With All My Heart
By: Silver Kitten
A/N: Hi guyz. Well I finished this story. (yay! 2nd story finished in my entire life) I hate to say that it but I'll admit I did rush this, on purpose. I still like the ending though, hopefully you will too. Thanks to everyone who reviewed this, for the compliments and constructive criticism, I appreciate it a lot.
Disclaimer: Must we go through this every time? I 'spose, huh? Well I don't own Hey Arnold…I'll go to my room and cry later. =P ^_^
Oh yeah, I should let you know its been 10 years since the last part—I know I know that's a wicked long time but I *think* (emphasizing the word 'think') that I pretty much pulled everything together throughout the story. I dunno, you can tell me.
~*~Helga~*~
What does a girl do when she's torn from love and recoils to misery? It's like there's almost nothing left inside, except a heart carrying a promise yet to be kept. Yes, I still think about him. Arnold. Childhood crush, obsession, infatuation, he was everything to me.
I abhor recalling that day I left. I can remember every detail of my confusion and my pain. We relocated in Kansas, a place where no one would find us. We came to find out that Nick Vermicelli was the one making threats. I guess he and Bob had a sour business deal, leaving Nick somewhere down the line bankrupt. It was his ill-conceived idea to get back at Bob, and now he's serving his sixth year in prison with eight more to go. I never paid attention to the full sentence; I had more explicit things on my mind. The question still lies why we never went back to Hillwood. Why we stayed. It was a question only my dad could answer.
He wanted me to have a better life than Hillwood. I still want to know where a better life was. He ended up opening a new Beeper store in Hutchinson, people down here seemed to be a little less advanced than in other places, so it was a good move for him. My mom, Miriam, still lazes around the house. Luckily I only visit my parent's house rather then living in it. My dad and I still get along better than we used to years and years ago, my mom and I have our days. Olga finished her teaching in Alaska and now lives there with her new husband, Lance. Which leaves me.
I live in a nice apartment, not huge but not too small. I've been working at a grocery store. Not my favorite place to be but it gets me where I need to for now. Meanwhile I've been working on a book.
I haven't gone back to Hillwood. Not yet. I couldn't before because of my dad's job, he liked it too much. I can't now because…truthfully, I'm too afraid. The conversation Arnold and I had replays over and over in my head. That bizarre moment he made me promise to meet him again; I didn't want to show up after ten years of separation. What if I changed too much and he didn't like it? What if he changed, would I be able to handle it? By submitting my story to a publishing company I decided to put our promise and my fate in their hands. I knew that if they accepted my book that I should return to Hillwood.
I still think of my other friends, of course I never let them get along with me all the time. I especially think of Phoebe. I wondered if I'd be in a different situation had she still been alive. I wondered if I had the chance to go back to Hillwood knowing I'd meet her there, if then I'd actually leave in place of staying here in my isolated fear. Ten years is a long time not to talk to someone. Even if we did agree to meet again, there are greater things at stake, are there not?
~*~Arnold~*~
It's been ten years and I still remember that day. I remember the sights, the smells, and the sounds. She's probably forgotten about it, forgotten about me. Ever since she left she's never made any contact and still after ten years now I think about her. Wondering what ever happened to her, why she left in the first place. Wondering what she had to say. Wondering if she still thinks of me, or if my name even crosses her mind once in a while. Or has she forgotten completely? Surely now she'd be on her own, would she ever come back and visit? There were so many questions, so many years, and so much agony.
A lot has changed though. I don't think I've changed that much, aside from becoming taller and looking a little more mature, or, handsome, as my grandma says. Fortunately my grandparents are still alive and kicking. Nothing could keep them down. They're not in tiptop health, but for there age they're doing great. I don't know where I'd be without them. I still live in the boarding house for now, only because my grandparents need help running it. They insisted I move on and I agreed only to that if they take it easy. They still liked going on their little adventures sometimes turning into a fiasco. So Gerald offered to let me move in with him.
Gerald and I are still best friends, now soon to be roommates. We've had minor disagreements but we always work past them. Sometimes he would bring Helga up in our conversations, and he'd ask me how I really felt about her. I'd flinch. Sure, best friends tell each other everything, but not everything. I was waiting. Yeah it would ease my loneliness to tell him that I missed her terribly, that I really thought fondly of her, but I was scared I'd never see her again. He'd more than likely ask a lot of questions that even I wasn't ready to answer.
I still had Helga's ribbon. I kept it in a box along with the picture of my parents.
~*~Helga~*~
I wasn't expecting to get anything in the mail today. But something came. At first I thought it was junk mail, maybe even a bill. It wasn't. It was from the people I sent my book too. I put my hand to my chest, realizing that sealed in this envelope predicted the near future. I opened it up and began to read.
They…accepted. They accepted my book and want to publish it! Is this for real? Is this a joke? It can't be! I'm going to be published! That means...oh god. This means I'm going back to Hillwood. A slight smile crept upon my face. I ran to the phone and called my parents, giving them the news. They were happy for me, I'd guess, since they had funny ways of showing it.
Within an hour I had everything I needed packed. I walked into my closet, took down a box and grabbed Arnold's hat from it. The same box I kept my old locket in. I haven't worn it for the longest time, it brought back memories and every time I looked at it I'd cry. Today was different. As frightened as I was I was excited.
I ran out to my car, put my luggage in it, and sat down, staring in the rearview mirror.
"Helga, you can do this," I told myself, started the ignition and drove off. Back to Hillwood, back to my home, back to Arnold.
~*~The Following Day~*~Arnold~*~
"Hey Arnold! Heads up!" Gerald yelled, but it was too late. The baseball knocked me in the head. I rubbed the bump just forming.
"Sorry."
"Man you need to be careful. What were doing anyway?" he asked, scratching his head.
"I was just spacing out." I explained, laughing mildly. Gerald patted me on the back.
"Well its time for me to go eat dinner. I'll see ya tomorrow, okay Arnold?"
"Sure okay. See you later." I said, and he ran off.
I picked the ball up, flinging it in the air and catching it repeatedly a few times. I remembered all the games we used to play, years back. When Helga was here all she'd give me were taunts and insults because I couldn't play well. It made me want to laugh, actually. I miss those taunts, those insults, because they came from her, and maybe now because I understood why a little more.
I started walking, taking the path in the park I usually do to get home. Reaching the doorstep I felt a twinge of awareness. There was something familiar in the air. I walked in, hanging my jacket on the hanger and headed towards the kitchen.
"I'm back grandpa," I said, almost rushing by the doorway.
"Hey short man, before you go up, you have some company waiting for you upstairs. Thought I'd give you the heads up." He said, winking. I tilted my head, and suddenly I thought for a moment that it could be Helga! After all these years, finally she'd return to me, and I could tell her what I couldn't then, and I could show her everything I've seen since realization hit.
I ran up, breathing hastily, hoping she'd be there. Then I thought...hey, what are the chances it is her? I stopped at the door.
It could be Harold, Sid, Stinky, anyone...I shouldn't get my hopes up. I slowly opened the door. One deep breath, one glance, one moment and it had come. The excitement, the anxiety, the realism of it all.
"Hey Football Head." she said. It was quaint and simple, but it held meaning greater than any words could only because it came from the one voice than enveloped my thoughts for what seemed like forever.
"Helga!" I whispered with anticipation. She sat on my bed, now standing up and looking shy.
"It's been a while," she said, sighing. I stepped closer.
"Yeah it has. How are you doing? What's been going on? I mean…wow. What's brought you back, finally?" I had so many things I needed to know. She smiled.
"Well…a lot of things have happened the past 10 years. Right now, all I want you to know is that I'm sorry I didn't keep my end of the deal." She said, tossing me my old but familiar blue hat.
"What do you mean? You came back, didn't you?" I asked her.
"Yes, but not as soon as I could…I could have came back long ago. I was just…afraid."
"Of what??"
"You." She said, looking ashamed. I laughed.
"Me? Why?" I wanted to know.
"It's hard to explain. You have no idea how much I wanted to leave and come back. Its just…well…it has to do with how I felt. You wouldn't understand unless you knew what I know. Now I came back to tell you and fulfill a promise from yesterday and every day before it since long ago. You remember. I had something to tell you." She explained.
"Yeah. Just as I had something to tell you." I added.
"Uh huh. You go first." She told me.
"I wouldn't feel right, you should go first." I suggested.
"No, please, I insist." She said. For a moment both of us looked around, avoiding the subject. I felt the urge to blurt out my feelings pulsate through me, my heart pounding with the anxiety. I waited for her to say something, but I knew she wasn't going to. It didn't seem that way. If I could remember anything from our past it is that we were both as stubborn as mules.
More seconds ticked by, more potential words came to my mouth but did not leave. I couldn't stand it any more.
"I like you!" I said, but I paused for a moment in shock—we both said it at the same time.
The silence was more uncomfortable now than before. I scratched my head and she twiddled with her fingers.
I didn't know what would be more appropriate, to wait for her to speak or for me to say something.
"What I mean is…that…I really like you. Like you like you, you could say. I mean, its terribly sudden and probably a shock you probably never thought to hear me say and you probably never wanted to hear, and probably will never return the same feelings-"
"Probably? Is everything probable to you so negative?" I cut her off, leaving her dumbfounded. "Helga I…I feel that same. I mean, well I'm not sure what I mean. That day before you left I realized some things that would have made so much impact on everything. First I got this instinct that maybe you liked me…and then I got to think that maybe I liked you. Then I thought that maybe wasn't even in the equation anymore. I did like you. I do like you. I didn't quite understand it then, because I had thought I liked Lila. Then I remembered the only reason I liked Lila was because she reminded me of you, well, on your good days. Smart, funny, polite- I knew that's who you were.
"It made me think about Ruth, Miss Felter, and Summer, and I realized the only reason I liked any of them was because in some small and simple way they reminded me of you. Different things I…I just knew. So, in fact, it's not just that I like you a lot. I feel like I lo-"
"No." she cut me off now, with confusion and a recognizable hatred in her tone. "Don't go thinking you love me. You don't fall in love with people who treat you like crap for as long as they know you. You don't fall in love with people who would much rather hate you than show that they actually like you. No Arnold. You don't. As much as I want to believe that, I just can't." she had tears in her eyes when she said this.
"Helga, listen to me for once. I knew you, the real you, before you could ever put on a charade for the rest of our preschool class. I knew you then, with as little as I could understand being that age, and I remember it now. I may have not as soon realized this because I was always so dense when it came to things like love, but I've started putting two and two together. Now, what I need to know now is…how do you really feel about me? Do you…do you love me too?" I asked.
She had fresh tears coming in, but a watered down smile was forming, that I could tell. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, slowly opening them and setting them upon me.
"With all my heart." She spoke. Immediately my heart was uplifted and I went to her, pulling her into a hug. "I've always loved you." She said now. I wiped away her tears, cupping her face in my hands and pressing my lips to hers, secretly hoping time would stop forever.
~*~
EpilogueArnold and Helga were in love; there was no question in that. They talked the rest of the night of what had happened since ten years ago. Helga told Arnold how she made a promise to her late friend Phoebe that if she ever got published she would have to tell Arnold how she felt, no matter what. Arnold was extremely excited and happy for Helga's accomplishment. She is now a well-known author with five best sellers in the last three years, while Arnold is a teacher at Urban Tots preschool, the place he states his life with Helga began and would never end.
Arnold's grandparents both passed on, but in peace. They said it was old age, but that was an overstatement, for they were younger at heart than a toddler.
Big Bob Pataki and Miriam made some major changes in their lifestyle. They got remarried, spent more time together, as Miriam got a job as an executive at the Beeper Emporium and Bob and her shared smoothies once and a while.
Gerald went on to be a successful football player and kept in touch frequently with Arnold and Helga. He remembers Phoebe as the one who would bring two people together, even in death, and the one who taught him to act on his feelings instead of hiding them to be 'cool'.
Mr. Simmons became a world-renowned playwright.
Curly is in a nuthouse.
Sid became Monkey Boy, sidekick of his hero, Monkey Man.
Stinky still lives on the farm.
Nadine still loves bugs and now studies them for her career.
Rhonda is, nonetheless, a fashion designer. She saw no other career path.
Harold and Patty are together, living the simple urban life they grew up in.
Eugene gets hurt…a lot. But has made his way into being a certified nurse at Hillwood medical center—probably a good place for him to be considering his personality.
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Okay guys, that's it, finito, done, finished, the END. Well I can admit, the end of this was rushed, yes? I apologize; I just lost the taste for this story and really wanted to get it done. What's weird is I like the first part, I think I screwed up the second part, the beginning of this part was zipping to the point, but I really enjoyed writing the end. *shrugs* eh, you can make your own decisions on how you liked it, if you liked it. I'll try not to dig myself in holes for story plots again so I won't have to rush stories like I did this one lol. Anyways, take care.
~*~Silver Kitten~*~
