Helga glances at her reflection in the mirror. Her style isn't at all mainstream; by the standards of most of the popular kids at her school. The only thing Helga changed was her monobrow and that was only because she got sick of it around age thirteen. She knew that if she made more of an extra effort to dress like other girls she could have better chances with the opposite sex, but it just wasn't in her to follow the crowd just please others. She smiles confidently at herself because she's proud of the person that she's become.
Walking outside to see her car coming into the view, she brings her hands into a prayer pose. Thank God for my beautiful car. It's a used Acura that she saved up the money she earned from her part-time job and bought from one of her father's colleagues.
Bob and Helga no longer live on the same street of their former years because of changes in finances, so now she doesn't live as close to her best friend Phoebe and other classmates. But the drive gives and giving her a ride to school has been like a daily school routine of ours since she gotten a car, it's not often the two of them had many opportunities to spend with together throughout the school year. Phoebe was and still is very involved in well... everything you can imagine except for sports.
Phoebe flies out the door with the brightest smile on her face. She's always over-joyous on the first day of school or any day of school. She respects that about her petite friend. Everyone needs their passions and hobbies.
She climbs in. "Hello, Helga. Thank you again for this ride." Phoebe checks out her appearance. "Oh, Helga I love seeing the clothes you come up with. I wish I had the guts to put together items that on the surface you would not believe blend together."
Helga shakes her head and is amused by her comment. "I don't know if that's a compliment or a dig."
"I definitely meant that as a compliment Helga."
Approaching the school all she needed to do is a glimpse at the student parking to know there isn't a chance in hell that she'll find a spot so she just parallel parks on the street not too far from the school.
Walking to the building my eyes work overtime to take in all the different face some familiar and unfamiliar. She spots a very familiar and also very favorable person from ahead of her. He's the boy she's been in love with for years, at present she still is except now.. well actually ever since high school started she's had an easy time avoiding an encounter because of a little thing called cliques.
She views him and his group of friends as from a totally different world. They are trendy, conventionally good looking, well liked and accepted by all and she isn't really any of those things. And that was because she had no interest in being any of those things, not because she is some pretentious poser, but because she simply has her own style and vision for herself. Helga could never picture herself dressed like… she stops due to seeing a certain bubbly girl with red hair girl approaching and she decides to retreat as quickly as possible. Yeah, she's the standard that most girls here model themselves after and lots of guys held up as their dream girl. She was, in fact, the girl of his dreams for years and probably still is. But her reason for retreating wasn't due to jealousy, she had moved on from that, but it was because she had gotten to know the real person underneath over the summer and she didn't at all like the person she discovered.
She has to watch as this redhead goes over to the very boy she loves and runs her hand down his arm with her typical bright smile and pleasantry, he seems to be enjoying her presence and because she finds it too hard to witness she looks away to see another good friend. Thaddeus, better known as Curly. Helga rushes up the stairs to him. Because of her rushing, she accidentally bumps into a fellow blond, except this one is a guy.
She glances at him and while doing this she can't help but see that Lila is still next to him. She mumbled her apologies and goes over to greet her best male friend Curly.
The guy she bumped into was, of course, Arnold. He grew up to be good looking, about average height, trendy style, athletic, popular with both sexes and overall good student.
A few minutes prior to gently colliding with Helga. He politely speaks with Lila, the girl who was once his ideal girl.
He stops walking and just stared ahead thinking about the fact that this is the start of a new school year with a downcast expression. Normally he would feel happy about the being back in school, but this is the first day of the last year of high school. There is so much he's done, but there are things he hasn't, people he hasn't connected with the way that he should have.
One of those people just brushed by him, his heart nearly stopped as she turned around to apologize quickly and runs off to join Curly. Helga. Most people don't agree or don't see what he does, what he took a moment to admire but Helga is a rare beauty in his eyes. What bothers him is that the only reason why people make fun of her and are not accepting is because of how she chooses to dress, the fact that she makes her own clothes or buys it second hand. But he could look at her, physically speaking and easily see flawless skin, bold features that complement each other perfectly, dark full eyebrows that gave her an exotic appearance because of the contrast against her blonde hair and blue eyes. He could see that she's thin, but has small curves in all the right places; he actually admires that she chooses to cover them up. Sometimes he wished those other guys could see what he did, but then a smaller part of him, his greedy side was happy and also felt special that he was one of the few - of his status, that could see Helga in such a highly positive light. He also knew that she is so much more than her retro unique style of clothing and reputation of being an oddball; who could have a vicious mean streak.
It might have seemed unlikely in the distant past, but he actually fell in love with her a year prior. His feelings for her started back in middle school when she went out of her way to help not only save the neighborhood but then a year later she helped in the quest to find his parents.
He went from at times bordering on hating the girl, to kind of liking her as a friend, to crushing on her, hard; harder than he did with Ruth or Lila. But before he could tell her, he moved away with my parents to San Lorenzo.
He was more than happy to return to Hillwood just in time for high school. Now he's lives with my parents in the boarding house which my parents now have taken off my grandfather's hands. He hasn't been the same since my grandmother passed away a year ago.
What happened around the time of his grandmother's death caused this young man to fall in love with Helga G. Pataki. She didn't come to the wake or the funeral or even the repast, but instead she secretly came over to help out around the house, anonymously sent flowers and wrote a beautiful speech and gave it to Phoebe to recite during the funeral. She said the most amazing things about his grandmother and his family in general. The only reason Arnold found out about it is because Phoebe got into an argument with Gerald about Helga because he was upset about her spending so much time with her. She and Gerald still did not get along, not because they couldn't, but from his perspective neither of them made an effort. During that argument and Pheobe accidentally let it slip out all the things Helga did for him. Phoebe didn't realize it but Arnold was in the next room and overheard everything.
He thought he would have been more confidence about confronting Helga about his feelings, but high school changed things. The gang had basically split up and formed into different cliques. The only people who were still friends were I and Gerald and Phoebe and Helga. Helga hung out with a lot of artsy or rock types. Being a jock he and Helga ran and still run in completely different crowds and unfortunately their paths rarely ever cross. They don't even have many classes together at all over the course of three years.
Right in this moment Arnold tries to follow her with his eyes as she maneuvers through the crowds. A guy that is simply a teammate named Brendan grabs his attention. He's actually more of a rival than a friend or even an associate. He is a guy that Arnold merely tolerates because they're on the basketball team together; this guy locates the source of Arnold's intense gaze and hysterically laughs.
This guy puts his arm around Arnold as he stares at Lila prance away in her mini skirt. "What are you doing staring at the swine of the school. Yet again. Instead of that hot piece of ass!"
Arnold brings his brows together while trying to keep his eyes on Helga who had walked far off. "What are you talking about?"
"You're gawking at that Hika girl instead of that smoking hot babe Lila Sawyer, who seems to be fending for you."
His eyes roll up. "Did you ever think that perhaps I'm not fending for Lila? And what do you care anyway."
"I don't exactly care Arthur." Arnold simply snickers at him calling him by the wrong name, he thought it was a lame attempt. "I'm just trying to figure out what you see in that chick. She's destined to be a cat lady. Look at her clothes."
Arnold lightly pushes his arm off of him. "I've already told you about talking badly about Helga."
He clasped his hand together and looks up. "Oh right, my bad, her name is Helga. But wait, Shortman, you claim that you like this girl so much and you're defending her and yet you never even asked her out yourself. Why is that? Don't worry Arnold... you don't have to answer that I know why because for the one you're a big chicken and two because underneath you're holier than thou image is a guy that thinks these things just like the rest of us."
"I don't care what you say about me. But I'm warning you to lay off her!"
But of course, he doesn't. "How do you pass up on some of the most beautiful girls in the school for a mutant? Come on Shortman, you know that girl is trash. Everyone in the school does." He leans in closer to the deeply pissed off guy to whisper something. "God are you so desperate for easy pussy that you lower yourself to that?"
Arnold scowls like no one ever seen before and punched Brendan right in the face. Everyone turns around to see Arnold; the last guy anyone expected to see get violent being escorted away by security guards.
Once Arnold was taken into the small room where they held detention during school hours; he realized that he allowed Brendan to win, to get so angry because this is a guy that always gave him a hard time. He was observant enough to know of Arnold's love for Helga and he insulted her simply to egg him on. The only time he didn't act like that was when their coach or his best friend Gerald was around. But what Arnold didn't fully realize is that Brendan had other intentions of getting his spot on the court and off.
End of chapter
This is just something I'm testing out, I haven't written anything else. I don't know how long this story should be. And I'm not sure if it's worth finishing, but these ideas just came to mind and I thought to post it.