Well Here it is! Sorry it took so long, but I had to get my creative juices a-flowing with some LOVERLY Jim Lang music :) Let me tell you, it is GLORIOUS to listen to his music and secretly imagine that it is playing in the background of what you're writing. haha.
ANYWAYS, I should probably stop blabbering and let you read this fun chapter. I hope you're liking the story! keep the reviews coming and be sure to let me know what you're thinking of the story! And tell your friends too!
DISCLAIMAH- The only character that is mine is Ray. Everything else is all Craig Bartlett's and I thank him every day that he came up with this fantastic series :)
Enjoy!
xoxo
Polkahotness
"What do you mean we have a lot to do?" I asked with a dumbfounded expression plastered on my face.
"What it's ALWAYS meant ya football-headed freak. Now c'mon."
"Who is it Shortman?" I heard Grandpa call from the kitchen and I turned around to grab my jacket and slip it on.
"It's Helga, Grandpa."
"That little friend of yours from Elementary school who had the big crush on yo-"
"Grandpa-"
"-u and you liked her too but you were too afraid to-"
"GRANDPA."
I saw him peek his head out with a grin and a chuckle.
"Have fun..."
I could feel the blush hint in my cheeks and I felt my blood boiling beneath my skin. After closing the door, I faced Helga to see just what her expression was.
She was looking at me with her eyebrow raised and her arms crossed and her weight had shifted to rest on her left hip.
"What was that about?" She asked with a cocky tone.
"Nothing. Don't we have stuff to do?"
I thought it was an odd idea going out for ice cream with three inches of snow on the ground, but Helga wanted some and I wasn't about to fight the plans I wasn't aware of. It wasn't like I had anything else to do and ice cream always tasted good.
She seemed to like it a lot. I mean, her and Phoebe were always talking about it, so I figured it was a girl thing. Guys never talk about food that passionately.
Sitting at the table, I watched as she ate her Vanilla ice cream cone, chewing on the edge of the waffle cone, letting the ice cream pool at the bottom. She seemed to be thinking about something other than what was happening at this very moment.
"So what made you show up at the boarding house today?"
"We had plans." she took a large bite off the top of the cone and crunched it loudly, her chin resting on the heel of her hand. "Doi."
"But... but you said you never wanted to see me again."
"Nope. Don't remember that."
"You have to. You yelled it out in the middle of the mall. In Salfry."
"Salfry? I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Helga..."
She swallowed the waffle bits she'd been chewing and sighed, defeated.
"Okay FINE. So I yelled at you in a mall in a town. So what."
"So, you seemed pretty mad at me."
"Well I was having a bad day."
"Helga..."
"Don't HELGA me, okay? I just thought that maybe while you're in town, I'd say Hola and give you a few hours of my day before you run off to Florida for another year, or two years, or however long it takes you to fly off to another country and never see me... I... I-I I mean US... again."
I stared at the bowl of ice cream melting in front of me and spun it around with my plastic spoon until the bowl was full of green liquid cream with bits of chocolate sticking out.
"So what are the rest of the plans for today."
"Thought we'd take a fun little trip down memory lane." she tossed the end of the cone in her mouth and licked her finger before tossing her napkin in the trash basket next to us.
"And what do you mean by that?"
"I mean throw that bowl of mush in the trash and lets get moving, bucko, we got a schedule to keep."
So off she lead me, her hand on top of her head to hold her hat in place from the destructive wind threatening to blow it off. I still wondered if that familiar pink bow hid beneath, but I'd never ask. She'd probably beat me to the ground for even mentioning it. One day, I remember in Middle School, she just showed up completely different. It was almost as if she had changed overnight. One day she's in that pink dress she always wore with that pink bow, the next she shows up with some hat on top of her head and form fitting jeans with various baggy t-shirts fitted just enough to see that she had started to develop a... womanly shape. It was about that time that Rhonda too started wearing different clothes, but different in the complete opposite of how Helga changed. Suddenly, Rhonda was wearing short skirts and tight shirts that made it hard NOT to see that she was...er...developing. And of course after Rhonda did it, so did everyone else. Except for Helga. She stayed the same as always; trying to be herself instead of some carbon copy our school had become.
Maybe that was what made her so appealing. She wasn't LIKE them.
"Arnoldo? You doing okay back there?"
I blinked my eyes a few times to see Helga standing on top of the large hill I had so many memories on. The same large hill I had been reminiscing over just yesterday.
"What are we doing here?" I said as I met her at the very top.
"What is it look like we're doing? We're sledding." I looked over as she pointed to two sleds, one blue and one pink. "Obviously the pink one is mine."
I smiled and reached out for the blue one in a circle just like Helga's.
I couldn't remember the last time I had gone sledding. We must have done it up until we all changed in Middle School. The snow days became lazy days and we would remain inside sleeping and watching old re-runs of cartoons we used to obsess over just years before. Weekends became date nights instead of revolving around endless baseball games at Gerald Field that soon became a vacant lot once again.
Its funny how people grow up, but given the chance, they retreat to their childlike ways just as Helga and I were about to do.
"Isn't this pretty dangerous? I mean... we never really thought out what we were doing when we were kids..."
"You a chicken?"
"Huh?"
"A chicken." she crossed her arms and shrugged. "I mean, if you and your stupid football-head of yours is afraid-"
"I'm not scared, Helga."
She reached down and picked up the sled while shoving it at my chest.
"Prove it, Arnoldo."
I grabbed the blue sled from her and grinned while tossing it on the ground ahead of me directly on a patch of ice.
"You ready?"
Startled, she quickly kicked her sled in place beside mine and jumped on it with her knees directly under her butt. Grabbing a hold of the handles on the pink circular sled, she held on tight until her knuckles were white and slowly started to count down from three.
"3...2..."
"ONE!" We shouted together and we slid down the hill faster than we had as laughing kids years ago.
It was an odd thing to hear Helga laughing. Laughing in fun that is. Towards our last few weeks of school, Helga had changed rather significantly. While we still talked, her ridiculing of me became more and more frequent, yet without the laughter that usually followed her name-calling.
"It's Helga, man. You can't expect Helga G. Pataki to be the same ALL the time." Gerald said as we walked home from school that May afternoon. My eyes were focused on the cement beneath me and I kicked a rock ahead of us with a sigh, my hands shoved in my pockets.
"I know Gerald, but it just doesn't seem like her."
"And why do you CARE, Arnold. Honestly."
"Gerald, you know why."
"I'm not so sure I DO anymore. Let a brother in."
I stopped in my tracks and looked directly at Gerald.
"It's just that... well I worry about her. I know she isn't really the big bully she acts like."
"You do? And why's that?"
"I just... I just KNOW, Gerald. And I know something is wrong. She doesn't laugh anymore. It's like she isn't even remotely happy."
"So talk to her. Seems logical to me." He said as he started to walk again and I shrugged while following after him.
"It isn't that easy, Gerald."
Up ahead I could see Sunset Arms drawing near and as we reached the stoop, we stopped and sat down on the concrete steps, our backs against the tall hard walls that acted as railings of some sort.
"Because-"
"You see how she acts around me. She-"
"Puts up a front because she LIKES you, man. C'mon. You know it, I know it, the whole damn SCHOOL knows it and then there's YOU."
I stared at him startled, my thoughts drifting back to memories of the FTI roof and Helga's words that I had worked hard to forget. The kiss that for some reason, I just couldn't.
"I just can't ask her."
"Fine. But don't say I didn't tell you so."
Nearing the bottom of the hill, I could feel my sled spinning around and I opened my eyes to see our sleds about to crash. But we were laughing so hard, we were enjoying this moment so entirely that I didn't care to try and avoid her sled, and she didn't seem to care about colliding with mine. And just before we did, our eyes locked for such a brief moment that I knew exactly how I had felt about Helga even when I didn't know it.
It's just that... well I worry about her. I know she isn't really the big bully she acts like.
CRASH!
Laughter was quickly lost as our sleds hit and we tumbled out of the circular sleds we had been riding on moments before.
"Ouch!"
"Ung!"
Before we knew what was happening, I was lying on top of her, both of us groaning for a moment in brief pain.
And then we opened our eyes.
Silence.
I looked down at her and stared deep into her eyes for a long moment. Behind them was the same person I had grown to know throughout my entire life. Hard. Strong. Brave and insecure. Lost. In search of just who she was and who she wanted to be.
"Uh..."
She stared up at me in what at first seemed to be happy but quickly faded to embarrassment and finally, the usual of annoyed that I was even in her presence.
"Just what do you think you're DOING, Football-head! Get OFF of me!"
I rolled off of her and sat down on the snow while standing up and offering her my hand.
"I can get up without your help, bucko."
"Right. Sorry, Helga."
"Sorry, schmorry. How about we pack it in and grab some winter delight down at Slausen's?"
Slausen's wasn't terribly busy as I was afraid it might be. And lucky for us, there were only two people working, so they weren't hovering around us asking if we needed anything.
We sat in our usual booth that we had always sat in since elementary school, except the gang didn't join us this day. Today, it was just Helga and I and as awkward as one might think it would be, it wasn't one bit. I listened intently as she talked about her plans for the future, her ambitions and the new friends she had made. I laughed at the stories she told about her oddball professors and the embarrassing audition she tried to do on a whim for the theatre class she had randomly decided to take. But through it all, I found in Helga a new sense of self and self-worth. She talked nothing of her parents or of her sister, Olga. In fact, the rest of the Pataki family seemed to be the furthest from her mind. She had managed to get loads of generous scholarships from her straight A's all throughout high school and she raved about her internship at the local newspaper and her job as a secretary in the meantime as some receptionist at a massage center. And while it seemed as though it wasn't her thing, she went on and on about her coworkers and how they'd helped her get money to pay off her second rent payment for the apartment she'd rented off campus.
Helga G. Pataki was going out and doing everything she'd secretly wanted with her life.
"So," she said as she took a sip of her hot chocolate, "how about you, Arnoldo? Things working out for you in Florida?" Her mood had changed significantly and I could tell she had wanted to ask about this since she'd first seen me.
"Oh... uh... well you know. It goes."
"Seriously. I wanna know just what it is that made Florida your best option."
"Well." I cleared my throat and adjusted in my seat, the booth suddenly feeling a lot harder than it had five minutes ago. "I'm working on getting my Private Pilot's License now, and from there I need to work and get-"
"No, no, no. I mean your school. How is it? Your classes, your friends, your girlfriend."
Her voice cracked on the last word, and I swallowed the lump that had grown heavy in my throat. I could feel my cheeks turning a bright red and I looked down at my mug of half-full hot chocolate that had started to grow lukewarm at best.
"I uh," I cleared my throat again as it had grown excruciatingly dry. "I don't uh, have a girlfriend, Helga."
Without looking up to catch her reaction, she continued, and I focused on the whipped cream that had melted into the brown liquid.
"So what about your friends? Haven't replaced Tall Hair Boy, have ya?"
"Oh no. Gerald and I talk quite a bit still. Whenever we can video chat, even though it tends to be late at night. Otherwise, I guess its okay. I have a pretty cool roommate. His name is Ray. He's pretty quiet though, which makes us get along pretty well. He likes Jazz a lot like I do. We like to mess around on the piano and stuff like that."
"Piano?"
"Yeah. We invested in a keyboard this fall, so we make beats a lot and sometimes go down to this little coffee shop we have down the block and we play there every once in a while. We have a nice following."
"I thought you had given up on piano."
I shrugged and looked up from my mug to find Helga looking at me intently.
"I dunno. When I found out Ray liked Jazz, I borrowed the keyboard we had in our lounge and he brought out his electric guitar and we just started playing." I smiled at the memory and reached up to rub the back of my neck.
"Would you ever play something here in Hillwood sometime?"
"Oh, I don't know, Helga. It's really not something I think anyone would be interested in hearin-"
"I would be."
I looked at her quizzically and she shrugged.
"I mean, I wouldn't want you out there playing for NO ONE. Least I could do is listen to whatever it is you would play."
I smirked and shook my head.
"Same old Helga."
But she wasn't. And as I waved goodbye to her on my way inside the boarding house, I smiled to myself knowing that even though we'd probably only get one day together during this break, maybe in the future we'd be able to start over as friends and talk on a regular basis.
I decided that night as I lay in bed staring at the sky that peaked through my window on the ceiling, that I would like that. I would like that a lot.
So what do you think? Review and let me know! Hope to see you at chapter three! :)
