Stay Together (Continued)

By Shaun Blankenship

A Hey Arnold! Fan Fiction


CHAPTER 2: When It All Hits The Fan

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"So are you ready for next week's test, Helga?"
Phoebe and Helga walked down the street on their ways home. "Yeah, yeah, I got it. What are we working on again?"
"The original colonies of America."
"Yeah, I got it. Well, here's your house."
Phoebe walked up the stairs. Halfway up the stairs, she stops and turns at Helga. "Hey, Helga. Cheer up, okay."
Helga let out a long sigh of depression. "It's not fair, Phoebe." She sits on the end of the stoop and Phoebe soon joins her. "You know, Phoebe? You ever just think to yourself 'Why me? Why does all this stuff always happen to me?' I have lousy parents that can't even put in enough effort to remember my existance, pure talent that will never go anywhere, and the only love in my life will never be able to return the same feelings as me! I mean, you have it so easy. Look at you. Your parents support everything you do; mine just wish I could live up to the greatness of Olga." She kicks a rock on the sidewalk from the stoop across the street. "You're so smart and pleasant, you know? I'm just... Helga."
Phoebe puts an arm around Helga's shoulder. "It's gonna be alright, Helga. Things will eventually work out."
"But when, Phoebe? When?" Helga looks at her watch. "I need to go home, I'm 'expected'. Have a great weekend, Phoebe."
"You too, Helga." Phoebe walks inside the door of her building. Helga gives a look back but turns forward and keeps walking.

"And you can take this with you!"
Helga hears a familiar voice yelling from up her street. "Hmm, sounds like someone's getting into a fight!" She quickly runs up the street. Bob is standing outside of her house in a pile of clothes.
"Aw, Miriam, come on!"
Miriam comes to the doorway in her usual sleepy attitude. "No, Bob! No! I will not stand here and listen to your lies!"
Helga looks up at Bob. "What's going on?"
Miriam disappears at the door but comes back and throws a blue work shirt out. "And you can take THIS with you!" Bob grabs the shirt and spans it out. A red lipstick mark is on the collar.
"Miriam, you have to believe me! This is all a misunderstanding!" Before he finished his words, the door had slammed on him. Helga looked up at her father, scared at what his answer would be to her question. "Dad, what going on?"
Bob looked at his daughter with a face that if a single muscle was moved, a flood of tears would pour out. He turned away from her, picked up his thrown belongings, and just started walking away from the house he had called hom for so long. Helga stared at Bob as he walked away, and as he seemed to disappear, she could hear him lightly weeping.
"Dad... don't go..." She reached out as if she could some how pull him back, but knew it was impossible. She went inside of her home.

Miriam was in the reclining chair usually occupied by Bob watching TV. Helga slowly slipped through the doorway. A commercial for Casa Paradiso had just ended and was followed immediately by a commercial for Big Bob's Beepers. Miriam quietly cringed in her chair. Bob pranced around in his royal cape with his diamond encrusted belt while women dressed in lavishly sequined outfits danced around him. After he was done saying how much someone could save with Big Bob's Beepers, he was followed with all the women gathering around him and one of them was hugging Bob. Bob looked at her and winked. Miriam finally couldn't take it anymore. She reached for anything she could find that was closed by and jammed it in the TV screen with a terrifying shatter and bang.
"Mom..."
Miriam didn't even turn towards Helga. She sulked forward towards the TV and just answered her as if she was sick. "Helga... I'm so sorry you had to see all of this. I am SO sorry..."
"Dad's not coming back, is he?"
Miriam turned towards Helga finally and ran towards her crying. She wrapped her hands around Helga and sobbed on her shoulder. "Helga... oh, Helga... I'm so sorry! It's... it's..." She's so choked up she can't even speak.
Helga put her hand on Miriam's back and patted her to comfort. "It's alright, mom. It's alright." Helga started crying with her.

"So what happened?"
Miriam hit liquify on the blender and made her self a smoothy. She poured her self a cup and drank whatever was in the blender's pitcher. She then proceeded to drink the cup. "It's not just one incident, it's a series of things.
"Bob has been coming home late everyday for about two weeks now. Being an important business man, it seems reason able for him to show up a little late. But then he started to ignore me. Everynight he wouldn't even wake me up and tell me to go to bed when I was on the couch. He wouldn't say anything to me when I left, but i thought maybe he just had some things on his mind. Then I found his shirt in the laundry with lipstick on it. I know it sounds really cheesy for that to have happen, but then after he left for work, I called the beeper store. He wasn't even working today!" She starts crying and sobbing. Helga hands her a tissue and she blows her nose. She starts telling her story again as she jams more fruit into the blender.
"What hurts me the most is when I called his cell phone and he... he LIED to me. He told me he was at work, so I told him to stay there and not to come home. That I know." She pours her self a smoothie after blending and actually drinks the glass this time. "Then when I asked him to explain how I was wrong as soon as he got here, and he said that he's been hit on all week by one of the extras from one of his beeper commercials but 'nothing happened between them' and now she's all over him. Like I'm going to believe THAT." She puts her head down on the counter.
Helga looked at the sad sight of her mother. "Mom, what happens now?"
Miriam lifts her head up. "I'm divorcing him, Helga. That's all I can do." She pours some more smoothie into her glass. "Helga, this is going to be a very tough time for both of us and I need you as much as you need me. Please, don't think I'm doing this to hurt you."
Helga looks down at the floor and reaches for her mom's hand. She looks up, holds her mom's hand and places her empty hand on top of her mom's. "It will be alright, mom. We'll get through this."
If only Helga could also believe what she was saying to her mother.

To Be Continued...


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