Standing outside the bedroom door, Lila summoned all of her courage and knocked again, more insistently this time. "Helga, I'm not leaving until we've talked. You can open the door, or I can ask Olga for the key."

There was a long, ponderous silence, and the lock clicked, but the door remained shut.

Slowly, Lila turned the knob and entered the room, taking care to step away from the broken glass that lay at the entrance to the room. Helga sat on her king-sized bed, scowling at Lila. The years had been kinder to her than her current appearance would suggest. Her blond hair, which had once been broom-shaped, now hung beneath her shoulders. Her complexion was fair and free of the blemishes that usually plagued girls her age. Helga had truly blossomed in her adolescence, and in many ways, including two very big ones, Lila often found herself envious of her looks. At the moment, however, Helga looked nothing like the brassy girl with a good heart that she had known since moving to Hillwood. Now, she resembled an animal caught in a trap, desperate to free itself or kill the hunter that had trapped it. Her eyes were bloodshot and baggy, and her hair was frayed and curled in places, as though she had been twisting it compulsively. On her desk, her laptop computer sat open, showing a full-screen picture of Arnold and Lila from last night. They were kissing.

"Well," Helga spat icily, "now you're here. Whaddaya want?"

"I wanted to talk to you about what happened last night," Lila said.

"Good," Helga replied, jumping up suddenly. Though her bedroom was quite large, even by adult standards, she covered the distance between them in mere moments. She squared off in front of Lila, their noses practically touched. Lila swore that she could feel the heat radiating off Helga's face. "Let's start with how you stabbed me in the back, stole my dreams, and ruined my life!"

Lila held her hands up and took a step back. "Please, just let me explain myself, okay? I know I hurt you last night, and I'm sorry. I know that's never going to be enough, but I really am sorry." Helga appeared unmoved, and she stepped forward again toward the redhead. "Last night," she continued, "I started to realize that I liked Arnold as more than just a friend, and I guess I have for a long time now. I… I just never wanted to take it any further than that because of you."

Helga sneered, "Well isn't that just oh-so-kind of you. Gee whiz, Lila, you're just the bestest friend a gal could want!"

Lila bristled slightly at Helga's mockery. When she spoke again, her voice had taken an edge. "Helga, please. I'm trying to be civil here."

"No, sweetheart, you passed 'being civil' the second you decided to screw me over and steal my football head from me!"

"I wasn't stealing him from you!" Lila shouted. "That's the point I'm trying to make here, Helga! How long have you felt this way about Arnold, nine years? Ten? That's longer than I've known either of you! Have you ever told him? Have you even given him a clue? No! You just hang back in the shadows, and whenever a girl gets too close to him for your comfort, you scare them off!"

Helga was taken aback at Lila's outburst. Even when provoked, she had never exploded like this.

"Last night…" Lila continued, her voice dying down to just above a whisper, "I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't stand the look he gives me every time I have to turn him away. He's so sweet and gentle to me, and all he wants in return is the one thing I can't give him. I realized that keeping him available for you was turning me into a person I didn't want to be… so... I just gave in. I'm not proud of myself, but that's the truth."

Helga stared daggers into Lila. Both girls knew that Helga was a simmering cauldron ready to boil over at any moment, and Lila tensed her body in anticipation of the blow, but it never came. "I should have known it'd be you," Helga whispered venomously. "Should've never let you get so close… to either of us."

"I think deep down, you always did know, Helga." Lila knew she was poking a bear, but this problem needed to be put to bed, and that meant getting everything out in the open. "Phoebe told me about the writing on the wall. How you erased your name and put mine in its place. Do you ever wonder why you did it? Picked my name, I mean. You could've picked any other girl, or even just a random name, but you chose mine. Sometimes I think about that. I think, in that moment of panic, you thought to yourself that if it couldn't be you, you'd pick the one person who could make him happy."

"You're giving yourself too much credit, Red," Helga snapped back. "It was a freak accident picking your name. I never thought you'd steal him away, but I guess that's on me, too. Shoulda known that Little Miss Perfect would want the best guy on the block."

"Helga, don't call me that."

"Call you what, Sunshine? Look at you, standing there with your perfect face and your perfect little body. You think that gives you the right to take the only good thing in my life and then spin it so you get to feel better about yourself?!"

Lila's hands balled into fists, but she said nothing.

"What do you even have in common with him, anyway? What, does he secretly like little pink ponies or something? Is he into ballet, or whatever girly crap you like? I know him, Lila. And you and I both know I'm better for him."

"We have more in common than you think, Helga."

"Oh really? I know everything there is to know about Arnold, Sugarplum. I know what food he likes, what he dreams about, how he spends his time. I can tell you the names of every one of his friends! Hell, I know more about him than his own family! What have you got, Lila? Just your fake smiles and forced charm."

Lila took a deep breath and tried to push her anger away. She couldn't think clearly when she was upset, and Helga knew that. "There's more to love than memorizing facts and dates, Helga," she said. "But we do have some things in common. Maybe more than you think."

The red-haired girl counted off on her fingers. "We both have the same taste in music… we both have issues with abandonment from our parents…"

"Big deal," Helga scoffed, "did you see the two-headed sloth on the couch downstairs?"

Lila ignored her, "But the biggest thing we have in common is that we both love each other."

She could tell as soon as she said it that her last point hit home. Lila could practically see the blonde's armor crack as the fight left her eyes. "And he could have loved you too, Helga, if you would have let him."

Helga's arms dropped. She turned from Lila and sat down on her bed, her face cradled in her hands. "So what now?" she asked. "What am I supposed to do now?"

Lila's expression softened. She walked over to Helga and crouched down to put herself at eye level. "That's up to you, Helga. You can do nothing… let us date and take your chances that it won't work out between us, or…"

"Or?"

Lila picked up Helga's telephone from its cradle and held it to her. "Or, you can call him right now, tell him how you feel, and we'll fight for him the old-fashioned way."

Helga took the phone and held it in her hands as the dial tone rang steadily. Lila watched as Helga, seemingly transfixed by the option before her, pondered the received for at least five minutes before hanging it up, defeatedly. "You and I both know how that plays out, Lila."

Lila put her arms around Helga, but she did not return the embrace. Helga's arms hung limply as Lila tried in vain to connect with her in some kind of way, to salvage some small piece of affection. "Helga, I'm so sorry. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you."

"Don't be sorry," Helga replied blankly. "You got what you wanted. That's what matters, right? Get out of my room, Lila. Don't talk to me anymore, and don't use Phoebe to communicate between us. You keep up your end of that, and I'll leave you alone. Spend every moment you can with him, because when he finds out what you are deep down inside, I'll be there to take him back."

Blinking back tears, Lila gave Helga one last glance before departing. This wasn't how she had hoped their meeting would go, but perhaps she had been naïve to think it could have gone another way. She exited the house quickly, without saying goodbye to Olga, who didn't seem to notice Lila's hasty departure. Her head hung low as she trudged through the snowy sidewalks. Her mind was to laden with regret and sorrow to properly register the cold, so it was perhaps not shocking that she didn't hear the heavy footsteps behind her. She felt two hard taps on her shoulders. Slowly, she turned to see Helga Pataki, wearing the same blank expression that Lila had left her with, holding a metal baseball bat. Helga swung the bat at Lila's head, and the world turned black.