Author's Note: Hola! Once again, thanks oodles for the reviews. Y'all
make me feel so special! I made it longer this time…and it's not so much
of a cliffhanger…although obviously there's still a ways to go…enjoy!
Disclaimer: I DO own Hey Arnold!, and Craig Bartlett IS my love slave! I'm also a consummate liar. You do the math.
Part III
"Arnold"
Arnold's eyes widened. "How do you know my name?" he whispered.
He hadn't recognized her? She didn't look that different from when they'd graduated high school. Well, he'd obviously been through a lot.
"It's me, Helga. Helga…Pataki," she said, her old last name strange on her lips.
Arnold's lips mouthed the word. "Helga?" He pulled himself back off of his knees, into a sitting position. "No…no, not again…" he began to mutter to himself, closing his eyes tightly, rocking back and forth.
"Arnold? Arnold, what's wrong?" Helga asked. He looked on the verge of hysterics, pressing the heels of his hands against his temples.
"All these memories…all these visions…none of them are real…you're not real…" he explained, still with his eyes closed.
"But I am real," she said, surprised. She inched closer to him, reaching out for his hand, then pulling back. After so long denying his existence, could she touch him, and make it raw and painful again? Impulsively, she grabbed for his hand.
He opened his eyes and looked down at his manacled wrist, clasped between her fingers. Gently, Helga placed her other hand in his. His fingers curled around it, and he looked up into her eyes.
Something inside of her exploded, and a thousand poems came sweeping out of her head. The past six years burned away, suddenly, leaving him as the idealistic, naïve boy she'd last seen at graduation, the boy who planned to be an archaeologist to follow in the footsteps of the mother he'd never known.
But the eyes that burned into hers now were not the ones she had known, not entirely. The strength was still there, and the honesty…but the hope, the trust and the naïveté were gone, lost…maybe forever.
His eyes widened, though, staring at her like a caged animal. "…Helga?"
Her mouth quirked. "That's my name, Football Head."
Suddenly Helga found herself wrapped in a bone-crushing hug, fighting for air as Arnold pulled her tightly against him. She remembered his hugs from childhood—for a scrawny kid, he had been quite exuberant in his affection. She heard his voice break with half-sobs near her ear.
"Helga…" he choked out. "God, it's been so hard…you wouldn't believe…"
She patted his back, a little uncertainly. She had never quite known what to do the few times he had hugged her, and she supposed slapping herself would have set him off again. He winced as she came into contact with raw skin, and she pulled her hand away quickly.
Arnold released her and sat back on his haunches, obviously getting himself under control. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "They…I've been in here for six months, and they try to break your spirit…I thought I was going crazy, haunted by old memories, old regrets…And then you came, I thought you were some kind of hallucination…" Suddenly his brow furrowed. "Why are you here, anyway?"
Helga suddenly flushed. "Ever seen the movie Misery?" she asked. He nodded. "This dirtbag Eddie…I just met him last night, at the bar at my hotel. He knocked me out and I woke up here. Apparently he's my biggest fan, or something, not to mention this huge English criminal, so he thinks that after a few days here I'm going to want to spend the rest of my life with him."
"Your biggest…oh, the writing," Arnold said. "I have a couple of your books. But they're hard to find out here…I only have the ones that came out while we were in college. They're not bad."
"Gee, thanks," Helga said sarcastically. Arnold's brow furrowed again.
"Eddie…not Edward Niles?" he asked.
Helga nodded. "You know him?"
Arnold glowered, and Helga felt a chill. The Arnold she had known wasn't capable of such hate. "He's the reason I'm in here, too."
Helga forced a laugh, trying to lighten the situation. "Don't tell me you're the love of his life, too!"
Arnold didn't even smile. "You know I'm an archaeologist?" he asked. Helga nodded. "Well, so is Niles, in a sense. He wants the Lotus of Nefertiti." At Helga's blank look, he explained. "Ancient Egyptian treasure. Most say it's only a legend, but if it's real, it's priceless." Helga's blank look cleared. "Well, anyway, I uncovered a tomb six months ago with a scroll that had the secret to finding the Lotus on it. Niles found out, and tried to steal the scroll from me, so I burned it. Then he threw me in here, hoping to torture the answer out of me. It's been six months, and they haven't broken me," he said proudly, straightening a little.
"Why don't you just tell him?" Helga asked.
Arnold looked at her. "This thing isn't just valuable, Helga. It's powerful." Helga scoffed. "No, really! I've been doing this for two years, and the things I've seen…well, I bet they could make even you believe."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Helga asked, a little touchy.
"I don't know. You were always…hard. Skeptical. Shrewd. I admired you." Arnold shrugged, then winced. "Stupid back…"
"Let me look at it," Helga said, to cover her embarrassment. He turned around, and she helped him peel off the flayed rag that was his shirt, thinking as she did. He admired her? But for what? All the wrong reasons. Because he thought she was hard, that she didn't have faith in anything. Well, she had had faith in something. Him.
His back was little more than a flayed rag, too. "You need to clean these cuts," Helga said. "I'll go get water."
Arnold half-turned, making Helga wince as the cuts in his back opened further. "You have water?" he asked, a wildness in his eyes.
"Sure," she said. "They brought me food and water. Don't they feed you?"
"Sometimes," he said, the wild look still in his eyes. Helga got up and brought the basin of water to him. He drank greedily, water sloshing down his chin and chest in his haste.
"Hey, hey, hey, slow down," Helga warned, taking the basin gently from him. "You'll make yourself sick. Are you hungry?" she asked offering him the bread.
He obviously was, but held back. "Don't you want it?" he asked.
"I'm not really hungry," she said truthfully. "I'll have a date. You eat. You looked starved." She handed him the bread. "But slowly," she commanded, feeling like she was talking to a child.
She bundled up his shirt and dipped it in the water, then moved it to his back, carefully cleaning the wounds. There was a crisscrossing pattern of old scars on his back, with some redder, more raw strips, and finally, the six or seven still bleeding ones. She washed the grime away in silence, mopping up the blood and then pressing the rag that had been his shirt to his back to stop the bleeding, which had begun anew with the clearing of the grime that blocked it.
Arnold. She had loved him intensely as a child, wrapping herself up in her passion for him so that she could ignore the travesty that was her life. Her every waking moment had been spent in frantic outpourings of unconditional love, her taunting and bullying, her poems and musings, all the masked cries for love that she desperately needed. Now she had love, love from dozens of men…but they were sociopaths like Eddie and needy romantics likes Jacques, and they didn't give her the fulfillment she had always craved.
And Arnold? Arnold was deeply scarred, and it wasn't just physical. Helga had no experience with the methods used to break a man, but she had a feeling that they weren't pretty. The way he had reacted to her, his desperation, his hunger for…something, she didn't know what…this was not the Arnold she had known. This was a man driven to his basic emotions, left with nothing but raw emotions. Fear, anger, hunger…none of the complicated good-samaritanism she had seen in the younger, untried Arnold. Was that behind him now? She didn't know.
Well, was she the girl she had been? She was certainly prettier. And she was certainly still afraid to make connections, to let herself open up to anyone. And her secret? Would it be so bad if she told Arnold, now, that she had loved him?
* Had * loved him?
"Thanks," he said, breaking into her reverie.
"Don't mention it," she replied gruffly. "Does it hurt very much?"
"It's not too bad," he said, wiggling his shoulders a little.
"What do we do now?" Helga asked.
He spread his hands. "We sit."
"That's all?"
He laughed a little. The laugh was rusty, but genuine. "There's not much to do, in jail," he informed her. "I doubt they'd lend us a game of Monopoly to play, or something."
She smiled, relieved by the joke. "What?" he asked, noticing the look in her eyes.
She shook her head. "Nothing. It's just…it's good to see that you're…still alive," she said. "That you still have…humanness in you."
He looked away. "I don't know if I do," he said softly.
"Of course you do. Don't say that," she said, edging towards him. He leaned against the wall behind him, and she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Of course you do," she repeated, for lack of anything better to say. "You're…well, you're Arnold. You've always had hope. You've always had warmth, and faith in human kindness. You've…always relied upon the kindness of strangers," she said in her best Scarlett O 'Hara accent. "I don't know." He laughed. It encouraged her. "You got us all through adolescence. You…you got me through."
He looked at her at that. "And how did I do that?" he asked. "I always thought you hated me."
She looked away. "I never hated you. I didn't know how to relate to you."
"Why?" he asked. "Why was it so difficult? I didn't make it hard on purpose."
She sighed. Even after all this time, she couldn't tell him. "I don't know," she lied.
They lapsed into silence. "So you've written more books?" Arnold asked finally, breaking the tension.
Helga relaxed a little and smiled. "Yes…I'm working on my seventh now. 'Ice Cream' was the first, then 'Masquerade'…"
"Yeah, I read those," Arnold remembered. "I liked them. What are the others?"
Helga ticked them off on her fingers. "'One Red Shoe,' 'Four-Letter Words,' 'Love Affairs,' and 'Poems From A Little Pink Book.'" She hugged her knees to her. "The one I'm working on now doesn't have a title yet."
"It sounds wonderful," Arnold said, looking far away. "Writing, that is. You were good even when we were little."
"Your life sounds wonderful," Helga contradicted. At the look he gave her she laughed. "Current imprisonment aside, of course. I mean…adventure, exotic places, legendary treasures…"
Arnold grinned, his eyes lighting up with boyish excitement. "Yeah, it's not bad. I remember this one time…" He launched into a vivid tale of adventure, near-death experiences, and hairsbreadth chances. Helga told him all about her writing, and they talked, as the sun moved across the sky. She could feel Arnold opening up, becoming more human, less a scared, starved animal, and it relieved her. If Arnold had lost his hope, his basic faith in human goodness, if there was no foil for her own cynicism and hardness…well, who could believe in the good in people if Arnold couldn't?
Finally they drifted to the subject of their old classmates.
"So Gerald tells me Rhonda has her own show?" Arnold asked. Helga rolled her eyes.
"God, yes, she's impossible to get away from. She's all over MTV constantly with this whole 'Music Style' thing, where she pulls a Joan Rivers on celebrities and talks to fashion designers about how plaid is the new orange and pink is the new black, or whatever. You know how she is." She launched into her best Rhonda imitation. "Hello, I'm Rhonda Wellington- Lloyd, and today we'll be talking about Madonna, and her uncanny ability to never grasp that inventiveness and individuality are only second to a twenty-two inch waist."
Arnold laughed. "You two always had a weird relationship."
Helga shrugged. "Can you blame us? We ruled the school together. You were our leader, but everyone listened to me and Rhonda." She smiled, remembering. "She had me on the show once. She pulled out all these old pictures of me from when we were little—it was humiliating. Fortunately, I had some of her fashion faux-pass with me, thanks to Kodak, so we broke even."
"She didn't show the dress with the sneakers?" Arnold asked, all mock concern. "And that bow, that big pink bow that you wore all through elementary and middle school. I always liked that bow," he remembered, looking thoughtful.
"I know," Helga said softly, reaching up to touch her hair as if it were still there.
Silence fell over them again. Again, Arnold was the one to break it. "Do you still talk to Phoebe?" he asked her.
Helga shook her head. "We sort of dropped off in college. I was in Stanford, you know, and she was all the was over in Cambridge. I think Gerald discouraged her from really working at keeping in touch with me. I don't think he ever really trusted me. Not that I blame him…I was pretty awful to him in school. Still, I'd never try and keep Phoebe from something that made her happy, and he made her happy. I'm glad for her, anyway." Something very sad settled in her as she thought of her best friend, her veritable lifeline to the world of the living for almost fifteen years. Their growing apart had been just as much her fault as Phoebe's or Gerald's, she realized.
"I still can't believe they got married," Arnold said.
"I know," Helga agreed. "Who would've thought that discreet glances over the punch bowl at Rhonda's parties would've blossomed into real love?"
He laughed. "You really are a poet," he said, growing thoughtful again. "Gerald went to MIT to be close to her. I think that must be nice…to have someone who knew you as a child, who loved you at your most awkward and insecure."
Helga didn't answer. Night had fallen, and she shivered, suddenly cold.
"It gets chilly here at night," Arnold informed her, noticing the shiver. "Especially alone." There was something hollow in his voice on the last word.
Helga looked at him through lowered lashes. "We could huddle together to stay warm," she suggested. Inwardly, she was shocked at the coyness in her voice. Was she…flirting? With Arnold? *Her* Arnold? It was too weird, to bizarre to be flirting with her childhood love in an Egyptian jail.
He met her eyes and she was glad of the growing dark that hid her sudden blush, as pink as her old bow that he had liked so much. "Believe me, Helga, I don't mind," he teased. Where was the Arnold she knew, the bashful and somehow innocent one, even after he had lost his virginity to that she-devil, Lila?
He lay down and gently patted the stone floor next to him. Well, as long as he was inviting her… Helga scooted over and lay down next to him, the coolness of the stone a sharp contrast to the warmth of his bare, tan skin so close to her. They weren't actually touching, but his heat radiated outward from him.
Suddenly a surge of bravery coursed through her veins, and she edged closer, so that she was actually touching him. She stifled a grin as she felt his body flush, heating at her contact. *This* was the shy boy she remembered! Embarrassed even though only their shoulders and upper arms were touching. It was a strange way to relate to him, sexually…it had never been in their encounters before. Of course it hadn't been there when they were children…and though she of course had been attracted to him in adolescence, once the hormones kicked in, all of the middle- and high- schoolers she had known, herself and Arnold included, had been too awkward and uncertain for any kind of sexual relationship. To play this game, one she had played with many men, but none with the stakes as high or the emotions as strong, was interesting and exciting. But now was not really the time, not this first night. God knows they'd be here for a while yet.
"Good night, Arnold," she murmured.
"Good night, Helga," he whispered back.
They lay like that for a while in silence. Helga stared upwards at the ceiling, thinking he'd gone to sleep. It was then that she let her doubts surface, and they hit her like a ton of bricks. What was she going to do? Rescue was too much to hope for. And she'd never accept Eddie's proposal. Especially now that she knew Arnold didn't like him. Anyone Arnold didn't like was on her list immediately.
Could they break out from within? It seemed hopeless. And where would they go, with no money, no friends, no transportation, no nothing? Was she doomed to stay here until she died?
She began to cry softly, as the first pangs of hunger hit her. She didn't mean to be selfish, she really didn't…but she didn't want to die here, didn't want to grow old and ugly here, dirty and hungry and cold. Arnold was here, and that would have made it alright in any other situation…but she couldn't bear to see him suffer, and he was suffering badly, she knew. She, more than any other, knew when Arnold was not himself. This Arnold was hungry and cold and tired too, and he was being tortured on top of it all.
She felt Arnold's strong arms go around her, pulling her close. "Shh…" he whispered, holding her tightly. "It's okay."
"No, it's not," she sobbed, crying harder now that she didn't have to hide it. She'd always had a tendency towards the hysterical. "I'm so scared…"
"Shh…" he whispered again, soothingly. He smoothed her hair and kissed the top of her head. "I'm scared, too. But I'm not half so scared as I was before you came."
He held her as she cried herself out, as she let go of all the fear and angry and sorrow that had been building up inside of her since her kidnapping, and before that, even. He held her as, exhausted, she drifted off to sleep, her eyes still red and puffy from crying. And when he was sure that she was sound asleep, Arnold cried too.
Aww…I wish I could find a guy like Arnold. Maybe without the head, though…this story is going places, man. The really weird stuff is gonna start happening in the next chapter, I think. Some new characters…and Eddie gets a little pissed…Let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: I DO own Hey Arnold!, and Craig Bartlett IS my love slave! I'm also a consummate liar. You do the math.
Part III
"Arnold"
Arnold's eyes widened. "How do you know my name?" he whispered.
He hadn't recognized her? She didn't look that different from when they'd graduated high school. Well, he'd obviously been through a lot.
"It's me, Helga. Helga…Pataki," she said, her old last name strange on her lips.
Arnold's lips mouthed the word. "Helga?" He pulled himself back off of his knees, into a sitting position. "No…no, not again…" he began to mutter to himself, closing his eyes tightly, rocking back and forth.
"Arnold? Arnold, what's wrong?" Helga asked. He looked on the verge of hysterics, pressing the heels of his hands against his temples.
"All these memories…all these visions…none of them are real…you're not real…" he explained, still with his eyes closed.
"But I am real," she said, surprised. She inched closer to him, reaching out for his hand, then pulling back. After so long denying his existence, could she touch him, and make it raw and painful again? Impulsively, she grabbed for his hand.
He opened his eyes and looked down at his manacled wrist, clasped between her fingers. Gently, Helga placed her other hand in his. His fingers curled around it, and he looked up into her eyes.
Something inside of her exploded, and a thousand poems came sweeping out of her head. The past six years burned away, suddenly, leaving him as the idealistic, naïve boy she'd last seen at graduation, the boy who planned to be an archaeologist to follow in the footsteps of the mother he'd never known.
But the eyes that burned into hers now were not the ones she had known, not entirely. The strength was still there, and the honesty…but the hope, the trust and the naïveté were gone, lost…maybe forever.
His eyes widened, though, staring at her like a caged animal. "…Helga?"
Her mouth quirked. "That's my name, Football Head."
Suddenly Helga found herself wrapped in a bone-crushing hug, fighting for air as Arnold pulled her tightly against him. She remembered his hugs from childhood—for a scrawny kid, he had been quite exuberant in his affection. She heard his voice break with half-sobs near her ear.
"Helga…" he choked out. "God, it's been so hard…you wouldn't believe…"
She patted his back, a little uncertainly. She had never quite known what to do the few times he had hugged her, and she supposed slapping herself would have set him off again. He winced as she came into contact with raw skin, and she pulled her hand away quickly.
Arnold released her and sat back on his haunches, obviously getting himself under control. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "They…I've been in here for six months, and they try to break your spirit…I thought I was going crazy, haunted by old memories, old regrets…And then you came, I thought you were some kind of hallucination…" Suddenly his brow furrowed. "Why are you here, anyway?"
Helga suddenly flushed. "Ever seen the movie Misery?" she asked. He nodded. "This dirtbag Eddie…I just met him last night, at the bar at my hotel. He knocked me out and I woke up here. Apparently he's my biggest fan, or something, not to mention this huge English criminal, so he thinks that after a few days here I'm going to want to spend the rest of my life with him."
"Your biggest…oh, the writing," Arnold said. "I have a couple of your books. But they're hard to find out here…I only have the ones that came out while we were in college. They're not bad."
"Gee, thanks," Helga said sarcastically. Arnold's brow furrowed again.
"Eddie…not Edward Niles?" he asked.
Helga nodded. "You know him?"
Arnold glowered, and Helga felt a chill. The Arnold she had known wasn't capable of such hate. "He's the reason I'm in here, too."
Helga forced a laugh, trying to lighten the situation. "Don't tell me you're the love of his life, too!"
Arnold didn't even smile. "You know I'm an archaeologist?" he asked. Helga nodded. "Well, so is Niles, in a sense. He wants the Lotus of Nefertiti." At Helga's blank look, he explained. "Ancient Egyptian treasure. Most say it's only a legend, but if it's real, it's priceless." Helga's blank look cleared. "Well, anyway, I uncovered a tomb six months ago with a scroll that had the secret to finding the Lotus on it. Niles found out, and tried to steal the scroll from me, so I burned it. Then he threw me in here, hoping to torture the answer out of me. It's been six months, and they haven't broken me," he said proudly, straightening a little.
"Why don't you just tell him?" Helga asked.
Arnold looked at her. "This thing isn't just valuable, Helga. It's powerful." Helga scoffed. "No, really! I've been doing this for two years, and the things I've seen…well, I bet they could make even you believe."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Helga asked, a little touchy.
"I don't know. You were always…hard. Skeptical. Shrewd. I admired you." Arnold shrugged, then winced. "Stupid back…"
"Let me look at it," Helga said, to cover her embarrassment. He turned around, and she helped him peel off the flayed rag that was his shirt, thinking as she did. He admired her? But for what? All the wrong reasons. Because he thought she was hard, that she didn't have faith in anything. Well, she had had faith in something. Him.
His back was little more than a flayed rag, too. "You need to clean these cuts," Helga said. "I'll go get water."
Arnold half-turned, making Helga wince as the cuts in his back opened further. "You have water?" he asked, a wildness in his eyes.
"Sure," she said. "They brought me food and water. Don't they feed you?"
"Sometimes," he said, the wild look still in his eyes. Helga got up and brought the basin of water to him. He drank greedily, water sloshing down his chin and chest in his haste.
"Hey, hey, hey, slow down," Helga warned, taking the basin gently from him. "You'll make yourself sick. Are you hungry?" she asked offering him the bread.
He obviously was, but held back. "Don't you want it?" he asked.
"I'm not really hungry," she said truthfully. "I'll have a date. You eat. You looked starved." She handed him the bread. "But slowly," she commanded, feeling like she was talking to a child.
She bundled up his shirt and dipped it in the water, then moved it to his back, carefully cleaning the wounds. There was a crisscrossing pattern of old scars on his back, with some redder, more raw strips, and finally, the six or seven still bleeding ones. She washed the grime away in silence, mopping up the blood and then pressing the rag that had been his shirt to his back to stop the bleeding, which had begun anew with the clearing of the grime that blocked it.
Arnold. She had loved him intensely as a child, wrapping herself up in her passion for him so that she could ignore the travesty that was her life. Her every waking moment had been spent in frantic outpourings of unconditional love, her taunting and bullying, her poems and musings, all the masked cries for love that she desperately needed. Now she had love, love from dozens of men…but they were sociopaths like Eddie and needy romantics likes Jacques, and they didn't give her the fulfillment she had always craved.
And Arnold? Arnold was deeply scarred, and it wasn't just physical. Helga had no experience with the methods used to break a man, but she had a feeling that they weren't pretty. The way he had reacted to her, his desperation, his hunger for…something, she didn't know what…this was not the Arnold she had known. This was a man driven to his basic emotions, left with nothing but raw emotions. Fear, anger, hunger…none of the complicated good-samaritanism she had seen in the younger, untried Arnold. Was that behind him now? She didn't know.
Well, was she the girl she had been? She was certainly prettier. And she was certainly still afraid to make connections, to let herself open up to anyone. And her secret? Would it be so bad if she told Arnold, now, that she had loved him?
* Had * loved him?
"Thanks," he said, breaking into her reverie.
"Don't mention it," she replied gruffly. "Does it hurt very much?"
"It's not too bad," he said, wiggling his shoulders a little.
"What do we do now?" Helga asked.
He spread his hands. "We sit."
"That's all?"
He laughed a little. The laugh was rusty, but genuine. "There's not much to do, in jail," he informed her. "I doubt they'd lend us a game of Monopoly to play, or something."
She smiled, relieved by the joke. "What?" he asked, noticing the look in her eyes.
She shook her head. "Nothing. It's just…it's good to see that you're…still alive," she said. "That you still have…humanness in you."
He looked away. "I don't know if I do," he said softly.
"Of course you do. Don't say that," she said, edging towards him. He leaned against the wall behind him, and she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Of course you do," she repeated, for lack of anything better to say. "You're…well, you're Arnold. You've always had hope. You've always had warmth, and faith in human kindness. You've…always relied upon the kindness of strangers," she said in her best Scarlett O 'Hara accent. "I don't know." He laughed. It encouraged her. "You got us all through adolescence. You…you got me through."
He looked at her at that. "And how did I do that?" he asked. "I always thought you hated me."
She looked away. "I never hated you. I didn't know how to relate to you."
"Why?" he asked. "Why was it so difficult? I didn't make it hard on purpose."
She sighed. Even after all this time, she couldn't tell him. "I don't know," she lied.
They lapsed into silence. "So you've written more books?" Arnold asked finally, breaking the tension.
Helga relaxed a little and smiled. "Yes…I'm working on my seventh now. 'Ice Cream' was the first, then 'Masquerade'…"
"Yeah, I read those," Arnold remembered. "I liked them. What are the others?"
Helga ticked them off on her fingers. "'One Red Shoe,' 'Four-Letter Words,' 'Love Affairs,' and 'Poems From A Little Pink Book.'" She hugged her knees to her. "The one I'm working on now doesn't have a title yet."
"It sounds wonderful," Arnold said, looking far away. "Writing, that is. You were good even when we were little."
"Your life sounds wonderful," Helga contradicted. At the look he gave her she laughed. "Current imprisonment aside, of course. I mean…adventure, exotic places, legendary treasures…"
Arnold grinned, his eyes lighting up with boyish excitement. "Yeah, it's not bad. I remember this one time…" He launched into a vivid tale of adventure, near-death experiences, and hairsbreadth chances. Helga told him all about her writing, and they talked, as the sun moved across the sky. She could feel Arnold opening up, becoming more human, less a scared, starved animal, and it relieved her. If Arnold had lost his hope, his basic faith in human goodness, if there was no foil for her own cynicism and hardness…well, who could believe in the good in people if Arnold couldn't?
Finally they drifted to the subject of their old classmates.
"So Gerald tells me Rhonda has her own show?" Arnold asked. Helga rolled her eyes.
"God, yes, she's impossible to get away from. She's all over MTV constantly with this whole 'Music Style' thing, where she pulls a Joan Rivers on celebrities and talks to fashion designers about how plaid is the new orange and pink is the new black, or whatever. You know how she is." She launched into her best Rhonda imitation. "Hello, I'm Rhonda Wellington- Lloyd, and today we'll be talking about Madonna, and her uncanny ability to never grasp that inventiveness and individuality are only second to a twenty-two inch waist."
Arnold laughed. "You two always had a weird relationship."
Helga shrugged. "Can you blame us? We ruled the school together. You were our leader, but everyone listened to me and Rhonda." She smiled, remembering. "She had me on the show once. She pulled out all these old pictures of me from when we were little—it was humiliating. Fortunately, I had some of her fashion faux-pass with me, thanks to Kodak, so we broke even."
"She didn't show the dress with the sneakers?" Arnold asked, all mock concern. "And that bow, that big pink bow that you wore all through elementary and middle school. I always liked that bow," he remembered, looking thoughtful.
"I know," Helga said softly, reaching up to touch her hair as if it were still there.
Silence fell over them again. Again, Arnold was the one to break it. "Do you still talk to Phoebe?" he asked her.
Helga shook her head. "We sort of dropped off in college. I was in Stanford, you know, and she was all the was over in Cambridge. I think Gerald discouraged her from really working at keeping in touch with me. I don't think he ever really trusted me. Not that I blame him…I was pretty awful to him in school. Still, I'd never try and keep Phoebe from something that made her happy, and he made her happy. I'm glad for her, anyway." Something very sad settled in her as she thought of her best friend, her veritable lifeline to the world of the living for almost fifteen years. Their growing apart had been just as much her fault as Phoebe's or Gerald's, she realized.
"I still can't believe they got married," Arnold said.
"I know," Helga agreed. "Who would've thought that discreet glances over the punch bowl at Rhonda's parties would've blossomed into real love?"
He laughed. "You really are a poet," he said, growing thoughtful again. "Gerald went to MIT to be close to her. I think that must be nice…to have someone who knew you as a child, who loved you at your most awkward and insecure."
Helga didn't answer. Night had fallen, and she shivered, suddenly cold.
"It gets chilly here at night," Arnold informed her, noticing the shiver. "Especially alone." There was something hollow in his voice on the last word.
Helga looked at him through lowered lashes. "We could huddle together to stay warm," she suggested. Inwardly, she was shocked at the coyness in her voice. Was she…flirting? With Arnold? *Her* Arnold? It was too weird, to bizarre to be flirting with her childhood love in an Egyptian jail.
He met her eyes and she was glad of the growing dark that hid her sudden blush, as pink as her old bow that he had liked so much. "Believe me, Helga, I don't mind," he teased. Where was the Arnold she knew, the bashful and somehow innocent one, even after he had lost his virginity to that she-devil, Lila?
He lay down and gently patted the stone floor next to him. Well, as long as he was inviting her… Helga scooted over and lay down next to him, the coolness of the stone a sharp contrast to the warmth of his bare, tan skin so close to her. They weren't actually touching, but his heat radiated outward from him.
Suddenly a surge of bravery coursed through her veins, and she edged closer, so that she was actually touching him. She stifled a grin as she felt his body flush, heating at her contact. *This* was the shy boy she remembered! Embarrassed even though only their shoulders and upper arms were touching. It was a strange way to relate to him, sexually…it had never been in their encounters before. Of course it hadn't been there when they were children…and though she of course had been attracted to him in adolescence, once the hormones kicked in, all of the middle- and high- schoolers she had known, herself and Arnold included, had been too awkward and uncertain for any kind of sexual relationship. To play this game, one she had played with many men, but none with the stakes as high or the emotions as strong, was interesting and exciting. But now was not really the time, not this first night. God knows they'd be here for a while yet.
"Good night, Arnold," she murmured.
"Good night, Helga," he whispered back.
They lay like that for a while in silence. Helga stared upwards at the ceiling, thinking he'd gone to sleep. It was then that she let her doubts surface, and they hit her like a ton of bricks. What was she going to do? Rescue was too much to hope for. And she'd never accept Eddie's proposal. Especially now that she knew Arnold didn't like him. Anyone Arnold didn't like was on her list immediately.
Could they break out from within? It seemed hopeless. And where would they go, with no money, no friends, no transportation, no nothing? Was she doomed to stay here until she died?
She began to cry softly, as the first pangs of hunger hit her. She didn't mean to be selfish, she really didn't…but she didn't want to die here, didn't want to grow old and ugly here, dirty and hungry and cold. Arnold was here, and that would have made it alright in any other situation…but she couldn't bear to see him suffer, and he was suffering badly, she knew. She, more than any other, knew when Arnold was not himself. This Arnold was hungry and cold and tired too, and he was being tortured on top of it all.
She felt Arnold's strong arms go around her, pulling her close. "Shh…" he whispered, holding her tightly. "It's okay."
"No, it's not," she sobbed, crying harder now that she didn't have to hide it. She'd always had a tendency towards the hysterical. "I'm so scared…"
"Shh…" he whispered again, soothingly. He smoothed her hair and kissed the top of her head. "I'm scared, too. But I'm not half so scared as I was before you came."
He held her as she cried herself out, as she let go of all the fear and angry and sorrow that had been building up inside of her since her kidnapping, and before that, even. He held her as, exhausted, she drifted off to sleep, her eyes still red and puffy from crying. And when he was sure that she was sound asleep, Arnold cried too.
Aww…I wish I could find a guy like Arnold. Maybe without the head, though…this story is going places, man. The really weird stuff is gonna start happening in the next chapter, I think. Some new characters…and Eddie gets a little pissed…Let me know what you think!