Suspenders
One day in P.S. 118, Phoebe Heyerdahl approached the school cafeteria table and set down a tray with milk and a sandwich on it. As she did so she noticed Helga Pataki, her best friend, was picking her teeth with her thumb again and Phoebe almost shuddered. Sometimes Helga was just, well, so unladylike. But then again, it made her feminine and delicate in comparison.
"Hey Phoebes," said Helga mildly. She lent over pile of granola bar wrappers and an empty milk carton. Phoebe guessed that Helga's mother had forgotten to pack lunch again and she had improvised. For a moment, a flicker of remorse passed over Phoebe's face and she lifted her own milk carton from the tray.
"Would you like another carton of milk, Helga?" she uttered. "I'm not really thirsty."
"Nah, no thanks, Phoebes," said Helga. "I'm good. What I really need," she muttered to herself looking over her papers again, "is…" Helga's eyes turned shifty. The young blonde girl looked left then right again, then back towards Phoebe at last. Helga then stood up unexpectedly.
"Come here, Phoebes," said Helga pulling the raven-haired girl in a blue dress along with her. Phoebe found herself shuttled along rapidly out of the lunch room and down the hall. Then Helga dragged her by the arm into a now vacant classroom. Both girls looked around themselves instinctively for eavesdroppers, for surely this was delicate situation.
"I just heard," said Helga leaning over nearer to Phoebe. "That Arnold's cousin, Arnie, is coming over for a visit again."
"Oh, no!" Said Phoebe covering her mouth with her hand. She remembered how Arnie had crushed on Helga during their last visit. Helga had even had to pretend to go out to pizza with him so that he stayed well and thoroughly broke up with Lila. That had been a wicked turn of events- a fallout from the day she and Arnold had conspired together to get Lila to dump Arnie. Helga had never imagined things would turn out the other way around!
"Right, right," said Helga nodding. "And since I don't want to have him moping around after me like a lost puppy, I need you do something for me. I need you to ask around. You know, find out what it is about Arnie that Lila is really into so that we can replicate it and make Lila fall in love with the oaf all over again.
"I don't think you have to do that, Helga," said Phoebe with a grim warning. "She's already still crazy about him."
"Yes, yes, but just think about it Phoebe!" Helga sputtered. "If only I knew maybe I could set her up with another sap and keep her away from…"
"Icecream?" said Phoebe picking up on her cue. Helga looked flustered but nodded.
"Yes, icecream. I don't want her going anywhere my Sunday," with this Helga Pataki made a wide sweeping gesture and placed her hands on her jutting hips. She stared off into the distance toward an invisible challenger.
"But Helga, you're much better at finding out secrets than me."
"You know, Phoebes, you're right," Helga declared deep in thought. "You just ask around. I'll look into this, too, in my own way of doing things."
It was a simple deed to pay Stinky and Sid ten dollars to delay Lila after school. All Helga had to do was to say it was a dare that they couldn't strike up a conversation with a girl they were sweet on and she had paid them in advance. What Stinky and Sid didn't know was that instead of watching to make sure they did not renege on the dare, she jumped the fence instead and ran to Lila's house. There, she pressed open Lila's window. The silly girl kept it open a lot and Helga guessed correctly she had not latched it.
"Excellent," Helga cackled with a wicked grin. She slipped into the room with minimum clatter of the trashcan she had stood on. She dropped onto the soft carpet of the room and let out a long, slow breath. It was espionage now.
"Papers, papers, papers," said Helga. "That girl must have a journal somewhere!" So saying, Helga began to look through every drawer and under every piece of furniture in the room. But all she found was some blank paper for doing homework with. There were not even books.
"Criminy," said Helga looking at the fifteenth picture of a farm animal she had found. "Is that girl even literate? She likes to hold books. Is that all for looks?" She whipped her head around as the doorbell rang and rolled for the window. Helga lept out of it just as the doorknob of the room began to turn. Lila had returned home from school.
"Hm, that's funny," said Lila looking across the room at the open window. "I thought I had closed that."
"Drat. This isn't working," Helga complained to herself in an alley nearby. "Time for plan B."
What plan B was, when Helga thought of it, was more pictures. Only this time it wasn't pictures of animals. It was pictures of guys she had torn out of every magazine imaginable. With determination she pasted them into a scrapbook and carried this scrapbook with her to school under her arm. The next day, when Lila walked past the janitor's closet in P.S. 118, an arm shot out from it and dragged her in.
"Hey, yo, hold-up there, Lila! I've got a little question for you. A girlie-girl sort of question. I mean, what is it that makes guys attractive?" Helga slyly asked opening up the scrap notebook. She pointed to the first photo on the page. "Is this guy attractive?"
"Um. No, actually," said Lila looking away with a small bit of embarrassment. It was a photo of a well-groomed guy in a black suit. Helga tried again.
"Is this guy attractive?"
"Um, no," Lila replied now looking at a picture of a model with rippling muscles and a half-open, red flannel shirt. Helga flipped through six whole pictures and she thought that Lila would deny finding attraction in any of them when at last Lila shocked her with a soft, resigned, "yes." Helga stopped turning the pages and stared down at the page in front of her.
"Yes?" she said puzzled. "This is a picture of a farmer," said Helga. "So you like farmers, then?"
"Well, no," said Lila with a nervous laugh. "They don't have to be farmers. But I'm certain now that I really should go!" Lila disappeared out the door in a wink.
"Hm," said Helga puzzling. "I'd better show this to Phoebe."
"You were right, Helga," said Phoebe the day following Helga's little interrogation of Lila in the janitor's closet. "I tried a number of ploys and it turns out that Lila reacts strongly to the word, 'suspenders'. Moreover, most of the girls in our grade remember her having said something about them at some point or another."
"But no one in these parts even wear suspenders!" Helga yelled in frustration waving her hands around over her head. "No one except," she said calming down with epiphany. "No one except Arnie…"
Helga rubbed her chin with her palm. If what Lila really liked was suspenders, then all she had to do to get rid of her romantic rival was to introduce her to lots of guys wearing suspenders. She did not have to wait for Arnie's visit at all. But it also meant Arnold must never, EVER know. It would be all too easy for the boy to get his hands on a pair of those and he would do it, too, for Lila! Helga's blood ran cold when speak of the devil, the boy she had her own ever-burning crush on rounded the corner and lay a hand on the shoulder of her pink dress.
"Um, Helga," said Arnold readjusting the pile of books in his hand. "I wanted to ask you something. Kind of a favor. I've heard that Phoebe's been asking around about what Lila likes. I mean, what kinds of things she really like-likes and not just sort of likes when she's in a good mood. So I want to ask you, what is Lila attracted to?" Helga's heart almost stopped.
"Wa..wa..she likes?" Helga stuttered, shivering. "She likes… uh... " Helga's mind cast about desperately.
"She accidentally went into the boy's bathroom and found out Arnie wears pink underpants!" Helga blurted out as loud and as quickly as she could. The expression of hopefulness on Arnold's face turned to horror. Abruptly, he spun around and walked away.
"Thanks, Helga," he said staggering off like a robot.
"Whew!" Helga exhaled, wiping her sweaty brow. "Now that that's over, time to put our intel to good use." She began to whisper with a broad grin.
Phoebe delivered, alright. Helga's best friend found some very tasty photographs of one of their fellow students to entice Lila. Two weeks after Arnie had come and gone and Lila was moping again, Helga sat down next to the twin-braid wearing girl with a confident smile.
"Aw, so glum!" Helga commiserated along with Lila before pulling a large, glossy, color photo-print from her math textbook. "I know the boy of your dreams is gone but cheer up! There are plenty of lookers to go around!" Helga slapped the photo down on the lunch room table. It was of Stinky as he accepted his award for best in show at the most recent vegetable-growing contest. In it, he wore a straw hat and a pair of bright, shiny red suspenders.
"Gosh!" said Lila ogling the picture as her jaw dropped. She let out a nervous laugh. "I never knew that about Stinky!"
"Bingo," Helga muttered under her breath.
"What was that you said?" asked Lila still staring at the photograph of Stinky Peterson, transfixed.
"Oh, nothing!" Helga quickly amended.
"Can I keep this photo?" asked Lila curling her finger around the crisp edge of the print.
"Sure thing, Princess," said Helga with a wink. "I've got a feeling that this is the one for you!"