02
This is how it started:
At sixteen, Arnold's height was still a bit of a sore spot, but he'd mostly come to accept that he wouldn't be any taller than he was. In the grand scheme of things, being just three inches shorter than the national average wasn't that big a deal.
It was exactly as Gerald said: it could have been worse. And he liked to think that he still had a lot going for him—just, maybe, not in the height department.
(And if Arnold had taken to self-deprecating humor to adapt, well, that was no one's business but his.)
As a junior, Arnold had a lot more important things to worry about anyway. With classes becoming more intense, guidance counselors breathing down their necks, SATs right around the corner, and college admissions looming menacingly ahead, he barely had time to fret over anything that wasn't pivotal to his education.
Including his girlfriend—now ex-girlfriend—Desiree Poe, who, in her own words, was "tired of being just an afterthought," and had dumped him in the middle of the cafeteria in front of all their friends.
It was every bit as humiliating as it sounded.
His friends were great about it (her friends, not so much) and flanked him like he was a wounded soldier in enemy territory. He appreciated the support, though he didn't need it—not that they believed him when he said so.
Thing is, after Arnold got over the sting of being publicly humiliated, he realized Desiree hadn't been wrong. He'd just been dropped like a sack of old potatoes by the girl he'd been dating for three months, and Arnold…didn't care as much as he should have. He felt regret for hurting her, of course, but the actual splittage wasn't causing him any significant devastation.
Cue the guilt, which his friends misinterpreted as heartbreak. And after a while, he grew tired of trying to convince them otherwise.
"You know what, I think I'm craving nachos," he declared when he could no longer stand being the recipient of all that undeserved sympathy. Without bothering to ask if anyone else wanted anything, he bolted for the vending machines at the opposite end of the cafeteria. There was a line, to his relief. Arnold shoved his hands into his pockets as he joined, and did his best to ignore the furtive glances aimed his way.
And that was when something heavy landed on his head.
Arnold looked up and bristled when he realized it was Helga using his head as an armrest.
"If you could not rest your elbow on my head, that would be great," he gritted out, feeling a familiar prick of embarrassment.
Helga leered down at him—which only made Arnold's annoyance towards her swell—but didn't move. She popped a gum bubble in his face, then laughed as Arnold ducked out from under her and pushed her away, his nose scrunched in distaste. He hated the scent of bubblegum, which Helga, of course, knew. Typical.
"Sorry, Arnoldo. Didn't see you down there."
Sometimes, Arnold really didn't like Helga.
"Ha ha," he said flatly, turning away. It was better to look at the back of the person in front of him than look up at her. "You're hilarious, Helga. A true comedian."
"Thanks, I try," she said with faux modesty, and Arnold rolled his eyes at her.
"So," she said, and from the corner of his eye, he could see her rock to the balls of her feet. "Got dumped, huh?"
He spun and scowled at her. "Seriously, Helga?"
But Helga, who didn't possess a single tactful bone in her body, merely shrugged.
"What? It's not as if you're all that choked up about it. If you cared that much you'd be crying in a bathroom stall or something. Not waiting to buy—I don't know, chips or whatever—like it's just another Tuesday."
Arnold's mouth snapped shut at that. He felt some of his irritation fade as surprise shouldered its way inside of him.
Arnold, like most people, tended to overlook Helga's capacity for shrewdness. Not because she was unintelligent or anything—everyone knew she had some of the best grades of their year. No, it was because of how deceptively transparent she was. Helga said what she thought and did what she wanted. Because of her candidness, it was easy to just write her off as shallow. Plus, she was so prickly that no one really wanted to see past the surface-level anyway.
It was just easier, not to mention safer, to assume that with her, what you saw was what you got. Less risk of being pricked that way.
Deep down, though, Arnold knew better; knew that she was smarter than she portrayed herself to be and sharper than she let on.
But as with everyone else, he allowed himself to be blindsided by all of her overwhelming Helga-ness until she unwittingly revealed glimpses of the depths that lay beneath. Like now, proving to be so perceptive by noticing what even his closest friends couldn't see.
Sometimes, when she gazed at him with those piercing blue eyes, Arnold felt like his skin was made of glass. Even now he couldn't shake the feeling of being seen through, like she was looking past his skin and bones to his very core.
It was terrifying. It was fascinating. He wanted to know exactly what she saw when she looked at him. He wanted to shield himself from her gaze and run away.
Helga G. Pataki was the most frustratingly inscrutable person he'd ever met—complex and complicated and contradictory—and Arnold wondered if he'd ever stop feeling so conflicted around her. If anything about her would ever make sense.
Arnold ruffled his hair, exhausted by his own knotted thoughts, and sighed.
"I don't want to talk about it," he said, drained.
He half-expected Helga to ignore this and continue prodding at him like he was a giant bruise she couldn't help but irritate. To his surprise, however, she shrugged and let the topic drop.
"Whatever. It's not like I have nothing better to do than to talk about your pathetic love life. Or lack thereof," she added, rather unnecessarily.
"Then why are you even here?" Arnold pressed as they continued up the line. Two more people to go, then he could get his chips and leave.
"For the same reason you are, Pint-sized. Duh."
And just like that he was riled up again.
"Could you quit it with the short jokes already?" he snapped at her.
The look she gave him was equal parts amused and curious, making him feel like some newly discovered specimen under a petri dish.
"Oh-ho, is someone feeling self-conscious about their height? No need to be, hair-boy, but if it's really bothering you I could get you some stilts if you'd like?"
Never mind. Arnold didn't just dislike Helga—he despised her.
"Why don't you just recommend yourself for the position; you'd do just as well," Arnold shot back without thinking.
A second later they both froze.
Helga was staring at him with the same wide eyes he could feel on his own slack face. She was just as shocked as he was.
Regret swelled in Arnold a moment later. Off-color insults may have been Helga's shtick, but they weren't his. He didn't want to be mean, even if a tiny part of him thought some people deserved it at times.
Arnold sighed and started to apologize, but before he could even get a word out, Helga started laughing. He gaped as she tilted her head back and released a bark of laughter so loud it speared the cacophony of the cafeteria. Arnold didn't have to look around to know that they were being gawked at.
"Hot damn, Arnoldo! Color me impressed. I really didn't think you had that in you."
Arnold absolutely should not have felt a flicker of pleasure at the keen way she was eyeing him, like he was something to be pleasantly surprised by. Flushing, he cleared his throat and shuffled his feet.
He was saved from having to respond when the only person ahead of him relinquished the vending machine, striding away with a stack of snacks so high they teetered.
Arnold ignored the stare he could feel burning into the back of his head as he fed coins to the decrepit machine, input the appropriate number sequence, and waited for his bag of chips to drop.
Snack obtained, he stepped around Helga and started making his way back to his usual table. Funny how he'd been so desperate to get away from his friends before, yet here he was now, eager to return to them and the semblance of normalcy they offered.
"See ya later, Shortcake!" Helga hollered from behind him, so abruptly that Arnold flinched.
"I certainly hope not, Storky," Arnold lobbed back before picking up the pace.
Helga's responding snort was loud (she was always loud, and brash, and so infuriatingly bright—) and despite himself, he couldn't help but grin.
Never would he have expected that things would escalate as they did.
Months passed, and then it was finally the summer before their senior year.
Gerald was spinning in his computer chair—arms gesticulating wildly as he gushed about the new rollercoaster at Hillwood Great Adventures—when Arnold lost the battle with himself and interrupted.
"And the whole gang is going to be there, right?"
Gerald nodded, enthused. "Most of 'em, which, let me tell you, was not easy to organize—"
"Even Helga?" Arnold cut in, casually. His gaze didn't stray from the baseball he was playing with, and so he didn't see Gerald roll his eyes and mime shooting himself.
"Yes, Arnold." His friend's sigh could be heard even over the whirring A/C. "Even Helga."
"Oh. That's cool. I mean, not cool. It's not like I care or anything. Just, you know. You said the whole gang so I was curious. I wouldn't be too disappointed if she didn't come if I'm being honest, her being a complete menace and all, but I'm sure Phoebe will be happy about it at least."
Gerald didn't respond, but Arnold could hear the creak of his chair as it started spinning faster. Arnold didn't know where he found the energy. He tossed the ball up into the air and caught it once, then twice, then let it fall onto the bed. Turned onto his stomach and tugged at an errant string on Gerald's checkered sheets.
"So…d'you know if she's bringing anybody?"
The room was suddenly filled with the screech of the chair as it came to an abrupt halt and Gerald's despairing groan.
"What's poppin', Shortstack?" the bane of Arnold's existence said as she pulled up next to him.
Arnold, who'd preemptively decided that it was way too hot to indulge Helga's pathological need to trade insults, and also that he would not let her provoke him, immediately shot back:
"What was that, Everest? I couldn't hear you from way up there."
The midsummer heat had clearly done more damage to his head than he'd thought.
Helga looked down her nose at him with a smirk, and it should have pissed him off, but instead all he could do was compare the color of her gleaming blue eyes to the overhead sky and appreciate the way her hair burned like spun gold beneath the sun.
Oh yeah, the heat was doing massive damage.
Helga cooed at him. "You're so cute when you're angry. Like a pissed-off furby."
She thinks I'm cute?
Arnold caught the outrageous thought and catapulted it into the sky.
She'd called him a furby, yet here he was, distracted by the fact that she thought he was cute.
If Arnold were to look up 'crazy' in the dictionary, a picture of his face would be plastered right under it. Probably right next to Helga's, too.
Arnold was so used to their banter by now that he didn't even need majority input from his brain to come up with a retort to toss back.
"Be careful you don't hit your head on that pole there. Might cause an earthquake if you fall."
"And there they go," someone muttered behind them, but Arnold was too busy bickering with Helga to really notice.
"Alright, alright, that's enough outta you two," Gerald interjected, grabbing Arnold's arm and hauling him away. He would have protested if Phoebe hadn't done the same to Helga. "Come on, we're here to have fun."
"Gerald's right," Sheena said. "Let's just all get along, okay guys?"
Helga snorted, and with a flick of her cropped hair, waved Phoebe away. "Whatever. I'll play nice as long as Pocket Square over there does."
"Took the words right out of my mouth, Treetop."
They bared their teeth at each other.
"I have a feeling that this is going to be a very long day," Sid said brightly, voicing what everyone else was thinking.
Here's the thing: Arnold didn't hate Helga. She might have been annoying, sure, and there were times that even he, who considered himself to be largely pacificistic, wanted to strangle her—but he didn't hate her. She could actually be pretty likable, once you got past the whole…well.
Anyways, he didn't hate her.
Helga was smart as a whip—something that Arnold both admired and despaired over. It kept him on his toes around her, because there were times where he'd barely finished speaking when a witty comeback was already flying off her tongue.
She was honest, often brutally so, and so unapologetically herself that Arnold couldn't help but feel envious. Puberty hadn't been kind to him, and he wished he had even half of the confidence that seemed to ooze from her pores.
She was kinda cool, too. Athletic, and studious, and funny when she wasn't being a jerk (and sometimes even when she was), and Arnold knew there was a taffy core beneath all those sharp edges. He'd seen it time and time again over the years—had often been a recipient to it, even though Helga would rather jump off a cliff than admit it.
And she was pretty. Which had nothing to do with anything, yet Arnold's brain was constantly invaded with unwanted thoughts about how freaking attractive Helga G. Pataki was. Tall and lithe like a model, with delicate facial features that stood out no matter how often they were twisted in a scowl, and stunning blue eyes that he wasted way too much time comparing to other things. Like the afternoon sky, or sapphires in sunlight, or sea holly—
But he was digressing.
The point was: Arnold didn't hate Helga. And that was the problem. If he hated her he could at least excuse the way his heart raced whenever she looked at him. Could justify why his hands instinctively clenched whenever she grinned at him. Could rationalize why his body became tense when she drew near, or why he found it hard to breathe properly when she laughed.
There was a thin line between denial and insanity, and he knew had to accept the truth before he teetered from one side to the other. As loath as he was to admit it, even to himself, there was…something there. Something that went a little beyond what one should feel for a 'barely tolerable acquaintance.'
Arnold… liked Helga. Not romantically or anything—of course not! Just in a friendly way.
And also in a 'you drive me insane but I still sorta find you attractive' way.
But back to the matter at hand.
Arnold liked Helga.
He liked the brash girl who used to throw spitballs in his hair and shoulder him into lockers; who now cracked jokes about his height and taunted him until he saw red. Who made Arnold crazy— brought things out of him that he never knew existed; made him react and feel to extents he never thought himself capable of.
He liked the girl who helped him save their neighborhood.
Liked the girl who risked life and limb for him in San Lorenzo.
Liked the girl who seemed to always be involved in the most important moments of his life, good or bad. Who, he'd come to realize, had always just been there. With him, against him, for him.
Arnold knew he was Royally Screwed™ when he found himself thinking that it wouldn't be so bad if that were to never change.
...
If being a moron was an olympic sport, Helga G. Pataki would be the reigning gold medalist.
She could almost imagine herself standing atop a podium with a shining medallion around her neck. Reporters would thrust their mics in her face and ask what she credited the most to her success, and she'd smile into the flashing cameras and say: "Well, that's easy—it would be my cursed inability to act like a well-adjusted human being around the guy I like so that he could view me as something more than just a boorish tyrant and not hate my guts."
Okay, so her imagination may have gotten a bit away from her there, but the point still stood:
Helga was a moron.
Why couldn't she just be nice to Arnold? Why was she so determined to have him see the worst possible sides of her all the time?
Self-sabotage, a voice whispered from the back of her mind. Helga scoffed at it; tell her something she didn't already know.
They were all waiting to ride Kingda Ka —currently the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the entire world. Helga was stoked; she loved thrill rides, and the scarier the better. There were a few green faces in the group—Eugene's in particular made her snicker—but for the most part everyone seemed to share her excitement.
An excitement that grew when she looked up and couldn't even see the top of the ride through the clouds. How wonderfully terrifying.
Her attention was diverted when someone roughly bumped into her, causing her to stumble. She turned with a scowl, eager to flay the perpetrator alive for their clumsiness, but her ire faded when she realized it was just Arnold being his normal scatterbrained self. His head was probably up there with the top-half of the ride.
If Helga weren't a complete moron, she'd reach out to help steady him, taking the opportunity to get close enough so he'd be able to smell the scented lotion she'd slathered on that morning. She'd be nice, and charming, and he'd favor her with that sweet, slightly flirty smile he seemed to reserve for girls he thought were pretty.
But Helga was very much a complete moron, so she only laughed in his face and left him to flail on his own.
"Tripping over the ants now?" she asked, raising her brow mockingly.
As soon as he steadied himself, Arnold looked up at her with displeasure swirling in his sunlit eyes.
(Sometimes, Helga could convince herself that their madcap dynamic wasn't so bad ; that at least it meant he felt something towards her. Strange as it was, she'd rather him think her annoying than not think of her at all. And, she could admit, there was also a certain destructive delight in being able to get under his skin the way no else seemed to be able to. The thought of him being affected by her on any level, regardless of the reason, was its own thrill.)
"How's the weather down there, hair boy?" She continued, unable to stop herself.
Around Arnold, Helga was a conductor on a train with defective brakes; crashing was inevitable, so she may as well just put her feet up and enjoy the catastrophic ride.
"Amazing with the shade you provide," Arnold snapped, gorgeous in his vexation.
(And sometimes Helga convinced herself that their bantering was friendly. Playful. That Arnold secretly enjoyed their repartee as much as she did; that their volleys invigorated him as much as they did her, and stimulated him the way nothing else could.)
"Sure you're tall enough to ride this thing?" she shot back, thrilling in the way his eyes flashed.
"Sure you won't knock down a plane while you're up there?"
She scoffed in an attempt to hide the way her mouth was twitching at the corners. Criminy, he was cute. Even his ribbing was soft—meant to push rather than shove. Helga didn't think he was even capable of being intentionally cruel. He didn't have a malicious bone in his perfectly tiny body.
Ugh, she just adored him so much.
"Arnold!" Lila suddenly called from behind them. A moment later, the other girl's hands were wrapped around his arm. "Can I steal you for a moment? I have to show you something!"
"Huh? Oh. Sure, Lila," he said, and without sparing so much as a glance Helga's way, allowed himself to be dragged to the back of the group.
Whatever thrill had risen in her during their verbal sparring was gone, replaced by a sour bitterness that made her teeth ache. She watched the two of them until she could no longer stand to, and then plucked her phone from her pocket and turned it on. Pretended to mess around with it as insecurity pressed down on her shoulders and made her hunch slightly unto herself.
Helga had long ago resigned herself to being unnaturally tall for a girl. Most days she was even fine with it. No point in being otherwise—it wasn't as if anything could be done .
But criminy, did her stupid insecurity rear its ugly head whenever she caught sight of Arnold hanging around any of his vertically-challenged exes.
It was always the worst with Lila, though, who was delicate in a way the others weren't—dainty and petite, with an air of graceful fragility about her that sometimes made even Helga want to do gentlewomanly things like escort her across busy streets.
If Lila inspired such instincts in Helga, who didn't even like her, then no wonder she had Arnold wrapped around her tiny fingers even years after they'd broken up.
She couldn't help but compare herself to the other girl and find herself…not lacking exactly, but awkward. Next to Lila, Helga felt not only coarse, but huge, and like clockwork, she became hyper-aware of the whopping seventy-three inches that made up her frame.
Even Phoebe slipping her hand into the crook of Helga's elbow and nudging her to keep up with the slow-moving line couldn't distract her from the twisted shape her thoughts had taken.
Helga was so tired of being in love with someone who would never look twice at her.
She wished her heart would get the memo and give her a damn break.
xxx
Author's Note: "Bite-sized chapters," I said. The next chapter is already more than double the size of this one, too. Welp.
I apologize if this chapter was a bit rough. If anyone's interested in being a beta-reader, please let me know! I will compensate you with my eternal love and devotion, plus all the shortaki drabbles.
Anyways, thanks so much for reading, lovelies! The final chapter should be up soon!
