Arnold left on January 18th of 2010, in the middle of his 7th grade year.

Arnold returned on October 3rd of 2016, in what should have been his freshman year of college.

Arnold had the audacity, or the naivety, to think that nothing had changed.

In this moment, Helga really couldn't tell you what she had a larger distaste for: lingering gingers making small talk, or cleaning a surface that was already clean.

"I'm not really sure what I want to get for lunch today," the girl twiddled her thumbs by the register, waiting to hit the clock out button. "Maybe a sandwich from the diner?"

Helga could practically see her face in the counter top.

"But that's such a far walk…"

"Don't worry about hurrying back, I've got it covered here." There was a scuff in the counter that couldn't be erased. It was dinged into it by someone dropping a fixture on it. Helga scrubbed at it anyway.

"Oh, I couldn't leave you alone too long. You're so new."

It took all of Helga's willpower not to stare around the empty room blankly. "I think I've got it."

"Well of course you do, but it could get busy at any time, really. Maybe I should just eat here."

"Go," Helga finally looked up at her, leaning on to her palms that were rested on the counter. "Really, I'm fine."

"Well, alright." Lila tapped her nails on the screen that clocked her in and out. Helga scrubbed at the scuff again.

"Oh, no!" She stopped and turned back to Helga, "I feel like there is something I completely forgot to tell you." She stared at her. "But honest to goodness, I have no idea what it is."

"Big thing, little thing?" Helga egged on with only the slightest hint of disinterest in her voice. "Work related, or another black out story?" If it didn't have to do with her general person in the next half hour, then she really didn't give half a fuck.

"No, no…" She shooed her, "Shit." She swore like Helga could only imagine mice sneezed. She'd never heard a mouse sneeze, but she could make her assumptions. "It's on the tip of my tongue."

"Well," Helga took a step backwards, to lean against the back counter on her hands, feeling the cold of the white rag under her palm. "It can't be that important then, can it?" She just wanted the sweet freedom from her endless chatter, whatever Lila had to say may very well have been important. Helga prayed blithely this wouldn't bite her in the ass in a couple of minutes.

"No," She insisted, unlocking her phone as if she had wrote it down, "No, I really must insist that you would find it really good to know."

"Well, whatever it is, I'm sure it can really wait until you come back from your lunch."

"Oh, alright," She tucked her phone back in her pocket. "But you can't say that I didn't warn you."

"I'm sure, whatever it is, I can handle it."

"Oh me too!" She looked flustered, "Just… warning. It's always nice."

"Yep." Helga dragged out, pushing herself off the counter to wipe at nothing on a table. "Go, enjoy your meal Lila."

"Okay, you too! Wait, I didn't- I'm uh-"

"I know what you meant. Thanks."

She left the shop & it was all Helga could do to resist heaving a sigh of relief. Having a coworker that added at least three unnecessary words to every other sentence exhausted her.

Rhonda Wellington Lloyd hated Hillwood.

It's true, she really, really did.

She just happened to take the two hour train to be home on the weekends because she was worried her parents might miss her too much. That was the fact of the matter. She was not about to become one of those kids who was too ungrateful to her parents to even call. So she did, twice a day.

Sometimes they forgot to pick up, but that was probably just a slip of the wrist.

She, perhaps, didn't know where she was going when she left her empty house that morning, her parents must have had an early meeting. Her friends were all tucked away at their various universities, likely making new memories, new friends.

Not that Rhonda wasn't, it was just more-so that it was still a work in progress.

There was just no real sense of class in Hillwood. Girls wore sweatpants out of the house as if it wasn't something to be ashamed of. Jesus, she thought, at least have the decency to buy a pair of leggings. And for God's sake, do not let them be see through.

It really just wasn't that hard to get...dressed, she thought, as she saw a boy walk past her on the street, dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants and a black tank top. His hair brushed the bottom of his jaw, he was probably going to put it into a bun once he got to the gym, she thought with a shiver.

She was another half a block away from him when she realized that she very much knew the boy she had just brushed past, in fact at one point might have considered him a friend. She turned back to look at him. His shoulders looked like he was just beginning to broaden them, like he was just starting to become a man.

Of course, he had drifted away from her, as she had drifted away from the rest of that group of people. He might have gone farther from her from the rest of them. But really, what could Sid have expected of her when he pal-ed up with Helga Pataki, and her dyke best friend?

"It's like talking to bread."

"She can't suck that bad."

"Bread soaked in water."

"…what does the water have to do with anything?"

"You know, you see a piece of bread soaked in water and there's interest. Where did it come from? Why is it wet? But then you look closer and you can finally see it, you know?"

"See…what?"

"That it's just wet bread. That's it."

"Don't you think you're being, I don't know, the tiniest bit harsh on a girl you've known, literally, for ten years, and has been nothing but kind to you? Considering she was the one who got you the job in the first place?"

"I'm sorry I can't hear you over the overwhelming sound of yeast rising over here."

"You're a terrible human being."

"Yes, but I've always been. Yet; you always say that like you're suddenly surprised by it." Helga was grinning on her end of the phone line, and trying her best to hide it from coming across in her voice. The girl on the other end of the phone didn't say anything in return. That was a habit of Cassidy's, one that Helga almost preferred.

She had always kind of preferred quiet people.

Helga had known Lila since she was nine. When she hit middle school & when shit, amongst other things, hit the fan, she became a constant in Helga's life. She was never truly relevant, she just was always there. She kept an eye on Helga; in a way that no one else in her life had really bothered to do.

She should have been thankful for it, but when you're one of those kids who wasn't exactly hugged as a child, all it did was make her uncomfortable.

Helga had wandered out to the customer's side of the lobby. She set her phone down on the counter, wincing at the makeup left rubbed on the screen. She cleaned it off with the underside of her shirt.

"I'm putting you on speaker." Helga heard her say something muffled. "Hold on," She set the phone up so she could hear her. "I'm sorry- what did you say?"

"I just asked why?"

"I want yogurt."

Helga truly underestimated just how dead the day shift of a frozen yogurt shop could be. But, it was and she was here anyway and so there was time to kill. Very little killed time quite like snacks, especially those of a frozen variety.

"Do you get that for free?"

"No."

"Are you going to pay for it?"

"No."

"You're going to get fired."

"Honestly? I can't wait."

The best thing about Cass was that she knew when to not talk at all. She had this instinct of knowing when Helga needed to know there was life besides her on the planet, the sounds of Cass breathing or shuffling her papers, but didn't need to ramble to fill the silence.

That was amongst the best things about Cassidy.

Helga filled a cup up, pushing the yogurt around, watching the colors swirl together. She shoved a spoonful in her mouth before speaking.

"I miss you Cass."

"I'll be home in a month," She spoke sincerely. Helga tried to ignore the lack of her declaration of missing her too. "It'll be before either of us know it."

"I hate college. You should drop out."

"Have you applied at all yet?" She sounded mildly impatient. Helga picked up her phone and turned it off the speaker, swinging back around through the employees only door. She sat on the table they had by the computer, tucking a converse covered foot under her.

Helga was suddenly paying a lot more attention to the Hillwood University sweatshirt that Lila left on the back of a chair. "I've…thought about it?"

Cassidy sighed. "I guess I can take that for now."

"I just need a little more money saved before I can really think about that, Cass." Helga shoved another spoonful on in my mouth

"What about community college?"

"No offense," She swallowed. "But I'd literally rather die."

"You don't mean that."

"You underestimate me."

Helga stared up at the screen that showed her the lobby. There was still no one in it.

"Did we ever get froyo at," She checked her watch "2:16 pm?"

"Uh," Cass coughed "I don't keep logs of our eating habits."

"Really?" She mocked. "Jesus, I thought we were friends, Cass."

"Well, maybe if you didn't eat 8 meals a day…"

"Are you calling me fat." Helga deadpanned, scooping another spoonful in her mouth, keeping her eyes on the empty screen.

"Why do you ask?"

"Why am I asking whether my best friend is implying I'm fat?" She tucked her phone in between her shoulder and her ear so she could get a better angle at my bowl of yogurt. "Well, fuck, Cass, maybe that's-"

"Calm down, Tack. I'm asking why you want a log of our eating habits."

"A frozen yogurt store should not be empty this long." Helga ungracefully tried to get her hair to flip back behind her shoulder by twitching, not dropping her spoon and bowl, or the phone she had pressed between her ear and her shoulder. Her hair should be in a ponytail anyway, but it wasn't. "It's un-American."

"You hate America."

"Well if we want to go and start throwing opinions around-"

"Hey-" She interrupted Helga, which was supremely Un-Cass in it's nature. "Have you been on Facebook today?"

"I avoid it when possible," Helga squinted down, fishing the mnms out of her somewhat melting froyo, "why?"

"I was on today, and-" Helga's neck cramped up, and she jerked it to the other side, promptly dropping her phone on the ground.

"Ah, fuck," Helga jumped off the table, grabbing it quickly, and then dusted her phone off on her pants. "Sorry, Cass, dropped my phone."

"It's okay. Anyway, have you heard anything about-"

The doorbell in the lobby rang, the one that gave you the Get Up Someone's Here signal. She set her cup of yogurt down. "Shit, I have to go. Text me it though."

"Wait, hold on, I think you're really gonn-"

"I really have to go, love you, text me, bye!" Helga whisper shouted, before hitting the little red icon.

She slapped on the baseball cap the store gave her that she so often forewent, and went out to greet the guests.

Which, naturally, were people she knew, considering her town was approximately a block and half wide.

Pheobe Heyerdahl really didn't expect a ton, socially, out of Hillwood anymore. She had her friends, as everyone else did, in high school. But she felt the expectation mutually between them that college would allow them all to move in their separate directions, without the pettiness and the stalking of Instagrams that so many other friend groups would deal with.

She sat up in her dark blue covers of her dorm bed, shifting her legs around, her heart still picking up speed at the sight of the Yale backpack on the floor.

She worked so hard, she deserved to grin at the inanimate objects that had her successes press-printed on to them.

Her I-Phone dinged quietly, in the tone that gave her the indication that Hey Something is Happening, but not in the Hey This is a Text way. She picked it up curiously anyway, pushing her glasses on to her head so she could read it.

2:32 P.M.

OCT 3RD, 2016

ARNOLD SHORTMAN HAS SENT YOU A FRIEND REQUEST!

Memories of middle school and it's prior years bled back into her mind, quicker than sharpie bleeding through printer paper. She hoped, genuinely hoped, that maybe one day she'd be able to look back at the whole thing without the little pang of hurt in her chest.

Arnold, however, she had nothing but affection for, despite not having seen or heard from him in seven years. That was rather what she expected, after all, when he moved to the middle of nowhere to be with his parents.

She clicked on his profile, smiling sadly at him not having any privacy settings on yet. She wondered if he had any friends at all to show him how.

The photo he used made her full out grin. It was him and his parents, all three beaming widely, Arnold in the middle, huddled over a little because his dad was trying to ruffle his hair and his mom was bent out to kiss his cheek, not quite reaching him. He looked…tall. Much taller than Pheobe expected him to be, maybe even as tall as his dad if he was standing up straight. He was handsome in his own way, maybe not so in the way his father was, but his own brand of it. And, praise God, he was wearing a hat that fit him properly.

He also looked painstakingly happy.

Pheobe grinned at him, because if anyone deserved to be, it was Arnold.

She clicked on to his Friend's List, because if she was going to be creepy she might as well go for the full monty. There were 22 of them. Her heart dropped a little to see that the names that littered it were only people she knew.

That's it.

Had he really not managed to make friends wherever he had moved with his parents?

Or were they just not the Facebook kind of people?

Knowing Arnold, the latter was more likely.

She clicked back to the main timeline, and her heart dropped further at his first status.

Two boys and a girl, who was obviously with one of the boys, walked into the shop Helga was standing in that day. The boy whom was not attached to the girl tagged behind like a button that had almost fallen off a coat. Helga knew the boys. She remembered them both, however, admittedly, one of their name's was slipping off the back of her mind. He was the loose button, which honestly wasn't surprising, he always was.

The one she knew, Helga knew all too well. And, God, did he know it.

So, God, was he ignoring her.

"Hey guys, how are you!" Helga spoke falsely cheerfully. They didn't respond, the girl smiled. "Let me know if I can help at all!" She smiled at them in the way she did a lot in this town. The you-are-trying-to-ignore-the-fact-we-know-each-other-but-I-the-Bigger-Person-won't-let-you. The girl said thank you, the button boy waved noncommittally. The other boy seemed to let his gaze drift past Helga, unsurprisingly, but it did settle behind her. She self consciously checked over her shoulder. Nothing was there except the the large sign for our establishment that was always there. Helga tuned out the couple discussing flavor combinations, and stared at the TV affixed in the corner. She could ignore the elephants if he could.

The girl wandered up with a quarter full cup, added some strawberries, which made Helga's heart hurt the smallest bit, and set her cup on the scale. She waited, with her head turned towards the boys, just long enough to let Helga know not to weigh the cup yet- that her boyfriend would pay for it.

"He totally knows who you are." The girl leaned forward and spoke quietly. "He's just being an ass."

"It's alright," Helga rolled her eyes. "I'll be honest, I can't even remember his friend's name, and we were best friends." She blinked. "Well, as close I got to having them, anyway."

"Uh, Jake?" The girl turned back to look at him. "His name is Jake." She leaned on to the counter, watching him fill his cup too high. "Gerald and Jake go way back."

"So do me and Gerald." Helga said quietly, leaning in like she was filling her in on a secret.

Hell, it probably was one to Gerald.

"But, I'll be real, Jake is not ringing a bell." Helga muttered, scanning over him. Sure, it had been a solid… 5? or so? years since they had spoken, but she was puzzled by him.

"That's because you didn't call me Jake, Pataki." His voice, twanging at the end of my last name, hinted at the past even further. Helga tried to hide her blush at him recalling her full name, when she couldn't even jog her memory of him. He set his cup down, leaning on to the counter, the towering mass of a boy he was. He was tall as fuck, but still lanky, like his limbs hadn't been fully introduced to the rest of him yet. His hair fell into his eyes, brown and shaggy. "Jake's not even my fucking name," He rubbed a hand between his eyebrows. "Stinky. Stinky Peterson."

"Holy shit," Helga whispered, "you were my first boyfriend!" She laughed, for lack of knowing what else to do at being confronted with the past so directly.

Forgetting one of the key players of your childhood: smooth, Tack, real smooth.

"Was he?" Gerald asked, addressing her for the first time. He was back a bit from the trio of them, observing. Helga and Gerald hadn't made eye contact yet. Helga could you six and a half years of reason as to why she was dreading it.

Gerald looked at Helga, and it seemed to her that not only could he give them too, but also in several languages.

Helga had forgotten just how observant he was.

"Was he really?" He asked again, raising his eyebrows.

Helga did the mature thing, and ignored the fuck out of whatever kind of tone he was trying to use with her.

"You had quite the head of hair, then." He still did, but now it suited him. Now it looked like something he managed to grow himself, instead of a small animal that chose to take up residence on his head. "Jesus, time flies."

"Tell me about it." The girl giggled.

"Hey-" Gerald walked up, moving on from whatever it was Helga was trying to say. "Is anyone else here?'

"Oh, are you looking for Lila?" Helga asked, leaning on the register. "Sorry, man, she left for lunch like 15 minutes ago."

It wouldn't surprise Helga, him looking for her. She didn't think they particularly ran in the same circle, but she wouldn't have ruled it out either. Gerald looking past Helga gave her a chance to really look at him.

He was tall, but that was expected from when they were kids. Overall, he had just…grown into himself. He looked muscular but not stacked, tall but not lanky. He looked older than Helga knew he was. The same couldn't be said for Stinky, but Helga probably could have told you that would happen as a child.

"Anyone else?" Jake/Stinky/Button squinted at her. Helga shook my head.

"No such luck. Can I help you find someone?"

Gerald looked back and forth between Helga's collar bone and hairline, which was kind of an odd view-point, in her opinion. "Nah," he set his cup down next to the girl's. "I don't think you know him."

Helga frowned because it was a very abnormal thing to say, but rang up the check all the same. And then the loose button's yogurt.

"Well, thanks." Gerald picked up his cup with one hand, and let the other rest on the back of his girlfriend's hip. He seemed to pause examine Helga one more time. "You look good," he almost hesitated, just a breath's width of space in order for the sentence to sound strange, "Helga G. Pataki." He turned towards the door, turning his girl with him. "See you around," He called without turning to look at Helga. The button, once again, trailed behind.

"Thanks guys." Helga said plainly as she heard the door close.

She had walked all the way to the back and reassumed her prior seat before remembering that he hadn't needed prompting to know her name, her full name- he just remembered.

And it took her five minutes to recognize a former classmate.

Then again, "Jake" hadn't destroyed Helga's entire life the way Gerald did, so it was reasonable of her to be a little shook.

Helga had 8 texts from Cass, but she hit the call back button instead of reading them. It was the kind of shit that just begged to be talked about.

"Cass!" Helga shouted it the moment she heard that the call connected. Maybe it was a little over-enthusiastically.

"Are you alright?" She sounded startled.

"You are never going to believe the shit that just happened to m-"

"Jeez, you scared me. I mean, I know it was kind of big new-"

"I mean seriously, this is the kind of stuf-"

"And I know it really shouldn't matter, not anymore anyway, because it was such a long time ago but-"

"Like, god, just when you think you're free of high school and everyone in it-"

"But he was still such a major part of your life-"

"Everyone goes to the college smack dab in the middle of fucking town-"

"And I really do think he is majorly responsible for the person you ended up becoming-"

"And it's like, JESUS, when do I get to breath?"

The line went blank, and Helga realized she thought they were having one conversation, and Cass very well could be thinking they're having another.

"How did you know Gerald was in the shop?" Helga asked hesitantly.

Her frozen yogurt had melted.

"Gerald? When did we start talking about Gerald?"

"If we're not talking about Gerald, then who are we talking about?"

"Wait, back up, when did you see Gerald? How did he come into this at all?"

"He just came into the shop,"

"Oh my god, wait, was a-"

Helga missed the other half of her sentence due the store bell ringing. She looked up and saw her darling red head returning from her meal. Seven minutes early, naturally, but Helga was impressed she managed to leave at all today.

Cass would kill her for it later, but Helga hung up on her.

She had evidence to dispose of.

Not for nothing, Stinky "Jake" Peterson didn't consider himself to be too much of a weird guy. Really, he didn't. Maybe he used to be, he couldn't really remember, but he wasn't now.

Yet for some reason, cup of fro-yo in hand, trailing slightly behind Gerald and his girlfriend, Mariella, he could not stop thinking about Helga G. Pataki's hair.

It was just so long, reaching past her waist, before feathering out into slightly unhealthy ends.

He shoved another spoonful into his mouth.

He supposed it was rather naive of him to expect ugly people to be ugly forever, considering his own nose forgave him eventually and allowed the rest of his face to grow around it. She just looked, as Gerald said, good. Her hair was long and her eyebrows were dark and thick but not connected. Her skin was clear, although she might have been wearing makeup, Jake couldn't tell those kinds of things. He could tell even with the black uniform of the shop, that she was thin and lean. Maybe she didn't sport the girlish curves that Mari, the girl in front of him, sported, but he doubted it bothered any of her suitors. Everyone seemed short to Jake, but not Helga, despite him probably having a good eight inches on her. It was probably just the way she carried herself, long arms leaning on the register while her hair flopped over her waist.

He supposed it was weird to be that shell-shocked by an old classmate on a mission to find an old classmate.

He meant, they found an old classmate but not the one they wanted to find.

From the clutch that petite, 5' 2" Mari had on Gerald's arm, her short bobbed hair falling over her tanned shoulders as she leant her head on his arm, he could just tell that Gerald was a lot more disappointed than he wanted to let on.

They had very little to go on, other than a Facebook status announcing their former classmates re-arrival in town, and Lila's comment to him to come visit her at work that day.

But all the same, Gerald's shoulders were slumped the very minimal amount that he ever let them be, and after ten years of friendship, Jake would think that he would know him well enough to call it.

He was disappointed.

After all, Gerald reaching out to the friend he hadn't attempted to contact in years would be a lot harder than just bumping into him.

Helga dropped the yogurt into the garbage with just barely enough time to cover it with a paper towel, and get her hands into the sink so it looked like she was accomplishing anything, before Lila power walked into the back.

"Helga!" Helga heard her call.

"I'm back here," She called, letting the questioning tone slip into her voice.

"Girl," Helga said as she pushed through the Employee's Only door "the store is like, half the size of my pinky, I'm here, you don't have to call for me-"

"I have something really important to tell you." She said quickly, looking flustered. "I really have just no plum clue how I've forgotten, as you might maim me for not telling you sooner."

Lila was looking at Helga so intensely it made her heart skip a beat. Like, shit, what was she in for here? Getting fired? Won the lottery? Was Lila secretly in love with her?

My eyes drifted down to the line in-between her waist in her hips. Helga wouldn't necessarily mind a confession of love.

Also, she loved drama.

It was something Helga had learned to just accept about herself.

"So," She swallowed. "Oh, this is just, this is really-"

Helga braced herself for the ever-so that Lila was inevitably going to say.

"Really fucking hard, Helga." Helga blinked at her. She walked to the chair by the computer to set her things down on it. "Normally, you know me, I cut to the chase, no time for dawdling, but shit-"

Her curse words sounded like the drip of a leaky faucet, small plinks of words, soon to be forgotten.

It was really rather endearing.

"this conversation has probably been years in the coming, and truthfully, I've never really confronted you about it for fear of you pounding me."

"…pounding…you?" Helga hadn't heard the phrase used in years.

"Not that you even do that, anymore!" Lila looked up at her, obviously mildly panicked. "I mean, who was the last person you physically hit?"

Helga just saw him not ten minutes ago.

"It's been a while," Helga admitted, leaning back on the sink and crossing her arms.

"I knew it!" She announced…proudly? Helga couldn't tell. "Oh, gosh, I've spent so much time procrastinating on this that I've just really put myself into a pickle here. I have no time to do this with tact or grace or anything like I had been planning. I mean, Jesus, Lila, why wouldn't you just mention it earlier?"
Helga, for maybe one of the first times in her life, had no idea what to say. Not even a drop of one dropping into the ocean of her mind. She was just standing there staring at Lila. The girl, who wasn't necessarily short by nature, but shorter than Helga, paced. Her frame was more filled out than Helga's, but in a way that definitely suited her. She had her hair, still thick and red, tucked up into two buns at the back of her head. It might of looked ridiculous on anyone else who tried, but it certainly didn't look ridiculous on Lila.

"Maybe you should sit?" Lila considered, coming towards Helga with her arms out stretched. "No, that's just, that's stupid, that's what that is." She paced away.

The doorbell rang.

"God, WHAT do you WANT!" Lila huffed angrily, stomping towards the door to the lobby.

"Hi, how are y'all this afternoon?" Helga heard her greet cheerfully.

Helga couldn't help it, she laughed.

It wasn't every day that Sid got a call from Cass, but it also wasn't exactly a rare occurrence either. He was just listening to music on his run at the Hillwood University gym, when his familiar ringtone starting playing overtop of it. He looked down and considered waiting till his run was done to call her back, but he didn't and hopped off the treadmill instead.

He knew that calling people wasn't so much a thing the millenials did nowadays, but it became a habit in their threesome between him, Helga, and Cassidy, so often that it just stuck.

"Hey baby, what's up?" He answered the phone, trying to fumble the cap off his water bottle with one hand.

"I'm pissed at Helga and I need to rant."

"'Aight," He leaned back on the treadmill, letting his gaze fall on himself in the mirror across from it. He laughed. "I can accept that." He looked small in the mirror, which made him frown. He wasn't small. He wasn't giant but he wasn't small either. He shook his long, dark, curled at the ends hair back, so he could better adjust his phones placement on his ear without putting his water bottle down.

"Shoot."

"She just, she called me today, and I'm really glad to hear from her but I just…She always.."

"You…just?" Sid felt a grin slide on to his face. "She…always?"

"She's so," Cassidy paused, taking in a deep breath. "Our best friend is just such a shitty listener, Sid."

Sid laughed. "But she's an excellent talker, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is, but that's not really the point, Sid. When I have news to tell her, I'd love if she just learned to…stop. talking."

"But will she?" Sid sat on the edge of his treadmill, like a total prick, because he was going to be right back on it as soon as Cass hung up. He ignored the glares of other gym-goers. "I mean, that's the real question."

"Well, I don't know, I guess not, but-"

"Well then, there lies your answer, in and of itself. We can either wish she wouldn't, or we can accept that she will." He took another swig of water. "I know what choice I've made."

"Oh, will you shut up, Sid?"

"Honestly?" He looked at himself in the mirror once again. "Probably not."

"Do you even want to hear the gossip that I called her about in the first place?" Cass sounded hostile, but not hostile, because that just wasn't in her nature.

"Well, duh, who do you think I am?"

"A dick, but I'll tell you anyway. I swear to God, the two of you, you're both constantly competing to see who can be more annoying than the other."

"Am I winning?"

"Do you want my news or not, Sidney?" She deadpanned.

Sid laughed again. "I'm done, I swear, shoot."

"You'll never guess who's back in Hillwood."

The grin slid off of Sid's face as he leaned forward, eyebrows furrowing together at the seriousness of Cass's tone. "Who?"

The line paused. Sid could only guess that Cass was probably trying to figure out a dramatic or witty way to say it, but she never was as quick on the draw with those kinds of things the way he and Helga were.

"He was gone f- no, he is short, well he was, judging from this picture I would say he probably isn't no- wait, hold on,"

Sid was trying really hard not to laugh.

" I, oh- for fuck's sake, it's Arnold."

The grin slid off his face once again.

"Our Arnold?" Sid stood up quickly, affectively spilling his bottle of water all over himself.

"Well, I've never met him so he certainly isn't my Arnold," Cass said quickly, "But if you want to claim him as your Arnold, well that's your prerogative I guess."
Sid was power-walking out of the gym quicker than his mind, he was walking before he even had an idea of where he was going.

"Your breathing got heavy," Cass commented. "What are you doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing?" He cut back bitterly, throwing open the doors and hustling down the front steps. "I'm going to find Helga."