DISCLAIMER:
I don't own Hey Arnold!. But I will when my 14th birthday rolls around. Hehe, I wish. Well anyway, it's not mine, I'm just writing this story to fanaticize what might happen to the characters in my favorite cartoon of all time. [cough] besides SpongeBob [cough]
A/N:
This is my first fanfic in a long time. I know this is probably really cheesy and cliché. In addition to the fact that it is yet another Arnold/Helga fanfic. But their chemistry is just so real, and sweet, and loveable!!! It's just something you can't help but write about! The storyline also vaguely resembles the movie She's All That. I said vaguely… do I have to write another disclaimer for vaguely??? No? Okay then- to the story, Poncho!
Wait- okay, the kids are High School Freshmen (15-year-olds), just so you don't forget. =D
Marshmallows and Irony
Chapter One: I Dare You
It was about ten o'clock at night on Saturday. Arnold had invited about ten friends to his house for a roof top camp out. The boys sat in a circle, anxiously awaiting Gerald's dare for Arnold. Arnold, the poor, dense fool, had chosen 'dare' instead of 'truth', which everyone knows is the easier option, due to the fact that lying is the sub option.
"Arnold, I dare you to…" Gerald was at a loss of brilliance this time. He had so far successfully dared Sid to lick Arnold's toilet bowl; Harold to kiss Abner; and Stinky to confess love to a random girl through the means of a telephone. He was known for his cruel dares, but since Arnold was his best friend, he decided to let him off fairly easy. "kiss some girl."
"Who?" Arnold asked. He hoped this wouldn't have to be too unbearable.
"Umm… I don't exactly know quite yet."
"C'mon! Pick some ugly girl already!" yelled Curly, picking his nose.
"No, wait, it has to be more complicated than that." Sid said.
"Where are you going with that, Sid?" said Gerald reluctantly. He hated the fact that someone was trying to infringe on his dare, much less a guy that had just licked a toilet.
"I mean, why don't we let him pick someone out of a yearbook?" explained Sid.
"Yeah!" Harold butted in. "And he can have a blindfold! And spin around 5 times! and pin the tail on the donkey!"
"I like it." said Gerald coolly. "Minus the donkey part, of course."
"What do mean!??!!? That's the best part!"
"Harold." Arnold said flatly.
"Yeah?"
"Just shut up." The discussion ended there.
So the boys gathered in Arnold's room and searched for his 8th grade yearbook. It was Arnold who stood on the chair near his bookshelf and looked for it. He had so very many of them; all the way from his yearbook from Kindergarten year. He thought back to the day when his class received them last year. As always, his signature was wanted in most everyone's book, but there was one person's request for a signature that had puzzled him. Helga had asked him to sign hers, in a fairly nice tone. He had always asked Helga to sign his book first, it was rarely vice versa. They were friends in his point of view- very distant, but nonetheless understood, friends. Arnold had always dreamt it to turn out as more than that. He had always dreamt of knowing Helga in a much different light.
(Woo…Flashback!)
"Hey Arnold!" said Helga as she approached him in the desk filled classroom.
"Yeah, Helga? What's up?"
"I know you usually ask me first, and I usually refuse to, and then we get into this uncomfortable conversation and…"
"Helga, what do you want?"
"Would you sign my yearbook?"
Arnold looked at her strangely for a moment. He couldn't believe that she wasn't calling him Football Head, much less even yelling at him. She noticed this and responded to it.
"What's the matter, Football Head? Are you going to sign it or not?"
There it was, the harshness. She had returned to normal. He relaxed a bit.
"Yeah, sure, I'll sign it."
They exchanged books and signed each others'. Their moment then, had stopped, and things returned to normal.
Arnold remembered what he had written. 'Helga, I hope that we keep talking to each other every so often. It would be nice to get to know the real you. Maybe we could hang out sometime. Who knows?' He had then left his number and signed his name. He also remembered what Helga had written in his. He wondered if she remembered too.
'Arnold. A poem by Helga.
I don't understand you,
But here we are, friends.
Hope we meet over the summer,
But who knows when it ends?
Those two long months away
From my school mate.
You could get to know me,
But it seems a little late.
Maybe we could hang out… sometime.
~Helga G. Patacki 555-555-5555'* (Corrected)
She was so eloquent with words. That's one of the things that made Arnold think of Helga so intriguingly. She was mysterious enough, and yet was so honest. She wrote wonderful poetry, but he wondered what she meant by most of it. There had to be an underlying meaning that he couldn't perceive.
"Arnold! Would you grab the yearbook already?" Gerald said, a little agitated.
"Yeah, I'm starving' down here!" griped Harold, rubbing his grumbling stomach.
"Oh, sorry." said Arnold sheepishly. He hadn't realized that he was almost day dreaming. He quickly found the book and stepped down from the chair. "Here it is…" He handed it to Gerald.
"…the book." said Gerald, eying it as it laid in his hands. Like some ancient, priceless relic, he held it, dreaming of the endless possibilities of victims that Arnold might happen to choose.
"So how are we going to do this?" Arnold asked, suspicious of what might happen next. Before he knew it, Sid had slipped a blindfold over his face, at first catching on his nose, pulling his schnoz to his face. This problem was quickly corrected after Sid had laughed about his mistake for a while, and pretty soon all Arnold could see was darkness.
"First, there will be a blindfold placed over your eyes, my brother, as Sid has already done." Everyone except Arnold laughed a bit after Gerald said this. "Second, we'll ask you what pair of pages of our grade's class you would like to choose the random girl from. Third, you will be spun around in the chair 5 times, and then, you'll have to choose the girl on the page, using only your finger to decide with."
"And no peeking!" yelled Sid in his ear.
"So what will it be?" Gerald asked. "What set of pages would you like to choose?"
"The third." said Arnold, secretly hoping he had chosen the page containing the girl that he wished to pick.
Harold then began to spin Arnold around in the chair, rather quickly, and all of the other boys began to spin him too. Arnold counted the spins; their were six, not five. It was probably a mistake of Harold's; he could never count very well.
"Okay, Arnold, pick your mystery dream girl." Gerald said, almost as anxious as Arnold.
Arnold's finger browsed aimlessly across the pages. He had no idea what last names it grazed over. The result was killing him, he didn't know if he could take it. But all of that didn't matter, Arnold was trying to overcome the dizziness so he could pick the girl that he had been waiting so long to kiss, so long to love. He longed to choose…
"Brainy?!?!!" exclaimed everyone standing behind him.
"He can't go out with a boy!!" gagged Curly. "Or can he?…"
"Just pick again, Rico." Gerald said, annoyed with the result.
Arnold's finger scrolled the pages once again, praying for a miracle, praying not to pick a vamp. So finally, his finger stopped. There was quite a long pause. He didn't understand it; who had he picked? He took off his blindfold and gazed upon the picture that his finger had been placed upon. He then understood the silence. All he could do was sit and gawk. The bet was then made, the dare was set in stone.
"Helga Patacki." Arnold stared with empty eyes at the name. And for all that he had hoped for, all that he had wished… he had chosen her, blindly, instead of his beloved and coveted Lila.
"Well, you've got your work cut out for you, man." said Gerald, half laughing, half staring in disbelief. Conversations then commenced after that, but Arnold was silent.
A/N: Well, that was the first chapter. Kinda obvious who he would pick, right? Hope you liked it so far- review if you wanna.
*I made up that poem on a whim. And that number- I just pulled it out of the sky. So don't be calling it and pranking on some old man in New Jersey… or Spain… or something. (Corrected it!)