It's a beautiful night outside the Pataki house, where the leaves are falling red, golden, orange, and yellow. Halloween decorations are being displayed in a few places.
The clock ticks in the bedroom where Bob Pataki is sleeping. He wakes up to get a glass of water from the sink in his bathroom, when he suddenly sees a shadow. And then he finds out it is his young daughter, Helga, in her bedroom, sitting on her bed with her new pajamas. It is not in the suit she sometimes sleepwalks in. She thinks she just got it from her grandma Geraldine for Halloween, one of two one-piece suits that tightly enclose your body with a back zipper and a hood open-faced. This one she is wearing now is plain white, and she plans to wear it under a Halloween costume. She is feeling very comfortable in fact. Miriam Pataki, her mother, really loves it as well when she tucks Helga into bed as a way to break away from her alcohol addiction.
"And remember…" Miriam reminds Helga then asks like she is tired. "You can't wear that to school. The other kids won't know who you are."
When Helga hurriedly puts her hood up, the father, Bob Pataki, comes in.
"Miriam!" He says.
Helga then gets her feet out of bed and says, "What do you think of my PJs, dad? Dad?"
"They're…cute."
Miriam says, "This costume also has fingers and toes."
"Thanks." She says more politely, although her intimidating, ferocious rudeness is so funny she means to say nice things.
Dad says "Helga, you're all covered in tights. Look at yourself. It seems to me that you look like an astronaut from outer space or something."
Helga giggles and says, "I guess this is the most comfortable thing I've ever tried on."
Miriam agrees. Helga then goes to her bedroom mirror and laughs at herself in the suit. The tight hood, zipping her head, enclosing the body, leaving the face to breathe and see. She just stared there, admiring herself as a little lady. She continues to giggle when she puts her school clothes on top of that.
She laughs and laughs until she looks at a photograph of herself and says in amazement, "I do look like a space girl! I sure do look cute in that. But I think I'll just go to school without it tomorrow."
Pataki keeps true to her word the next morning and wears the pink bow, red belt, and white shirt, like she does every single day.
Fifteen minutes have passed since the bell rang and Mr. Simmons has not shown up in his classroom at P.S. 118. "Is he sick?" "Is he coming?"
Well, the fifth graders do not care. Instead they are messing around, playing, laughing, and literally not taking care of business. They are loud and Arnold finds it to be annoying.
"Now, I'm going to be the teacher!" says Curly Gammelthorpe, one of the classmates.
"Nice try, freak!" Helga obnoxiously replies.
The kids are laugh while Helga walks to her seat in the back. She then blows a spitball at Arnold, who then turns around and grins at her.
Helga writes in her journal:
Happy Halloween, Blah, blah, blah; what else is there to say? Oh yes, dearest love Arnold. The class, they're talking about his bunny pajamas and Mr. Simmons is not here. Oh, that teacher from hell! Criminy!
"Arnold wears bunny pajamas!" Stinky Peterson says. Arnold gets frustrated.
The near-cool kid, Iggy Brittanays then gets frustrated, "I don't want to hear that from any of you. Okay? Clear?"
Arnold thinks to himself, "I don't know what we'll be doing in here today."
Gerald does not know what he is thinking either.
Then Phoebe mentions to Iggy, "But you've earned Arnold's trust."
Arnold says, "No."
Helga, who used to be that nasty bully in the fourth grade, blurts out, "Then you still have a football-shaped head, you know."
She throws a few spitballs at him and their classmates are humiliating him. She gets up from her seat in the back, pushes Brainy and says, "Move it freak!"
Sid then mentions, "Remember the other day Iggy had on bunny pajamas?"
"Enough is enough!" Arnold is feeling irritated and frustrated with the bunny PJ idea.
Anyway, there's a new kid at school who just got kicked out of school for hitting another student with a basketball during recess. At lunch Phoebe Heyerdahl, the smart girl, walks up to Lila, Rhonda, and Helga and suggests introducing them to Maggie.
Helga asks, "Who are you?"
The newcomer replies, "My name is Maggie. Maggie Anne Harris. Who are you?"
"That's Helga G. Pataki. That's Rhonda Wellington Lloyd. And this is Lila Sawyer" says Phoebe.
Iggy notices Maggie and walks toward her. She is that tall, red-eyed, Oxford-born girl with brownish, curly, boyish hair combed to the side, and a face just like Helga's, but has more of a soft English accent. Helga's bow is pink; whereas hers is more turquoise.
"Oh I remember you." He says.
"Iggy!" She then gives him a hug and says, "I remember seeing you on the playground the other day."
Helga then comes up to Maggie and says, "Guess what newcomer!"
"What?" Maggie replies.
Helga says, "I intimidate people a lot. And this time I'm gonna pound ya."
"Helga," Phoebe warns. "You don't have to do this! She's an ordinary bully, just like you."
"Oh Criminy" Helga goes. She then pauses and moves on to another subject. "By the way, do you know what you're going to dress up as tonight?"
Phoebe says she wants to be Vampira. Lila Sawyer says she is going to be a pilgrim in a bonnet, Maggie is going to dress up as a nun in disguise, and Rhonda is going to be a magician.
"No!" Helga says. "Last year's Halloween with us being aliens was great. You know, we pranked the whole city…"
"I think that the class should do something a little different tonight." Phoebe suggests.
"Good thinking!" says Lila. "Well, it doesn't have to be the whole class."
Helga says, "It doesn't have to be. But we're still going to scare the daylights out of people. This time, we're going to be bloody corpses, sleepwalking through the night. We'll take old clothes and rip em'. Then we're gonna apply make-up."
She then stares at Iggy as he silently walks away.
She then mentions to the other girls, "As for me, my grandma Geraldine sewed me up a bunny costume…"
They giggle at her and Maggie says "Don't you remember Helga? My brother Richie sewed up a bunny costume for you."
"And there's another for my imaginary friend! A kid you know already."
"What's his name?" Rhonda asks.
"Arnold." Helga replies. "Anyway, wear any Halloween costume you want, but just rip them up. We're going to be zombies tonight.
At the playground, seven classmates, counting Arnold, are playing a game of basketball. Arnold is playing against Helga in a match-up. Helga thinks that the rest of the kids are better than him. After Arnold passes the ball for a check, he has possession of it.
"Pray no one will make fun of me. Three classmates think I'm dumb but I'm not giving up. Think action on the play. Think, Arnold. Think!" The football headed kid says to himself.
He then runs and dribbles the ball. Helga attempts to block him.
"Do it Arnold!" Sid cheers.
Helga then goes in for a lay-up, fouled by Arnold from behind, he gets shoved. Ouch!
Gerald asks Arnold, "Are you okay?"
"Nice going, football head!" Helga goes.
Kids laugh in the background at Arnold, as she walks away. Helga then sits along the fence in private and grabs her chained locket out with Arnold's picture in it. While talking to her chained locket quietly, she expresses love, passion, and poetry.
"My love! If only I cared deeply about him. Oh! I hate him and yet I love him. I hate him and yet I love him! Oh!"
Arnold then walks up to her from behind and simply says, "Helga, I'm sorry."
"I forgive you." Helga speaks calmly. She then turns around harshly.
"I mean - what are you doing sneaking up on me, you little creep!"
"Sorry." says Arnold.
Helga then says, "You know what; you are just a complete idiot, football head!"
Gerald then comes up to him. "Hey Arnold, there's a bash over at Stinky's tonight and you're all invited."
Harold says to Arnold in an intimidating way, "Everybody's going to recognize you Arnold!"
"Yeah!" Stinky says. "Even if you don't want nobody knowin' who you are, you still gonna be…recognized."
The kids laugh at Arnold, putting him down. He lowers his head to the ground, ashamed. "I can't believe it." He is humiliated enough to walk away from his friends, while they simply laugh at him.
At his house at 4040 East Vine Street, Arnold is sitting on the couch in his living room. Grandma Gertrude, in her late sixties, is cooking some mashed potatoes and green beans in her witch outfit. Grandpa Phil, in his mid-seventies, and their guests: Ernie Potts, Mr. Hyunh, Mr. Kokoschka, are also in the living room.
Arnold is trying to explain what happened on the playground. "I can't believe it. Why does it have to be so bad out there?"
Grandpa says, "Forget about it, short man."
"You know Grandpa, Halloween is intended to scare the daylights out of people."
"Exactly."
"I read in the Hillwood Times today that the aliens are invading the entire city again." Mr. Hyunh says.
Arnold and Grandpa gasp in surprise.
Arnold says, "Not again!"
Ernie says it was all a prank from last year.
Grandpa says, "Exactly!"
Grandma is saying that she read in the paper that the alien invasion from the year before was just a trick, according to city officials. Mr. Kokoschka concurs and says that the people involved were just kids in costumes. Arnold can remember what happened, but he barely gets it off of his mind. Ever.
At the time he speaks passionately about what he is going to wear for a Halloween costume. "This year, I'm going to be a prison inmate, with chains and manacles."
Grandpa says that he will wear the same costume as the year before, as a hag.
About to fight, Ernie goes "Oh yeah?"
"I read today that the aliens are attacking from the west side of the city." Mr. Hyunh says.
Ernie Potts proves "Yet they don't exist!"
"Yet they do!" Mr. Kokoschka points out. "Look, I'm going to have to get out of here and go back to my place, pet the kitty."
Oskar Kokoshka just left the big house, while Arnold goes into his room to change into his costume.