CHAPTER 4 - Coming Clean

That evening Arnold had bundled the mess that used to be his school books into a bin liner and walked home in the rain. His wrist twinged as he heaved the heavy sack onto his shoulder, he had sprained it in that collision with Helga. Helga, he thought, pushing air through his clenched teeth. If he never saw that girl again it would be too soon. And he knew that tomorrow he had to face her all over again, where she would no doubt be gloating about the amazing prank she had pulled on him, sporting her cuts and bruises as though they were battle scars.

He walked straight up to his room that day, not wanting to face any of the boarders in case he took his anger out on them.

Something twanged in his mind as he thought of the science project he and Gerald had worked so hard on. It was ruined now, he knew there was no way he could salvage it. He felt like crying. So many wasted hours, all that work down the drain. "Helga," he growled again as he threw the mass of books on his bed. The bag split, and suddenly his duvet was covered in the sludge. He cursed under his breath as his Grandpa entered the room.

"Now now Arnold, there's no reason to be using language like that," he warned, pulling out Arnold's desk chair and sitting down.

"I'm sorry Grandpa," Arnold said, "but Helga's just got me so frustrated. She just seems to live to to torment me. Before I could kind of handle it, but today she went too far. She completely ruined my science project!"

"The one you and Gerald had been working so hard on?" Grandpa asked sympathetically.

"Yeah, it's so unfair Grandpda. At least it backfired on her, she got beat up pretty bad by a chair," Arnold muttered with a tiny smirk. But suddenly a cold feeling rushed into his every pore. Helga had actually been quite badly hurt by her prank, she obviously hadn't meant things to turn out the way they did. That was no excuse for her to have done it in the first place, but there was no reason for him to take pleasure in her pain. Phil obviously thought so too.

"Oh Arnold, what has become of you?" he wailed. "How can you delight in a poor girl's pain? She's probably sitting over there in her room right now, feeling guilty." Arnold lowered his head. "And if she's not then I guess it's fine for you to smirk away." Phil got to his feet. "Right, I have to go and try to coax your Grandma down from the roof. I'll bring your dinner up later for you." Phil left Arnold to his thoughts, and while the rage in Arnold was still very prominent, it had calmed down a fair amount.

As Arnold climbed into his makeshift bed on his fold out sofa that night, he decided to have it out with Helga the next day. Once and for all.

-

Helga had arrived at the Pataki household very low that evening. She had slumped down in front of the television without so much as a grunt form her father, but that didn't bother her much. She wanted to be left alone. 'The Wheel' blared from the set, and Helga fixed her eyes on it and thought about Arnold. She now knew it would have been better to have faded from Arnold's memory than to be lodged in it forever as the girl who ruined his life. She sighed heavily, and tried not to cry. "Dinner's ready!" Miriam called from the kitchen in her usual sleepy fashion.

"About time Miriam," said Bob, getting to his feet, "I'm starving!" Helga found she couldn't even push herself up from her seat. "Come on Olga, dinner," he grunted at her, and reluctantly, she trudged to the table.

Helga spooned a large mound of mashed potato onto her plate with a dull plop. She poked at it with her fork for a while, but she found she couldn't take a single bite. She just played with it, hating it for reminding her so much of tapioca pudding. "Not eating girl?" came her father's gruff voice. Helga looked up, an immediately wished she hadn't. "Criminy girl, what happened to your face? Did you get in another fight at school?"

"No Dad I-" she began, but her father cut her off.

"If we get one more report from that school about you fighting Helga, I'm going to have to take drastic action. I'm sick of coming home to phone calls from that Simmons guy. 'Helga was involved in an incident... Helga has to go to therapy because of such and such...' I tell you I'm tired of it Helga!" It was funny how he always seemed to be able to remember her name when he was telling her off.

"I wasn't fighting Dad!" Helga yelled. "I fell from my chair in school today, ok?" and she stormed upstairs to her room.

"You come back here and finish your dinner!" Big Bob Pataki hollered.

"I'm not hungry!" she screamed, and slammed her door. She threw herself face down onto her bed, wanting to cry but the tears wouldn't come. For the first time it occured to her that today not only had she severely damaged her realtionship with Arnold, but she had also gotten into serious trouble at school. Mr. Simmons had told her that he would deal with it tomorrow, but for now he had to make sure everyone involved was alright and that the mess got cleaned up quickly before anyone else had an accident. She groaned and knew she would be beating herself up for this for the rest of her life. Arnold hated her, Bob was going to get another phone call from Simmons, she was going to be dragged off to England and everybody she left behind would despise her. At least I can get a fresh start in England, Helga thought, I just wish I wasn't so fond of being here.

No, she was going to make it better. She was going to tell them why she had acted the way she did, and she was going to say sorry. She was going to set things right. Once and for all.

-

When Helga had woken up the next morning she had contemplated not tying her hair up, hanging some of it in front of her bruise to cover it up. But no, she didn't want to. Everyone knew it was there and how she had gotten it. She had nothing to hide. She brushed up her bunches, tied in her bow, put her shoes on the wrong feet and didn't eat any breakfast. By the time she left the house she was so far away in her mind that she missed her front steps and managed to skin her knees.

On the way to the bus stop, she bumped into none other than Arnold. In a way she was glad, she wanted to explain to him before she explained to everyone else, but in another, she was horrified, she hadn't been prepared at all. He looked at her, the same look on his face he had worn yesterday. She cringed inside, she had bought out the worst in him the day before. "Arnold!" she exclaimed, suprised.

"Oh, hey Helga," Arnold said quietly, as though it was only because he felt he should.

"Look, Arnold, I'm sorry," she began straight away, before he could stop her. She flashed him a small hopeful smile, but his expression didn't change.

"That's not good enough this time Helga," he said, and he walked away from her. She wanted to call out to him, to stop him, but the words got lost in her throat. She felt like dying. Even when she had tried to be civil and call a truce, Arnold still hadn't forgiven her. She wanted to make it up to him somehow, and at the same time she wanted to beat his stupid face in. This was Helga at her best and it still wasn't good enough for him. She folded her arms huffily and waited at the bus stop, tapping her foot impatiently and not letting her mind rest for a second. The bus pulled up and Helga stomped noisily aboard, her face so dark that no one dared even look at her. This was disappointing for many of them however. Rhonda, in particular, had been looking forward to giving Helga a piece of her mind, but upon seeing her that morning she bacame far too worried about the fate of her one of a kind, tailor made platform Caprini boots to say a word.

Helga sat herself down heavily next to Phoebe, just as she did every morning. She was shocked to note that Phoebe didn't greet her with her usually cheery Japanese. Helga knew what she was thinking, she thought Helga had gone too far just like everyone else. She knew that Phoebe had been more worried about someone getting hurt than anything else. Helga snorted. No one seemed to have noticed that the person who had suffered the most from yesterday's prank had been her. Her cheek had swollen up to a nice purple bruise with a deep ret cut in the middle, she still had the band aid over her eyebrow and she couldn't be certain, but it felt like she had twisted her knee when Arnold had pulled her to the ground.

And that was another thing! she thought, her temper suddenly exploding in her mind. Arnold had spitefully pulled her to the ground and injured her quite badly. It hadn't been a last act to try and stop himself fallen, that was obvious. He had taken Helga so unawares that there would have been no way she could have held him up. She bit her lip and counted to twenty, there was no way she was going to take this out on Pheebs.

"Look, Phoebe, I never meant for it to turn out the way it did," she said honestly. Phoebe turned to face her, and a small smile crept across her lips. She obviously didn't want to spend her last two months being mad at Helga, it was obviously tearing her up a great deal inside. "I just wanted to go out with a bang, you know? Just wanted to make sure that everyone remembered me for something else other than being 'Olga Pataki's sister'. Guess that wasn't really the best way to go about it."

"I guess not," said Phoebe, grinning widely. "But you know, you really are going to have to apologise to Arnold and Gerald for ruining their science project," she said sweetly. Helga sat up in her seat. That had been news to her.

"I ruined their science project?" she repeated back in a high pitched tone. Phoebe just nodded slightly; she thought Helga already knew that. "Oh man, no wonder he was so off with me earlier." Phoebe looked inquisitvely at her, and Helga explained her meeting with Arnold that morning. She clapped her hand to her forehead, striking the band aid and cursing. "I need to make it up to the little football headed idiot somehow," she said thoughtfully and Phobe, while agreeing, had absolutely no ideas.

-

At the back of the bus, Gerald was doing everything in his power to stop Arnold getting to his feet to have a showdown with Helga. "I mean, can you believe that Gerald! She just says 'sorry', as if that makes it all better!" he raged.

"Well, 'sorry' is quite an accomplishment for Helga G. Pataki," Gerald said, grinning slightly.

"Well it shouldn't be! Just because she's so used to being a right pain doesn't mean that she can brush away things like this with a forced apology! It shouldn't be that hard for her to admit she's wrong! I tell you Gerald, that girl is going to make my life a misery, I just know it! God, sometimes I really hate her!"

"Only sometimes?" Gerald muttered quietly so Arnold couldn't hear.

-

Helga wisely chose to sit at the back of the class that day. That way anyone who chose to spend the lesson boring their eyes into Helga's skull would have to do it with their backs to Mr. Simmons, something he was sure to notice. She rubbed her temples and closed her eyes. Her head was beginning to throb, all steming from the stinging sensation that was coming from the cut above her eye. She sighed deeply and wished the ground would swallow her whole. "Are you ok Helga?" someone whispered to her. It was Gerald. She sat up straight in her seat, her senses jolted out of their sockets.

"Er, yeah, head hurts," she muttered. "Oh, and sorry about your project," she added as an afterthought. Gerald smirked.

"You're a mean girl Helga, a mean girl." Helga shook her head, totally confused. One minute he was concerened about her, the next he was insulting her. "It's gonna take a big gesture to get yourself out of this one." He was, of course, right, but Helga couldn't see any real reson for him to be saying anything to her at all. "It's not like I want to speak to you at all," Gerald said, reading her mind, "but I've never seen Arnold like this." Ah, thought Helga, it's all making sense now. "Usually he'd be all upbeat and forgiving, but I swear he was going crazy on the bus this morning, yelling about how he would never forgive you, how much he hated you. If you can do that to a kid like Arnold I mean, wow girl, you must be pretty bad, but you've got to make it right again." He turned to face the front of the class without giving Helga another look.

Helga felt completely miserable. Nothing would make it better, nothing. Mr. Simmons got up from his desk and cleared his throat quietly.

"Now today I want you to write up a summery of the video on the Civil War we watched yesterday. Everyone get your history books out. Oh, and Helga?" Her head snapped up. "I want to see you after class please." Helga's stomach knotted. She could feel the class' pleasure that she was going to be told off and sent to the Principal's office for what she had done, and she squirmed a little in her chair. Phoebe gave her a small smile, but Helga could tell she thought it was hopeless. Helga got to her feet. "No Helga, after class I said. Right now I want you to complete your history assignment." All eyes were on Helga.

"I know, Mr. Simmons, I just had something I wanted to say to the class," she said, not sure where she was going with it and feeling the epitome of cheese. Mr. Simmons nodded and Helga stepped up in front of the blackboard. She took a deep breath.

"Ok, I know what I did yesterday was fairly... bad. I didn't mean for it to turn out the way it did-"

"So why'd ya do it in the first place Helga?" Stinky called out. Helga scowled at him.

"I just wanted you to remember me when I was gone," she said faintly, aware that it made her sound as though she was dying. The class gasped as one. "I'm moving away soon."

"Where are you going Helga?" Sheena asked.

"England," she replied offhandedly. "Bob's continuing his plans for world domination. But still, I want to say sorry for yesterday, mostly to Arnold and Gerald, 'cause I ruined their project. Oh, and to Sheena, 'cause my bleeding made her faint." She finshed her little speech and an awkward silence followed. She rubbed her elbow with her hand and shrugged at Mr. Simmons, who took it as his cue to pick up the slack.

"Oh, that's such a shame Helga, we'll miss you very much. But that was very noble of you to apologise like that. Um, please take your seat. Get to work everyone." Helga sat down, and wasn't really suprised to find that on the whole, the class was fairly indifferent upon hearing her news. There were the odd spiteful few who said they couldn't wait to see the back of her, probably still sore from yesterday, ("Good riddance to bad rubbish," Rhonda commented), but some of them looked sad, like Phoebe and suprisingly Lila. Helga sat back down and found that she felt a lot better. Gerald gave her a look that said he forgave her, but when she turned around to look at Arnold she couldn't see his face.