She never intended to follow him to college. In fact, the plan was to start over while she was there, without him. Her childhood crush hadn't eased up and ever since she told him how she felt, Helga found her feelings for Arnold to be nothing more than a burden. She'd tried everything to get rid of them. She'd had a few boyfriends –even convinced herself she liked them for a little while—and even took one of them on a double date with Arnold while he was dating Lila their sophomore year hoping that seeing him with that goody-goody and the fact that she had her own boyfriend would give her brain some sort of reality check and allow her to somehow forget her feelings.
Despite all of this however, that crush remained like a ghost haunting her from her childhood. Her final tactic was to lose him from her life all together in the form of the University system.
She listened to him talking to Gerald about schools during the last semester of their senior year. He had plans to go to a university just a half hour from home, so that he could continue living with his grandparents. The old coots were as agile as ever but he still felt better staying with them in case his grandpa's back went out again or his grandmother went on another jungle expedition through the city.
Arnold's college plans worked out well for Helga. Big Bob had been pushing for Helga to attend his alma mater ever since her summer job with him at the beeper-turned-cellphone shop, so getting him to help pay for tuition in order to go to college a good 4 hours away from home not only allowed her to move out and away from her family, but it was far, far away from that football headed blonde that she couldn't get her mind off of otherwise.
So how is it there he was in the common room of her co-ed dorm? Why was it his dumb head bent over his cellphone with a goofy smile on his face and an open text book in his lap? How had she still not gotten away from him?
Ruth. That's why he was there. During the summer he'd reunited with her while she was home visiting family. Sometime while Helga was busy packing her life away, ignoring her sister's wonderful college advice and her mother's drunken depression after realizing she'd soon be adding "empty nest syndrome" to her list of disorders, Arnold was bumping into Ruth on a trip to the mall. They caught up and chatted and started dating over the course of a couple of months between high school and college and he decided to start going to her school so that they could spend more time together.
Helga chose a coed dorm because she despised girls. The only one she ever appreciated having around was Phoebe, who had went on to college a year early and was currently attending some fancy university on a full scholarship and living with Gerald now that he'd graduated. Helga decided even though there were still girls in a coed dorm, at least there would be less of them. However had she known she'd be stuck under the same roof as Arnold, she might have chosen to deal with the nagging and the makeovers and the menstrual irritability.
When she first saw him, her initial reaction was that uncontrollable jump in her chest. The one she once lost herself in while hiding behind lockers or in closets and alleys. However the immediate afterthought was that of pure anger. How dare he? How could he? Following her like a curse she'd never deserved into her university. Her new life. And when that thought passed through her, she dropped a pink sock in his white laundry.
Arnold wished he were rooming anywhere but under the same roof as Helga G. Pataki. Literally. Anywhere. He attempted camping on the campus green until campus security made him leave. He didn't feel like the streets were safe enough—though Helga wasn't much less dangerous—and Ruth had already paid her tuition and her roommate was completely against him even spending the night, let alone living there. He'd asked Ruth about getting an apartment over winter break, but she was convinced he was moving too fast.
In the end he decided it wasn't impossible to avoid Helga in the dorms. There was a lock on the door, and besides, his new roommate, a fine arts major named Duke from Kentucky, wasn't that bad. Not to mention, outside those walls, just across the campus green in the girls dorm was Ruth. And she made the torture endured during the time he spent in the common area of the dorms a little more bearable.
It wasn't that Helga was as mean as she ever was to him. In fact, she'd changed a lot since elementary school, and her bullying became a lot less physical. She decided to rely more on pranks and insults and a few obscene hand gestures his way. Nevertheless, it definitely put pressure on his attempt at being civil with her.
Luckily there were no more "heat of the moment" confessions to make things more awkward between them than they originally were. When Helga first confessed her feelings—and admitting to most likely a certifiable amount of obsession—Arnold didn't know how to handle the situation. They had both agreed without agreeing to pretend it never even happened and that it was nothing to begin with, but they both knew. They'd always know. Luckily since fourth grade it seemed to him as she had finally moved on. He assumed her harassment was just a longtime habit and he'd have to deal with it.
Other than the harassment, however, Helga had physically changed a lot. Helga had grown to be a bit more well endowed, unlike her older sister who stayed a dainty thin form. Not only had she been able to fill out all of the Nancy Spumoni clothing she'd saved up her summer earnings on, but she began to possess more dominant features than her mother and sister, most likely coming from her father's side of the family. She'd grown into long legs and a large bust and shapely hips typically shown against her clingy Nancy Spumoni jeans and and pink shirt.
She'd left her pigtails long in the past but her pink bow was a dominant feature of her style whether it be in the form of a decoration on her pink flats, as a charm on a necklace or sometimes held the sides of her hair back out of her face. Thanks to her days of attempting to move on, she'd learned her way around the beauty section of the drug store and kept her eyebrows waxed and wore just enough makeup that she didn't feel like she were wearing a second skin.
Arnold hit his growth spurt during freshman year, out growing many of his classmates except for Gerald and Stinky. He was tall and lanky and his sense of style hadn't changed much, a pair of blue jeans and some sort of sweater or button up—sometimes both—pretty much summed up his every day since of style. His pants typically had one or two holes in them—he never threw them away unless they were completely unwearable—but he pulled it off like one of the high end distressed jeans someone would get from a department store. He never spent money on new shoes, instead he wore the same pair every day, a beat up pair of sneakers he'd had since junior year. Like most guys he never really changed his hair style. It didn't keep it's youthful form of spiked on top of his head and began to lay back instead, but he never put too much effort into how it turned out when he left his dorm and many times people would claim he was intentionally going for a bedhead look, but the true story is that he would only run a brush through it once a day and nothing more. He was just one of those guys that seemed to make a style out of not caring about his style.
Helga tried avoiding him as much as possible, and luckily the feeling was mutual yet unspoken. If they did pass each other in the halls of the science building or the caf, he would politely wave and she would greet him with a smirk, eye roll, or middle finger, depending on her particular mood. The second semester however, they somehow became lab partners, and vocal interaction became completely unavoidable.
"We never have good luck as lab partners. Did the professor just think it was funny pairing up the two from the same school?" Though both annoyed at the union, Helga was the first to voice her irritation. She worked while toying with the tongs, picking up pencils and balls of paper and dropping them while leaning her face against her hand with a total lack amusement.
"We'll just have to make the best of the situation." Arnold starting pulling together all of the items for the particular experiment and getting them situated. He noticed Helga's eye roll as she shook her head and put the tongs down. She muttered something about his "damn catchphrase" under her breath. "Look at least we know each other. And we know how the other works. So how about we just try to get through this semester without killing each other?"
She scoffed a bit under her breath but shook his offered hand in agreement. She couldn't look at him when she did, though. Shaking his hand was hard enough without eye contact. The experiment began, they both pulled on their goggles, Arnold poured some sort of chemical into the beaker while Helga heated another chemical under a flame. Every once in a while he'd bump her or she'd bump him, and they'd both pretend not to notice but silently agreed, this was going to be a long semester.
The first month or remained voicelessly awkward as the two were forced to continue working together as lab partners. They attempted trading, asked the professor if they could work separately, but nothing ever came of it. The two were stuck together. After their attempts at changing partners and leaving class failed, however, things weren't as bad as they had anticipated.
By mid March—over two months into the semester—they had progressed to small talk, mostly consisting of "that smell in the dorms the other day" or "the streaking guy on the campus green." Every once in a while, however, they would stumble upon an actual conversation.
"Ruth. Isn't she that sixth grader you had a crush on back in the day?" She remembered the scenario well. Especially since Arnold was two-timing her—well Cecille, but her as Cecille—in order to go on a valentine's date with Ruth on the same night. "I thought you got over her because she was a snob."
Arnold shrugged, looking down at the lab sheets, but Helga could swear she saw the slightest blush on his cheeks. "Well she's different now. She grew up. I mean we all grew up. She's a lot cooler now."
Helga held an insult and a scoff in the back of her throat. Insulting the girlfriend does not a good lab partner make. She knew it was probably a bias talking, but she felt that he could do better. Ruth had treated him like a bus boy. Not to mention Helga's irritation at her ignorance when Arnold told his friends she thought that "anonymous" was a real physical person. "Whatever. Just don't come crying to me when she dumps you for a maitre d' this time."
Arnold rolled his eyes and filled out their lab paperwork. "That's not going to happen. I told you, she's different." Before she could comment again, Arnold interrupted. "Will you hand me the sample?"
She clamped her mouth shut before the remark could leave her lips and passed him the lab sample. She knew Ruth was no good for him, but what was her reasoning in telling him that? She had never directly met the girl. Besides that, he was happy, and even though the elementary school Helga would have been driven crazy as the idea of him being happy with someone besides her, the college Helga knew a happy Arnold was a good thing, not matter the reason. So why ruin it with insults? It didn't matter that the girl was a snobby rotten no-good…
"Helga?" Arnold was looking at her with concern and motioned down to her desk. "Are you okay?"
"Huh?" She blinked over at him and looked down at the pencil snapped in her hand. "Oh sorry. Old habits die hard, eh?" She laughed a bit and threw the two ends of the pencil in the trash as she excused herself to the restroom.
"Pull yourself together Helga." She told herself, pacing back and forth in front of the bathroom sinks. You've spent two months sitting with this guy and it is going well. You're almost there. You're moving on. You can do this. She leaned on a sink and stared at herself in the mirror. She'd long since stopped arguing with herself out loud—Brainy made sure to finally break her of that habit—but she couldn't help her thoughts from crashing around in her mind like an interstate pileup when she became frustrated. And nothing frustrated her more than that guy.
Arnold. She thought. What a loser. What a stinking pile of garbage. Who does he think he is coming in and ruining my life before I even got it fixed? Being so nice to me and making it even harder to just be a friend. She sighed, washing her hands in the icy cold water just to jar her from her thoughts. She couldn't stay in the bathroom forever. Lab still lasted another 45 minutes.
He didn't know what he'd done to set her off. She didn't even seem like she was angry before that moment. It was obvious that when left to her own thoughts Helga could put herself in a bad mood, however Arnold couldn't help but feel like he'd done or said something wrong. He cleaned up the experiment, eyeing the door for her return. As she fell back into the seat beside him, releasing a deep breath, he slid her his observation notes. "You want to type them up?"
She shrugged, unable to look him in the eye. She'd had enough of being a good lab partner for the day. She took the paper blindly, luckily avoiding his hand by a couple centimeters as she slid it into her binder before the group lecture began. She heard the light sound of a phone vibrating beside her and couldn't help but glance over to the mild disruption. She knew who it was by the smile on his face as he slid his cell under the desk slyly.
"Criminy…" she muttered, rolling her eyes and leaning forward, leaning her chin in her hands. She couldn't wait to get back to her dorm.
The professor kept the class an extra ten minutes while he finished his lecture—an act that should be against every school policy. Arnold and Helga were both anxiously tapping their feet against the floor, as if a race were to start between them as soon as the teacher dismissed them. Arnold would have won. He'd already muttered a "Later, Helga," and had his backpack slung over one shoulder before she even stood up. By the time she'd closed her satchel, he was gone.
Arnold shoved his phone in his pocket after sending a quick message to his girlfriend informing her he was on his way to meet her at the coffee shop on campus. He ran to the University bus that was parked at the end of the street and checked his phone again. She said she had news. He didn't know what it was, but any news from Ruth was good news.
She waved at him from the table outside. Her hair was a little longer than when she was in sixth grade, reaching her shoulders. She'd kept her thin form and big smile he'd always liked even when he didn't like her attitude. "You got here quick."
He laughed and smiled, shrugging as he set his bag down beside him. "Got lucky catching the bus." He looked at the table. "Did you order my coffee?"
"Oh," she glanced down at the table as if surprised it wasn't sitting there. "I couldn't remember what you liked in it so I figured I'd let you order it." She seemed to forget about the text with his coffee order in it. Two creams three sugars.
"Oh well. What's the good news?"
Her smile lit up, just like always. "You're never going to guess. Go ahead guess." He opened his mouth but she continued before he could respond. "I got approved for the study abroad program!"
The initial reaction was that he was genuinely happy for her. She'd been hoping to visit Europe during the summer but she was worried her financial aid wouldn't cover it. However that meant for the entire summer she'd be in another country. She would barely even be able to call since long distance was so expensive and he knew her calls would be more importantly to her family than to him. Nevertheless, he plastered a smile on his face and congratulated her. "That's great Ruth. You'll have to take plenty of photos while you're there."
"I will!" She reached in her purse—which was too big to be carrying around as it could have been used for a book bag—and pulled out the brochure for her trip. "I'll go to Spain and the U.K. and England and France and Scotland and Ireland."
Arnold wanted to remind her that England, Scotland and Northern Ireland were part of the United Kingdom, but instead he just smiled. "That's awesome. I'm really happy for you." But inside he was miserable.
Helga fell on her bed with a sigh, letting her books fall with a loud thump against the floor. She had another class in a couple of hours, but after all the emotional stress of chemistry, she was tempted to skip it. It was an easy class anyways and she was maintaining a solid A in it without even giving it her usual half effort. Her roommate was still in class, and would be for another two hours. It was ideal time for a nap or a music blaring diary session.
Her sister had given her a leather bound journal for her birthday; surprisingly one of the best gifts her Olga had ever given her. Her old diary had been filled up a few days before and so it was perfect timing. Since then she'd been using that one every night, religiously. Whether it be a four page story about the kid that followed her around campus because he didn't know English and couldn't find the counselor's office, or a short paragraph because she'd went to her classes and came back to her dorm without any major event, there was an entry for each and every day of her life.
Helga pulled her laptop out of her backpack and plugged it into the stereo system on her bed. Before long her music was as loud as she could make it without getting a visit from the resident advisor and she was wrapped up on her bed with her journal and pink feather pen.
Diary,
Why is chemistry so hard?
Helga.
That was all she could put on paper. She was stumped for words for the first time in her life. She stared, blinking at the almost blank page in her journal, but before her mind could wander further, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.
She was barely able to answer it at the last ring. "What is it Miriam? Did you lose your keys again?"
"Helga?" It was Phoebe. "It's me, Phoebe."
Helga smiled and sat up, leaning her head back against the wall and stretching out her legs. "Oh hey Phoebe, what's up?" It'd been a long time since she'd heard that mousy little voice. They'd been texting frequently as usual,however, meaning each girl was completely up to date with everything going on in the other's life. Despite the fact that Phoebe was dating Arnold's best friend, Helga knew she could still trust her with all of her secrets, just like she'd always done.
"Gerald and I have spring vacation coming up next week at our respective schools and I was wondering if I could come visit you. Gerald was hoping to catch up with Arnold and I know you've needed a verbal outlet for your frustration for a while. Perhaps we could go out to dinner just us while the boys conversed."
Helga let out a sigh of relief and smiled. "Phoebs, you're a genius."
A/N: So this is my first attempt at a Hey Arnold fanfiction. I have never written a Hey Arnold fic before, nor have I read one. But I have read some of the fancomics and they are magnificent. I have a pretty solid idea of where this is going written out in my pocket notebook but I'll be happy to take any ideas into consideration especially for the name which I completely drew a blank on.
Also I'll be writing on my off days mostly so I might only update on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Also I'm trying to stay in character as much as possible. Luckily I grew up with these characters so that definitely helps. And also yes, Helga is still in love with Arnold, but now she hates being in love with him because it's pointless. If there are any character changes as far as how they are acting, remember that they are in the 18-19 year old range now, they aren't children. I had to mature them a little bit...except Arnold. He's always been a 40 year old man...
Anyways please review! Positive or negative tell me how to make it better!