She never said a word to me at school. I approached her once, and she turned and ignored me. Phoebe tried to find out what had happened, but got nothing. Helga shut down to everyone, including Curly.
"What the hell happened?" Curly asked. "She's dropped drama, ballet, everything."
I just shook my head, and walked away. I left a note of apology in her locker, then waited to see what she would do. She took it out, looked at it, then threw it in the bin. She never even opened it to read it.
The Graduation came, and we all went our separate ways.
It would be six years before I saw Helga again. I often have nightmares, even now, of the look on her face as I drove away that day. Heartbreak and fear. I asked Phoebe what had happened, but she didn't know. She hadn't heard from Helga at all. I tried asking Olga in a letter. She replied, but not with what I wanted to hear.
Daddy sent her away. She's not likely to come back anytime soon, if ever.
What did that even mean? How could she never return to Hillwood? I got my answer when I came back for my first break from College. The For Sale sign outside the old house told me exactly how. After the fallout, it was Ernie and Oskar who went to retrieve clothing, only to end up having everything sent by truck to the boarding house, including photo's of me from over the years.
They had obviously purged my presence from the house. I guess I couldn't blame them.
Getting used to living at the Boarding House took a while. It was a very noisy place. Sometimes I would lay awake and feel homesick, but mostly it was because I knew my constant companion wasn't just a crawlspace away. That was the hardest thing. Not having her near-by.
I'll admit, in the beginning I was in it for the sex. I lusted for her. But now that she wasn't here, I realized that maybe there was more to it all, than I had originally thought.
Apparently Miriam was alone at the time. Bob had left, taking Helga with him. He later came back, but only to sell the house and finalise a divorce. I saw him once, and we locked eyes across the street, but I didn't have the nerve to ask what happened to Helga. And I doubted he would have answered honestly, if at all.
I went through the motions at College, had a girlfriend here and there. But I never did get over Helga. I managed to score an internship at the Smithisonion, thanks to being my professors pet student.
Funnily enough, it was Curly who finally had a tidbit of information on Helga. Apparently Rhonda had run into her in St. Tropez, of all places.
"She was there with Lorenzo," he told me. "She'd a model, you know."
I know. I had seen the pictures. Saw the television interview. Saw her being linked to numerous men.
"Lorenzo, who went to school with us, Lorenzo?" I asked, trying to be sure. Curly nodded.
"Apparently they bumped into each other at College," he told me. "She's coming to Rhonda and mines wedding as well."
He continued to talk about her, but I had closed my ears.
I was going to see her again.
...
...
My heart broke that day. My father . . . he didn't know what to say, what to do. Oh, how I feared what he was going to do to me. But it wasn't me he attacked.
It was Miriam.
"How could you have let this happen!?" he roared at her. Tears. There were tears.
"Bob it's not my-"
"You were supposed to watch them!" he screamed. He turned and yelled at me to get upstairs. But I could still hear it. "If you weren't so fucking drunk all the time, Miriam, you would have seen the warning signs, could have stopped it in it's tracks!"
"I tried!" she screamed back at him. "But you wouldn't let me send her away!"
"Don't you turn this on me, woman! It was too late by then, anyway!"
And on and on it went, the yelling, screaming, tears, blaming. It all ended with the sound of skin on skin, a slap. Then Dad leaving, shutting the door so hard behind him that the whole house shuddered. Then quiet. Dead Silence. It was me who went down the stairs and saw my mother sitting on the floor in tears. For a moment I thought he had hit her, but then she looked up. So much, hate and anger in her face, it scared me. I made a dash for the door, and just as I got the door open she grabbed my hair and I screamed.
I had always been the invisible child. It was always Bob who had diciplined me, and I was beginning to think now, that maybe I knew why. Father's could be hard, but mother's could be cruel. She pulled me back in and raised her hand before being knocked aside.
"Get up girl," dad said, grabbing me by the arm. "We're leaving."
He drove us to a motel. Then he left me there to watch TV. When he came back he had a bag of clothes.
"She'll be out in a few days," he told me, when he came back. "You're finishing school here, then we'll decide what to do." I saw him craddleing my diary. "Why him, Helga? Of all the boys in the city, why him?" Bob asked. I looked down, tears springing to my eyes.
"I don't know," I confessed. Why? Why had it been Arnold? Was it because he lived in close proximity? If he hadn't lived with me, would we have still became as we were? I had fallen in love with him.
More the fool me, I suppose. Arnold had no problems leaving me that day. It was a cut, that turned into a scar, that never completely healed. Bob and Miriam split up. I seized all contact with her. Olga . . . poor Olga, she was confused, and Bob left it to me to explain what had happened. I know Olga still talks to Miriam, but not a lot.
"She drinks so much," Olga said, shaking her head.
"She always did, that was half the problem," Bob would say sadly. Then he would sigh and wander off. Eventually, after I left to go to college he sold the house. "I just can't be there anymore." He sold up his business, and traveled a bit, visiting some cousins overseas. Eventually he settled down again, met a lovely woman, and remarried.
The biggest surprise to greet me was seeing Lorenzo at University. I went to an arts school in Paris, but fell into modelling. I still did my art, my ariting, and finished, but did modelling jobs in between. And got signed to be an Angel. Lorenzo was doing business on the same campus. He came along to a gig I was doing, and hit it off with the photographer there. And instead of going home for holidays, I instead went to Nice, a trip to Kitzbühel one Christmas which I paid for Dad to join me on, and Lorenzo and I went to St Tropez, where we saw Rhonda. She begged me to do some modelling of her clothes.
"Please, Helga, a famous model is just what I need!"
"Your shameless," I told her, but agreed and wore one of her designs to a party, spread her name . . .
It was awkward seeing her that first time. She had so many questions about what had happened. Why had Arnold left to live with his grandparents? Have I had contact with him? Where had I gone? And on and on. I filled her in as much as I could.
A couple of years later we received the invite to her wedding to Curly. Lorenzo accepted without consulting me first. I was annoyed. I didn't want to go. Not there. Not back to Hillwood. Not back to the curious looks, the questions . . . and maybe even him.
"I think Rhonda is under the impression we are together," Lorenzo told me one night as we sat down to dinner.
"Really?" I asked, trying to hide my annoyance. "I wonder why? Could it possibly be because we're always linked together in the tabloids?"
"Well, she addressed it to both you and I, instead of separate ones," he pointed out. "My parents think we are as well."
That made me choke on my food. Shit, if they thought so, they may talk to my father.
"What do we do?" I asked. We weren't together. Lorenzo was taken already. He just hadn't yet explained that his "partner of choice" was a guy.
"I think it may be time, but I need to talk to Marcus."
Two days before we flew back, I got the call from Olga. Miriam had finally done it. She had drunk herself to death. I wasn't surprised, but I was still sad. Though I didn't regret not talking to her, I had a feeling that maybe one day I would. Maybe I should have. It was too late now. I told my dad.
"You can't change it now, girl, all you can do is move forward," he told me. "Can't move forward if your always looking backwards."
"Wow, dad," I said, propping my chin on my hand. "You sound insightful." He turned pink.
"It's Heather, she's good for me."
I could see that, and Olga could see it, too.
...
...
"You look beautiful," I tell her. How I managed to raise such a smart, beautiful, talented young woman, I will never know. Actually, I could take no credit. Thinking back on it, she pretty much raised herself.
She was going to make a wonderful mother one day. A good mother. Not like her own. Thank God.
"Oh, look at you," Heather said, giving her a hug. "No wonder your so popular."
Helga gave a nervous laugh, then her phone rang.
"O, it's Olga," she said before answering it. Her face went from smiley to confused and sad in a moment.
Oh, my God . . ."
I frowned and went to say something, but Heather stopped me, and led me from the room. A few minutes later Helga came in to tell me the news.
"She just . . . drank herself to death," she said, sitting down. "Literally, drank herself to death. How do you even do that?"
"With a lot of practice, and God knows that woman's had a lot."
...
...
(I like writing stories where Helga and her dad work together, rather than taking the usual path. I'm sorry if this isn't enough drama. I really think Bob does love his daughter, and I think it's sad that he's always portrayed in such a bad light, so I try not to do that in my fics. Mother's however, with daughters . . . jealousy is a wicked and very common issue . . .)