Disclaimer: I don't own Hey Arnold, or anything else that I've mentioned.

Summary: After waking up to a bizarre series of events, Helga finds herself back in Hillwood, after a 3 year absence, and just in time for her senior year of high school. But maybe a particular, lovable, football headed guy can make her return worthwhile. Oh, if things were only that simple, and with Helga and Arnold, they never are.

A/N: Everybody ready to venture into the great outdoors?

Buzzlightyearr: Yeah I don't know if I can top that chapter, but I'm going to try before the story is over. My secret to that chapter was...I essentially wrote it buzzed on white wine (Teeheehee!). I came back later, read it, thought it was hilarious, proofed it and viola! "Shelga and Bro Man Dude." I might have to try that tactic again sometime soon! :-P

Nep2uune: I agree, Helga should just play dumb. It obvious Lila is trying to lure her into a trap. I don't think Arnold even knows what's going on with himself, Lila and Helga. I think he's just...doing his Arnold thing. Yeah, Gertie is a real wild card at this point. lol.


The Call of the Wild

"Who is this person?! This isn't you. Can't be," Arnold tore his eyes away from his phone, smiling and looking at Helga, waiting for her to tell him she was kidding.

"It is!" She insisted.

He shifted his eyes back to his cell, "You look like Madonna...in the 80s!" He was mesmerized by the theatrics. In that picture, she was all frizzy hair, fishnets, bracelets, and bright cherry lipstick, while snarling at the camera, arms draped over the shoulders of two other girls.

Helga rolled her eyes and propped herself up a little better on his bed, "That was the point. It's called an 80's party...and I'm kind of the resident expert. FYI."

"Expert huh?"

When Prometheus had wrapped up, they had somehow gotten into a conversation about Facebook when Arnold realized that they were indeed, not social media friends. That quickly snowballed into a friend request, an acceptance, and then him scrolling through her masses of photos of her life in Virginia.

"Um, yeah. If you're lucky, I might one day let you gaze upon my vast assortment of the greatest decade of clothes and accessories."

"Because you just never know when you might have an emergency involving the need to look like Cindy Lauper," He teased, looking back at her while fighting a laugh.

She played along, crossing her arms, "I mean, you just never know."

"What's going on here? What's with these awful Christmas sweaters? Oh, hey there's Phoebe," He tilted the phone to show her what he was talking about. The two girls were posing for the picture. Helga in a red sweater with Santa on saying, 'Where my Ho's at?' and Phoebe wearing a green one that had a drunken snowman on it, wearing sunglasses and holding a solo cup in its branch hand.

"That was Nikki's—one of the girls from the other picture—bad Christmas-in-July sweater party. Phoebe was visiting so, I took her."

"You had this whole...life there," He absently said.

Helga snorted, "Duh? What'd you think I was doing? Pining to be in Hillwood again?"

The boy shook his head, realizing that, the way he said what he was thinking, wasn't the best parsing of words, "No, I just meant, it doesn't seem like you've been gone for that long. And you're this whole other person from when you moved, with this whole other life."

"Well you know, you get older, you change, blah blah blah," She mused while he continued swiping through her albums.

"Ohhh, whose that? A boyfriend?" He cooed in a really annoyingly sweet voice, tilting the screen so she could see a selfie of her and a brunette guy. He was the one taking the picture, standing behind her, both of his arms over her shoulders and out of front of them, obviously holding the phone.

She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment before chuckling, "No. That's just Jamie."

Arnold laughed, "Oh, well you should have said that to begin with. That explains everything. It's just Jaime everybody! Definitely not a boyfriend, because its just Jaime."

"You are insufferable," She groaned, but recognizing an opportunity to pay him back and make him squirm a little, she smirked and said, "However, if you must know, he was my buddy."

Arnold side eyed her, catching what she was attempting to do with her snarky little grin and her purposeful drawl of the word 'buddy' and decided to throw it right back at her with, "You're boning him. You could have just said it," He diverted his eyes back to his phone, an infinitesimally small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, "Well probably not now, he's all the way there. Oh, and you've got the whole cast thing and-"

"-You know what," Helga interrupted, by that point, having turned a nice shade of red, "I think you've spent enough time looking through my pictures," She attempted to take his phone away from him, but he was quicker and held it out of reach of her desperate hands.

"I just got to your concert album though! Holy crap you've been to a lot of shows," Helga had this tradition of snapping a photo of her and the ticket at the venue of whatever concert it was for. "311...four times?! Jealous. Day Trader, Mute Math, Lana Del Rey, Chevelle, Conditions, Incubus, Muse, Nine Inch Nails, Man Overboard, and The Silver Sun Pickups? When did you have the time to go to all of these?"

"Where we lived wasn't like here, hair boy, bands came through non-stop so it was extremely easy. Also the zero parental supervision..." She trailed off, suddenly understanding why her parents had always been too busy to pay much attention to what she did. Law breaking took up a lot of ones time.

"That's really cool though. I haven't ever been to a full fledged show by a major band."

"Ugh...you haven't lived until you've been around that much energy."

Arnold laughed and backed out of his Facebook app and then blacked out his phone and putting it back in his pocket. He crossed his arms and turned his head towards her, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Yes, your face will have feeling again. Don't worry about it."

The boy rolled his eyes, "Good to know, but, fo' real?"

Helga popped an eyebrow. She had a list of things that she thought that he could be inquiring about, and she was probably more curious than him about which one on it he would ask about, "Fo' real huh? Alright."

"What happened to your parents to make you move back here?" He asked kind of quickly, panicked and hastily amended with, "If you don't want to tell me you don't have to. It's okay."

The blonde waved him off. It was a questions that was bound to come up, "I'm sure the rumors have already started."

"You know, Fuzzy slippers and—"

"—I can't believe that guy is still around?"

"Yeah, it's crazy," He agreed.

"My parents fled the country because, according to my dad, he was laundering money through his business." Arnold's eyes had grown to about three times their normal size, his eyebrows almost joining this hairline, and his mouth dropping open. "Right?" Helga chuckled at his reaction, "I got woken on a Wednesday morning with this."

"You guys are like the Sopranos..."

"We're actually Hungarian...not Italian."

"Breaking bad?"

"Mmm...he didn't say anything about cooking meth...but maybe that's why Miriam was so terrible at making dinner..." She trailed off, having to turn that bit over in her head for a second. She might have to look into that further...but on a later date.

Mental note made.

Arnold was still appearing as nonplussed as ever, "That's just crazy..." He said again, his voice laced with a heavy awe of wonderment.

"Yeah well...what are the odds right?" She offered, a bit cheerily, trying to pull him out of his shock. "Can I ask you a question now?"

"Huh?" Arnold shook his head, "Oh yeah, what you want to know?"

"What's the deal with you and Lila? You guys seem to never hang out on the weekends? Hence, I've occupied two of your weekends in a row. And don't worry if you don't want to answer its cool. It's not really my business."

Arnold quietly laughed, "You just exposed the Pataki crime family to me, I think I can answer this for you."

"Ah cool. Now I don't have to call my connections to make you talk," She winked.

He smiled and pretended to wipe a bout of nervous sweat from his brow, "We'll that's a relief. Anyway, for Lila, the weekends are her girl time. We hang out on week nights and stuff but, I'd say nine times out of ten, she has plans with her girlfriends or she wants her 'me' time," He explained.

"Interesting."

Arnold quirked a brow, "Is it?"

"Nah, not really," Helga offered a really carefree shrug, "It's just the first thing I could think to say. So you just bach it on weekends huh?"

"I mean, I hang out with people...the guys, but I do like the weekends to do things that Lila wont do with me."

Helga smiled, pretty interested by that point to know what all this stuff that he did, that Lila would have nothing to do with, "Like?"

He smiled a little goofy like, almost as if he was embarrassed, "Like...going to see local bands play, watching types of movies she hates, hanging out at the peak, or going to the park..."

"Getting high with the hippies," She chimed in really quick.

"Hey, it was the first time I've ever done that." He laughed.

"I've been here for a hot minute and I'm already a bad influence on you."

"Well, it's what I get for not paying attention in the school parking lot."

Helga smirked and took a peak at the time on her phone, very surprised at how long she'd been there, slightly feeling like she might be over staying her welcome. And by welcome she meant boundaries. After all, she had this tight rope of not crossing lines with Lila and she was sure she'd already crossed about 35 of them just by being in his room, and defiantly another 65 by laying on his bed with him. "Well, I think it's about time you take me back home huh?"

"Oh, yeah sure," He sat up, sounding a little disappointed to her, but maybe he was just being lazy. Helga slowly slid her leg off the pillow prop he'd made for her and over the edge of the bed, wincing at the sudden rush of blood into her limb. She'd definitely be taking another half a pain killer before bed that night. She grabbed grabbed her crutches from the couch and scooted to his door.

"Alright Football head," She began as they came to edge of the stairs after leaving his room, "If you drop me, at least try toss me in a way that breaks my other leg, K? That way I can get a wheel chair."

"Whatever you say, Helga. Whatever you say," He chuckled before scooping her up in his arms.


Arnold pulled into her driveway and put his car in park. "Well, it's been fun," She said and went to open up his door.

"You really need to go camping with us," He said before she could pull the handle. She looked back at him.

"You are very persistent about this. What, you think I can't survive a weekend without you being at my beck and call?"

He graced her with that lopsided smile of his, "You need me and you know it."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

"No I think you would have fun hanging out with everybody you used to hang out with is all."

Helga sighed and shook her head, a tiny smile at the corner of her lips, "I'll think about it. Will that make you happy?"

His face perked up greatly, "Yes it will," he assured, before noticing her safari urban assault SUV parked off in the guest drive behind her, "Hey, so uh...how many people does your car fit?"

"Uh...eight technically why?"

"That would be great for taking camping..." He began jabbering, "We could fit everything and-"

Helga shoved him in the arm, "Oh I see. You only want me to go so you can use my tank of a vehicle," She accused him, but without any true malice. As if the smirk on her face didn't already suggest it.

"What? No," He laughed, "I just noticed how big it is and...more of us could ride together instead of taking so many cars."

"Can you drive a stick?"

"Huh?"

"It's a manual."

"Really?"

"Arnold, you broke my left leg. Why do you think I can't drive right now? It's because I can't feel the clutch, or put that much downward pressure on my leg."

She could tell, by the way his face shifted, that it had just occurred to him that was the reason why she couldn't drive, "That does make more sense now..."

"...Wow. Bless you and your heart of gold," She told him and then opened the car door. "See you later. Thanks for the tacos!"

"See ya! Think about it! The camping!" He asked again as he bid her goodnight.

"I will, crimeny," She promised and shut the car door. When she got inside she saw Owen and her sister sitting on the couch having a wine and cheese party for two.

"See, why'd you have to say her name three times?" Owen turned and gave his wife a fake perturbed look and shoved a piece of cheese in his mouth.

Olga swatted him, "What have you been off doing all day?" She asked, before taking a sip of her wine. Helga walked over and half leaned half sat on the arm of the sofa chair across from them.

"Out with Arnold." Owen fake cracked a whip in the air. "Oh my gawd, you're so hilarious," She replied in a really high pitched valley girl voice. "Anyway, you guys have any camping stuff?"

Owen and Olga looked at one another then back at her, "Yeah, I think we can help," Olga said.


Owen came trudging down the attic stairs hauling a rubber maid bin in his arms that was labeled, 'Camping.' He then carried it down from the second floor and dropped it in the middle of the living room. "Alright, Hel-faba, here is everything you'll need for your romantic camping get away."

"Really?"

Olga looked at her husband, "She's going with other people," She chided, but quickly turned to her younger sister and asked, in a more motherly voice, "You are going with other people right?"

"Yes! It's like a whole group thing." She watched her sister's face relax and a relieved smile crop up while she took another sip of her wine.

Her brother-in-law pried the container's lid off and began rooting through it. "Ah, here we go. Sleeping bags, boots..." He began removing the items and throwing them on the couch, "Flannel...oh, our latern! Our specialty hotdog roasting rods," He pulled out a wooden box, blew absolutely no dust off of it, as if it were an elder wand and then cracked it open and showed her two shiny forked hotdog roasting rods.

She was unimpressed by what she saw. And even if she had been, she would have still given him a hard time. That's just how they rolled, "That's it? That whole box for two glorified coat hangers?"

"Hey!" He snapped the box shut quickly, as if she weren't worthy to further gaze upon them any longer, "You laugh, but its all fun and games until somebody loses a wiener in the ring of fire."

"Oh lord..." Olga breathed putting her face in her free hand.

"That sounds like a bad porno."

"Helga!" She barked incredulously, and the younger blonde could only laugh.

"I'm sorry, but it did."


Friday. Two Weeks Later.

"Canopy. Check. Fire pit grill. Check. Cooler and ice. Check. Cups, plates and utensils. Check. Fishing rods. Check. Cards against humanity. Check. Gerald and Phoebe's bags?" Arnold turned from the back of Helga's SUV and looked back at his friends. His best friend handed over his and his girlfriends duffle bags as well as two back packs. Arnold crammed them in to the space, "Okay so, there is Helga's and mine and Lila's, okay! We're good!" He announced and slammed the lift gate shut.

Lila had been leaning up against the passengers door the entire time, face plastered to her phone, appearing to be texting back and forth with somebody.

"Everybody go pee before we leave."

She pulled herself off of the door and skipped up the steps into the boarding house to go do just that. Helga had already emptied her tiny bladder and hadn't drank much since they left school that afternoon, so she figured she was good for the hour and a half drive. She went around to the passengers side and climbed in the front seat as Phoebe and Gerald climbed into the back. Arnold had committed to driving and climbed into the drivers side, and they all proceeded to wait for Lila to reemerge from the boarding house.

When she came back out, she walked around the car, face still in her phone and was perturbed to see Helga riding shotgun. She shot the girl a disgruntled look at which Helga tilted her sunglasses at to stare at her. The redhead cocked her hip and planted her palm on it, sassily spouting, "Um, I already called this seat."

That'd show her. Not.

The blonde coolly pushed her sunglasses back up her nose with her index and replied with, "I've got to keep my leg stretched out, Miss perfect." Lila scoffed and looked across the seat at her boyfriend.

"Babe, really?" She asked in a way that suggested that he do something about the situation than Helga was agreeing to.

However, Arnold shot her his own incredulous look, "Honey, she has a broken leg. She can't sit in the back," He reasoned, but with the air of finality.

Lila rolled her eyes, looking off and huffing loudly with a, "What-ever," and stomping to the back passenger door, yanking it open and sliding in next to Phoebe on the seat, slamming the door shut behind her.

The ride to the camp site was at least mostly tension free and easy going. Lila didn't say much, only expressing her annoyance with Helga's music choices, but everybody else had been conversational enough to make the drive time seem a lot less than the hour and a half through the mountains that it was.

Sid and Stinky had skipped out of the last two blocks of class to get a head start and arrive early with everybody's tent and get everything sat up for the others. Rhonda was riding up with Curly, Sheena and Nadine, and Harold, Patty and Brainy were carpooling. So everybody was relieved that when they arrived to their campsite as the sun was going down, there was already a fire going, and already tents set up to start occupying.

Arnold's tent was a huge six person monstrosity, but not as big as Rhonda's, who had the resident tent mansion.

Duh, of course.

Seriously, that thing was like something from Harry Potter.

But his was plenty specious for them, and generous enough that they could all sleep in a nice row with room for all of their stuff around. Gerald and Phoebe called the first two spots, Helga elected to slap down a stake next to Phoebe and Lila, deciding that Arnold would be sleeping next to her over her dead body, elected to take the spot next to Helga and stick him at the very edge next to the tent wall.

What-ever.

Helga thought it was all childish. She couldn't care less where he slept..or her for that matter.


Saturday. Day 1 of camping.

Helga emerged from the tent, having changed after everybody else, wearing her red flannel, some deep denim blue jeans that she'd had to cut to make fit past her cast before they left, and a single hiking boot. To her complete amazement, she saw mostly everybody around the fire, eating breakfast, dressed in their regular clothes and found herself saying, "Da fug?"

She sat down on the log bench next to Phoebe and Arnold and curtly smiled at both of them. "What's with the get up?" Arnold asked, swallowing a mouth full of scrambled eggs.

"I'm camping. This is my camping attire," She informed him as a matter-of-factly.

"You look like a 90s cigarette ad."

Helga just shook her head and looked off, "Owen..." She muttered under her breath.

After breakfast, everybody began pairing off into groups to go do some fun things. "Hey Gerald, you want to get some fishing in?" Arnold asked.

"I think Phoebe and I are going to hit up that four mile trail, man," His friend replied.

Arnold was bummed but he tried not to show it, "Oh, that sounds fun," at that point, Lila walked over with Rhonda, Nadine, and Sheena.

"Hey hon, the girls and I are going to go tubing, you want to come?"

"Oh...okay. No, I'm going to go fishing."

"Alright, have fun with that," She replied. He walked over and gave her a kiss and they left in Rhonda's car to drive to the recreational area of the campground.

As everybody began to trickle out to do their activities for the day, Helga couldn't help but feel bad for him. "Alright, hairboy, I guess I'll go fishing with you, since nobody else is stepping up."

He looked over to where she was still seated on the log, mouth full of bacon and beamed, "Really?"

"No," She swallowed, "It's all a cruel prank. Um, doi."

"Awesome!" He scurried off to their tent and retrieved his set of fishing rods, tackle box, and a small cooler, shoving them in his back pack and jogging back out, "Oh, I bet the fish are biting today."

Helga looked at him as she stood up, grabbing her crutches, "Hooray!" She mocked his enthusiasm, "How far of a walk is this?"

"Not far, he began walking towards a trail at the back of their campsite, "Like maybe a fourth of a mile down this way."

She crutched after him, "Fourth of a mile huh? Better not be lying." He wasn't lying, it wasn't really that far, but it was eternity when one were on crutches. which meant it was definitely going to be a painkiller night.

Whoot whoot!

That should be interesting.

When they got to the river's edge there was a nice little rocked embankment for them to set up shop on. Arnold unpacked the cooler and the tackle box and started worming their hooks before opening his cooler and cracking open a cold beer. Helga was almost beside herself with shock at how casual he was about.

"Under aged day drinking. And here, I thought you were such a good boy," She teased him as he handed her one of his fishing rods.

He chuckled, "I am. Mostly." He joked back, "You still know how to use one of these right?"

"Yeah, I know how to work a rod, thanks," She smirked at him and fished herself a beer out of his cooler, cracking it open. Arnold felt himself blush ever so slightly by her word choices, and found himself kind of wondering why he would even notice it to begin with. "Want to have a shotgun contest?"

"Seriously?"

"No, of course not. Football head, it's not even noon. Have some class!" He spit a little bit of beer through his teeth and tongue at her and scampered off before she could retaliated with her hand. "Gross..." She wiped it off her shirt and followed after him, "You hear me? You nasty!" She followed after him to the very edge of the water. "So what are we fishing for here? Passwords, secrets, the 'Heart of the Ocean' from titanic, Amelia Earhart, the answer to why nobody told Captain planet his hair cut made him look like Billy Ray Cyrus? Or...maybe some sort of fish?" She took a sip of her beer and grinned up at him.

He deadpanned down at her, "Trout."

"Ah...trout," She sat her beer down on the rock and cast her line in and began reeling it back. "Good ole' trout."

The two stayed out their until a little after noon, splitting a six pack between them and catching absolutely no trout to Arnold's displeasure. Both had growling stomachs by then, breakfast having been worn off, especially with the beer and figured they should head back to camp to grab some sandwiches. Arnold packed up everything and they began the short hike back to their tent. About halfway down the trail, Helga heard a squeaky click coming from just off the path, in the woods beside her. "You hear that?" She stopped. Arnold stopped and listened, and did indeed hear the little whine again.

"Yeah, what is that?"

Helga shrugged, "No clue. Sounds like an animal." She hobbled to the edge of the trail to see if she saw anything. She heard it again, this time pin pointing it to around a certain tree. "It's coming from there," She pointed with a head nod and then started to go over towards it.

"Helga, no!" Arnold rushed toward her, walking off the trail towards the spot while saying, "Let me go look, you'll probably get tripped up by—" He got tripped up by a vine and face planted into the leafy forest floor.

"You okay?" She crutched over to him as he rolled over to stare at her.

"Yeah, I'm good." He raised a thumbs up at her, but by then, she really wasn't paying any attention, because she had heard the squeaky wail again and looked up to see a infant squirrel, peaking out from behind a large pine cone.

"Aww, hey little guy," Helga cooed sweetly at the little tyke. Arnold sat up and finally saw what she saw.

"Whoa, it's a baby squirrel."

She squatted down as best as she could and held her hand out towards the animal and said, "Come here little fella." It came out from the pine cone and sniffed the tips of her fingers. After a few more inspecting smells, it apparently decided she was trustworthy and crawled onto her hand. She brought it back to her person and cuddled it to her.

"Hey little guy," Arnold smiled and put his hand up so it could sniff his fingers as well. It did and then rubbed it's little head on his digits. Helga scratched it's little back and it flipped over, wanting a belly rub.

"Where's your mom at?" The baby rodent looked at her and then ran up her arm, into her shoulder and nudged her neck affectionately. "Not me, I'm not your mom." The baby clicked a few times, nodded its head, and hugged her neck again.

"What about your dad?" Arnold asked the squirrel, to which Helga gave him a look.

"Really? His dad?" She incredulously asked.

"We're living in a modern society. Maybe his mom is a deadbeat. Maybe he's being raised by a single dad that works long hours."

"Maybe you're ridiculous. He's an animal."

Arnold narrowed his eyes at her and leaned into the animal, "You got a dad little guy?" The squirrel looked away from Helga and reached it's little arms out towards him. "Me?" He asked. The squirrel squeaked and nodded. "No, I'm not your dad," It squeaked again and jumped over to him, nuzzling his neck. Helga was staring at him with a un-impressed expression the entire time. He laughed nervously and began rubbing the back of his neck, "Alright, so...what do we do now."

They came walking back into their camp ground a few minutes later. Stinky, Harold and Sid were back from whatever they had been doing that morning, and were apparently determined to build up the fire to a ridiculous size so Sid could play hibachi chef. Obviously they'd been shotgunning before noon. What animals. Lila and the girls were back from tubing, sitting on the log benches in their towels and bikinis. Arnold sat down next to Lila, the squirrel still on his shoulder. "Babe, don't freak out but-" Lila had looked over to him, saw the creature perched like a bird on the edge of his shoulder, screamed bloody murder and flipped backwards over the log. "Lila!"

He jumped up and the squirrel squealed and hopped over to Helga for protection.

Arnold quickly yanked Lila up off the ground, dusting her off with his hands. She was far less concerned with her newly stained skin and towel as she was with what she had just seen on his person. "What. Was that. Thing?!" She demanded with a pointing index finger.

"It's not a thing, its an orphaned baby squirrel and...it thinks Helga and I are its parents."

Lila's face shifted into further perplexity as she processed what he'd just said. She finally just barked, "What?"

"It's a baby squirrel, Lila," He repeated and turned to look at it clutching to Helga, who was coddling it with her hand while it looked onto Lila with absolute terror.

"Throw it back out in the woods, and let nature take its course!" She pointed into the brush near their tents.

"No, he doesn't have any place to go."

"Yeah, and his names Steve," Helga chimed in quickly.

Arnold looked back at Lila, "Yeah and his name is Stev—" He whipped his head back around and looked at Helga again, "Steve?" He mouthed in a animated way. Helga returned him an exaggerated shrug and a 'idk' face.

The boy turned back around to see his girlfriend, newly crossed arms, with a less than impressed expression hardening her face. "Fine. Whatever. It better not get near me though," She warned.

"Alright, he wont get near you," Arnold assured, "You have fun tubing? Are you all going back out?"

Lila nodded, "It was fun. We're going to go back out after we eat." She then grabbed his hand and pulled him towards him, "You've fished enough today, I want you to come with me."

"Okay, yeah, I can do that," He smiled, as she pushed up on her toes to give him kiss.

"Perfect! I'll be oh so much fun!" She smiled, "I've missed you today."

"I've missed you too," He cooed back to her as she started leading him off to their tent. Back at the fire, Helga just shook her head at how much like a dog she treated him, and he just went along. It was also sickeningly sweet to hear them converse with one another. It was so forced sounding it almost made her want to puke.

Almost.

But what business was it of hers? None. Though she did find herself wondering why she kept thinking about how much better he could do, and how much better he actually deserved. Lila wasn't the same person she was eight years ago, but maybe Arnold was having a hard time recognizing that fact.

Whatever it was, she was sure the only reason she thought it, was because they were actually becoming friends, and she was actually starting to give a damn about his well being...again.

She looked down at Steve and chuckled, "Can you say, 'she wolf'?" She asked and Steve squeaked. "No I won't let her eat you."

"Gather around ladies an gentlemen!" Sid began announcing theatrically, "For the greatest show in this campground!" He began clicking together a chef's knife and a large spatula. He then took a big mouth full of beer and spit it into the fire, causing it to flare up, to which he stupidly danced his utensils in the elevated flames.

"Alright little dude, we're going to watch a lesson on why we don't play with fire."


Later that night, As everybody was settling into sleep, or in Phoebe and Gerald's case, already out cold from their midday hike together-and God knows what else-Steve had taken to running back and fourth from Arnold to Helga, as if it were some sort of little fun game for him. The problem with that was he had to cross Lila to get to either which meant he had to touch her, and after about a dozen back and fourths, she was absolutely not having any of it. "I'm not dealing with this all night!" She bolted upright and then stood up, grabbing her sleeping bag.

"Hey, where you going?" Arnold sat up, half asleep and reached out for her.

"Nowhere. Switch with me. That rodent isn't running over me all night."

Arnold sighed, climbed out of his sleeping bag and pushed it next to Helga's which allowed Lila to move into the spot at the end of the tent and away from Steve.

"Hidy ho neighbor," Helga groggily greeted, by then going into her painkiller full force. Steve seemed to be pleased with Lila's decision to move, because he finally curled up half on Helga's sleeping bag and half on Arnold's and went to bed.


The next morning the very first rays of light began pouring through the tent walls waking Helga. As she was slowly dragged from her deep slumber she began to realize that she was really hot. Like ridiculously hot. Like it felt like a heater was on her backside. It was September. There was a morning and night chill, she got that, and the sleeping bag had been adequate, without being too warm to stay in, on top of that, there had been zero problem the morning before.

That was when she finally woke up enough to realize there was an arm draped over her, and a body as close as it could get on her back side with some breath on the back of her neck. Holy shit!

She was being spooned. Who was ninja spooning her?! Lila?! Girl needed to recognize this wasn't a revolving damn door—wait...

Her eyes popped open.

Arnold!

She micro tilted her head over just enough to see him sleeping like a blissful, blonde angel out of the corner of her. She could also make out enough to access how this situation had materialized to begin with. He had, at some point, scooted out of his unzipped bag into her unzipped bag and attached himself to her like a parasite to a host.

And—Fuuuuuggggg! If that all weren't awkward enough, she suddenly felt herself getting poked by his now very obvious morning wood, which he then started to grind into her backside a bit! Really? Really?!

This would certainly be a situation to explain.

To everyone.

Oh and to top it off all she could hear in her head was Owen's voice echoing, "It's all fun and games until somebody loses a wiener in the ring of fire."

Hairboy was about to lose his wie—Ahhhhh.

He pulled her a little closer to him, grinding into her a little more, the entire time she was sure she hadn't blinked once. She had to remove herself from him at once! This could get worse. Much worse.

So she called upon every stealthy fiber of her being to slowly begin extracting herself from his clutches, without waking anybody in the process, including him. About two breath holding minutes crept by before she'd successfully freed herself, only waking Steve, who chose to just curl back up on Arnold and continue doze. She quickly grabbed her crutches and slipped out of the tent, relieved that nobody else was up yet.

How many lines did that cross, Helga? Like a gazillon more?


A/N: Awww, they have a little baby squirrel named Steve now. I wonder how that's going to work out for them? Oh, and this awkward morning. Wonder if he's going to remember any of it? Anyway, thanks for reading! Your thoughts are always welcomed and appreciated!