Beforehand--(rubs eyes) Dude…I'm so glad I've got the rest of this week off. This is a much needed break; I can't stand school. My apologies for not updating too often, and as always, thanks so much for reading and reviewing. You really don't know how much that means. Again, enjoy, loves. And have a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Dis-claym-urr: Surely you can distinguish between what's mine and what belongs to Mr. Bartlett.

---

Chapter 4: Fruit Punch

Sid flicked his pencil back and forth, making a repeated tapping noise on his desk. Sighing, he glared at the clock, wishing the fifteen minutes of homeroom would hurry up, so that he could go on to his art class. His homeroom guide, Mrs. Whateverhernameis (because Sid couldn't ever pronounce it correctly), was seated behind her desk, talking to some police officer that had waltzed into the room unexpectedly while Sid had zoned out. They were looking over the attendance sheet together apprehensively.

"Just a few more minutes, kids, sorry!" she told the small group nervously, adjusting her glasses.

The cop scanned the room and pointed to an empty seat. He whispered something to her, and she froze in thought, then looked back at him and shrugged. Pocketing his walkie talkie, he looked around once again.

Striding over to the doorway, he said in a deep, harsh voice, "If any of you know the whereabouts of a Lila Sawyer, give the main office a visit."

The door slammed, and Sid stared at it with wide eyes.

---

"Okay, twerp, so what's your career gonna be?" Helga spat at Curly, situating herself on his living room floor. She had just returned from the kitchen with a tall glass of iced tea, eyeing their questionnaire on the tea table and turning her straw in circles.

"An actor, of course--I can't possibly be anything else," Curly replied with a tone all too similar to Rhonda's. Helga was irked; he could easily tell by the way her nostrils flared, but she jotted his answer down anyway.

"Actor…Film or Broadway, bucko? Or TV sitcom star?"

"Broadway!" he declared, figuring it to be an obvious answer. "What do you think I took ballet for?"

"Fine, Broadway...I put myself down as a novelist," Helga chewed on her straw and stared at the paper for a moment.

Curly swung his legs onto his couch and snorted.

"A novelist."

"Yes, Thaddeus, a novelist," Helga confirmed, setting her glass down and flicking her pencil back and forth.

"What makes you think your books will sell?" he challenged her, irritated by her use of his real name.

"What makes you think you'll be in musicals?!" she shot back.

"Fine, fine, put down novelist--let's do some easy questions already!" he prompted her.

"Okay--kids."

"I said easy, Helga!"

"Well, I don't want them, so the answer is an easy no," she hissed.

"What if I want kids?" he practically whined.

"Have 'em yourself, or adopt, but I'm not watching any stinkin' little--"

"Fine, fine, no kids, it'll be easier for me to be on Broadway anyway," he admitted, sighing. He'd expected something a little more fierce.

"Good. Now--place to live?" she asked, thinking he'd been defeated.

"New York City, of course, where else?"

"I was thinking Paris, or Rome, or on the coast of Sicily--"

"What the hell for?" he spat, hoping for a reaction. She was getting more difficult to crack these days.

"Whatever, fine, I'll put down New York City, yeesh!"

"What kind of house?"

"An apartment, doi."

"But we'll be rich, we'll have a mansion and a Mercedes Benz!" he said ridiculously. This one had to get her.

"Yeah, after I publish four novels and you score a leading role in RENT."

Curly smirked. Not quite, but almost.

"You have a point," he said slowly, figuring he'd agree with her on something.

"Exactly. Apartment it is."

"Can we live near 42nd?"

"Whatever you want, Curly," she sighed, exasperated.

"So we can have kids?" he asked sweetly, mocking her. She had said whatever he wanted.

"Dammit, Curly, I said no kids!" she burst, taking the ice out of her drink and chucking it at him. Finally, a suitable retort to his antics.

The small blocks of frozen water hit him spot on the chest, even though he threw his arms up to try to block them. They were cold, but only for a few seconds, and they didn't hurt. She threw pretty hard, having been a pitcher back in the day, but not hard enough to really hurt him. She could have, if she wanted to, but he knew she wouldn't. No matter how much he got on her nerves.

No matter how far he pushed her, she would never leave.

Maybe that was why he felt that way.

---

Butler Apartments, Building 6, Door 22. Last one on the left. Yes, it was the right one, Arnold realized, checking the note Isabella Winters had stuck in his locker that day. One of the numbers on the door had been upside-down, he noticed, as he rang the bell.

A large, fluffy tabby cat pounced in the window, staring Arnold down with round, yellowish eyes. He smiled; what a beautiful animal. It jumped down just as the doorknob turned.

"I didn't expect you to be on time," his class partner told him as she opened the door. Her eyes were a very light brown, almost yellow, like her cat's. She smiled slowly. "Come in, Arnold."

Arnold slipped off his book bag and set it down by the door. The cat quickly jumped on it and curled up.

"Cute cat," he said, smiling widely. He loved his pig, Abner, but he wished sometimes that he had a calm, sweet pet like that.

"Furball," Isabella stated, striding over to the couch. Arnold took a seat next to her and watched her prop her legs up on the table. "We got her to replace my brother, but that didn't work for too long."

"Replace your…brother?" Arnold asked, confused.

"Yeah," she started. "He was down south for quite a while. I thought I was rid of him forever, but unfortunately he's back, for some weird reason…"

"Oh, I'm--" Arnold stammered, unknowing of how to react, but Isabella grinned at him.

"Don't worry about it," she said sweetly, smiling. Her teeth were a pearly white.

"What's uh--is something wrong with him?" Arnold said uneasily.

"You could say that," she said, smirking.

Arnold looked at her quizzically, clearly conveying his curiosity. Unexpectedly, she obliged quickly, tossing her dark locks over her shoulder and rising from the couch. She gestured for him to do the same.

"It's a story meant to hear over some fruit punch."

---

Rhonda swung one leg over the other in her lounge chair, twisting the phone chord around her fingers and huffing and puffing after nearly every sentence she spoke to Nadine and Sheena, who were listening on the other line. She'd just escorted Harold out the door after their meeting for their project, and was now engaged in a vent session via three-way calling.

"He said he wanted to run a butcher shop--a butcher shop, can you believe that? That's his life's greatest ambition. I'm going to start my own clothing line and model it, I need to marry a--photographer or something! But no, he wants to raise animals and then hack them to death and slap their carcasses on burger buns! Honestly, how revolting is that?"

"It's his dream, Rhonda, you don't have to devalue it," Nadine told her sensibly.

"I hardly agree with the meat thing," Sheena started, "but I do agree with Nadine; that's his goal, and you shouldn't belittle him, just because you don't like it."

Rhonda scoffed, taking a small bottle of nail polish and shaking it with her free hand. "He doesn't even want to live anywhere but here! After suggesting Milan and Paris, he goes and says 'oh, well I'd rather just stay here.' Here! Of all places! I love Hillwood, really, but I don't wanna be stuck here for the rest of my life!"

"Rhonda, it's not even real," Nadine reminded her impatiently. "You're acting like this assignment is gonna decide your whole future."

"Just try and compromise with him," Sheena encouraged sweetly. "All you have to do is the questionnaire and the essay and it's done!"

"It's a good thing it's not deciding my future," Rhonda rambled, playing off of Nadine's words. "I can't stand being with Harold alone for three hours--just imagining a married life with him gives me the urge to vomit. I am so jealous of you, Nadine, I'd much rather work with Park…"

Nadine gave a hollow laugh. "No you wouldn't. Be glad you have someone who thinks for himself. All Park says is 'whatever you want' and 'okay' and 'sure.' He doesn't disagree about anything or have any ideas, he just goes along with all of mine!"

"And you're complaining?!" Rhonda burst, spreading a pale pink color onto her fingernails.

"Yes, he's boring," Nadine whined. "I'd even pick Brainy over him."

"Brainy?" Rhonda repeated skeptically.

"Oh, but Brainy is a pleasure to work with!" Sheena beamed. "I was really surprised, he has so many ideas, and he's easy to get along with--our project is nearly done, we just need to finish our Power Point slideshow!"

"You mean you're done?" Rhonda asked in disbelief.

"Well, yeah, we decided everything and finished the questionnaire yesterday."

"Damn, Sheena," Nadine groaned. "Park and I still have forever a day before we're done…if he doesn't start giving me any input, I'm just gonna do it all myself…"

"If we could trade, Nadine, I would, gladly," Rhonda assured her, finishing up her thumbnail. "Even pretending to be in a relationship with Harold Berman is a nightmare…"

---

Isabella poured the punch into a tall, plastic cup for Arnold.

"Ice?" she asked, holding up the tray. The cubes were in the shapes of hearts.

"Sure," Arnold answered, eyeing the pieces of frozen water oddly.

"Art project," she told him as she dropped them into his cup. "We had to make our own 'cool' version of a kitchen utensil, so…I made my own ice tray."

"That's pretty cool," Arnold told her, sipping the fruit punch. "Are you really into it?"

Isabella smiled as she poured herself a glass. "Into what, art?"

Arnold nodded.

"Yeah, I am. I suppose you could call it my 'saving grace' or whatever. It's kept me sane with the family problems and all."

Frowning, Arnold felt slightly bad for asking about it again, but he couldn't help it. "You mean your brother?"

"Pull out a stool," she told him, sitting down on one herself. Wrapping her pale hands around her cup, she inhaled in preparation to speak.

"Robbie and I didn't see a lot of our parents, growing up. They weren't together--they never were officially; they were just two lonely people who got busy and twins were the result. So we started out living in Kentucky with my mom and her sister--my Aunt Lucy, who takes care of us now."

Arnold nodded, looking intently into her face. There was something strikingly familiar about the curve of her jaw line and the freckles on her arms, but he ignored it.

"My mom did a lotta drugs, when we were kids. We hardly saw her, Robbie and I--Aunt Lucy didn't let us, because she was almost always strung out. The few times she wasn't, though, she was so happy--the best mother ever. She taught me how to paint, the only thing she and our father had in common, so it was really special to me. Robbie didn't do it--he didn't like it very much, but, then again, he didn't really like anything," she confided, half-smirking. Arnold smirked back.

"But yeah, she OD'd, when we were in middle school, and that's when Robbie just kinda lost it…"

"Lost it?" Arnold repeated.

Isabella nodded. "Yeah. There were a lotta times he didn't come home, and forget about the weekends, nobody saw him. He had a really bad rep; smoking and selling weed and playing with girls, so we moved here, and checked him into rehab for teens. He stayed there until we found out that our father had died--that was two years ago, in the summer."

Arnold swallowed his fruit punch a bit too fast and felt himself choking slightly.

"Whoa--are you okay?" she asked, furrowing her brow.

Arnold patted himself on the chest and coughed a couple of more times, but then his airway felt clear again. "Yeah, yeah, it's okay--go--go on."

"Well…Robbie didn't go to the funeral…I did. I had never seen our father before, and I supposed that seeing him in a casket, knowing whether or not I had his face, would be better than not knowing at all…"

"Robbie didn't agree?"

Isabella shook her head and sipped her punch slowly. "No. He was too angry--since we found out that he and our mother were not only sex buddies, but that he was a married man too, probably with other kids…well, being the result of adultery really hurt him."

Arnold couldn't have imagined the feeling, but remembering his own father, he said, "I still would have gone to the funeral…"

"I'm glad I did. I wish Robbie didn't freak out."

"What did he do?"

"He went to Aunt Lizzie--our father's sister, and her husband--and they adopted him, but that was before."

She paused, taking another long sip of punch.

Arnold didn't want to press, but he urged after a few moments. "Before…what?"

Isabella began picking at her fingers and stared down at the counter. "Robbie…instead of going to the funeral, he went to this party. There were a ton of older kids there, and all of them were drunk, and there was this one girl that he just couldn't lay off of…"

Arnold's heart sank. "Did he…?"

Isabella ran her hands through her hair anxiously. His imagination was running wild, and he could tell he was probably right. Drunk girls are most likely victims of one particular thing.

"He got away with it so easily," she said quietly, sounding far away. "He called Aunt Liz a day or two later, asking if he could stay with her, and they adopted him officially before school started. He'd been living down there for a while, but he got emancipated from them, and now he's back here…"

"Didn't they…wasn't there an investigation?" Arnold asked, thinking of that girl.

"People didn't believe her," she said, her voice cold. "They all said things like…she deserved it, because she was acting like a slut at that party, and she was leading him on…like, she can't say she was raped because she was drunk, and she didn't know whether or not she wanted it, and she couldn't remember saying no…"

Arnold felt his skin practically crawling. "Still, that didn't give him the right to take advantage of her…"

"I know," Isabella agreed, finally looking up at him. "I had hoped that while he was down there, he would have changed, but…my girl friends won't come to my house anymore…and guys don't like to talk to me because Robbie chases them away, and my aunt just gets so sick of him that she locks herself up in her room whenever she's home, or she takes extra shifts at the hospital…"

Arnold reached across the table and patted her hand, feeling his heart ache.

"It's so…stupid," she began, tears beginning to brim in her eyes. "I can't stand him. I can't stand the person he is, or how he acts, or how he treats others, but…I love him, so much!"

Arnold swallowed, unable to make the knot that had formed in his throat sink down.

"I just want to make him good again," she whimpered, clutching Arnold's hand. "He's the only link I've got left to Dad…And I know he's a good person, he just…he just needs help, and…I wanna save him, I wanna show him he can do it…"

"You can, Isabella," he told her encouragingly, forcing a smile. "You can do it."

She sniffled. "You really think so, Arnold?"

He did. A smile got his point across.

Wiping her nose, Isabella sniffled again and asked, "Have you ever wanted to do that for someone?"

He finally swallowed the lump in his throat. "Y-yeah."

"Did it work?" she asked, obviously searching for some hope.

He wasn't able to give her that much with his answer.

"Not yet."

---

Helga groaned. She stretched across her bed to the night table to answer her ringing phone. The ID on the screen told her Rhonda was calling.

"Rhonda…what the hell," Helga asked, groggy and sleepy. "Criminey, it's four in the damn morning…"

"You have to listen to this, Helga." Rhonda's voice came in loudly.

"What?" Helga demanded, lying back against her pillow.

"Lila's back."

Just as soon as she laid herself down, she shot back up. Clutching her sheets with her free hand, she hissed, "What did you just say?"

"Lila is back in Hillwood. Now. She got back Sunday night. She was supposed to come to school yesterday but she didn't show."

"How the hell did you--" Helga stammered, breathing heavily. She must have been having a nightmare; everything in her room suddenly appeared blurry and unfocused.

"Sid told me after school," she began, sounding extremely agitated. "A cop paid a little visit to his homeroom yesterday. Apparently her dad found out she wasn't there, and she wasn't at home, so he sent them to find her."

"Did they?" Helga asked quietly, hoping to hear that they didn't; that she went missing or got kidnapped; anything to keep her away from Hillwood.

"She was at Bigal's, since, you know, she used to work there," Rhonda answered blatantly.

Helga screeched. "What the hell was she doing there all damn day?"

"The manager said she'd come in right before school, bawling her eyes out," Rhonda explained. "That's what my father told me, since he's in touch with Mr. Sawyer. She was freaking out, saying something about not being able to go to school--that something dangerous was here or something. She was begging her father to send her back with her Aunt."

"Hope she leaves, then," Helga muttered, ruffling her hair and drawing up her knees. "Why can't she come to school here, though? Has she finally flipped her lid?"

"I have no idea, Helga, but it sounded bad," Rhonda breathed, exasperated. "Like she was having a complete mental breakdown or something. Whatever it is, it's terrible, and it's apparently in our school."

"But what the hell could it be?" Helga asked incredulously. "Is there some--freaky three-headed dragon hidden in the basement breathing poison--or some forty-foot long snake with a death glare slithering in the sewage?! Seriously, what's her deal?"

"I don't know, but whatever it is, I wanna find out--just so it doesn't get the chance to mess me up like that," Rhonda said finally, determined. "You should've seen that girl, Helga…She was a total wreck. I've never seen anybody cry like that in my life…"

---

A/N: I know the Curly-liking-Helga thing seems a little more than odd, but hopefully you can understand the reasoning with that passage there.

I hope you'll like Isabella as much as I do. I'm not sure what else I've got planned for her yet, but it'll be good.

If you hate Robbie now, just wait til later.