AN: In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, the characters of Arnie, Lulu, Stumpy, Fifi, Kid, Gerard, Rhoda, Harry, and Hilda are creations of Craig Bartlett while the characters of Brawny, Eustace, Noreen and Shanna are creations of fellow fanfic author Kryten.

Anyways, Enjoy!

"She is the prom queen I'm in the marching band
She is a cheerleader I'm sitting in the stands
She gets the top bunk I'm sleeping on the floor
She's Miss America and I'm just the girl next door…"

In the cupid-covered hallway of Regional School 59, Hilda Pulaski bobbed her head and lip-syncing along to the ditty as it blasted from the headphones of her Discman. The ponytailed girl in pink seemed lost in her own little galaxy and unencumbered by the world around her while swaying in rhythm on her way to her locker that February morning.

By the song's conclusion, Hilda had found her locker proceeded to swap the device out for the books she would most definitely use that morning. But as she hooks the padlock back upon her cubbyhole, a congested snort and lustful giggle fill the air.

"Crap. Them."

Grabbing the first book she can and shoving it up to her face, Hilda watches her two classmates walk hand in hand to homeroom: one, a female attired in green seemed to glide through the hall like a lizard on ice. But it's her companion that sends Hilda's emotions into a tailspin; a dead-eyed child in plaid with ashen countenance who in contrast to the girl lumbers with all the hustle of a slug.

"Oh Arnie." The girl coos loudly. "Our Valentine's Date yesterday at the General Store was oh so lovely."

"I'm glad Lulu." The boy replies with a voice as flat as day old soda. "I liked the gumball machine. There were 94 that day. Six white ones, thirty-three blue ones…"

Lulu's face slowly breaks into one of agonizing boredom over Arnie's attempt to regale her with the inventory he took of the confectionary. Yet as she catches Hilda from the corner of her eye and her sad attempts to conceal herself from them, the flirtatious female in green flicks a balled-up gum wrapper at her direction. Now having Hilda's attention, Lulu sticks out her tongue at the girl before her lips curl into a smile of haughty victory as they round the corner and enter the class of their homeroom teacher Ms. Czek.

On the surface, Hilda Pulaski was a girl well-adjusted to the point of blandness. In her spare time, she dabbled here and there in poetry (nothing complex, mind you), she unironically loved to wear pink, and proudly possessed a naïve yet easygoing outlook that made her relatively popular within the RS-59 environment. But as the saying goes; looks are always deceiving…especially as of late.

(A day earlier)

It was supposed to be like a fairy tale out of the movies.

Taking advantage of the recess aide's negligence of the duties they had been entrusted with, Hilda snuck away from the playground with one goal on her mind; getting her gift to Arnie in the time allotted to her by virtue of this break.

She had no reason to be secretive about this endeavor. Heck, some of her classmates probably knew of her feelings for Arnie to one degree or another. Still, there was something all too fitting about surprising the one you love on this the high day of romance. And what a surprise it was: a vanilla cupcake, unembellished save for a white gumball dotting the top as best as she could coupled with a hand written note professing the depths to which her feelings ran for him.

Rushing back to the playground, Hilda played it cool for the remainder of their free time. Ultimately, the bell rang and the grumbling gaggle of school kids sulked back to the second part of their academic day. With baited breath, the girl in pink cast her eyes towards the desk of her beloved waiting for the moment he would rest his physique within the chair and have no choice but to see what she had laid out for him. Sure enough, Arnie entered the classroom with a snort and shuffled to his space. With all the curiosity of a granite slab, he looks for a minute at the cupcake before taking the gumball and chewing on it. Suddenly he spits it into the paper wadding it up and tossing it in the trash, apparently finding the confection too flavorful for his liking. The cupcake was given to Lulu as an ice breaker for the hope that they could kill time after school at the General Store.

(Present)

"Ah, young love. Lulu and Arnie. First comes love. Then comes marriage…"

Hilda's voice, one which usually contained no trace of malice or acerbity, suddenly got quiet and clipped…but not angry.

"…Then comes Hilda Pulaski to annihilate both of you. Oh, what on earth could I have ever possibly seen in that vaguely sentient scarecrow of a human? Was it the way one eye blinks after the other, or how his voice conveys all the thrill and excitement of paint drying? And to top it all off, he had to fall head over heels for that trollop in training wheels who practically regards this school as her personal petting zoo the way all the boys seem to be eating out of her hand. Arnie. What an emotionally handicapped creep. What a total Franken-dork. How I utterly loath him with all my being-"

A slow round of applause fills the empty corridor, each thwack bringing Hilda back to earth. Turning around, the girl in pink sees a short and squash-headed student reclining along the lockers. He donned himself all in black and his baggy pants were festooned with chains around the pockets. His equally dark shirt bore the image of a worried squirrel with baby blue eyes and a syringe poking into his head followed by the words 'My Mom Overmedicates Me!' But what really takes Hilda's attention is how his face breaks into an impressed sneer as he continues his clapping.

"Eustace!" She yelps. "How…how long have you-"

"Long enough to see that apparently, little miss sunshine happens to have some bite." He replies.