"Hey, what's the matter?" He asked, walking up to her and opening his arms to her.

She stepped into them and hugged him, feeling him wrap his arms around her. She let out a long sigh and closed her eyes, trying to push out the thoughts. "It's nothing. It's just..." She trailed off, leaning back and casting her eyes downward. "My roommate was on the phone when I went back to my room after philosophy, and she was talking to her dad, and I could tell that he was drunk. I tried to talk to her about it, but she just walked out. Then Arnold wrote this thing in philosophy about the meaning of life and it was really depressing, and I tried to talk to him and he just... It's just been a crappy day so far."

Hearing Justin let out a small chuckle, he began, "First of all, why are you wasting your time with that freak?"

She looked up to him, giving him a pointed look, "He's not a freak." She said halfheartedly, sounding unconvincing even to herself.

"Just forget about him, okay? You'll be a lot better off. Now what about your roommate?"

"I don't know. I really want to help her, but I don't want to overstep."

"Why not just talk to her? What's the worst that can happen?"

Letting out a sharp sigh, she nodded, "You're right."

"But listen, I've got to get to class. I'll text you later."

"Okay, babe." She said as he leaned down to give her a quick kiss just before he turned around and ran off. She dug her phone out and saw that she too had to get to her next class, so she quickly stopped by her room again and picked up her stuff, then headed to class.

An hour and a half later, she walked out of her writing class and stepped outside, finished with her classes for the day. Deciding she was hungry, she made her way down to the dining hall and picked up a fruit bowl and a bottle of water, making her way over to a table to sit down. She looked up and was surprised to see Arnold walking toward her, but even more surprisingly was the fact that Rhonda was walking right beside him. Even though Arnold still had a blank expression on, Rhonda was looking down at the ground and she seemed to be talking to him. She sat down at the nearest empty table and averted her eyes, waiting until they passed her and were out of ear shot to look back, not seeing them.

She ate quickly and made her way back to her room, where she saw Rhonda sitting on her bed with a text book open in front of her. "Hey." Helga greeted her.

Rhonda looked up and smiled slightly. "Hey."

"Listen, um..." She hesitantly began, sitting down on her bed and looking down at the floor, readying herself to most likely get yelled at for butting in. "I couldn't help but overhear what you were saying this morning on the phone."

Rhonda looked over to her, her brow in a straight line, giving her a hard look.

"I just wanted to let you know... I've been there." Rhonda's expression toward her remaining unwavering, she continued. "My mom went through the same thing."

"You don't know what I've been through, so don't pretend you know me just because your perfect little life had a hitch in it." She replied in a harsh tone, looking back down at her text book.

"No, you're right. I don't know what you've been through, I'm sorry for making assumptions, but... I was able to help my mom, get her into AA, maybe-"

"My dad is past the point of saving." Rhonda replied, not looking up at her.

"But he's your dad, don't you want to get him help?"

"Listen Mother Teresa, my dad has been stuck on his first relapse for nine years. He's so far gone that he still thinks I'm a freshman in high school. You may think that everyone can be saved, but some people don't want to be saved. My dad wants to be drunk. And after what he was put through, so would I." She said, looking back down to her text book, bringing her knees up in front of her.

"And what was that?" She asked, curiosity winning over her mind telling her to be quiet and leave it alone.

"I don't remember hiring you to be my damn therapist!" Rhonda spat.

"I'm just trying to get to know you." Helga weakly replied, hating herself for feeling her eyes start to burn. Why did it feel as if everyone hated her guts when she was just trying to be friendly?

"You really want to know?" She asked in a tone that said she was going to tell her just to get her to shut up. "Fine. My dad and I moved to Seattle when I was seven after my mom took him for everything he had in a divorce settlement and left him and me with nothing so she could run off with the pool boy. My dad wasn't able to find a good enough job to feed his lust for the lavish life style he was used to living, and ended up drinking himself into a fantasy far enough to where you couldn't tell it apart from reality. Now he's living alone in our one bedroom apartment, while I'm trying to get a life started for myself by going to school on scholarship, while he's calling me asking whether I want lobster or filet mignonne for dinner. So please... don't tell me you know what it's like." She said, looking back down at her textbook perched on her thighs.

Helga looked down, her heart aching for her roommate. "I'm-"

"Don't say you're sorry." Rhonda stopped her, not looking up from her text book. "I've had enough people tell me their sorry. I didn't keep a four point oh GPA by people feeling sorry for me." With a sense of guilt, mixed with a heavy feeling of loneliness, Helga slid back against the wall on her bed, bringing her knees up and wrapping her arms around her legs, fighting to keep back the tears. She let her head fall in the space between her chest and her legs, feeling the pooling wetness overflow onto her cheeks. After a moment, she felt the bed beside her dip. Helga looked up and saw Rhonda sitting next to her, having just pulled her knees up to mirror her posture. "Tell me about your mom." She said with a soft smile.

Smiling over to her and averting her gave down onto her knees, she reached up and wiped a single tear from her lashes. "She was an alcoholic for about eleven years. From what my sister has told me, when I was born, my mom couldn't cope with the postpartum depression, and my dad was always so caught up in his work that he never bothered to get her help. It wasn't until my older sister moved back home that things started to turn around. We were able to convince her to get into AA, and after that, my parents went to a marriage councilor. I mean, it's nowhere near as traumatic as anything you went through but..."

"Hey, hard times are hard times. Everyone has them. But I came out stronger than I was before. I'm sure you did too."

Helga chuckled despite herself and shook her head. "I'm not feeling so strong right now."

"Why is that?" Rhonda asked, sounding very sincere.

"It's just... everything feels like it's happening all at once. And it's not even that. But something happened this morning and it's been really weighing on me."

"What happened?"

"Well, my boyfriend is on the football team, and he invited me to this party at the frat house on Friday night, and I went because I had a stupid idea that I would get to spend some time with him. But I ended up getting caught in a game of truth or dare, and they dared me to go upstairs with this guy I had never met. And I was just standing there, and they were all looking at me, and my boyfriend was doing a keg stand and I don't do well with peer pressure at all. He didn't even do anything, he just stood there for five minutes and then let me go, he didn't even talk to me. But then I saw him in my philosophy class this morning and he thought that I was talking to him out of pity, and then he wrote this thing that the professor read aloud about how he's been searching for the meaning of life and it was really depressing, and it's just... I don't even know why I'm obsessing over it."

"Is this guy about your height, messy blonde hair, really hot?" Rhonda asked, a devious smile appearing on her face.

"I guess."

She chuckled and shook her head. "Well, Arnold does seem to have a very deep mind."

"You know him?" Helga asked her, now very interested. Maybe she could finally get some deeper details about this enigma of a boy.

"Not really." Rhonda shrugged, "I sat next to him in my behavioral sciences class this afternoon. I asked him if his boots were Gripfast, and he just told me that they were the only boots that would get him to where he wanted to go. He didn't say much after that."

"Oh..." She said, looking back down to her legs.

"I wouldn't worry too much about him though. I think it would take more patience than I have to offer to crack that suit of armor he has on." Helga couldn't help but feel a little discouraged, a little let down at the fact that she may be right. "Are you... interested?" Rhonda asked with a smirk.

"I have a boyfriend, Rhonda." She said, giving her an obvious look.

"Oh yeah, Captain America, that's right." Rhonda replied with an eye roll and a smile.

"Don't talk about him like that!" She urged her innocently. "He's really nice, and sweet."

"No, you're right. I'm sorry. It's not my place to judge. It's just the whole jock thing... really not my type." She said, sliding forward and walking across to her own bed.

"Oh, really? And what is your type?" Helga challenged.

Rhonda spun around and fell onto her bed with a devious grin. "I like 'em crazy!"

They shared a laugh and spent the rest of the night talking idle chit chat, and for the first time since she got here, she felt that she had made a real friend. Things weren't at all awkward between them anymore, and it made her feel so much better about everything, feeling as if she wasn't drowning in all of the things she was going against. Rhonda had told her that she wants to be a social worker, that she loves the feeling of helping people who can't help themselves. She told her that she is a hardcore feminist, and hopes to move back to Seattle and try and help her father. But for now, her father's friend Bill, a really nice guy who is in his fifties, short, with a balding pony tail, but just has a real nice way about him, that he met at his job working out of a warehouse, is looking after him, and he always tells her that she has nothing to feel guilty about by leaving. Bill had become sort of like an uncle to her over the years, and Rhonda told her that she owed him a lot.

Helga had told her about going to school as an English major mainly to learn, about how she likes to write, but never felt that she was all that talented, and that in some wild fantasy, she hopes to become published. She told her about how much she looked up to her sister as a role model when she was first growing up, but learned to view her as a real person, while she told her that she always felt a lot of pressure from their parents, mainly her father, to excel in life, and about how she never felt like any of the things she did were for her, but their father, and during the time when their mother was in AA, they grew to become best friends, and real sisters.

The next morning, Helga woke up around eight since her first class wasn't until eleven, and after going about her normal morning routine, she headed to the dining hall with Rhonda to get breakfast. After grabbing their food, and a comment about Rhonda being a vegetarian, they went to sit down. They were about half way through with their meal when Rhonda looked past her, a smirk appearing on her face. "Hi Arnold." She chirped.

Helga looked back to see him in a black t-shirt, blue jeans, his blonde hair messy, staring expressionlessly in front of him, his hands tucked into his pockets, not even moving to wave back. As he walked by, Rhonda's eyes following him long after he passed their table, Rhonda looked back and rolled her eyes with a smile. "He can't even say hi?" Helga asked her.

"I would love to know what he's thinking." She said, looking over her shoulder to see him walking back toward them with a bottle of water in his hand. Rhonda was silent until he walked past him again and waited until he was out the door again before grinning again.

"Aren't you the one who said that no one could crack through that 'suit of armor'?" She asked, using air quotes.

"I said that I didn't have the patience to." She replied, popping a slice of her orange into her mouth, while Helga turned back to her own food. "You might though..."