Doesn't it usually feel like you have more chapters than you actually have? Doesn't it? Fine then, don't answer me! Just stare at your computer screen, meanies! Okay, Chapter 7. I love this chapter, even I haven't exactly *cough, cough* written it, oh well! Time to go!
Disclaimer: I don't own Hey Arnold, and it's really starting to bug me!
Chapter 7: In and Out and Back Again
"It's burning up in here
Even though the bed is cold on your side
I'd rather die
Than spend this night here without you
Without you…"
NewFound Glory "It's Been A Summer"
Helga had reluctantly haunted the hotel room for the past hour and a half. She couldn't do much of anything without the risk of awakening Arnold. Several times that night he'd awakened, sitting up straight in his bed, claiming to hear a "noise". And because of such, Arnold proved himself to be an incredibly light sleeper. Phoebe had called earlier, stirring Arnold for the seven hundredth, forty-ninth time over the past 4 hours. Helga mimed her apology as Phoebe described how she'd planned on spending the day with Gerald.
"No, it's okay, really.", Helga assured Phoebe, pressing her cheek against the cold surface of the hotel phone.
"You're sure your not mad?", she asked, just for insurance.
"Yes, I'm fine. Have a good time.", Helga replied, smiling.
"Okay, bye!", Phoebe piped up excitedly.
So, evidently, she figured she'd be doing this all day. After about another half hour of rearranging the hotel bathroom commodities by alphabetical order, and picking all the fuzzy things off the down side of the blankets, Helga decided it was high time to wake up this guy. She'd already tried the traditional approach, and she couldn't quite get the ancient alarm clock to function properly. So, of course, drastic measures were needed. She proceeded to slightly nudge him little by little off the bed. If he stirred, which he did several times, she'd immediately run into the bathroom, until he fell back asleep. She looked upon his sleeping figure for a moment. So peaceful, shame she had to do what she did. She continued to nudge, and nudge, and nudge, until…
"Ow!!! What happened?", Arnold said rubbing the sore spot on his head roughly, trying to figure out how he'd fallen asleep on a somewhat hotel bed, and had woken up on a adversely uncomfortable hotel floor.
"Something wrong?", Helga asked, from her bathroom retreat.
"I don't know", Arnold muttered, still half asleep.
"Well", Helga said, peeking out from the bathroom innocently. "Looks as though you've, uh fallen outta the bed, there."
"You did this.", Arnold stated simply, a smidgen of humor in his tone.
"Arnold, I'm shocked.", Helga said, mockingly placing her hand over her heart and feigning a hurt expression on her face. "How could you even fathom that I would ever do something like that?", she asked, on the verge of her ever famous crocodile tears. Yes, those salty wonders had come to her aid more than enough times.
"Whatever.", he retorted, surrendering into the bathroom from which she'd just emerged.
Helga sat on her bed and looked at the dead T.V. screen. She reached over lazily and grabbed the remote from the nightstand and flipped on the T.V. The screen depicted a court scene, two middle aged women fighting over property of some kind. Just as the bailiff was about to escort the women on the right out of the courtroom, Arnold came from the bathroom and spoke.
"Ish uh shame, chee-vee now-a-day-sh", he said, his toothbrush poking out of one side of his mouth.
"Oh, please, spit or gargle or…something.", Helga managed to remark, at the sight of the pale blue foam that encased the exterior of Arnold's mouth. The sight of any bodily "productions", so to speak, literally made Helga cringe. She practically gagged after watching "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer." But then again, she'd contradicted herself, after thinking about once sculpting figures out of gum that was once in that same mouth. She turned her head in the other direction, partially from blushing at the memory, the rest from utter disgust.
After erasing that image from her brain, she decided to ignore the scenario taking place on T.V. and flip through the latest issue of T.V. Guide. She immediately sought out the crossword puzzle, and used the hotel pen to fill in the few she actually knew.
"Hey Arnold?", she called, without looking up.
"Yeah?", he replied, almost as loud.
"What's a four letter word for merge?", she asked, wrinkling her nose at the page.
"Uh,…um fuse."
"Oh, yeah…", she said, scribbling the word on the page. "How about a…twelve letter word for surly?"
"Hmmm, that's a hard one. Cantankerous. Does that have twelve letters?", he asked, stepping out of the bathroom fully dressed in a large black T-shirt, with St. Louis plastered on the front, and a pair of baggy khaki pants.
"Hold on…", Helga stated, counting out the words as she wrote them. "Yup, twelve. How'd you know that?"
"My Grandma likes crossword puzzles. She takes them on her expeditions to the Sahara or the North Pole, or wherever she feels like going that day so she doesn't get bored.", Arnold stated, simply.
Helga had already known (from prior encounters of the Gertie kind) that Arnold's grandma wasn't your usual knitting, cookie baking, cheek pinching grandma. Every occasion she had to visit his home, she was at once greeted with a warm smile, even though as soon as she stepped through the door, she'd no longer be Helga. Nine times out of ten, she was Eleanor Roosevelt, come by with urgent news from the President or something.
"Hmm, I see.", Helga replied, not quite knowing much to say. In comparison to Arnold's family, hers was strictly Plain Jane.
'No or never, now or never, now or…'
"Okay, here's one for you. What's a three letter word for…" 'Now or never, NOW OR NEVER
"For what?", Helga asked.
" A three letter word for would you like to go to a play with me tonight?", Arnold said, rather quickly.
"Really?", Helga asked, at first taken aback by the question, but finally getting a chance to answer.
"Yeah, I mean the guy, last gave me these tickets to the play up the street and I…"
"Yes.", she interrupted, not quite sure what to add on. The smile that lit up her face said enough.
"Okay…", Arnold said, trying to hide his excitement.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"So, was Helga okay about it?", Gerald asked, slightly nervously.
"Yeah, she was, um fine. Plus, she might have needed some alone time, or something.", Phoebe said, trying to avoid the subject, but inching closer and closer to it still.
"You know, don't you?", Gerald asked, his wicked smile returning little by little.
"Know what?", Phoebe asked, answering a question with a question. After a minute, she was forced to succumb to the truth. "Yes."
"Yeah, I uh, I found out yesterday.", Gerald began saying.
"Me too."
"Did you happen to, uh see the room?", Gerald asked, trying not to say what he was already saying, without really saying that he was saying what he was saying.
"Look, I know what it looked like, but…"
"They said, 'No, of course not.'," he said, mocking the innocent tone in which Arnold used to thwart his accusations.
"I know my best friend and…"
"And I know my best friend.", Gerald smirked. His heinous smile had now taken his face completely over, making him resemble the Grinch, in more ways than one.
"You're terrible..", Phoebe retorted.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"…And they just, yanked your hair out of your teeth?", Arnold asked, not quite believing this rather tall tale.
"Yes, what else were they supposed to do?", Helga replied in a fit of laughter.
"I get that, but-"
"There's no but!", Helga interrupted. "Hair or braces, hair or braces. Hmmm, I think my braces are more important to me than a few strands of hair."
"I still for the life of me, don't understand why women chew their hair. It's disgusting!", Arnold said, in equal disgust as Helga's earlier in the day.
"Well, it's the same as…as you, biting your nails.", she implied, sitting up on her bed and reaching for his hand across the gap that separated them. Before quite realizing what she was doing she looked down and was running her fingertips over the edge of his shrunken nails. She had lost considerable track of how long she'd been holding his hand, until of course she let go.
She cringed as the awkward silence once again invited itself in, residing here and there, worsening the situation.
"So, what about you?", she asked, sheepishly staring at the floor.
"What about me?", Arnold asked, not quite sure what she meant.
"Any secrets you'd like to divulge? Anything you'd like to tell our studio audience?", she said, not intentionally trying to be as charming as she was.
"Yes. Yes I do. My name is Arnold. I'm eighteen years old. I live in Seattle, Washington. And I am famished.", he said, turning to Helga.
"Hi.", she said looking straight forward into an imaginary T.V. camera and smiling widely. "I'm Helga Pataki, and I'm also eighteen years old. I reside in Seattle, Washington, and I too am about to die of hunger!", she continued, still smiling.
"You sound like your in one of those beauty pageants, or something. ", Arnold said.
"I could never be in one of those things. It seems so…I don't know, there's something about them, that I just don't get", Helga remarked, her eyes darting from here and there.
"Like what?", Arnold asked, convinced that even if Helga did ever decide to do something like that, she'd have a clear shot of winning.
"Oh, Where to Begin*…, but no time for that, I'm starving!", she said, heading towards the closet to retrieve her coat.
"You wanna go out to eat?", Arnold asked, still seated on the bed.
"Of course. Why, did you wanna order room service or something?", Helga asked, as if she were asking if he'd like to lie in a bed of scorpions while balancing starved tarantulas on his nose.
"Well…"
"You don't order room service for lunch! It's like eating coffee beans, or something!", Helga uttered. "But if you really want to, it's fine with me."
"No, I've been in this room too long, anyway."
"If you don't want to go out, it's fine. Really.", Helga called from the closet, obviously putting her coat back.
"Ya know, you are so hard to agree with. You want to do something, I agree with you, and you change your mind!!", Arnold said, his tone louder than usual.
"Okay, one, I have the right to change my mind, being as it is MY mind, and two, I only change my mind because I am trying to be flexible, and compromising.", Helga replied, trying to soften her tone a little.
"Well, here's the deal. I'm going to go down the corner, and get some food. You can stay here and be as 'compromising' as you want.", Arnold stated.
"Hey wait! It was my idea to go out!", she said, heading after him.
"So what?", Arnold asked, at the door. It didn't really matter to him whose idea it was to go wherever to eat, just as long as he ate.
"So, if I were to follow you to go get something to eat, then it'd look like I was…following you.", Helga said, realizing the absurdity of her own comment.
"Yeah…", Arnold said, down the hall.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*
As our favorite feuding fire headed, whatever, as Helga and Arnold argued angrily down the street, we find another one of our favorite couples heading in the opposite direction. Phoebe and Gerald had spent the past eight hours looking at the same sites that they'd both seen the day before, and were frankly, tired from the whole ordeal. Instead of taking the packed elevator to their rooms, they decided on the stairs, which wasn't exactly the best idea…
"What are you doing?", Arnold asked, looking across the table in the indoor eatery they'd chosen after deciding that there were 400 million McDonalds worldwide, and they didn't need to travel halfway across the country to eat another greasy hamburger.
"Picking out the beets.", Helga stated simply.
"You don't like beets?", Arnold asked, as if she were saying she didn't like…something everybody likes, but something I can't think of right now.
"No, I don't like beets.", Helga said, with the tiniest hint of anger in her voice. She didn't exactly enjoy talking about herself, which made her temporarily vear the subject in the opposite direction. "And you don't like…", she began, peeking onto his plate to see if he'd extracted any food from his meal. He had. " Carrots? You don't like carrots?", she asked, not really caring if he liked fried calamari and oriental rice crackers. (A/N: I love both!)
"No, they're disgusting.", he replied, deliberately looking Helga in the eye and placing another tiny orange strand to the side of his plate.
"They're not 'disgusting.' They're good for you're eyes.", Helga said, picking around her food for a carrot, and upon finding one, munching on it loudly. "Mmmm,…"
"And beets are good for your colon.", Arnold retorted, mimicking her and chewing on a large red beet he' d found in his salad.
Helga shot him a fatal glare from across the table before speaking. "Well, if you want to go blind by the time your twenty-five, then that's fine with me.", she said, leaning over and scooping a spoonful of carots off her plate and onto hers, smiling evilly.
"And if you want to have your colon flushed out every two weeks by the time your twenty-one, I couldn't care less.", Arnold said, reaching over the salt and pepper shakers to her plate, and picking out every beet she'd disregarded.
Helga continued to look over at Arnold from across her plate. By this time, in practically any other situation, she'd probably be in the middle of a fight with whomever she'd been stuck with. But it seemed as though being "stuck" with Arnold wasn't really being stuck. Being stuck would probably consist of her never leaving her hotel room, or on the contrary, leaving her hotel room to escape the person she may have really been "stuck" with. But the fact that Arnold could be so cool about everything, about her, actually made this vacation bearable. For the most part, he dealt with her sarcasm, bitterness, and irritability with a considerable amount of self-control (and a little sarcasm as well.) Next to Phoebe, she probably couldn't have picked a better roomate herself.
"Hello? When people talk to you, the custom on this planet is to reply in some manner.", Arnold repeated, waving his left hand in front of her face.
"Ha Ha, oh that's funny. Are you ready to go?", she said, standing up.
"Um, that's only what I've been asking for the past 10 minutes!!", Arnold replied.
"I wonder what Phoebe did today.", Helga said, thinking out loud.
"If I know anything, they visited a maximum of four sites, and ate at every restaurant on the east coast, and Gerald is still hungry.", Arnold said, speaking from prior experience.
"Hey, what happened up there?", Helga asked, pointing to the ambulance parked in front of the hotel. Even from a distance, Helga could make out the tiny figure being lifted into the back.
"Oh no…"
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Okay, hope that served as an acceptable cliffhanger! I've been meaning to make a REALLY good one, and I hope this is it. Again, humongous thank you to all of the wonderful people out there in compu-land who take the time out to drop me a line!! THANK Y'ALL!!! I gotta go, it might snow tomorrow, which is good cuz I have FINALS!!!! Thank gooness my Chemistry final isn't until Wednesday, but it's still a final. And I'm sorry if this or any other chapter may have been a little "stagnate" as my tenth grade vocabulary is supposed to say, anyway, I guess…I don't know. Inspiration comes and goes for me, and when it's gone, they do nothing…at all. And I'm sorry, if it gets a little boring to read. I promise, next chapter will be, the best!! Okay, maybe not the best, I still think chapter three was the best one of this story!! But it'll be close, promise!!! So go, eat, drink, review, and be merry!!!