A beautiful day can be beautiful for all sorts for reasons. Today was one of those days when the iris were especially beautiful, while the rain had lashed all the others in garden patch by Arnold's backyard fence into a mass of tattered petals. But the iris, which were water plants by nature, shone in the sun like amethyst gems.
Sunshine filtered back into the streets and people shed their raincoats at last, craning their heads up toward the malign tempered sky. There were enough clouds on the horizon to guess that they'd be in for another rainstorm soon, but at least the danger of spring floods was subsiding.
"Whew!" Arnold's grandpa muttered as Arnold puttered around in the greenhouse where the boy kept an assortment of lush leafed, tropical plants. Grandpa was examining a newspaper. "Says here, Shortman, that this week should be the end of rain for a while! Good thing, too! The levy was getting mighty high! But no matter what, we'd stick it out! We are as tough as sticky tape!" Arnold craned his head around to listen to his Grandpa. But he was mildly surprised when Ernie Potts walked into the greenhouse door looking for him.
"Hey, Arnold!" the short, balding boarder explained with a thumbed pointed backwards behind his shoulder. "One of your little classmates is here to see you!"
"That little girl with the ugly eyebrow?" Grandpa speculated. But Ernie Potts shook his overlarge nose no.
"Nah, ah, it's some other weird kid. Wears red and has an attitude of a different kind… what was her name again? Oh! Rhonda!"
"Rhonda?" Arnold responded with dull enthusiasm. He dropped the enormous, waxy green leaf he was holding. "Oh, yeah, I'm expecting her. Sorta." Arnold dusted the potting soil off his hands then entered his house's back door to pop out the front. Rhonda Lloyd was waiting on the front stoop with her arms crossed.
"Hey Rhonda," Arnold said with dull enthusiasm. He propped one of his rear heels against the heavy concrete rail portion of his stoop, then leaned the back of his calves and lay one hand on the top of the railing. His gaze was angled toward Rhonda, in an effect that was both slanted and a little cool but not flirtatious. With age, he was overcoming him uncomely lack of confidence to become a little bit of a braggart. After all, he had gone on more dates than anyone of his fellow classmates, saved the neighborhood, and become a local hero of sorts for his good deeds. "What do you need?"
"Arnold," Rhonda said slapping her hand against the cover of a thick textbook she had brought with her. "I know we went over this in this in study session, but for our math project, I just don't get how to construct ANYTHING out of construction paper! I mean, the little pieces of paper just fall over all over the place! It's troublesome! They definitely don't end up three-dimensional! They're flat!"
"Well, that because you need to fold each shape out of one sheet of paper," Arnold explained. "Like origami. "Or you could try using popsicle sticks to build a frame! We could work on our homework project together if you like. Come on, we can use my kitchen table! Did you bring the construction paper with you?"
"Alright!" Rhonda complained loudly as she shrugged. "I don't get why anyone needs or cares to make a pyramid out of paper other than to annoy school children, but okay!"
"Well, it helps to conceptualize the lesson if there's a visual reference," Arnold said as he rummaged through a drawer for scissors. "Hold on and I'll go get some glue!" Arnold trotted upstairs. But as he slowly walked down his bannister staircase with a squeezy bottle of glue in hand, he heard laughter up ahead. Rhonda Lloyd was still seated at the kitchen table, but some of the boarders had gathered around her.
"Oh that's funny, that's very funny!" Mr. Hyunh said.
"Yeah, that's a riot!" Ernie Potts agreed.
"Hooray for Kimba!" Grandma Pookie said for no particular, sensical reason.
"Oh, Arnold!" Mr. Hyunh greeted the boy with a cheerful grin. "You did not tell us ever about your school field trip to the zoo!" Arnold rolled his eyes backwards with unease.
"I'd really rather not talk about that!" Arnold fished for understanding. But Rhonda was in the middle of what Rhonda thought was a riveting story. The boarders apparently thought so, too.
"And then Helga said, 'Where did old Arnoldo go? I haven't seen him or Gerald for nearly an hour!' So I glared at Curly and said, 'Alright Curly, what did you do now?!' Eugene turned up and said, 'They're over there!' So we looked and all of the tiny lemurs were running all over the place. Gerald and Arnold had tried to stop Curly so he had shut them up in the smelly old monkey cage. Children were poking at them. And when the zookeepers threw us all out for what Curly did, they stunk up the school bus so bad that…."
"Ugh, Rhonda?" Arnold interrupted much louder this time so that his gentle voice had grown stern enough for his more dominant side to show through. "While it's nice of you to reminisce about shared childhood memories, I'd appreciate it if you considered my feelings more about it. I told you ALREADY that I don't want you mention it. So don't mention it!" Arnold gave Rhonda a glare. But she flicked her fingers outward to dismiss his subtle anger.
"Oh please! There's no reason to get all upset about it! All I'm saying is simple and recountable, substantiated fact! Ask anyone who was there! If you think long and hard about it, I'm sure you'll realize that I'm right and get over it!"
"Well," Arnold murmured scratching his chin. "That is true. All that really happened. But Rhonda, as a friend let me tell another 'fact'. This time about you. I hate to say this, but you tend to say a lot of things about other people. If you gossip about others a lot, I dunno, you MIGHT make a lot of people angry at you. You might hurt other people's feelings too much so that they might stop wanting to be friends. So I really suggest you don't do it." Arnold left of there, because he had spoken all of his advice in one great sermon and it was up to Rhonda now to either heed his advice or ignore it.
"Oh, Arnold, don't freak out over little things like this!" Rhonda said with undiminished cheer. "Just go on about your daily life like this never happened! It's what I do!"
"Right. Sure," Arnold said with hooded eyes. It was clear he wasn't about to get an apology from Rhonda. "Well, if that's all you need, I'll show you out," the boy said. "I'll walk you to the door." Slightly numb, Rhonda stood up on her feet and followed Arnold out his front door. As soon as had walked out onto the stoop, the front door snapped shut behind her unusually fast, as if Arnold had held himself back just short of slamming it. Rhonda cast her gaze backwards on the green door.
"Well, I never!" Rhonda Lloyd stated to an invisible audience. "What's his deal anyway?"
Rhonda Lloyd didn't dwell on Arnold's annoyance with her for long. Instead, she showed up for school the next day with cheer. Nadine was waiting for her in a long hall lined with green lockers. "Hi Nadine!" Rhonda chirped. It was a good day to be at school with friends. Little did she suspect that Arnold's prediction about angering her other friends would come true.