Letters to a Young Poetess
by Kaelanti
Chapter Two
"Flowers of Red and Black"
"I still say you're crazy, man," Gerald said, as he lounged on Arnold's stoop, looking up at the setting sun with his best friend. Arnold glanced over, offering Gerald a half-smile as he shook his head. "I mean," Gerald continued in that tone he reserved for when he was trying to make a very firm, obvious point to a very stubborn, seemingly-clueless Arnold. "What possessed you to suggest we have a party for Helga Pataki?"
"She's our friend, Gerald." Simple words, to go along with the simple smile that Arnold offered back at Gerald. He could understand his friend's confusion, honestly. After all, there were so many times that he wanted to just walk away, wanted to give in and fight back, rather than simply letting her abuse wash over him. But every time he seriously considered it, something always ended up changing his mind, some tiny glimpse that perhaps there was more to her than simply a blowhard tomboy in pink. "You don't want to?"
"A party, instead of schoolwork? I can live with that. But you want me to be all noble, don'tcha? Say that deep down, I actually dig the girl?" Gerald waggled his eyebrows at Arnold, and Arnold couldn't help a soft chuckle at his friend. He stood up as the last sliver of sun disappeared behind buildings, and held out a hand to help up Gerald as well.
"I'll settle for tolerate," Arnold smiled, and their fists bumped together, thumbs waggling back and forth in silent acceptance of the spoken and unspoken. "What I want is for you to help me tomorrow," he added after a moment, walking up the steps and opening the door. Gerald followed him inside, listening to Arnold even as he waved hello to Arnold's grandfather.
"Help you with what, man?" Gerald asked. Arnold glanced back at Gerald for a long minute, then smiled secretively, turning to climb the stairs to his room. Without question, Gerald followed him, just as Arnold had known he would. They were a part of each other, as close as brothers. Closer, in fact, Arnold reflected, if you counted the way Gerald and Jamie-O felt about each other.
When they were in his room, with the stairs pulled up behind him and the door shut, Arnold turned to the radio. "I think we should get her something before she goes," he said, as the soft strains of jazz began to fill the room. "Something to take with her, I mean. More than just a card." He moved to sit down on his bed, looking across the room at where Gerald had flopped down along his red couch.
"You are kidding me," Gerald pronounced slowly, a disbelieving note to his voice. "First you suggest a party for her, and now you want the two of us to get her some sort of special gift? Arnold, did you hit your head today on the monkey bars?" Round eyes narrowed to slits above a wide-spread nose, and Gerald nestled his chin against the back of his hands, staring straight at Arnold. "Or did Helga throw one too many spitballs your way today?"
"No, Gerald!" Arnold cut him off impatiently, shaking his head. "Not just the two of us. I think the whole class needs to get her something. Maybe a couple of small things. Like... a photo or something." Even as he spoke, his eyes began to light up, a grin slowly forming over his lips. "Yeah," he said, and even though he was facing Gerald directly, somehow his gaze had turned distant. He wasn't really seeing the other kid anymore. "A photo album. We can all add a picture of ourselves in it, and write a little personal message to Helga, and at the end we can include one of our class photos, with everyone. That'd be perfect!"
"Arnold," Gerald said, dampening down Arnold's growing excitement. "We have two days to pull this off. Do you honestly think that we're going to manage to get everyone in the entire class to produce a picture and sign some sort of little oh-so-happy message to Helga Pataki?" Arnold could hear the pointed emphasis, but it didn't phase him in the slightest. So little ever did, when an idea had him chomping at the bit to get started.
"Well, sure," he returned, rather than letting Gerald's disbelief pull him down. "Phoebe'll help us, and we could maybe ask Mr. Simmons about trying to get school photos. Picture day wasn't that long ago, after all. Mrs. Vitello was experimenting with some pressed flower-decorated albums. I can go there tonight when you head home and get one for her. That way, she'd even have a special little piece of the neighborhood to go with it," he said, irrepressible excitement creeping back into his voice. "I just need your help getting everyone to sign it when she isn't looking. We can enlist Phoebe to help keep Helga out of our way so that she doesn't realize what we're doing!"
Gerald stared for a long minute at Arnold, then slowly sighed, turning onto his back and looking up at the ceiling instead. "You're a bold kid, Arnold," he murmured, the words slow and dragging, and faintly reluctant. "A bold kid." Arnold just smiled at that, knowing that sometimes, like this time, the complimentary words covered up another statement altogether. But he didn't mind that Gerald thought he was nuts. It had already settled into his brain, and he could envision exactly how he wanted to do things. And the tiny portion of him that was frowning over the fact that he was going to so much trouble for Helga was lost amidst formulating plans.
***
Once he'd finally laid out the plan in full for Gerald, it had taken the rest of their evening together to call around to various classmates asking for pictures. They'd called Phoebe first, and Arnold was grateful for that by the time it came to walk Gerald home and they'd only barely managed to finish the half of the students that they'd told Phoebe they would talk to. Under Arnold's guidance, the half-baked plan had slowly coalesced into something organized and orderly. Each time they'd called someone new, they had explained the idea, and how much work they were putting into it. And eventually, each place they'd gotten a promise of a five by seven picture to go in the book.
Arnold walked Gerald partway home, but instead of going all the way, he'd ducked into the flower shop as they'd arrived there, leaving Gerald to shake his head slowly and head off home muttering about what a bold kid Arnold was. The photo album itself had been less difficult to obtain than Arnold had feared. There were a few of them in the shop – very few, as Mrs. Vitello decorated each using flowers she'd hand-pressed herself, and because of that personal touch, they were all more costly than Arnold had expected.
The album he finally paused in front of was cream-colored, decorated with small red flowers with red petals and prominently dark centers. It sported some forty pages to it, along with a central picture window on the front of the album. It was perfect... and twenty dollars beyond his reach.
"Something wrong, Arnold?" Mrs. Vitello finally asked, looking over as she finished sweeping up the shop. She dusted her hands off on the apron she wore, the white fabric between tiny blue flowers going brown as some of the dirt from her hands came off. "You've got a long face there," she added in her faintly husky, faintly nasal voice.
Arnold looked up at her sheepishly, hesitating a long moment before deciding to just explain the problem. "One of my classmates is moving, Mrs. Vitello," he said, reaching up to take down the album he'd been staring at and look at it a little more closely. "It's really sudden, but she's not leaving until Saturday, so we're going to have a party for her on Friday, and I thought we should maybe get her something to help her think about all of us and remember us." He held up the album, offering her a sheepish smile. "But I didn't realize how expensive it would be. I can't afford it, and no one else offered to chip in."
He moved to put the album back on the shelf, but one hand, dirty from a full day of working with plants, settled on his arm. Stopped mid-gesture, he just stood there for a moment, arms still outstretched toward the shelf as he looked up at Mrs. Vitello curiously. "You're a good boy, Arnold," she said, smiling down at him. Above her hawkish nose, her eyes crinkled with good humor. "I'll tell you what. You come work for me on Sunday, all day, and we'll call it even. I think a few hours of good help around here would be enough to pay for this, don't you?"
Instantly, Arnold's green eyes lit up in delight, and he nodded hard. "Absolutely, Mrs. Vitello! That'd be really great!" He drew the album back to him, hands squeezing the edge just a little hard in his excitement. "Thank you so much! I've gotta get back home. There's still a lot of work to do in this," he babbled, and as Mrs. Vitello waved goodbye, he ran out of her shop and back toward the boarding house, clutching the album against his chest.
For almost fifteen minutes, Arnold carefully examined the album, comparing the flower petals to various folders of construction paper and markers, and noting the small details of it. When he looked more closely, he could see that the cream-colored cover was some sort of fabric stretched over the covers of the book, and that it and the flowers were pressed down behind a glossy plastic cover that made handling the album much safer. In the lower corner of the back cover, on the inside, he read two hand-lettered Latin words, and realized that they were the name of the flowers. But he had no idea what flower Adonis Annua actually was.
Forty pages, counting front and back, that he had to fill. Or rather, that he could fill. But that was what he wanted to do. He didn't want to present Helga with a half-created photo album. Instead, he wanted it to be whole and complete, offering her a better set of memories than something hastily thrown together. And so he began to plot, taking out a sheet of notebook paper and numbering each line before slowly penciling in exactly what should go on each page. By the time he was done, he was back to feeling confident in the project, and it was with a light heart that he began to prepare forty little white message cards.
***
"Man, you don't look good, Arnold," came Gerald's pronouncement the next day, as Arnold slid onto the bus seat beside his best friend. Arnold knew it, though he felt a little sheepish that Gerald's voice was loud enough to at least carry three seats front and back. He reached up, tugging on a lock of hair more wayward even than normal, and adjusting his blue cap. Somehow, it was refusing to sit just right on his head, and he suspected a lot of the reason had to do with hair that was willfully stubborn about not laying straight.
"I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night, that's all," he shrugged, voice slightly huskier than normal. 'Sleep-frogged', his grandpa had called it, and he'd just looked at his grandfather oddly at that one. "I was up late working on...." He trailed off as he saw Helga and Phoebe climb onto the bus, and he glanced pointedly at Gerald. "That thing." Gerald rolled his eyes at the secrecy, but nodded gamely. Arnold looked back up as Helga and Phoebe sat down, and caught sight of Phoebe looking significantly at Gerald. He could feel his friend nod slightly to the girl, and blinked again as he saw a faint dusting of pink over Phoebe's cheeks for a moment. But a second later, he was left wondering if he'd imagined the color, as Phoebe turned back to whatever it was Helga was going on about.
"I swear," Gerald chuckled, leaning his head back against the bus seat, "that girl likes to hear herself talk as much as Rhonda does." Such observations were kept quiet, a 'just between us' sort of voice that the two had perfected over the years. Arnold chuckled a little and nodded, settling back himself and closing his eyes. He could feel that tiny cap on his head push a little forward, but it didn't fall off, so he didn't bother with it.
"At recess, we'll collect the pictures from everyone we can," Arnold said quietly. "If you can, talk to Phoebe before that, and see if she can keep Helga moving, so that we can get a few words with everyone. After school, we've got other stuff to do." Hands laced together over his stomach, and he felt himself start to drift a little bit. But there was only one more day of this, and then the party, and then Friday night he could go to bed really early so that he could still watch Saturday morning cartoons properly.
"What other stuff?" Gerald asked suspiciously, dark eyes narrowing at Arnold. "Oh no you don't. You're not going to sleep and leaving me hanging like that." He elbowed his friend sharply, and Arnold shifted in his seat, giving Gerald a half-hearted glare. "Talk," Gerald directed at him, trying to sound commanding.
"The album has too many pages for just the class," Arnold explained quietly. "So I thought we could get some pictures of the neighborhood too, and take them down to the one-hour photo place. That way, she can also have some good memories of Mighty Pete, and Gerald Field and stuff." He offered Gerald his usual smile, and saw Gerald just slowly start shaking his head.
"Arnold, why do I go along with all this?" Gerald asked, frowning just a little. But Arnold could see that frown or not, Gerald realized that he was already involved, and it was just going to stay that way. "You're crazy to do all this just for Helga."
"Yeah, well," Arnold said sheepishly, his smile only growing at Gerald's words. "Grandpa says that being normal is boring anyway." And that, as far as he was concerned, was that.
***
The end of recess found Arnold and Gerald making their way to the last two people on their list, with Phoebe having successfully kept Helga out of their way. Of the kids they'd already spoken to, more than half had remembered to bring their pictures along. "Hey, Gerald?" Arnold asked, as he tucked Park's picture away in the small notebook he'd brought out to the schoolyard. "Remind me to ask Phoebe what she told the people she called. Everyone on her list made sure to bring their photos."
Gerald nodded at the observation, glancing over his shoulder back toward where Phoebe had carefully roped Helga into a game of four-square with Harold and Stinky. "She's really reliable," he agreed calmly, making a checkmark on his paper. "Last two are Nadine and Rhonda. Rhonda was quizzing me about what sort of decorations we were going to put in the album last night," he added after a moment, tucking the list out of sight in his back pocket.
"You think she might withhold her picture?" Arnold questioned, frowning a little at the thought as he looked over at the last two. When Gerald only shrugged, Arnold sighed. "Well, here goes," he said, before making his way toward the determinedly. He didn't look back to see if Gerald was following him. He could feel his best friend without looking.
"Oh Arnold," Rhonda said, her eyes lifting just in time to catch their last few steps. "You must be here for the picture." She dug into a small purse she had carried with her that day, holding her arm just so in order to catch the sunlight in the glass gemstones decorating it. "I must say, I'm not sure it captures my best side, but I suppose that won't matter quite so much, considering who it's for."
"Rhonda," Arnold frowned, holding out his hand for the picture. When she handed it over, he looked at it curiously, then smiled. "It's really pretty, Rhonda," he said, rather than comment further on her words.
"Of course it is," Rhonda replied, reaching up to run her hand through her short black hair. The move was so practiced that Arnold was left wondering if she even realized she did it anymore. "Now, Gerald said that you were putting borders around each of the pictures. The borders aren't going to be red or orange, are they?" she asked, spearing him with a look, and Arnold blinked.
"Well," he started, awkwardly tucking the picture away without looking. "The flowers on the front of the album are red with black centers, so I was planning..." He never got a chance to finish. Rhonda interrupted almost immediately.
"The border for mine should be black, then. After all, basic black goes with anything, and red would clash with my top horribly. Make sure my border's black, Arnold. You can do Nadine's in red. She was wearing blue that day," she added, nudging her best friend. Nadine blinked and handed over her picture as well.
"Yes, Rhonda," Arnold sighed, tucking the new picture away as well. "I'll make sure of it." He started to say more, but the bell rang in that moment, and he tried to hide his relief. Turning away from Rhonda, he spoke to Gerald instead. "Good thing I haven't cut out all of the borders yet, right?" he asked, holding his fist out to his friend.
Gerald's answer was accompanied by a bump of his own fist, complete with wiggling thumb. "Listen," he said, starting to lean over to Arnold. Helga interrupted, walking past them both with a dismissive 'Watch it, Football-head' and a shove that effectively pushed Arnold directly into Gerald. Gerald sighed, watching her go as Phoebe hurried to keep up, and looked at his friend again. "Are you sure about doing all of this work?"
Arnold scowled, rubbing the arm she'd shoved with his other hand as he watched the back of Helga's head. But even though at that moment he wanted to fight back, there was really only one answer he could give Gerald. They'd already come too far to back out now, after all. "Yes, Gerald," he said. "I'm sure."
"You go home after school and work on those borders and cards," Gerald replied, moving to hold the door for Arnold. "I'll take care of the pictures. Sid said earlier that his dad could get them developed for us. I'll bring them by after dinner, okay?" The two best friends shared a slow grin between themselves before heading down the hall.
