Author's Note: The prologue is slow and filled with descriptions. I promise the story will pick up!

PROLOGUE:

ARNOLD'S RETURN TO HILLWOOD

He's late, the pilot sighed, as he watched a family of capuchin monkeys fighting over an orange he had thrown their way shortly after landing.

For nearly an hour, the man inside the helicopter baked in temperatures reaching one hundred and three degrees Fahrenheit in ninety-percent humidity. He didn't know much about the passenger that he was to escort to the local airport, except that he was a young teen who currently resided in a village deep in the jungle, with little access to the main city. The longer the pilot sat there, fanning himself with a magazine brandishing full bosomed Latina women, the greater his curiosity grew. How could anyone want to live here? He thought. Sure, the Green-Eyed people were accustomed to life without modern luxuries, but the stifling heat alone was enough to make him long for his air conditioned home equip with a refrigerator and working ice dispenser—not to mention cell phone reception—nearly 70 miles away from this spot.

He would tell his wife later, he decided, to imagine closing the bathroom door and turning the shower on all the way to its maximum temperature gauge, and allowing the steam to concentrate for a few hours, and then living and working in that environment your whole life. What was worst was that over the chattering of the monkeys, the call of the green-winged macaws, and shy growling of ocelots, one could hardly hear themselves think.

He had to admit, though, it was similar to his hometown in Mexico City. Busses, taxis, stray dogs, and constant bustling of people always on the go, always staring at their cell phones, kids playing ball in the streets, rendered one completely submersed in sea of microscopic growth, while feeling perpetually isolated. Our cities naturally evolve into their own jungles. Still, he thought, I can't wait to get the hell out of here.

Suddenly, he heard one capuchin monkey in particular screech its voice, signaling the whole gang to disperse. Animal sounds were soon replaced by distant human ones. He put his magazine down and looked over from his height inside the cockpit of the helicopter where he could spot a boy from afar, dragging his luggage over fallen tree trunks and shrubs, through gaps left between the ancient Barrigona.

Must be him, he thought. Right on cue, the pilot turned on the ignition, allowing the blades of his helicopter to rotate gradually to full speed while the boy and a few others following close behind him approached the base of the steps pulled out from the helicopter's entrance.

The pilot peered through a window at the small family parting ways: the Caucasian passenger, maybe 16 or 17 years of age, brandishing an oddly wide head of yellow hair; his mother and father, both in their mid-40s, ushering over what appeared to be an band of tiny brown men and women. He realized that these followers must have been the Green-Eyed people he read about in the paper. They were a shy people, he heard, and so witnessing them in person became an overwhelming experience. He observed their stout stature, their indigenous cheekbones, and black straw like hair. Their clothes were earthy and scant.

When everyone finally arrived, he watched the boy modestly fight off an onslaught of hugs and kisses from every direction. Suddenly he realized that the boy was trying to say something, only to result in looks of confusion on his parent's faces. It took a minute for the pilot to realize the roaring helicopter blades were drowning the boy's voice out, and preventing his parents from being able to hear him. Promptly, the pilot turned off the propellers so that the family could say their good byes in peace.

On this especially warm day, in his final few minutes in the deep South American jungle, Arnold stood at the base of the steps leading to the entrance of a helicopter that was waiting for him in the clearing. The blades had been rotating so rapidly that it seemed as though even the Barrigona branches were taken aback, their leaves holding onto stem for dear life. Struggling against the wind generated by those wings, Arnold pushed back the hair flapping across his face, while he felt the tugs and kisses of both his parents and an army of young children barely able to reach the waist of his faded blue jeans. Old women with long black braids pried their children away, only to reveal their own misty green eyes as they accepted what was their last chance to say good-bye to the boy they grew to love for so many years. With his free hand, he offered his luggage over to two shorter brown men, each with starkly emerald eyes, who in turn threw the luggage over to another pair of men of similar stature. The men climbed the steps leading to the entrance of the helicopter to take his luggage inside. Though he could barely hear himself think over the loud roar of the helicopter, he took a deep breath before uttering his final statement to the parents he had so longed to be with his entire life, whom had once abandoned him as a boy by accident, and from whom he must now temporarily depart as a young man.

"Mom…Dad?" he said over the roaring helicopter. He took a deep breath. This is it. "I'm gonna miss you." Much to his surprised, his parents continued looking at him blankly, smiling as though he didn't say anything. Finally, his mother tilted her head upward, and elbowed her husband.

"What?!" the two middle aged biologists yelled back in union, squinting against the gust of air blowing against their faces.

"I'm…going…to miss you!" he yelled louder, annunciating each word this time.

"You need a tissue?" his mother wrinkled her eyebrows. "I thought I already packed some in your suitcase!" Growing irritated, Arnold puffed out his chest, preparing his diaphragm to deliver maximum force this time. He did not even notice when the helicopter's ignition had turned off for his benefit before he continued in what was now dead silence. Even the feisty capuchins craned their necks to hear him speak,

"I SAID I'M GOING TO MISS YOU!"

"Well, no need to yell, son."

It had been an exhausting morning, packing last minute items, reaching the airport and navigating through customs. By the time he entered the airplane, he found himself breaking out into a fit of yawning as he scooted past an elderly woman to get to his seat.

"Gracias, abuela," he thanked her, as she made room for him to take his seat. She smiled at him sweetly.

Watching the clouds had always been his favorite part of flying. About twenty minutes into his journey, Arnold decided to gaze out the window next to his seat and found himself half smiling at the marshmallow puffs of air that seemed to engulf him and the rest of the airplane. The clouds through which the plane flew were of all shapes and sizes, and seemed to take on a life of their own, sculpting into various formations and zipping past him.

As his eyelids grew heavy, he noticed some of the clouds outside his window beginning to come together and drawing to an unusual still. Hmm, he thought, that's strange. The clouds seem to be coming together. And yet, in his sleepy daze, the scene before him unfolded naturally.

Some invisible hand had begun sculpting these clouds into a life-like entity. Little fluffs of white danced around each other in coordination until he could make out the formation of bugged eyes growing out of what resembled the face of a fat Jewish boy with an under bite. Arnold gasped. This face…it looked so familiar. The cloudy eyes narrowed angrily, peering through the window right at him, until he found himself gulping in anticipation.

"Here's the deal!" the cloud's mouth began to move as a hollow and distant voice emanated from within. The accent was uncannily accurate. "Tomorrow, Arnold. Right here. It's clobbering time!"

The last word was drowned out by the echoing sound of nine-year-old voices in the back of his mind shouting barbarically, "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!"

Arnold's head popped up, and he gasped. Wait! I can explain! he wanted to say, but he found himself unable to speak. Fortunately, it didn't matter, because without warning, the face-resembling cloud began to transform once again.

No longer were the angry eyes screaming revenge peering at him. This time, he noticed, the clouds formed a tall head of hair over a round face. This face was friendlier than the last, sighing with a smile at Arnold while shaking its head.

"Mmm, mmm, mmm. You're a bold kid, Arnold," it said, with a cool, raspier voice than the last, while retaining the same echoing effect, "A booooold kid." Arnold found himself chuckling at its sagely mannerism, but didn't get a chance to respond before the cloud changed shapes once more. When the transformation completed, he gasped again.

A very distinct scowl could be seen. Two jutting pigtails that resembled the ends of a witch's broom, a bow placed betwixt them, and a distinct unibrow came together. This entity was different from the last two. Its anger seemed to be directed at Arnold, and yet, he could sense the pain beneath the flaring nostrils. Before Arnold could get a chance to ponder further, he heard a faint whistling sound growing increasingly louder, as though something were heading towards him at a rapid speed. Suddenly, from a distance, fluff of cloud resembling a soggy crumpled up piece of paper came into view. It bulleted towards his window at full speed, as though intended to hit him in particular.

Where did that come from? He thought. He turned to this new face for an explanation. She began to grin.

"For spitball of the day….Football Head." she said.

Arnold was at first overcome by an unexplained feeling of humiliation, as he wondered if the rest of the passengers on the plane noticed the sinister cloud head taunting him. Why would she do that? He wanted to confront her, and yet he feared what she might do next.

He barely worked up the courage to say something to her when he noticed a change in the cloud's face. The pigtails grew shorter, the scowl welted into a pouting frown, and the eyes broke into tears. It was the same girl, but this face seemed younger than the last he saw. And most importantly, he thought, this face looked shy. Arnold felt a great deal of pity for this anthropomorphized toddler.

The clouds surrounding her grew darker, and a bolt of lightening suddenly shot through the sky. He thought hard, while the rain took on full speed. Something about the look she was giving him seemed all too familiar. She didn't say anything; just looked at him with big eyes. Arnold felt his mouth move against his will, and from the furthest recesses of his mind came a voice that belonged to a young four-year-old boy—it was a cheery voice that exuded optimism.

"Want mine?" he spoke. He didn't recognize his voice, but it sounded eerily familiar, like a dream that is soon forgotten the moment you open your eyes. The girl outside his window nodded her cloud head. His mouth continued moving against his will as he continued the conversation of which he had no recollection. "I like your bow. It's pink like your pants," he said.

She smiled. Arnold wanted to call out to this girl, but suddenly found himself unable to speak. He tried to reach out for her. She wanted his help. He could feel it in his bones. He saw her extending her cloudy arm over to him. Defying all physical possibility, he was surprised to find his own hand penetrating the window and attempting to grasp on to her small hand. Arnold's fingers and the cloud-girl's fingers barely brushed one another when a bolt of lightening struck his hand, causing him to immediately pull away.

Arnold suddenly gasped for air, and he lifted his head.

"Huh? What?" he said in confusion.

"Tu estaba tiendo un mal sueño," she said, softly.

Much to his surprise, and later embarrassment, he had been nestled against the shoulder of the elderly woman sitting next to him with his mouth wide open. The sound of the thunder outside the plane must have woken him up, and he realized he must have been dreaming this whole time. With a groggy mind, he drunkenly looked around the plane, feeling a bit self-conscious as he felt moisture drip down his chin. Blushing, he wiped the drool running down the corner of his mouth. He noticed another woman across the aisle staring at him pointedly. Was he snoring? He had no idea how long he had been asleep, but much as his dream foreshadowed, it had indeed begun to storm outside.

Hesitantly, he rang the doorbell.

For a few minutes, he stood there, waiting for someone to answer. Grandma and Grandpa must have forgotten about me coming, he sighed. Just as he turned the doorknob, he was immediately pushed back by a parade of cats and dogs rushing out the door. Wait a minute, he thought. After a delay, a fat pig came waddling after the platoon. Chuckling, Arnold stepped inside.

He looked around for a light switch he knew by memory would be located to the left of the door. Taller now, his arm lowered from their original position and groped the wall until it found the switch. The room immediately illuminated, and he surveyed the familiar layout: the long hallway, the living room to the left, the kitchen further down, and the stairs leading the second floor. He almost believed that the entire boarding house had been abandoned, until he finally heard some shuffling from the living room. A knowing grin grew on his face. He poked around the dark living room until he heard some voices grumbling.

"Shut up Oskar! You'll ruin the surprise!" He heard the voice of an old man.

"When do we get to eat the cake?" a voice with a distinctly Czechoslovakian accent whined back. Smiling, Arnold turned the living room lights on. Heads popped out from every direction of the room, and he could barely comprehend what had happened before they all began together,

"Surprise!"

Ernie emerged from under the side table. Oscar and Suzie stood behind the couch. Mr. Hyuhn unwrapped himself from the curtain, and Grandpa Phil stood behind the wall next to the entrance. Once more in the past two days, Arnold was bombarded by hugs and kisses from every direction.

"Arnold…I hope you don't mind I invited my buddies for poker in your room tonight…hehe!" he heard Oscar explaining.

"Oh Oscar!" scolded Suzie.

"I mean…it's really nice to see you, Arnold. You look just as generous now as you were when you were just a short midget…hehe."

"Oskar!" yelled Susie once again.

"Um…it's ok, Mr. Kokoshka…you can use my room tonight."

"Arnold, I'm likin' the muscles. Have you been lifting weights?" Ernie clapped him on the back of his shoulder,

"Not really weights exactly…"

"Listen kid," Ernie interrupted, "I better see ya at the demolition site next Saturday. Imma knock down my hundredth building. Wouldn't be the same without you,"

"Sure Mr. Potts…wouldn't miss it for the world?"

"Arnold!" yelled Mr. Hyuhn in his familiar Vietnamese accent. "I prepare a song for you while you are away!" Mr. Hyuhn pulled out an acoustic guitar from out of nowhere, and without warning, began in a completely unrecognizable country accent, "The day's been cold without you, And Oskar's been a pain! But now you're here, and Mai's near, my heart can beat agaaaaaaain!"

Arnold just blinked a few times.

"Alright, alright, let the poor boy breath! Let's get your things upstairs short man," said Grandpa, clutching Arnold's shoulder with one hand and his abdomen with another, "And let's make it quick! I had a bad tuna sandwich that's just itching to come out any second now."

Though he was excitedly basking in all of the familiar scents and chaos, Arnold couldn't help but feel that something was missing, and he searched for that one voice that remained absent from this otherwise perfect choir.

His sensei, his piano partner, and his stand-in mother for ten years—he was just about to give up hope and ask outright where she was, when a sound resembling the howling of an alley cat could be heard screeching from the kitchen. He turned around slowly, finding himself grinning ear to ear.

"Camp down lady sing this song! Doo da! Doo da!" Grandma Gertie marched down the hall, carrying in a large rectangular cake of her own design, decorated as the American flag. "Camp down lady sing this song! Dum dee do da day!" After setting the cake down on the coffee table for all to gather around, she quietly rested her hand on his shoulder. "Welcome back, Kimba."

The school bell rang.

"Alright class," began the fifty three year old Sam Rooney, high school English teacher to a room filled with half-asleep juniors. "Before we continue with our lesson on post modern American literature, I just want to take a moment to remind everyone that Ms. Pataki is still welcoming submissions for the school's literary journal…"

"Ahem!" a cough from the back of the room interrupted him.

He sighed. "…and in her words, 'they better have some stinkin' soul…or else.'"

"You got that right," mumbled a voice belonging to a blonde girl slouching in her seat towards the back of the room. Her feet propped up atop her desk, she folded her arms behind her head before continuing, "I don't want to see any more poems titled 'Ode to Roast Beef Sandwiches.'"

"Everyone loved it, Helga, so shut up!" yelled a large pink-faced boy sitting in front of her, turning around to face her.

"Alright, Harold…" pleaded their teacher.

"You wanna say that to ol' Betsy, fat-boy?" she growled, waving a fist at the boy in front of her.

Harold gulped and quickly turned back around in his seat. Knowing fully well that he was powerless to defend himself against her formidable fists, he grudgingly mumbled under his breath, "Madame fortress mommy…"

"And as much as I appreciate a good romance, Curly," continued Helga, with tone that was initially flat, but soon escalated into a full on rant, "let's keep princess's name out of all your creepy stories…and keep them rated PG!"

"I'm just trying to make your dreams a reality, Rhonda baby," said a boy with black hair and round glasses, as he slowly began to massage the shoulders of the brunette sitting in front of him, resulting in her yanking her shoulder away and jumping up onto her desk with a horrified look on her face.

"Ugh! Get this freak off of me!" she yelled.

"Gee wilikers," began a large-nosed boy with a country accent, sitting towards the center of the room, "It seems like no one's stories are good enough for Ms. Helga's magazines."

"It's called a journal, Stinky," she retorted.

Rooney, who was still standing in front the room, thinking of how to refocus the class back to the topic at hand, suddenly realized the phone on his desk was ringing. Slouching his shoulders, he headed over to attend whatever issue for which the front office might have been calling him. As he expected, his momentary absence only encouraged more students to join in on the heated discussion over the exclusiveness of Helga's literary journal.

"Well I think your whole journal is rigged," said the brunette, finally having fought off Curly's advances and folding her arms across her chest, "The only poems I every read in there belong to that Cecile girl!"

"Well, Rhonda, maybe that's because she's the only one in this school whose idea of good literature doesn't include a four page diatribe about Marc Jacob's new fall line!"

"That was a great story and you know it!" Rhonda said, standing up.

"Technically," began a Japanese girl seated next to Helga, "What you submitted was an editorial, and not a work of fiction. And besides," she suddenly blushed, "Helga did publish some of Gerald's spoken word poems."

"Thanks Phoebs," said Helga, offering a low five to her compadre.

Rhonda continued, unfazed, "Who is this Cecile girl, anyway? I've never met anyone at our school by that name."

"That's enough!" interrupted Rooney as he hung up the phone and went back to putting an end to his class' daily bantering. "It looks like I have one more announcement before we begin. I just received a call from the principal's office, and it seems like we'll be welcoming a new student today. Principal Wartz wanted to know if anyone is willing to show him around the school for next few days until he gets acclimated."

Not surprisingly, the class overwhelmingly responded with blank stares.

"Come on, guys, it won't be that bad. He's probably got a lot of interesting stories to share from his time spent in San Lorenzo."

And upon uttering those last words, much to Rooney's surprise, two thirds of the classroom gasped in union, as if they all knew something. Suddenly, they seemed to have his attention, but he couldn't figure out why. What could possibly be so shocking about some foreign exchange student?

"Hey, Mr. Rooney," finally spoke a tall black teen with a raspy voice that many girls in his class often described as velvety smooth. "What's this kid's name, if you don't mind me asking…?"

"Oh, well his name's—hold on, I wrote it down." He held the paper up to eye level while squinting at what he scribbled down earlier while on the phone. "It's Arnold…uh…Arnold…damn it, I can't read my own handwriting…"

Before Mr. Rooney could finish deciphering the last name, the doorknob in front of the classroom began to jiggle. Once again, nearly the entire room of students gasped in anticipation. Helga's feet immediately planted back on the floor.

A blonde 17-year-old boy poked his unusually wide head inside. The boy looked around nervously at his classmates, who all stared at him with wide eyes as though he were a ghost exorcised from its grave. Rooney looked him up and down, unable to decipher why this seemingly shy teenaged boy elicited such a presence amongst his peers.

"Arnold?" bumbled the large boy sitting in front of Helga. "Is that…is that really you?"

"Yes Harold," the boy shuffling into the classroom responded, smiling. "It's me."

The kid with the raspy voice got up, shaking his head in disbelief, and walked over to Arnold. The two teenage boys both stared at each other for a long time, before breaking out into a long hug. After pulling away, Arnold brought his right hand up to form what, to an untrained eye, would appear to be a mere thumbs-up sign. Smiling, Gerald followed suit, and thus the two jiggled their thumbs against each other, feeling as though no time at all had passed since parting ways five years prior.