This idea is brought to you by Quis Custodiet who enlightened me with a great idea that i am going to take for a whirl.

Here's hoping!

Please review!

Blinking my eyes, I awoke to see the ceiling staring ahead of me. I hadn't slept well, much like every other night, but after Arnold's appearance yesterday I slept even worse than normal; my dreams that of nightmares only egging me on to when I awoke.

I regretted everything with Arnold, every small interaction that led to our departure from each other so many years ago.

Okay, so it was only three years, but three years feels like an awfully long time when you still wish you were in high school. And to be honest, I knew almost NOBODY who actually wished they were back in high school.

Nobody besides me who was still clearly caught in the past of everything that was and never would be again.

Swinging my legs over my bed, I stood up to stand tall and stretching in my studio apartment where rent was cheap and the building was even cheaper. All the studio apartments in this town were over shops and other such places where tourists could spend their money and then leave this rainy city to resort back to their homes in better places.

Not that I hated Washington. It was my home, after all, it just held so many memories I'd rather forget then continue to remember, even in my unconscious state.

I yawned and made my way to the pile of work clothes I planned on reusing for my midshift today with Emily who was already finishing up my list of 'to-do's which I left her from last night.

With a breath, I took steps towards my window that overlooked downtown which was covered in blankets and blankets of rain pouring out of the sky like a hole in an overflowing bucket. Clearly, it was just another day in the neighborhood and I was just another nobody getting ready for their nobody job at their local nobody Rent-a-Movie.

I sighed and picked up my half-pack of cigarettes only to open them up and remove a single stick from the carton. Putting it up to my lips, I picked up my lighter and lit the cig at the end and inhaled deeply before letting out a giant cloud of smoke from my mouth and nose; the burning sensation making my nerves calm down and my body slowly relax.

"Just another day, Helga old girl, you can do this," I said to myself in between puffing my cigarette once again. "You can do this," I repeated before going in for another drag.

It was true, I COULD do this because I HAD been doing this for years now since graduating high school. Work the weekends, full time school and job during the week, I filled my days with empty promises of a future in hopes that it would distract me long enough to forget all my regrets from far too long ago.

Or at least I tried.

It was hard to forget when there sat a crazy-shaped-head-of-a-reminder in my Ethics class, and I wasn't just talking about Geraldo.

Nope, I was talking about Arnold who I'd have to face on Monday and every day thereafter. He was like a plague that wouldn't give up; a hopeless reminder of the life I COULD have had if I'd just given us another chance.

I could peg it all back to that one day, that one day in American History that I'd been invited to Harold, Sid and Stinky's crazy life adventure—one that I couldn't forget as it had ruined everything.

If I'd just had the chance to go back—go back and fix that stupid mistake of turning Arnold down like he'd probably secretly wanted me to do.

He didn't love me. Not anymore and not then, either. I was an experiment; a trusty test in that of life which I'd failed epically.

But given the chance? I'd take it. I'd take his date in a heartbeat and fix everything I'd done wrong those years ago, experiment or not.

After all, he couldn't have meant that, could he?

It was just another question I spent my life trying to analyze and find the answer to without so much as luck for help. It was foolish to keep going over some stupid thing that happened all the way back in high school. It was foolish to go on and on over being called an experiment when he had said that wasn't what he meant in the first place. And it was foolish to continue thinking about this when I had somewhere to be in roughly ten minutes.

Shit, I was gonna be late.

I reached down to put out my cigarette in the ash tray and quickly clothe myself in a last-ditch effort to get to my job on time. Not that I cared all that much. It WAS just a silly Rent-a-Movie job and those kind of jobs were a dime a dozen in this college town.

I often wondered where it was that Arnold spent his time, other than his boarding house with his parents; still trying to make up lost time from all the years they were missing from his life.

But even though I wondered it, it didn't mean anything more than wonderment to me. It wasn't like I was going to text him and ask what it was he did with himself while out of school. For all I knew, he spent his time off with a hoard of girlfriends and Gerald while dancing around a fire and singing the songs of his people from back in San Lorenzo.

Ah… San Lorenzo… back where it all started, my brain foolishly thought as I ducked to get into my car and peel out of the parking lot en route to my pathetic job.

San Lorenzo had started everything between Arnold and me. After getting back from that hot, deadly place, Arnold and I did something remotely close to dating, though 6th graders didn't really know what all dating included. So we broke it off—and that was the first time.

Following that, we were on again off agains, sometimes together and other times not, our longest relationship with each other lasting that of four months back in our Junior year.

But I remembered how that ended far too well. It haunted my every dream and ruined every memory with the haze it brought to my every thought. It may be pathetic, but I was still living in my days of High School, the days where there was still a chance of Arnold and I being together and more than just classmates at the local university.

No matter what, however, I couldn't go back. Magic didn't exist, at least not in the literal terms, and I was far too old to believe in something completely impossible.

Which is why I resorted to living at my job as much as possible.

I pulled into the parking lot and put my car in park while blinking through the rain dripping onto my windshield in between every wipe.

"Well Helga," I said to myself while looking into the rear-view-mirror at my hazy and tired blue eyes, "here's to another day back at the grind."

And with that, I left my car to enter the familiar run-down building I called my job.

"So he tried to hit on you? Again?"

I rolled my eyes at Emily and shrugged while putting a sticker on the corner of the DVD box in front of me. "Yeah but what else is new? He's been hot on my tail since, well, since Arnold."

Silence.

Emily knew how much a topic like Arnold bothered me to talk about. But even so, she pressed on as I pressed on the sticker to a new box and rubbed it on flat and free of bubbles. From afar in the store, I could see a gentlemen glancing at me and Emily while browsing the racks and I couldn't help but stare back at him in curiosity.

"Well what's stopping you?" Emily asked me to get me out of my trance before blowing a bubble until it popped and shrugged herself. "I mean, you ARE single and ready to mingle, aren't you?"

I chuckled and shook my head. "I'm gonna say 'no' to that one, Ems, I mean, he was ALWAYS a jerk in high school and not much has changed since college began."

"Ahh, but, he IS older, isn't he?"

I gave her a confused glance, "Yeah? Two years, I think, but it's NEVER gonna happen—"

"Because of Arnold?"

I stared at her with wide eyes. What had gotten INTO her today? I questioned myself before blinking a few times and stuttering out an answer. "Because Wolfgang is a JERK, Emily, I just TOLD you." The words came out sourly and it took her aback when they flew out of my mouth like ants escaping a firey ant-hole.

"Yes," she responded carefully, "but wouldn't it help you maybe, I don't know, get over Arnold once and for all?"

"By dating Wolfgang," I stated without emotion while Emily offered a sly smile.

"Not just him, but anybody, really."

I shrugged my shoulders as the strange man made his way to another rack; his eyes still lingering on me somehow from where he stood. Trying to stare anywhere else but at him, I said, "I mean, it isn't like it wouldn't HELP to date somebody else," the thought had never really crossed my mind too much before. "But even so, I haven't met, well, ANYbody worthy of me in a really long time."

"Since Arnold?" She asked with a hint of playfulness though I wasn't really in the mood.

"Uh…" I said before licking my lips and frowning. "N-no, not really."

The man took another step forward towards us, a DVD in his hand that he tapped along his other appendage almost anxiously.

"And you really don't think you could still get him back?" She asked me then, a doe-eyed innocence taking over her facial expression in a way she usually had. Emily was much younger than me, freshly 16 and at her first-ever job. She didn't understand the world fully yet and was still in high school—a dream sequence in that which is life.

Still, I smiled at her, a sad smile, and said, "Nah, Ems. I'm afraid that ship has sailed for us. We uh, we weren't very good together anyway."

It hurt me inside to say such lies, but even so, she had to hear the sad truth. Sometimes, life just doesn't work out the way you dream it will and that's just the sad fact of life that we all have to learn sometime or another.

Best to learn that lesson NOW rather than LATER, I had learned, so maybe it was the best for her to hear it from me—the other end of that ridiculous rope of 'love.'

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that Helga. You seem like a really nice girl."

Ha. If only she knew.

"Yeah well, haven't you heard? Nice guys finish last and there's no difference between any guy or girl. That, my dear, is LIFE. Better to figure that out now and stop wasting your life dreaming."

"Sounds like somebody hurt you awfully bad, miss," The man I'd been watching said as he approached the counter with his movie choice. "I suppose you wish you could go back and fix it all, don't you?"

I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my brow at him. "And what good would THAT do?" I demanded as Emily awkwardly took his movie choice—13 Going on 30 –and began to ring him up in our system as he presented his frequency card.

The man shrugged his shoulders with a smile still plastered on his face. "Just a thought out loud, I suppose. I'm sorry."

"No, no, no," I continued as Emily stared at me from my left, "Who just comes in here and asks a random girl about her past love life, huh? What's your angle exactly?"

The man, still smiling, lifted his arm to place his hat back on his head and said, "No angle, miss. Just wondering if you would change anything, that's all."

I stared at him, my eyes glowering in his direction while Emily continued to look between the two of us in near suspense.

"Well," I began almost nervously, my eyes locked with his for a moment longer than a minute, for sure. "I guess, I uh," Why are you even ANSWERING this guy? "I guess I would, yeah, if that chance were even a real thing and could happen."

The man nodded his head as if he received the answer he was looking for and took his movie from Emily who was offering it to him from over the counter. "Well, someday maybe, right?"

I nodded my head in silence, a stoic look on my face as the man tipped his hat my way and wished us a good day before exiting the store; leaving us with a stunned look full of confusion lost on both Emily and mine's faces.

"What was THAT about?" She spoke my thoughts exactly as I shook my head and stared outside the window to watch him walk down the street and disappear into the horizon.

"I honestly have NO idea," I stated before blinking my attention back down to the DVD's I was still stickering.

What was that even about? Who just asked strangers those kinds of questions? And what was he doing eavesdropping on my conversation ANYhow?

Questions filled my mind though I tried to push them to the back of my mind while pushing for Emily to hand me some more stickers. "Sticker me," I said though the man's words stuck with me far longer than any adhesive even after Emily left me alone to the store and its patrons for the night.

WOULD I choose to make a change? Even if it physically was possible to change the past?

Maybe. Maybe I would change my life around just so I could fit Arnold into the mix of it. But even if I could, I still can't so there's no need to think about such a crazy idea.

Yet, crazy or not, the thought just wouldn't leave me as I sat in the quiet store by myself. I went through each idea, each thing I would change, over and over again until my mind finally shut off and I fell asleep behind the counter like many-a-day that I'd work.

And even in my dreams, I found that if I could, if I really, really could, there were quite a few things that I'd change after all.