A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I'm glad to see that you all believe that Helga is in character, despite her demeanor. This chapter sheds a little bit more light on her situation as well as explains the assigment.
Disclaimer: HA! is not mine, but the intellectual property of Craig Bartlett and Nickelodeon.
Chapter 4: Yet another "Special" assignment
The scene in the cafeteria last week had unnerved Arnold, and Helga's behavior hadn't changed at all. Arnold had not seen her pull out Ol' Betsy in a while, even when Harold taunted her. She just shot him a deathly glare and walked away. Yesterday, Brainy began to hyperventilate and had to be taken to the nurse's office; apparently, he was suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Arnold was a little unclear on what he was withdrawing from, or what it was, but he and Gerald saw him walking home one day repeatedly punching himself in the face, sighing almost contentedly after each punch. Gerald had shaken his head ruefully. "Mmm, mmm. That kid is a strange one," he muttered in a low singsong voice out of the side of his mouth to Arnold, who couldn't help to agree.
They had walked on, on the way to Gerald Field for a game. "Gerald?" Arnold questioned. His best friend looked at him. Both boys stopped walking. Arnold took a deep breath and continued. "Um…I'm really concerned about Helga. She's too quiet."
"You worried that she's planning something big? I wouldn't put it past Pataki." Gerald snorted and started to continue down the street, but Arnold grabbed his arm.
"No…wait a minute, Gerald. Stop. I'm serious. It's a bad kind of quiet. Like something's really wrong. I just know it, I can feel it." Arnold smiled a little. "I almost kind of miss the old Helga."
*SMACK!*
"Gerald!" Arnold held his cheek gingerly. "What the heck was that for?"
"To knock some sense into you, man! It's not normal for you to miss her bullying! Aren't you always saying that she's a good person underneath? That she has a soft, chewy center like the rest of us? Well, this is her showing it, so stop questioning it!" Gerald yelled. He shook out his hand, hopping from one foot to another from the stinging pain in his hand.
"Soft chewy center?" Arnold chuckled. "That's funny …yet strangely accurate. Gerald, she's not a Tootsie pop…but… I bet she's probably sweet like one," Arnold said, going half-lidded and gazing off into space, not even realizing he said that out loud. That was one of his secret thoughts that he usually had at night. What was it doing here, out in the cold light of day?
*SMACK!*
"GERALD!"
"Sorry, man, but you worry me!" Gerald's chocolate brown eyes looked at his friend, genuinely concern showing through. "You have been wondering about her for the past week…always talking about her and stuff, looking at her, and that, that almost kiss in the cafeteria-and don't deny it because I saw it, man! I saw it!,And…and now you just said that she's…" here, Gerald twisted his face in pure disgust, "…sweet like a friggin' Tootsie pop! What kind of sick twisted thought is that? And now? And now, you just now you had that expression on your face!" Gerald paused to catch his breath, his face red with exertion. The usually neat stack of hair Gerald sported was now sticking out haphazardly.
"What expression?" Arnold asked innocently. The whole right side of his face burned.
He narrowed his eyes. "That goofy, half-lidded expression you get! Lila got it and so did Ruth…if I didn't know any better, I would say you like-liked her." Gerald folded his arms, waiting for the denial.
Silence.
"Arnold…"
Silence.
"ARNOLD!" Gerald raised his hand. "Do you want another five across the face? Don't make me do it again!"
"Okay, okay, geez!" Arnold sighed. "I don't like-like her…at least I don't know if I do." Arnold added honestly, then ducked, narrowly missing Gerald's hand again, which caught his blue hat instead. "Besides, there's other stuff I can't explain to you."
"Like what?" Gerald questioned. Arnold momentarily forgot he hadn't told Gerald about what happened on the rooftop of the FTi building. He bent over and picked up the cap and placed it on his head. "I can't explain it because I don't know how." He quickly thought of something he was willing to tell Gerald. "Like I said, something's wrong. You know how sometimes I think I hear stuff that you can't hear? Just out of the blue?"
"Yeah…" Gerald replied, folding his arms and looking at his friend with narrowed eyes.
"Well, it's like that. But at night, mostly. And I wake up hurting, and aching. These weird marks show up on me, too." Arnold pushed up his sweater sleeve and revealed a faint reddish mark for Gerald to inspect. "And I'm scared, I can feel it. And…call me crazy, but I think it has something to do with Helga." Arnold rubbed the back of his neck and gazed up at Gerald.
Gerald stared at him, not knowing what to make of any of it. He took a big breath and blew it out.
"I don't know, man. I don't know. Just talk to her. If you feel you have to." Gerald looked at his friend further, then shook his head again. "C'mon Arnold, we got a game to get to."
Later the next day, Mr. Simmons bounced eagerly into the classroom and began to talk about the "special" projects that he was so eager for them to start. When the class had settled in, he eyed the students, excitement shining in his eyes. "This assignment is a doozy. It has two parts…wait, don't groan! You don't even know what it is yet!" He shook his head at Harold, who had been the loudest, and continued. "First, I want you to pick a hero or heroine, or even an event. A world changer, someone or something that shaped the world we live in today," Mr. Simmons paced back and forth in front of his students. "If you pick a person, they don't have to be famous, like MLK, but someone like Rachel Carson, who may not be as well known, would do quite nicely."
"Who the heck is Rachel Carson?" Stinky drawled. His eyes were lazily following Simmons and growing quite dizzy.
Mr. Simmons beamed at the question. "Well Stinky, guess you'll have to find out for yourself! She can be your special person to research!"
"Aww, shucks!" Stinky muttered under his breath. Sid and Harold snickered quietly behind him.
Mr. Simmons paused and surveyed the class. "How long do you think it takes to change a life?" he asked. He sat back and waited from responses.
"A week, obviously," Rhonda stated haughtily, pausing long enough from her nail filing to take the bait and answer first. "Mine changes every time Fashion Week approaches." She smiled absently, envisioning the runway shows that Daddy had promised to take her to this year if her grades were good.
"Wouldn't it depend on how long it takes for the government to agree on a bill? Or for a jury to decide a verdict?" Phoebe asked Mr. Simmons. Her mind was already made up on probably examining Brown v. Board of Education or something similar.
"Nah, more like a quarter," Gerald replied, flashing Phoebe a smile, causing her to flush pink with pleasure at his attention. "Sometimes, it all comes down to that last quarter, when the score is tied and you've got to pull ahead to win it."
Mr. Simmons smiled. "All good answers, and all of them right. Sometimes, it only takes mere seconds to change the course of a life forever, people," Mr. Simmons said quietly. He stopped pacing and leaned against his desk, arms folded. "I want you to really study their lives, and study their motivations, emotions, their hearts. Ask yourself, why did they do it? What was to gain? To lose? And then, I want you write about your own special life changing moment."
"Would you not change a thing? Or would you do it differently? Or not at all?" he asked. "Examine yourselves, dear hearts. You're not too young to start thinking about these things. Some of you have already experienced what I'm talking about." His eyes sought out Arnold's, no doubt thinking about the events only a few weeks prior. "These are the questions that shape our lives, which become history, your history," Simmons continued. "Make the answers count."
Mr. Simmons kept talking, but his voice faded into the background for Arnold, whose hand gingerly moved to touch his lips, remembering that kiss. It was burned into his memory, now. He was certain that it was one of those life-changing moments that Simmons was going on about. It was his first real kiss. Yes, there was the play, but that was scripted and he knew it was going to happen. The kiss he and Helga shared was unexpected, and passionate, and warm and everything he thought a real kiss should be. It felt like one he would see in a movie or something.
Arnold sighed and put his head down on his desk. Part of him wished it never happened; he would have bobbed and weaved his oblong shaped head to avoid it like the plague if he knew that the fallout would be Helga completely changing her personality. He never wanted that to happen, ever. That was the only thing that Arnold could think of for Helga to make such a drastic change; he didn't outright reject her, but gave her an out.
But…
But, if he was completely honest, it was to give himself an out, too.
Kissing Helga complicated things in a way he wasn't ready for because it made all these questions bubble up inside his brain. Does that mean that if he didn't love her back, they couldn't be friends? He considered her change in behavior and thought about how it answered his question.
Arnold didn't like this, because he didn't know what love was. How would he know? Not for the first time since the FTi incident happened, Arnold wished his dad was around to ask about this. Surely he was in love with his mom and could tell him what it felt like. Sometimes, Arnold sneaked into his grandparents room and stared at the few remaining photographs of his parents. The way that they looked at each other…he didn't look at Helga like that. And he knew that he should, if he was in love with her, or even like-liked much he knew. But then, Arnold would think about how he felt around Lila, or Ruth, and how close it sometimes (only sometimes!) was to how he felt about Helga. Like that…but more intense somehow, more raw.
"What…what does it mean if I liked it? Really liked it?" he would think sometimes, that being the most asked one of all. Arnold would lay in bed at night sometimes and think about Helga's lips. They were so full and soft, and tasted like…well, he couldn't place it, but it was like a sweet that he had never tasted before yet felt so familiar. Those lips tasted so much better than the cotton pillow that he secretly used to practice kissing when he was sure that Lila liked him.
Then, he would quickly push the half-answered response out of his brain. Arnold really didn't want to answer that, he reasoned.
But…
But, if he were completely honest with himself, he had to admit, that sometimes…mostly after he would wake up from one of his particularly vivid dreams of him and Helga kissing, and kissing a lot…sometimes, he thought that he did want to know; that if he could go back, he would be ready for those hungry lips with his own.
A/N: The assignment Mr. Simmons talks about comes directly from a lesson plan that I created and used last year. It was really successful, and I'm pretty proud of it. I'm glad I used it in the story, because, well, it's special!
Read and review, dear ones! The next update will be Sunday, I think. Check out my new one-shot, "Stay with me tonight," if you need something to hold you over =]
