This one's for Halloween, but a reader by name of "Dragon" asked for a story to explain why Helga is so afraid of rats. Here's a humorous explanation, in her own words.
On a foggy morning of October, a crowd gathered at the back of P.S. 118's, Mr. Simmon's fifth grade classroom. "Gawsh!" Stinky Peterson said, awestruck by the tragedy. Less reverent kids like Curly and Toothless Joe had gotten a stick from outdoors, and gently they prodded and poked the class pet garter snake who was flipped upside down, a glassy look in its eyes. There was no doubt about it. Georgie, the class pet garter snake, was dead.
So it was, on this particular October morning, a week prior to Halloween, that the class flag was lowered half staff. The green school spirit flag was half lowered, too, out of respect for it could be said that Georgie the gartersnake had died in service of P.S.118. And, as the class somberly (and for a few of the kids even tearfully) said their goodbyes to the little green garter snake and buried him in a hole dug next to the fenceline and rhododendrons in the school playground, it might have been said that a garter snake could not have asked for anything better except not to be owned by a bunch of fifth graders in the first place.
"Gawsh," Stinky repeated himself. "That's plain dang sad!"
"Yeah, it is Stink Meister!" said Helga folding her arms together. "But the question is, where are we gonna get a new class pet?" It was not the greatest of secrets that P.S.118, their class included, barely managed to get by on budget money and fundraisers. Overhearing the kids murmur about replacement pet ideas, including Eugene's strange idea of getting an armadillo for a mascot, Mr. Simmons snapped his fingers together in inspiration. As soon as the kids all filed back into the classroom, he fished around his desk for jar. Pouring the paper clips out, he relabeled the jar and set it on top of his podium.
"Okay, class!" said Mr. Simmons. "Settle down! Now I know we are all sad about the loss of our friend, Georgie. But since many of you are eager for a new class pet, I have an idea! We can all put our change together and raise money for a new pet! Now how does that sound?"
"Oo! Can it be a hamster?" asked Rhonda. "One of the FASHIONABLE kinds?" the trendy girl said leaning across her desk by one arm, a tranquil grin sliding across her face as she imagined.
"A rodent?" Helga groused. "You have got to be kidding me! You want rodents, just go hang out back the dumpster for a while!"
"A fish!" Eugene declared almost fearfully at his bravado. But Mr. Simmons stared flatly at Eugene.
"No, Eugene. No fish!"
"A scorpion!" shouted Sid.
"A turtle!" shouted back Stinky. Mr. Simmons clapped his hands to both sides of his head as the classroom degenerated into shouts and thrown chalkboard erasers.
"Class, class! Since we are all in disagreement, I am going to pick one student to decide. Now let's see," said Mr. Simmons examining the members of his class closely. "Nadine! Since you did more than anyone to take excellent care of Georgie, I think it's only fair that you get to select the next class pet!"
"Okay!" Nadine promised with a tinge of doubt in her voice. "I can go after school to the pet shop. I'll try to get something good!"
"Great!" said Mr. Simmons with enthusiasm. He passed the empty mayonnaise jar to the first seat in his class and Sheena dropped a quarter in. The glass jar slowly made his way around the classroom, with each of the kids dropping a bit of change inside. After a few minutes, Nadine lifted the half-filled jar and peered inside it.
"Good! Great! Now, that that's settled, we can go back to our school day! Students, please open your textbooks to page 114!"
"Aw!" Harold whined propping his feet up on the back of the desk ahead of him, his arms folded. "I hoped we'd get the day off after the funeral!"
"Nope!" chimed in Stinky as the class resumed its usual activities. "Such is life. One day celebrated. The next day forgotten." The class resumed. After school, Nadine gathered up the glass jar with change and walked out the door with it. Helga watched Nadine's retreat with distaste.
"Whaddya say she comes back with a giant bug?" Helga guessed.
"Or a cageful of crickets!" said Phoebe. "They are only five cents apiece!"
"Right," said Helga. She watched Arnold walk out the door to catch up to Gerald before setting out herself.
But the next day at school, a new kind of horror had settled into the classroom. This time, students of the class were outraged because Nadine had spent their coins not on a giant beetle but a giant, sleek, black…
"Rat!" Rhonda complained. "Nadine, I distinctly told you I wanted a hamster!"
"This pet is for everyone, Rhonda!" Nadine disagreed tactfully. "There wasn't much money in the jar when I counted. The pet store was selling rats half-price, so I had only just enough!" Nadine kept her eyes crossed until Rhonda lifted up her hands in defeat.
"If I knew THIS was going to happen, I would have slipped in a five-spot!" she lamented.
"A rat!" said Harold. "That's STUPID!"
"Well, I actually think it's not that bad," said Sid tapping the glass with his finger to try to get the rat to come out of its hiding place among pine bark shavings. But amongst the murmuring students, one girl in a pink dress had not yet arrived. Yet Helga G. Pataki was about to. Stepping into the classroom with a sleepy stare on her face and a book cradled in her arms, Helga walked drowsily towards the cage her fellow students were crowded around. Pivoting her sleepy gaze downwards, she stared down into the cage and saw only pine bark.
"Oh, hi Helga!" Eugene said cheerfully. "Would you like to see our new pet?" The red-haired boy lifted a black rat into the air so near to Helga that its whiskers almost touched her nose. The textbook fell out of Helga's hands and she shrieked. And shrieked. And shrieked again before backing up into Arnold who was only now arriving at the classroom.
"A RAT?!" Helga muttered, recovering from her initial fright. "Nadine! I want my money back! A rat is NOT a pet! It's vermin!"
"Hey, the pet shop guarantees the animals it sells are in perfect health!" Nadine disagreed stubbornly. She took the pet rat from Eugene, stroked its back once, then set it down gently in its cage, closing the lid. "Why are you so scared, anyway?"
"Why?" said Helga. "I'll tell you why! Rats are nothing but evil! They might look furry, but they are only waiting for their moment to strike!" said Helga snapping her hands together like jaws. "I remember! When I was seven years old… it happened!"
"What happened?" asked Eugene tensing. Helga put a hand on his shoulder and forced him down on a chair.
"Sit down kid, and I'll tell ya!" Helga flicked out the classroom lights so that it was a little darker, especially with the window blinds closed. Ever helpful as usual, Phoebe pulled a flashlight out of her desk and put its spotlight onto Helga. Helga bowed toward her audience. "Thanks Phoebes!" Then her story began.
"It was a warm spring day!" Helga declared. "The tulips were blooming, the daffodils were waning, and everything seemed peaceful. Except.."
"Except what?" asked Eugene fearfully as Helga scratched her chin.
"There used to a small shed in back of my parent's house. Nothing big! Just for tools really! Only we don't have that shed anymore!" Helga declared with dramatic flourish. "And I'll tell you why!" Helga rubbed her hands together.
"I was sleeping out on a blanket in the backyard, just an innocent, not-rat-hating seven year old! My father was trying out his new gas-powered hedge-trimmers and suddenly I woke up!" Helga pantomimed waking up suddenly. "And there, on the edge of my blanket, staring back at me, was a big, black huge rat nearly as tall as I was! I screamed of course! It ran back into the tool shed it had come out from!"
"That's not that scary!" Eugene protested. Helga scoffed.
"Oh, no? Well, how about what happened next? I was sleeping in my bed with the window open later that spring. All of a sudden, I heard a small noise. I looked up. And there was the rat again! Only he had torn off my doll's head with his teeth!" said Helga making the jaws with her hands again and moving them to cast shadow puppets on the wall. "I never saw my doll alive again! Its head was bitten off! And then, my father rigged together some high tension wire and some electronics to make explosives and blew out the wooden wall it had nested in. Collapsed the whole shed, really! So we don't have a shed anymore." Helga declared taking on a cheerful note.
"Um, isn't that a bit extreme?" asked Eugene more fearful of explosives that rats still.
"Not at all!" said Helga. "The bugger deserved it! That doll was trademark merchandise! And," said Helga regaining her menacing voice again. She snatched the flashlight from Phoebe and held it under her chin.
"Ever since that day, I've been waiting for the rats to return, knowing, that if I leave my guard down for a moment, they'll chew all the meat off my bones and leave nothing but a skeleton!" Helga leered into the flashlight. She flicked on the classroom lights. "The end!" Helga ended almost cheerfully. She handed the flashlight back to Phoebe to put in her desk.
"Aren't you exaggerating how big the rat you saw was?" asked Rhonda standing beside her best friend Nadine. "I didn't want a rat, either, but this one is much too small to eat anyone!"
"Oh, no?" said Helga. "Well, don't blame me if you all get covered in rat bites or come down with some sort of infectious disease!" With a loud humph, Helga trotted over to her desk behind Arnold's and sat down in it. Half turned in his chair, Arnold eyed her with concern.
"Say, Helga," the boy questioned. "Are you going to be all right?"
"Oh, yes! Eugene's next in line to take care of the class pet! Won't be long till the thing croaks!" Arnold couldn't argue with that one, so with a grim frown, he went back to fiddling with school supplies on his desk.
Yet, Helga could not part with her morbid fascination with her mortal enemy- the rat. Just before lunch, she crept to the back of the classroom and stared at it through the glass. The staring contest lasted five whole minutes until the rat squeaked and scampered away into a pile of pine shavings. "I'm watching you!" Helga warned before backing away and heading off towards lunch with a power walk.
The week passed swiftly enough and soon it was the day of Halloween. Fortunately, this year it fell on a school day so there would be extra candy in class and a miniature "class party" with cupcakes and punch. Arnold got down off the school bus all smiles. He walked up the front steps, went to his locker, then spotted Helga pacing down the hall past him.
"Hey, Helga!" he said as the girl paused to get a good look at him. "I didn't see you on the bus today! I thought you were sick!"
"You didn't see me today because…" Helga began. The class bell rang. "Oh, well, I'll tell you all about it later! I've got to turn this piece of paper into the front desk!" Helga announced before strolling off. Tranquil, Arnold walked down the hallway towards class.
Helga, meanwhile, paused by her locker. She rummaged inside and pulled out a new pink bow. Then she unloosed the one she was currently wearing by tugging gently at its edges. Carefully she tied up the new hair bow and examined the old one. Its edges were frayed. Helga stretched the ribbon out to measure its length. Sometimes she could save a ribbon by chopping off its edges to clean them.
"Ah, this one's getting mighty short!" Helga complained. So she carried it down the hallway with her and dropped it in the nearest trashcan. As Helga strode away, a black rat came crawling out of the trash bin with Helga's pink ribbon clenched between its teeth. With a squeak it scurried away. Meanwhile, in Mr. Simmon's classroom, thing were getting heated.
"Ah, who left the cage door open!" Harold complained. "That was dumb!"
"Wasn't me!" said one student!
"Wasn't me!" said the next, on and on until Mr. Simmons came in the door at last to much hissing and fuming.
"Class, class! What is the matter!" Mr. Simmons asked.
"Mr. Squeaks has gone missing!" Harold declared angrily.
"Oh, dear!" was Mr. Simmon's lament. "We'd better contact Varkas."
"The school janitor?" asked Sid. "Cripes, he'll kill him!"
"Sh, shh! Calm down Sid!" Mr. Simmons pleaded. "Maybe if we ask nicely, Varkas will help us retrieve Mr. Squeaks...alive." Sid and Stinky both shared a silent agreement that Varkas bringing any rat back to their classroom alive was bogus.
"Well, I say that if we end up getting a new class pet, this time, it's a hamster!" said Rhonda. With her painted fingernails poised against her chest, she raised a twenty dollar bill above her head in her other hand. Mr. Squeaks seemed much less a loss after that.
Meanwhile, Helga still hadn't headed in the direction of the classroom. Instead, she went to turn in a note to the school's secretary. She slid the note across the desk.
"I've got to cancel on early classes today!" Helga clipped out. "Got an appointment with the pediatrician!"
"Okay, Helga dear!" said the school secretary. "Good luck with your… constipation." While she HAD been walking away, Helga froze. She whirled half around.
"Do you HAVE to say that out loud? It's clearing up!" said Helga before stamping down the hall with rage. Soon she buckled up into the car and she was off.
"You don't look especially happy, Baby Sister!" said Olga who was driving. "Did something happen?
"Step on it!" Helga frowned, as unhappy as could be. Soon, Helga went to an annoying but necessary checkup. Afterwards, she and Olga dropped by Hillwood City Pharmacy and Helga sat in the front seat of the car drinking a cream soda from a bottle.
"Ginger is good for you, Little Sis!" said Olga after skipping out of the pharmacy with another bottle, this time a green one. Helga took it silently and read the label.
"Thanks, Olga. Say, is my Halloween costume still in the back?" Helga said returning to Olga's pink convertible. The top was up because it was foggy and raining slightly. Helga stood up on her toes and draped herself around the car seat to dig out a little pink bag. She smiled slightly when she found it.
"Are you a witch?" asked Olga buckling in. "You'd look oh so adorable in that little pointed hat!" said Olga flicking a finger at the imaginary peak of a hat on her own head.
"Nah," said Helga. "I'm a ghost! I'm keeping it simple this year! Just some pale foundation, mud, and some fake chains!" She hummed, because if she hurried, she could make it back to Mr. Simmon's Halloween Party for cupcakes, punch, and candy.
As Helga and Olga drove back towards the school in Hillwood, Principal Wartz pulled his car into his private space. Humming happily, he opened his car door. Hurrying through the light rain quickly, he removed a wooden crate. This he carried to his office and using a crowbar, pried it open. Then, rubbing his hands in glee, Principal Wartz stuck his hands inside to pull out armfuls of Halloween decorations.
"Oh, boy!" said Mr. Wartz. There came a knock on the door. It was one of the sixth grade teachers rolling the model skeleton from science class along by its wheels on the floor. The teacher looped her arm around the skeleton's shoulder like they were friends.
"Ready to start decorating for the teacher's Halloween party?"
"You betcha!" replied Principal Wartz with a hearty wink.
"Hm," said Arnold as the hours at school went by. "Where is Helga? She should have been here by now!" the boy fussed a little. He turned backwards to look at the vacant chair.
"Ah, she probably is home sick today!" said Gerald. "She wasn't on the bus this morning!"
"That's what I thought, too!" said Arnold. "Except I talked to her this morning! She was here at school! I wonder why she isn't at class yet?"
"Hm," was Gerald's comment before he bent his head back to his books. Arnold was still wondering where Helga had gone when the bell for lunch rang. Sid was the last one out of the classroom. He was late walking down the hallway towards lunch when he heard a squeak. Sid turned to see a rat running past him in the hallway streaming a pink ribbon.
"It's Mr. Squeaks!" Sid declared to himself before hurrying after it. The rat led him straight through a doorway that was cracked open slightly ajar. It was the room that Mr. Wartz and the sixth grade teacher had decorated for Halloween. The lights were off and the only light came in round the edges of a covered window. Sid stumbled inside and the rolling skeleton from science class fell over on top of him. Sid screamed! Then Sid looked down at the pink ribbon on the floor and screamed some more! Somehow, the rat had managed to leave at exactly the right place for Sid to find it.
Arnold was chatting with Gerald, Rhonda, Harold, and Stinky in the lunchroom next to rainy but surprisingly bright windows when Sid came running towards them at top speed. Panting and heaving with exertion, Sid thrust out the pink hair ribbon he had found for Arnold to take.
"Sid? What's this?" asked Arnold lifting up the ribbon between his hands and looking at Sid in askance.
"Helga was right!" Sid said catching his breath. "We shouldn't have trusted him! Mr. Squeaks got out, and now, he's eaten Helga! There was nothing left but the bones!" Arnold stared. This time, it was Gerald who answered the distraught boy..
"Sid, you're talking crazy talk! What are going on about, man?!"
"That's why... Helga never made it into class today," Sid said gulping. "Mr. Squeaks got her first! I found this ribbon to prove it!" said Sid pointing.
"Well," Arnold said awkwardly. "This ribbon does look a lot like Helga's. Where did you find it Sid?"
"I'll show you!" Sid declared. He marched his boots straight up to the classroom decorated for Halloween. But the door was slammed shut. It now was locked. Sid tucked on the door's handle in vain.
"That's funny," said Sid. "It wasn't locked before!"
"You must have imagined it, Sid!" said Gerald.
"I'm telling you, I didn't! I promise!" said Sid. Just then, the rat scurried out the door again, this time with a long finger bone in its mouth.
"That's it, I'm breaking down the door!" said Gerald, his eyes getting determined.
"Mm...mme...me too!" said Harold getting over his own fright. Together, the two boys knocked their shoulders into the door. It swung open just as the rain grew heavy enough to thunder, sending a flash of light across the dim room to reveal a bunch of bones laying on the floor.
"Mommy!" Harold said biting his nails. Arnold stood stock still, his mind still whirling to try to determine what the reality of the peculiar situation was when someone called his name from the hall.
"Ar...nold!" came Helga's voice as lightning flashed again. "Arnold!"
"Helga?!" Rhonda bit her painted nails in fright when she had whirled around. Arnold, Gerald, Harold, and Stinky all gaped, too.
"Gawsh, I figure it's a real, live ghost!" Stinky pointed with a trembling finger. Helga kept her hands on her waist and humphed, blowing a strand of her loose hair out of her face.
"Of course, I'm a ghost!" said Helga. "What'd ya think?" Sid dropped to his knees.
"We're sorry Helga! If only we'd known Mr. Squeaks was evil! We could have prevented this terrible tragedy from occurring!" Sid placed his face in his hands and sobbed.
"Yeah, well I'm a ghost, so I'm going to the Halloween party. Any objections? No? Good!" said Helga walking delicately down the hall. Her confused friends trailed after at a distance. Mr. Simmons smiled as Helga entered the room.
"Why, Helga! What a nice costume!" their teacher remarked as Helga sat down in her usual chair and folded her hands together.
"Only it's not a costume!" Sid freaked out. Stinky nodded his head in agreement.
Staring, Arnold looked down at the ribbon in his hand. Then he looked toward Helga trying to put two and two together. Still silent, he sat down at his own desk.
"You reckon Helga will keep this classroom haunted from now on?" asked Stinky.
"Shh!" said Rhonda. "Maybe she won't hold this against us and, I don't know, go home to haunt her parent's place or something!"
"I'm haunting everywhere tonight!" said Helga overhearing. "Tonight's Halloween!" Rhonda, Stinky, Sid, and Harold hid low in their chairs. But Helga tore a strip of paper from her notebook. Wadding it up, she spitwad it at the back of Arnold's head. But instead of the usual frown, Arnold rubbed the back of his neck and smiled instead. The spitwad had been warm.
After a brief lecture, Mr. Simmons let the class break out the class Halloween Party goodies instead. Arnold got up from his chair, stretched and smiled at Helga. He touched the back of Helga's hand to test it. Sure enough, Helga's hand was warm, too.
"I never thought I'd be so glad to be spitwad in my life!" Arnold spoke unexpectedly. "For a minute there, I thought you really were a ghost!"
"The costume had you fooled, huh?" asked Helga.
"That and other things," Arnold answered softly. "So where were you this morning?"
"Doctor's appointment," said Helga. "I meant to tell you, but I was in a hurry!" Arnold held out something in his hand.
"I found your ribbon," the boy said offering it toward Helga.
"Nah, this one's too old even for me! I threw it out! Thanks anyway though!" Arnold smiled and kept the ribbon in one hand.
"So, you up for some punch?" he asked instead, stuffing the ribbon into his pocket for now. He and Helga strolled toward the party food as Sheena and Eugene set it out on a table made of lots of desks pushed together, then covered with a colored sheet.
"I sure am!" said Helga.
"Happy Halloween, Helga!" said Phoebe dancing near. Phoebe was smiling. But Gerald still looked frightened to go near her.
"Happy Halloween to you, too, Phoebes!" said Helga lifting up her own cup. She took a few sips out of it, then strolled over nearer to Sid.
"BOO!" Helga yelled loudly. Sid jumped a mile high. The end.