This is a rewrite for the chapter book titled, Arnold's E-Files. If you do not have a copy as reference, you might look for a used copy. Otherwise, just imagine what was said or written by the characters during the bold print.
Helga swooned in delight. Her heart skipped a beat. Tonight was another day of bliss, for she would be seated behind her crush, Arnold. And the boy was noticing her, recently! Life was like a dream.
Helga hummed. She skipped one step as she arrived at the classroom door. Sure, she was late, but only a few moments so! Like clockwork, the halls had emptied and all the kids hidden beyond their respective doors. It gave Helga a bit of space to pull a locket from inside her pink jumper to fawn over it.
Chapter one, read the paragraph on page 5 and carries over to the beginning of page 6. Helga gushes.
Helga ripped open the front door to the classroom. Brainy waved at her from the rear of the room but she ignored him. Helga's eyes were all on Arnold, whose eyes were on... Wait a minute! Helga gawked. Her lovesick expression for Arnold was replaced with one of hatred and rage. Arnold, HER Arnold was admiring another woman. The enemy. A she-devil. It was a sixth grader from another class. Mary Margaret.
Read the final paragraph, then all of page 7. Arnold admires Mary Margaret and gets all hot and bothered. Oh, oh, oh! Such a no-no because….
Looking like the cold furies of Hell itself, Helga sat down in her chair. Arnold could feel an air blast like a winter chill rising up behind and he shivered violently. Helga's glare was boring right through his chair into his back. Then Helga spoke, with all the first letters of her name.
"Arnold… you were looking at her," Helga seethed in a whisper.
"No I wasn't," Arnold lied swiftly- not out of cruelty, but self-preservation.
"Yes you were!"
"No, I wasn't!"
"Class, class, shush please!" Mr. Simmons scolded. Helga scribbled down a note, crumpled it up to toss the unchewed wad onto Arnold's desk.
"WAS!" she had written angrily. Arnold scribbled on a sheet and pinned it up against his book.
"Wasn't!"
"Herk, herk, herk!" Gerald suppressed a laugh.
"Teehee!" Phoebe giggled. Blushing, both Arnold and Helga dropped the argument. For now.
Now read page 9. Siobhan is properly introduced. Skip everything up to page 16 for now. The piece we need starts with, "When Arnold logged on to his email that night," and ends with the first email.
Arnold read the email out loud. Then he quirked his eyebrow and tilted his head to the side. "Oh no!" Arnold said with misgivings. "Mary Margaret! She mentioned the computer lab! It's just got to be her! But I kinda like Helga." Arnold rolled his eyes around with grief. "I've gotta talk to someone about this!"
That someone was Gerald, Gerald Johanssen. The precocious boy was finishing up his supper when Arnold rapped a fist on his window, alerting him to Arnold's presence. Gerald opened the window wide to look outside.
"Arnold, why are you hiding there?" Gerald asked between hooded eyes.
"Gerald, I've gotta talk to you!" Arnold said with desperation.
"Is this about Helga?"" Gerald asked shrewdly.
"It's about Helga, but it's about Mary Margaret. Argh! I think it's her!"
"Alright, come inside!" Gerald relented.
"WHAT?!" Gerald said, leaning far over the tops of his basketball shoes to look at Arnold after he had recounted everything from the email he remembered. "She really said, 'SECRET ADMIRER'. I find that a little hard to believe. Mary Margaret didn't exactly strike me as someone who needs to be.. Discreet. She certainly ain't that way with gum, anyway."
"Gerald, it's GOT to be her!" Arnold said.
"Well, if you really believe that, send me the email. We'll look at it again, together in the computer lab tomorrow."
"Okay! It's a deal!" Arnold bartered. The best friends shook on it. Then Arnold went home, because it was getting late.
As planned, Arnold and Gerald met in the computer lab. It doubled as a stake out, too, for both Siobhan, a super-smart third grader, and Mary Margaret were there, too. Arnold and Gerald glanced at the two girls. Gerald read Arnold's email over his shoulder. But he shook his head and began typing a million miles a minute. Arnold read the email from Gerald, then grew annoyed. So began a minute of Arnold and Gerald shooting emails back and forth from one another until both stood up angry. Arnold picked up a book he had carried with him, then strode out the door. Both he and Gerald paused just outside the computer lab in the hallway.
"Look, Gerald!" Arnold breathed out irritably. "I'll handle this myself. Forget I ever told you about it."
But Gerald was equally as snappy. "Fine by me, man. Forget you, too," Gerald growled out before he stomped away.
Arnold sighed. What was he doing? He had really BETTER resolve this. So Arnold pressed open the front door to the computer lab and walked right in. Only things were not so quiet anymore.
Read page 40, 42, and 43. Then read the first part of page 46. Also keep the first sentence in the first paragraph on the second half of the page, after the break. Read the second paragraph after the break, but replace Arnold's words with, "Now I really wish I hadn't fought with Gerald. He was right about Mary Margaret. It wasn't her after all. But who could it be?" Then read the last sentence on page 46 and all of page 47. Have Arnold say the words out loud.
At his desk, Arnold raked his hands through his hair. Then he got up and dialed Gerald on the phone by his couch. "Hello Gerald? I'm really, really sorry for this stupid fight."
Sounding familiar? Read almost all of Arnold's email on page 54. But not all. Leave off the last sentence so there is NO mention of Brainy. Yet.
Things seemed to go back to normal at P.S. 118. Gerald and Arnold were best friends again. They stood beside the water fountain, drinking and checking out the girls whom were eyeing them in turn.
"See?" Gerald described. "Helga's still looking at you!"
"And Phoebe's DEFINITELY sweet on you!" Arnold grinned.
"Hm, hm, hum! We are men to be envied, Arnold! Walking dream machines!"
"Don't you think that's exaggerating a little bit?"
"Not when all of the girls can gaze upon the perfectness of myself!" Gerald said with a wink. "You're kinda handsome, too. You've a... sort of natural charm."
"Uh-huh," Arnold said hoping Gerald would not expand on that. The conversation was getting to be a little too much to bear.
Feeling a little self-conscious, Arnold made his way to the classroom at P.S. He sat in front of Helga's desk. When class began and Helga sat behind him, Arnold turned around to give her a puppy dog look that was every bit as cute as Abner's. Helga's heart watered into little globs of mush.
"Oh, the bittersweet rapture of adolescent love!" Helga breathed out under her breath as Arnold turned to face the bulletin board again. Helga laced her hands together across her chest.
Arnold busied himself with a scrap of paper and a pencil. He always took studious notes, although from time to time like today, he rested the pencil between his teeth instead of laying it down on table or even nibbled the rubber eraser tip. On this day he did both.
Arnold left school, secure in the knowledge that Helga still admired him. His eyes flickered behind him with a happy smirk. Things had not turned out with Mary Margaret, but he had Helga to admire him, and who could ever steal Helga's affection away from him? Who indeed? But this rewrite of Arnold's E-Files is not over. Not by a long shot.
Helga did NOT have a computer in her humble, simple room. Yet she did have an email account. The following day, she logged into it in the school website in their computer room. As she did so, Helga made the mistake of reading the directions written on a sheet of paper out loud. She even read her username and email address. Unbeknownst to her, Brainy was listening to her at a computer station not so far away. He tensed, then scribbled down her email address as she read it. Then he tucked it away in his pocket with a dreamy grin.
Helga watched her email account open up. She breathed heavily as it seemed to take forever to load and then, BING! Up came a welcome service message from the school. Helga ignored it, clicking instead on an email from Phoebe, whom sat two chairs down from her in the room.
"I got your email, Phoebe!" Helga shouted across the room disturbing all the other students.
"Shhhh!" everyone said as one.
"You need to reply by EMAIL!" Phoebe whispered.
"Oh!" Helga uttered, new to the concept of … well, you know, not actually talking but scripting. Helga ducked her head low. Then she sent another email. Phoebe gave her a steady thumb's up to let her know she had succeeded.
Helga typed with a bored expression. Her neck drooped and her cheek had almost hit the keyboard when something interesting happened. Helga stood upright from her chair and gasped. Another email?
"What the? What's this?!" Helga uttered under her breath. Helga clicked on it.
"Golden Hero?" she whispered a bit too loudly. She was shushed again, this time by Eugene and Peapod Kid instead of the whole room.
This called for drastic action. Helga stood up. Then she dragged Phoebe over from her computer terminal to sit at her own. Helga waited with arms folded, as tense and coiled as a bedspring holding up a concrete block. Phoebe read over the message.
"Not one word, Phoebe, not one word! Not here anyway! Now how do I turn this off?"
"Well, it will take a few minutes anyway," Phoebe mumbled. But Helga sighed, then grasped hold of the power cord connecting the computer to the floor. Mercilessly, she yanked the cord out from the wall so that the computer sputtered into silence instead of generating the dull whirr which older computers had. The computer screen went blank.
"Come on, Phoebes!" Helga pushed Phoebe forward toward the nearest exit. Helga was so worked up she failed to notice Brainy watching.
"Helga," Phoebe asked Helga as soon as they had barricaded themselves in a broom closet. "Who's Golden Hero?"
"Do you think I know? I was going to ask YOU!" Helga huffed, throwing her arms up over her head. "But he says he loves me, which is straight up weird. Arnold would never have the nerve to say that to my face… unless of course he isn't saying to my face! That's it! It just has to be! It's gotta! GOLDEN...HERO!" Helga explained with glee as she moved her hands together as making a compound word like "peanut butter".
"Helga if I remember correctly, and I recite, ahem!" Phoebe coughed before doing a rather ludicrous impression. "I have been silent, but now (insert all of the email on top of page 11)."
"What does that that tell us?" Helga sought Phoebe's opinion honestly. She waited for it, a stern expression on her unblinking face.
"Well, it does tell us he's a lousy poet. Picking strands of rubber off sneakers sounds...ew!"
"Phoebe!" Helga countered. "The guy says he LOVES me and I… I've never heard anyone say that before to me. Not anyone I could believe, anyway." Phoebe choked back a gasp.
"Helga please didn't tell me you're thinking about it! You can't just go throwing yourself around at any one who says that! What if he's mean? What if he treats you poorly or steals your crayons or makes you pay for every date? What if he treats you worse than well… your own family just because those are the words you wanna hear?" Phoebe echoed sadly. Helga glowered.
"Humph! Just because you're my best friend doesn't give you the right to call me stupid! I can pick 'em just as good as any other girl! And besides, this GOLDEN HERO might well be Arnold! And if so it's a flippin miracle! Something to be happy about! Geeze, Phoebe, you could act a little happy for me!"
"I would be," Phoebe hesitated. "Only I'm not so sure. Please, Helga. Let me ask around a bit. If it's really someone in our school… then I can…"
"No!" Helga shouted out, her rage as fierce as a dagger. "You will not mettle in this! If Arnold finds out, who knows what he'll think? Who knows what he'll do? I can't.. I can't afford to lose him Phoebe! Not like this! Not when I'm so close to…"
"To being loved?" Phoebe answered softly. "Helga I know how you feel. I'm just trying to protect you as a friend."
"Then act like one!" Helga snapped. She stormed out of the closet to leave Phoebe behind, alone and dejected.
The school day ended. Phoebe walked home as a gray, depressing rain began. It drizzled down her windowpane at home. Phoebe lay on her blankets and watched the grey threads, much more elegant to see than the threads of worn sneakers.
"Thinking about Helga communicating with some… stranger makes me sick at heart!" said Phoebe glaring at no one but her empty room. "I've got to do something about this! But what?!" Phoebe picked up her own copy of the rules for the computer lab. Her hands had hardly lifted the sheet from the table when she was struck by a thought. What if she snuck into the computer lab and snooped for info? And what if she collected everyone's usernames she could… casually without either Helga or Arnold knowing? It was brilliant! Phoebe jumped off her bed. She pulled on her raincoat and hurried out her house. She knew just where to go first.
"Hm," Rhonda Lloyd muttered in thought a good many minutes later. She swished her black-clad legs behind her as she sprawled out on a pillow and the plush carpet of her room. She studied the little black book of names and phone numbers in her hand and compared it to the names Phoebe had written down.
"Sorry, Phoebe, but I honestly don't know whose user name that might be. I already have the emails for nearly EVERYONE in the class but I haven't got that one. I COULD use your's and Helga's, though." Rhonda readied a pen to write it down in her book.
"Well, if you do find out who it is, you will let me know, won't you?"
"Why do you need to know so badly?" Rhonda had picked up on Phoebe's desperation.
"Ah, no reason," Phoebe mumbled. "I'd better go home, now." Phoebe walked slowly and sadly out the door.
Somewhere in her walk through the neighborhood, Phoebe stiffened her shoulders. Phoebe had come to an important decision. She walked right up Arnold's green door and knocked on it. Then she fidgeted nervously for the door to answered.
"Hello, Junebug!" Grandpa Pookie said wearing a cowboy outfit, complete with spurs. Phoebe blinked.
"Ah, is Arnold here?"
"Up in his room!" Pookie explained.
"Ah! Yes, I see." Phoebe crept up the staircase, glancing behind her back as she climbed every other step. That odd woman with the cowboy costume was watching her!
Mercifully, Arnold's room was more normal. Phoebe knocked on the door.
"Hello?" came a soft voice. Even softer tufts of yellow locks were revealed as Arnold opened the door to greet Phoebe. He blinked once in surprise.
"Phoebe? What brings you here?"
"Well, oh, ah… I just wanted to send you an email, Arnold. We're friends, right? So I may need to message you some day!" Phoebe blurted out. Without pause and without drama, Arnold took up scrap of paper and wrote on it.
"Here you go! Anything else?" Arnold asked Phoebe.
"No, no, that's fine!" Phoebe looked down at the paper in hand. "Hm, so your user name is ZenBoy. Is that right?"
"Right. Something wrong?"
"No, no, it's a fine name! Really!" Phoebe flustered "Thanks Arnold and goodbye!"
"Um, goodbye then." Arnold stood at the top of his steps behind his door as Phoebe scuttled away. Then he shrugged and went back to a half-open comic book. He sat down on his couch to read.
"Hm," Phoebe pondered as she stood out on the sidewalk of Vine Street. "It isn't Arnold! But then, who could it be! It isn't Gerald, or Stinky, or Harold, or Sid and that leaves very few boys it could be! Gasp! What if this CRETIN isn't in our class at all! What if it's someone out to trick and harm Helga? But then again, we are using the school website. I don't think it works for anyone outside our school. Hmm." Phoebe thought. She thought long and hard on it and returned back to P.S.118. School was out, but she pressed her nose to a glass window. The light was on in the computer lab! Siobhan was there, working long hours to get all of the computer work done. Mary Margaret was filing her nails as she sat on a desk instead of working at one.
"This job is SO boring!" Mary Margaret complained. "The only reason I volunteered for it was because it looks good on paper- as an academic achievement." Siobhan grimaced.
"Well, I feel computer literacy is an important skill!" Siobhan dared to speak up. "So I will do my best to finish up before my Mensa Club meeting."
"Tff! If you really are the protege you claim to be, it should be NO problem," Mary Margaret said rudely. Poor Siobhan looked even more unhappy than ever. Phoebe did, too. Going behind Helga's back to find out who Golden Hero was made Phoebe feel guilty.
The next day, Helga flitted around like she was in a dream. She blew a kiss and winked at Arnold at the drinking fountain, causing him to twist his head to stare. He got water down his neck instead of in his mouth, but no one else but the two of them had been around to see the exchange. Arnold wiped off the water that had not run down his shirt.
Helga skipped into the computer lab and sat down to type. Mary Margaret was the only 'administrator' present. When she walked out, to use the ladies room perhaps, Helga locked the door behind her so she was alone in the computer lab.
"Ah! Time to reply to my beloved!" Helga breathed dreamily. She spoke out loud as she composed.
Read all of the email on page 27. Finish reading page 27. Then read pages 29 through 32. Read the first email on page 33 but not the one on the bottom of the page. That doesn't happen. Instead:
After reading Arnold's email, Brainy collapsed into a nervous heap. He was stuck by his own words. Helga expected HIM to appear with a rose! Could he do it?
Brainy was absent from school the next day. Few of the students noticed his absence. Phoebe was much more worried instead about Helga's continual good mood. She met Helga by her locker.
"Pst!" Phoebe whispered behind the locker door. "So how'd it go? What did.. Well… G.H. say?" Helga tossed a book into the locker with force.
"Who says I've been talking with anyone?" Helga snipped. "It's not like it's any of your business!"
"Helga!" Phoebe glowered. "You have, haven't you?"
"So what if I did?" Helga stormed off, a different book under her arm. But Phoebe would not be shook off.
"Helga!" Phoebe panted with the exertion of keeping up. "You were right and I was wrong! I'm sorry! Now will you please tell me what is going on?"
"Well," Helga paused for a moment. The remorse of having shut Phoebe out actually stung her. So Helga minced words.
"I'm kinda meeting him tomorrow. At the park. Wearing a red rose. I haven't specified the park, tomorrow, yet, but I'll ask him that today! And then I'll know for sure! I'll meet at last my reticent, timid, Arnold and hold him in my arms (for years) at long last!" Helga hugged herself in adulation.
"The park? A red rose?" Phoebe muttered. Helga was too busy to see. A plan was DEFINITELY formulating behind those thick glasses of Phoebe's.
"Are really going to ask him?"
"Sure I am!" Helga said.
"When?"
"Right now!"
"Okay!" Phoebe said demurely, She followed Helga all the way to the computer lab. Phoebe had perfected mildness. She said not a word as Helga perfected her romantically-minded post.
"There!" Helga said with jubilation. "Now, when I go home tonight I had better make sure I'll look good for tomorrow!"
"Whatever you say, Helga!" Phoebe said a bit too happily. Helga stooped to squint at Phoebe, suspicion in her glare.
"You're acting plain weird, Phoebe! Out with it! What do you want to say?!"
"Why nothing at all!" said Phoebe. "What makes you think there was something?"
"Okay," Helga relented. In the blink of an eye, she forgot all her suspicions.
But it was not the last of Brainy, either, for when Arnold sat down at the computer lab next, he let out a heavy sigh.
"What's the matter?" Gerald asked in a whisper so as to not disturb others.
"He's begging."
"Who?"
"Brainy. For me to go and help him meet the girl of his dreams."
"Who's the girl of his dreams?"
"I dunno!" Arnold shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I'm probably gonna regret this but I feel for the guy. I'll help him this one time." Arnold typed on the computer.
"There you go again, trying to save the whole world," said Gerald. "But like you said. Let's hope it doesn't come back to bite you!"
"How could it?" Arnold asked naively.
Arnold was happy to help. That was until he and Brainy met at the park. Brainy quavered as he held up a single red rose. He gazed across the fountain in the park, the silver spray of its waters drifting up and cascading softly like the rhythm of a young girl's' hair as she rounded the bend. Arnold watch the girl stride toward the fountain in slow motion. That was… wait a second! That was Helga! Arnold gaped and looked at Brainy. Brainy's secret love was Helga?! But he- Arnold- had a crush on Helga, too! This was terrible!
Arnold was much too nice to hurl Brainy away. Instead, Arnold stood still with shock- a numb and horrified expression on his face as Helga stopped beside the fountain to turn her head in their direction. Helga might have spotted the pair of two boys. Yet she did not. To both of their astonishments, a very short boy with a blue dress suit, large black shades, and an enormous bouquet full of roses hopped out of a bush between them and Helga. The 'boy' then shoved the giant bundle of roses very nearly into Helga's face.
"Huh?!" Helga stuttered. "Who are you?"
"Golden Hero!" said the voice. Helga snatched the bouquet away with a sniff. "You seem awfully small for fifth grader."
"Ah... I'm in the fourth grade," the speaker lied poorly in a funny voice. Helga's eyebrow folded up in puzzlement.
"Let's not just stand here! Let's dance!" The person in a blue suit grasped hold of Helga's hand and dragged her into the nearest restaurant. The stranger put some change in a can so that a the band in coffee shop began to play. Then the 'boy' spun Helga around rather fiercely.
"Woah!" Helga declared. "This strange! And yet.. Oddly familiar! Who are you Golden Hero!" Helga squared off with the stranger. "Tell me RIGHT NOW!" Phoebe knelt. Then she took off her pair of shades.
"Helga. Please don't be angry. It's me!"
"Phoebe!" Helga gasped. "Er, but why?! Why would you do something like this to me?!"
"Because I love you," Phoebe admitted, tenderly.
"Phoebe, you know how I feel about Arnold," Helga let drop as kindly as she could.
"Oh, no Helga! I mean I love you as a friend! You are my very best friend, Helga, and you can be angry with me if you want, but I followed you here because I wanted to protect you!"
"Hmph! Well, that's all very well and good, Phoebe but I have the REAL Golden Hero to meet up with," said Helga turning on her heel.
"But it turns out the REAL Golden Hero is Brainy!" Phoebe uttered out with believable sincerity. Helga clenched her teeth together with even bigger shock.
"Then again, maybe not! I'd rather stay here with you for another dance."
"As you wish, Helga!" Phoebe said. With grace, she offered Helga her fingertips, curtsied, and then took the lead position for the dance. Arnold meanwhile was left with Brainy by the park.
"Ah, Brainy, I'm sorry, really but I've gotta go! There's somewhere I need to be!" Arnold left a dejected Brainy to jog forward down the street, his tie flapping the breeze. He, too, had dressed up to help Brainy meet his amour. Arnold had not jogged far when he spotted a disguised Phoebe and Helga dancing in a coffee shop to jazz music. Incredulous, he pressed his nose to the glass as the dancers separated.
"I'm going to the bathroom," Phoebe state. She wandered off, leaving Helga alone. Arnold took the chance to practically barrel into the restaurant.
"Helga?" Arnold panted. "What is that about? Are you… seeing someone?"
"Oh, that. Well. It's been a funny day, Football-Head. Someone pulled roses on me and told me that they loved me. It's a funny thing, though. I… I love them, too!" Helga fell lost in thought.
"You LOVE them?!" Arnold fell back in disbelief. This was even worse than what had just happened back at the fountain! Yet he cracked a smile in an eternally-the-gentleman way.
"Look, I'm sorry I barged in on you like this. I… I just hope that whoever the guy is- well, I hope he's everything you wished for him to be. You really deserve it." Arnold smiled a half-heart-broken smile. It seemed another crush of his had slipped through his grip.
"Oh, Arnold!" Helga snorted sarcastically, her hands on her hips. "It isn't a guy! It's Phoebe!"
"Phoebe?!" Arnold gasped out. His eyes darted back and forth confused.
"Yes, Phoebe was just being overprotective. And you know what, after all this I agree with her. No more online romance for me. If someone wants to tell me they like me, they have to do it straight up! No more hiding where I can't see them! Right Phoebe?"
"Right!" said Phoebe who had just returned from the bathroom. She and Helga whirled away for another dance.
"Ugh, I think I'm going to need some time to think this out. I'm confused. What is going on around here?" Arnold sat down at the coffee shop. He turned his head to see Rhonda, wearing a little red cap and scarf, as well as more expensive shoes than she usually wore to school.
"Oh, Arnold! Loosen up a little and enjoy the vibes! Maybe you can even ask Helga to dance yourself!" Rhonda said with coy delight. She had long suspected the two had a thing for one another.
Phoebe danced. She danced with Helga, but then she danced with Peapod Kid and Toothless Joe just for the thrill of it. Then the door to the coffeeshop swung wide open.
"Hey, who left me out of the party?" asked Gerald. Phoebe gawked up at her own sweetheart and battered her lashes up at him.
"Oh, hi Gerald!" Phoebe giggled. "I'm pleased to see you!"
"Care to sit down and enjoy a table for to with me, my fair senorita!"
"Why, Gerald, of course! I thought you'd never ask!" Helga watched with bemused interest as her best friend's attention was taken away from her.
Arnold was lost in a daydream. He tapped his fingertips on the tabletop in front of him until his eyes were almost cross-eyed with irritation. Arnold decided at last on something when Helga slid into the table in front of him. He took a pencil from his pocket and wrote on a napkin, "Crushing on someone else?" Helga stole the pencil from him.
"Was not!" Helga wrote back.
"Was too!" Both kids growled at one another from across the table top, flashing napkin protest signs at one another as their friends had a genuinely good time. It seemed they still had a lot to work out between them. The end.