It was covert, but before the rope lunged his team's way to their Tug-Of-War victory, she was sure of it—he'd caught her sabotage.

His look of surprise, then untrusting scrutiny as she sprawled out on the ground along with the rest of her teammates, their limbs tangled, told her well enough. Granted, it wasn't like sabotage from her side wasn't unheard of when it came to competition–particularly between them.

But sabotaging her own team so his would win? Well.

That was new.

Ignoring her team's sore loser antics, she got up from the ground, dusted herself off, and met his stare head on, her gaze carefully guarded and impassive.

It was subtle, just a signal sent with nothing more than a soft jut of her chin, but one he'd received, eyes widening.

A call to end their stalemate with a proper truce.

Arnold wavered a moment, taken aback as he distractedly gestured and nodded in response to his teammates' back-smacking, unearned gloat. He looked disordered and wrong-footed, like he didn't quite know what to do with himself. She turned around and walked off, leaving him with her olive branch, recalling the last time she'd seen him with that face.

In early summer, following the end of 5th grade, she'd collided with him on a sidewalk corner as she was booking it home after a frustrating loss at Gerald Field. As you do, when you're seemingly bound by some unspoken, cosmic demand that you knock skulls with your unrequited crush at least once a month. She swore, they barely said anything to each other one time when they'd been running, before stumbling away in opposite directions, mildly concussed. More often though, she'd gasp his name (a bad habit, one of many) and clamor over his apologies, asking if she was okay.

But not that time.

That time, he went completely off on her, and didn't even give her the chance to gripe.

Of course she'd been shaken–his changes over the past year had unnerved her, but his mood after summer started? The closest she'd seen him less himself was during his Bruce Lee phase when he slammed Eugene in a locker and popped a kid in the hall just for walking. She'd been mindful of his mood changes, tipped her own toes around him as tactfully as she could–which really, didn't amount to much, but she'd tried.

But if there was anything Helga wouldn't take, it was shit—not even from Arnold.

She'd challenged him back with more than enough heat to match, and demanded to know where that came from, fighting to ignore the way her eyes burned, willing them dry.

And he couldn't answer her.

He'd muttered 'sorry' under his breath as he left—or escaped, she thought.

Maybe when he was with her, there wasn't any difference.

And whatever measure of his sourness he'd school for her afterwards, or her staying worryingly, resentfully silent on the matter in kind, offered no real resolution for them, whether they pretended otherwise or not. It wasn't real.

And the olive branch wasn't real, either. But he didn't need to know that.

Not yet.

… … …

Sid was not okay.

The least of her problems, but not a fact left unknown to their table. And probably half the rest of the mess hall, given the raised brows and stares turning their way. Even Stinky and Harold, who'd been on the same page as him, watched his theatrics with a wariness that spoke to growing doubts.

"I'm serious, you guys—these aren't pranks! We were using a Ouija board last night, you know, and asked if there were a-any ghosts, o-or angry spirits that could hear us—and it said 'yes'!"

"Actually, Sid, with all due respect," Phoebe spoke up, her voice tiny but confident and clear. "I'm afraid that using a Ouija board wouldn't be a credible means to detect any sort of supernatural presence, as its method for communicating with 'ghosts' as purported has been debunked, with the simple scientific explanation of the board's seemingly 'independent' movements being merely a result of an ideomotor effect."

Everyone's eyes glazed over–except Gerald's, his wide, with engaged, curious awe at his girlfriend's intellect as always. Almost boyish, like a young, excited nerd asking about dinosaurs, she thought with a scoff. It was a trait Helga pretended to find annoying, but actually appreciated on Phoebe's behalf, who more than deserved a boyfriend who valued her encyclopedic knowledge and sharp deduction.

And it helped that he wasn't an idiot, either.

"What's an ideomotor effect?" he asked.

"Oh," Phoebe smiled with demure appreciation at his interest. "It's the effect caused by the brain signaling the body to move without its conscious awareness–such as jerking awake when you're still asleep, or when drifting subconsciously toward an object of interest. Or," she gestured, "in the case of an Ouija board, your body producing small, nearly undetectable movements that reflect an answer your subconscious wants to receive."

Helga couldn't tell if Gerald retained all that, but his gaze never left his girlfriend's face, his eyes becoming progressively droopier and half-lidded as she spoke. His brow arched, playing it cool as he slid closer to her on the bench, his hand smoothing around her waist. His voice lowered so the rest of the table wouldn't hear, but Helga did.

"An—'object of interest,' huh?"

She rolled her eyes. When she glanced back to the table she caught Arnold casting his own sly side-eye, before his gaze met hers, with a small smirk.

A first from him in a while.

Things weren't normal–far from it. And they wouldn't be returning to normal, despite what he might think. But to be looked at again by him, like they were sharing an inside joke, made something light flutter in her chest. For a second she forgot how heavy she felt, despite all the harder, darker feelings that dwelled in her gut below.

She paid him a small smirk back.

"Yeah—yeah, okay. Sure. Maybe it was that. And hey, maybe your science can explain why all this crazy shit keeps happening! So, why did all the water in the fountain turn red, huh? Blood red! What more proof do you need?!"

"Food coloring, man." Gerald dismissed, "just a prank."

"Haha, yeah, that's what they want you to believe."

"What, the counselors?" Rhonda asked, her hand thrown out with impatience.

"You guys actually trust them? They don't want you to know the truth—they're just out for their money!" Sid seethed over his plate, over-the-top, causing Rhonda to nurse her temple, muttering 'I swear to God' under her breath.

"Well, and, uh, I'm sorry to say this is true, but," Eugene joined in, rubbing the bandages on his arm from… something, Helga couldn't recall. How could you keep up with that hazard magnet, anyway? "Camp counselors… don't really make that much."

"Yeah?" Sid countered, a touch of nastiness in his tone as he looked around with a look that read as both cornered and alone as he grasped. "Well what about that disgusting dead mouse right outside our cabin this morning, huh, Eugene?"

The red-head pulled a face.

"Dead mouse?" he asked, with stumped unfamiliarity.

"Probably the cat." Gerald shrugged.

Sid's eyes caught alight.

"Cat? You mean that black one–the unluckiest, evilest kind? The one always wandering around camp? A bringer of bad omens–"

"Nah, Sid," Stinky corrected with trepidation, brow twisted at his friend's upset look as he countered his last point. "Princess done be a tuxedo type."

"Princess?" Sid repeated incredulously, as if his best friend's familiarity spoke to betrayal.

"Yeah, she's got a little bib, and a white tummy," Harold added to the feline's defense, not realizing he was smearing food on his shirt as he gestured his hand down his front. Or not caring, Helga figured. No one mentioned it.

Sid, aghast at their lack of support, scrambled.

"-Still! A cat, a familiar of witches!" he doubled down, ignoring Gerald's facepalm and the collective groans across the table as he pressed on. "Leaving a nasty, maggot-ridden, eviscerated rodent, right at our doorstep! I swear, it's a sign of some kind–I bet it was cursed!"

He gasped, eyes flashed in alarm.

"Wait! Stinky, weren't you the one who trashed it? Oh no, Stinky," he grabbed his friend's wrist in earnest, who let him, though taken aback and nonplussed. "Are you feeling okay? Any boils, o-or Satanic marks? Oh Jesus, what if it spreads to the rest of us?!"

"Willikers, Sid." Stinky admonished, smacking his hands back with disbelief when Sid began lifting his shirt up to check.

"Christ," Helga said with a light laugh as scoffs traveled along the table at the display.

"Wait, witches?" Rhonda repeated scathingly. "Isn't this just supposed to be about haunts? You're completely losing it, Sid. God."

Sid shook his head, throwing his hands out like they were all being unreasonable, pleading.

"I just wanna know if it's safe! You should be thanking me! I mean, why else would a cat leave something so–messed up?"

Helga rolled her eyes. God, he was dense.

"I believe, that would be because," Peapod rumbled, ever the stilted and reserved peanut gallery, "it is a cat."

Helga deadpanned.

"Yeah," Gerald turned his hand up, forking mashed potatoes with the other. "And, probably because it likes Arnold."

Sid paused, lip curled in confused disgust. "...The hell would it do that, then?"

Helga's eyes snapped to him.

Put on the spot, Arnold shifted in his seat.

Looking across the table as everyone's attention turned to him, he chewed the chunk of garlic bread he'd just bitten off his loaf unhurriedly, swallowed, and cleared his throat.

"It was leaving a present," he said at last, turning his head to Sid.

He continued when he was met with a revolted, disbelieving grimace.

"It's pretty common. Even the cats at the boarding house do it sometimes. Leave them at the front door."

"What? What's disgusting!" Harold exclaimed, taking the words right out of Sid's mouth.

Arnold shrugged in agreement, keeping a straight face otherwise.

"A present?" Sid repeated, his voice soft with puzzlement. "But, why a…"

Helga's gaze wasn't sharp like a hawk's like it had been the past few weeks, but she never took her eyes off him as he spoke. His voice, particularly when spoken in sentences longer than the single word he'd uttered to her days ago, a husky sound that reverberated chills through her entire body, and relished to hear it.

She had missed hearing him talk.

"Well, because that's how it shows it cares," he replied.

When Sid's expression didn't let up, he leaned forward on his elbows with a look of inward reflection before he resumed.

"People might… sometimes think that leaving their kills at your doorstep is… just, an instinct for survival. Or, like bringing back trophies, that kind of thing. But, of course, they're not leaving trophies," he gestured his palm up, "They're cats. And as for survival instinct, well. When ours catch a kill they intend to eat, they take them to the backyard. They've never eaten the ones they've left on our stoop–even if everyone's been gone on a trip for a couple of days and they've been living outdoors."

"So.. are they, like…" Sid mulled over his words, his revulsion still twisting his lips as he tried putting it together, "trying to feed you…?"

"Yeah," Arnold nodded. "They wanna make sure we're okay."

Sid still looked unconvinced, and like he might try lifting up Stinky's shirt again to look for 'signs,' Arnold continued.

"I know, it's gross, or it may seem like it to us, but. For a cat, that's its nature, and it can only care for others the way it can. Even when we never," he shook his head, "well, accept it's care. At least not in the way it's trying to."

It was brief.

But during the last of his explanation to Sid, his gaze flickered up, and held hers.

She kept her breath controlled, her eyes thinning back.

Oh.

That right, Shortman?

"Well," Sid tossed his hands up, "okay, I guess that explains the cat," he allowed, nodding at last.

Before his eyes swept conspiratorially across the table, that is.

"But I'm telling you, this place is seriously, freakin' haunted with ghosts, man."

Gerald wiped his face with his napkin and crumpled it up, tossing it on his tray with defeat. He groused under his breath.

"Man, gotta hear this shit, then go back and do more setup for Penacook Fest? Can't wait for this day to be over."

… … …

Author's Note: Creator's Choice - Olive Branch