Chapter 19 - Dearly Departed

Helga walked home alone that night. After assuring Lila that she was perfectly fine the sweet country girl had let her go off on her own, letting her get lost in her thoughs on the slow trek back to her house. Helga found that there was no way to deny it; she felt strange. While very little had changed on the outside, Helga felt as though she had had a total emotional upheaval in her mind. She had never lost her social identity before. Was she the tough mean bully who was still a complex soul on the inside, or was she now an open book with a tendency to needlessly complicate things? Did Arnold not love her because she was mean, or was she mean so that Arnold wouldn't love her? She just didn't know. Lila's words continued to float around her mind. 'You've not been yourself. It's not right.' Helga snorted as she climbed the steps to her front door. Not herself, huh? But who exactly was she?

"Where have you been little lady?" a voice growled as soon as she had shut the door behind herself.

"Just out, dad," she replied distractedly. As she made to go to her room and spend some more time analysing herself, she felt her father's finger disappear down the collar of her shirt and pull her back.

"Not so fast girl," Bob snarled at her. She turned to her face her father, wondering what she could have possibly done wrong in her previous weeks of saintliness.

"What?" she asked quietly.

"You have to get started on your packing." Helga blinked at her father stupidly.

"Packing?" she repeated, trailing her fingers along the banister.

"England Olga, England!" Bob boomed, poking her on the forehead. Helga blanched. She had been so certain that she would come up with a plan to stop the move that she had kind of assumed it already existed, but now that the time was upon her she realised she hadn't done a thing to change Bob's mind. There was no way this was going to happen though, it just couldn't. "Now, you march yourself upstairs and sort out your clothes! And see if you can't throw a few of them out, I don't think we have enough room for all of Olga's trophies in the cargo hold..." As Bob wandered off to observe exactly how many trophies Olga had for the third time that day, Helga found that she could not walk up the stairs. All of the bones seemed to have been extracted from her legs and replaced with a very heavy metal, titanium, or perhaps lead. Her mind seemed to be completely blank, as though all the thoughts that had been there had been so pointless she had simply disposed of them in her anguish. She finally managed to make it half way up the stairs before changing her mind and walking back down them. Instead, she headed for the telephone.

"Hello?" Helga had expected Phoebe's sweet little voice to calm her in it's familiar way, but it turned out to have the opposite effect. A wave of grief washed over as she thought of all the things she and Phoebe would never get to do together. All the things they would never laugh about again... everything she had never told Phoebe that she had so desperately wanted to.

"Hey Pheebes," Helga said, totally unable to keep the misery out of her voice.

"Helga, what is it?" Phoebe asked, picking up on it at once.

"Man, where do I start?" Helga said with a short, false laugh. Phoebe winced at her end. She knew that Helga had only laughed so she wouldn't have to cry.

"Do you want me to come over or something! she asked, wanting nothing but to rush to her friends aid. Helga was sorely tempted to say yes, but then she thought of her father, sitting in the living room and scowling through The Wheel while Olga's trophies glinted in the corner of his eye. If she didn't start packing soon it would be the last thing she never did.

"You probably shouldn't, I've got so much to do," she said sadly.

"Really?" Phoebe asked brightly, trying every wild path she could to cheer Helga up. "What kinds of things?"

"Oh, just packing and throwing away old things," Helga said on the verge of tears as she imagined herself dismantelling the shrine in her closet.

"Packing?" Phoebe shrieked, her cheering up attempts now forgotten. Helga's swallow caught in her throat. She had been talking to Phoebe as if she already knew, but with Phoebe's involvement in all this recent madness it had probably slipped her mind too.

"Um, yeah," Helga said gently, as though breaking bad news. "England, remember?"

"Yeah... I remember," Phoebe said weakly. Helga thought she heard a choked sob.

"I've got a lot to take care of before I go," Helga said softly, and strangely, her thoughts drifted to Brainy.

"I guess you do," Phoebe said in a resigned voice. "When's the... the big day?" Helga would have had to be something rather stupid to miss the bitterness in Phoebe's voice. She glanced at the calendar on the wall.

"Three days time... this Saturday." At the other end, Phoebe dropped her phone. After a moments nervous scrambling, in which Helga had enough time to pick at some loose wallpaper, Phoebe managed to pick up her receiver and compose herself.

"So soon?" was all she was able to say.

"So damn soon," Helga said in saddest tone Phoebe had ever heard.

"So, um, why did you call? Not that I'm not pleased to hear from you of course, but you know..." Helga frowned at her friends voice, as though she had just placed her in a very tight spot.

"Would I sound crazy if I said I didn't know?" Helga said, and once again she gave her silly false laugh. She expected Phoebe to laugh along nervously, or to spout well thought out text book answer as to why people called other people out of the blue. She was, however, pleasantly surprised.

"Not at all, Helga," she said in a friendly yet firm tone, as though to stamp out this silly crazy nonsense at once. "You're my best friend and I'm... well I'm yours." She let out a deep breath as though she didn't think it was upon her to make so bold a statement.

"'Til the day I die, Pheebs," Helga replied.

-

Two hours later, Helga was lying on her bed with her arms under her head, a large, broad grin on her face despite the misery she had been feeling before. If someone had told her that spilling her guts was going to make her feel that good, she would have done it sooner. People had always told her, Dr. Bliss in particular, that getting things off of your chest was the best therapy around. Helga had never held much weight with this generic mental ideal, having always felt that there could be no such thing as a 'cure-all' when everyone was different. She did have to admit, however, that in her case it seemed to be the perfect therapy. She also suspected that the feeling wouldn't last long, though. Sooner or later the reality of what she was being forced to do would hit her again and she would be right back to feeling terrible. There was a soft knock at her bedroom door.

"Yeah?" she said lightly, resenting whoever it was who dared to bring her back to earth. Her mother poked her head around the door, looking a little dazed as ever.

"Helga honey, I was... uh... I was just wondering if you wanted some help... uh... packing." Helga slid off her bed with a short nod; best to get started now and never look back, she supposed. Her mother walked over to her closet and threw the door wide, making Helga's stomach clench.

"No, Mom!" she yelled, skidding over the floor as her socks skidded on the polished wood. "I can do my clothes, ok? You, uh, you pack up the things on my dresser." Her mother looked slightly lost for a second, before pushing her glasses back up onto her face and then heading downstairs for the cardboard boxes she had traditionally forgotten. Helga knew that not even her scatter-brained mom would take long retrieving the boxes from the garage, so she plunged herself headfirst through the row of hanging dresses and fell to her knees at the back of her closet. As usual, her breath was taken away by the homage she had creadted to her beloved Arnold.

She had only a momet to admire her handiwork before she reached forward and grabbed the wicker statue, crumbling it into an indistinguishable mess between her fingers. Her heart broke a little bit as she got to her feet and began to unhook the fairy lights with her free hand. This was the worst she had ever felt. She was leaving behind everything she knew and loved. Her best friend, her 'other' friends, the love of her life who came in that adorable Arnold shape, and now she had to destroy the one thing that had kept her sane for all these years. Well, maybe 'sane' was a bit of a stretch, but it had definitely helped her keep her head, she was sure of that. She heard footsteps on the stairs and dashed out of the familiar darkness of her closet and back into her room.

Her mother re-entered the room just as Helga was stamping down the last of her obsession in her waste paper basket. She threw her mother a guilty look, and her mother knew better than to ask questions.

"Ready Helga?" she asked as she dropped the folded boxes onto Helga's bed.

"I guess so," Helga replied, and she began the long process of packing up her life.

-

For a fleeting moment when Helga woke the next morning, she didn't know where she was. The walls had been stripped of their Wrestlemania posters, the round pink rug had been rolled up and propped in the corner, and her small framed photo of herself and Phoebe at the fair had been neatly packed away. The dolls were gone from the windowsill, letting in a lot more light than usual, and all the books were missing from the shelves. She sighed and switched of her alarm clock, the only thing left on her bedside table, and swung her legs over the edge of her mattress.

"This blows," she muttered to herself.

Her dressing screen was gone also, and Helga felt strangely self-conscious as she pulled her pink dress over her head. It was odd, she couldn't help but feel, but then she had had that dressing screen there for so long that it just didn't feel right without it. It was downstairs, next to four boxes full of trophies and her dad's repulsive deer head. She had had rto fight tooth and nail to be allowed to bring it, her father said there would be no need to take it with them, but Helga had insisted. She had had it for as long as she could remember and she wasn't about to give it up now.

As she left her barren room that day, she was vague aware that her t-shirt was creased and that her bunches were loose. Her ribbon was sloppily tied and one of the tails was now flapping pointlessly in front of her eyes. She fruitlessly stuck out her bottom lip and blew a jet of air up at it, but that did nothing but aggrevate it so she just gave up. She'd been doing a lot of that recently.

Before she realised it Helga found herself at the bus stop. Her feet carried her there without being connected o her brain; it was a journey they had done a thousand times. And, Helga thought as her eyes filled with tears, they would never do again. If the bus turned up quickly or if Helga was just lost in her thoughts to make it seem that way she didn't know, but it wasn't long before Helga found herself in her usual seat next to Phoebe as the bus trundled to the school. She sniffed as she sat down heavily, and avoided Phoebe's enquiring eyes.

"Morning Helga," Phoebe said softly. Helga merely grunted in response. "It's, um, a lovely day, isn't it?" Helga raised her head a little to look out of the window, and saw a miserbale spatter of rain falling against the glass. The sky was grey and angry, promising one heck of a storm later that night, and the sun was absolutely no where to be seen.

"Liar," Helga said, shooting Phoebe a mischevious grin in spite of herself. Phoebe giggled.

"Alright, it's a miserable morning, but your hair looks fantastic." Both girls collapsed into uncontrollable giggles at this point, and Helga only managed to stop when the cramp in her stomach became unbearable. A figure leaned over the chair in front of them, a nasty sneer on it's face. It was Rhonda.

"Good to see you in high spirits today Helga," Rhonda said smoothly. Helga's eyes narrowed.

"What do you want, Princess?" she growled. Nadine turned around in her seat to watch.

"There's no need to be all high and mighty Helga," Rhonda said arily with a sickly smile. "I actually came to do you a favour." Helga very much doubted this, but she didn't drop her gaze.

"Oh yeah? Gonna jump out of this here window?" she said dryly, jabbing her thumb and the rain soaked pane.

"Charming," Rhonda said, turning up her nose. "Actually, I've decided to bless you tomorrow. I won't be treating you to your mashed potatoes over your head during lunchbreak."

"You won't?" Helga said, brimming over with skepticism.

"No," Rhonda said, smiling in a way that reminded Helga very strongly of a lion contemplating an antelope. "I'll be doing it today instead." And with that she turned back around in her chair and disappeared from view. Helga didn't need to see her to know that she would be looking as smug as could possibly be, however.

-

Lunchtime ticked ever closer, and Helga was surprised to find that there wasn't a trace of foreboding within her at all. She looked down at herself and snorted. Perhaps it was because she was such a mess already that a little peas and gravy might actually improve her appearence a little bit. She let out a tiny laugh that made several people look at her. "You ok Helga?" Helga looked around. Much to her delight, it was Arnold.

"Fine and dandy," she said with a smile that wasn't the least bit false. Arnold smiled back; that dazzling, winning smile that made Helga go weak at the knees.

"I heard about what Rhonda's planning to do to you at lunch," Arnold whispered with the smallest trace of outrage in his voice. "It's really unfair."

"We all gotta take our lumps, football head," Helga said, the smile still dancing across her lips and lighting up her whole face. She couldn't be sure, but she had a feeling Arnold definitely liked it, and that just made her grin ever more.

"You seem... really happy," Arnold said, slightly bemused.

"Oh I am Arnold-o," she said cheerfully, not rerally bothering to lower her voice. "I'm moving, nothing I can do about that. I'm going to wear my lunch today, nothing I can do about that either. I might as well smile or I'll only end up sad. Know what I'm saying?" Arnold knew all too well what Helga was saying. He was the King of looking on the bright side.

"That's really positive of you Helga." The blonde girl rolled her eyes. "What?" Arnold asked.

"Positive?" Helga said in a mocking tone.

"Yeah, you know... high spirited, cheerful, ha-"

"I know what positive means," Helga said sternly. "It just seems weird to hear you saying it. You ever thought about a career in psychiatry?" The bell rang and all the students got to their feet, dashing for the door before Mr. Simmons could lay any homework on them. Arnold asked Helga if he could walk her to luch, and it was with a giddy pleasure that she agreed. Phoebe wisely kept her distance, deciding to walk to the cafeteria with Sheena instead.

The pair separated as they entered the lunchroom, and Helga joined the queue behind Phoebe. "So," Phoebe said slyly, a strange tone of voice for her. "You and Arnold seem to be getting along quite well." Helga was immediately on the defensive.

"What's that supposed to mean? Are you implying that... I... have..." She trailed off as Phoebe raised her eyebrows. "Oh yeah," she finished lamely. She had forgotten that she had confessed everything to Phoebe over the phone last night. She blushed, and Phoebe made an 'aww, how sweet!' face. "Knock it off," Helga growled as they found themselves face to face with steam trays full of gooey foodstuffs.

"You know Helga, I've been thinking..." Phoebe said as she made her selections.

"You? Thinking? Whatever next? Brainy exhaling loudly?" Phoebe ignored her friend and carried on.

"If you were to choose a lunch of a more solid consistency, it might not be so slimy when Rhonda..."

"Dumps it all over my head? Nah, forget it Pheebs. If I'm gonna have this done to me, I might as well get it done properly. Besides, better slimy than solid. It'd suck if I was rendered unconscious by the dry end of Angie's meatloaf." As Phoebe stifled a laugh, Helga couldn't hlp but notice her mashed potato was slopped onto her tray a little more forcfully than usual.

Helga and Phoebe had barely gone two steps before Helga felt perfectly manicured fingernails digging into her arm. "Alright," she sighed exasperatedly. "Lets get this over with." Rhonda looked rather taken aback.

"No fighting words?" she asked hysterically. "No attempts to hit anyone? No horrible insults?" Helga borrowed Rhonda's sickly smile and threw it right back in her face.

"Not today," she said as Rhonda coughed loudly for everyone's attention. The cafeteria fell silent as everyone swivelled in their chairs to watch. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Gerald took the floor.

"Helga Pataki," he said in a very quick monotone. Phoebe flashed him a thankful smile. "You lost a bet..." Rhonda cleared her throat loudly.

"Do it porperly," she said through gritted teeth. Gerald sighed.

"In the case of Rhonda Wellington Lloyd versus Helga G. Pataki in the bet set in place by Eugene Horrowitz, you lost. You were not able to be 'nice' for the duration of two months, and therefore, you forefeit. Rhonda?" Rhonda grinned like a Cheshire Cat and wrenched Helga's luch tray from her hands. Helga closed her eyes and braced herself. It felt like an eternity had passed and she still didn't feel the warm ooze trickling through her hair. She had just dared to open her eyes when...

"NOW!"

Rhonda quickly set the tray on the floor and stuck her foot out in front of Helga. At the same time Helga felt something slam heavily into her back and she fell forward, landing face first in her luch. Then she felt something wet being poured on her back, and from the small of it it could only be paint. Her nose was sore where she had struck the tray, and even though her eyes were firmly shut she could feel them watering. Shrill laughter reached her ears; Rhonda was having a field day. As Arnold and Phoebe rushed forward to help Helga to her feet she saw that it was paint that now covered her dress, orange paint, and it turned out that the hard something thatr had run into her back was Curly. Her eyes were swimming they were so full of tears.

"Gonna cry, Helga?" Rhonda asked maliciously. At any other time Helga would have shouted that it was Rhonda who was going to be doing the cryong once she was through with her, but she just couldn't face it. Instead, she stood on the spot and wept. Arnold's temper had finally found it's limit.

"That's it Rhonda!" he roared. The simple fact is, that when someone who yells a lot is yelling some more, some of the effect wears off. But when a usually calm and collected boy is screaming his lungs out for the first time in his life, and letting his rage run riot, then that is truly scary. Rhonda backed away slowly until she was pressed up flat against the wall, but still Arnold was shouting. He had completely lost control. His anger was usually well focused and channelled, but not today. Not today. "Stop picking on Helga! You're nothing but a common bully! Helga is a sweet, caring girl, and she doesn't deserve this from a spoilt little brat like you!" Helga looked up. Her tears were instantly soothed. Arnold was defending her honour! She felt like she was on the verge of dying from happiness.

"Look, A-Arnold," Rhonda said, trying to regain some ground and failing miserably. Arnold snarled at her.

"No, you look Princess!" he bellowed. "I don't know why you think you have some sort of holy status in this school, but let me tell you! If you want to be the top dog, you have to earn the respect, and right now you're losing that by the bucket load!" His chest was rising and falling heavily. "Helga is ten times the girl you will be!" He turned and walked away, only stopping to say under his breath; "And a hundred times prettier too." Helga thought her ears were decieving her.

-

Helga didn't go to school the next day; there was too much to do. She was glad in a way, she didn't want to ruin that elated sense of victory she had been feeling since lunchtime. That was the ultimate rush, the way it felt to hear Arnold say those beautiful words. Though she had promised herself that she would confess everything to Arnold before she left, she had come to the conclusion that even if she did it wouldn't change anything. She would still have to leave and everything would always be different between them. And also, she couldn't help but think, it was possible that Arnold already knew, and that those magical words had been his parting gift to her. She smiled as she thought this, and made sure that her passport was safe and secure in her hand luggage.

-

Helga sighed as her back grew more and more painful. She had been sitting on the same chair for hours, watching the delayed take off board and waiting for her flight to be called. Bob had satyed behind to make sure all of the families possesions were flown out safely, and Miriam and Olga had asked Helga to wait for just a few minutes while they went and changed all their money into pounds. That had been three quarters of an hour ago. She couldn't leave the suitcases unattented, not even for a second so she could play on the video games, and she had never been so bored in her life. It was then hat she heard excited voices behind her.

"There she is!"

"Boy howdy, she sure looks glum."

"Maybe her flight was delayed."

"I'm so glad we made it in time."

Helga turned around and nearly fell off her chair in shock. Walking up to her on the carpeted floors opf the airport were her classmates and her friends. They all had cheery smiles on their faces, some were waving, and Sid was clutching a large bunch of balloons. Helga smiled at them all.

"Trying to sneak out the back door, huh?" Arnold asked.

"Oh Helga, how could you?" Phoebe squeaked. For a second Helga thought she was going to burst into tears, she felt a little bit like it herself, but instead the small girl flung herself forward and wrapped her arms around Helga's waist. "Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?" she whispered.

"Course not," Helga lied. "I was gonna call..."

"Liar," Phoebe said, smiling.

"We, er, we just all came to see you off Helga," Stinky drawled. Helga grinned at him.

"Thanks Stink-O," she said sweetly, knocking him on the chin gently with her fist. The class spent the next few minutes saying their goodbyes to Helga, some not quite sure why they were there, and a few drifting off to the arcade. There were a few people Helga really wanted to talk to though, and thankfully for her, these were the ones who hung behind.

"Brainy," Helga began after pulling him to one side. He breathed happily in reply. "I guess I never really took the time to thank you for... for never telling." Brainy's cmiled faltered and he pointed at Arnold. "Yes, about him. I should have thanked you, I know, and I definitely should have socked you a little less. I'm really sorry about that Brainy, by the way."

"Huh... uh... that's ok," Brainy said.

"And also I wanted to say that... well... if I had to have a guy on my heels all the time, breathing heavily and looking, well, faithful, I'm glad it was you." She gave him a short hug which left him rooted to the spot as he vowed in his mind to never wash again. With a final smile at him Helga went and pulled Phoebe away from the crowd.

"Pheebs," she said pathetically, not sure where to begin. "I don't really know what to say. You're my best friend, but you already know that, and I don't know what else I can say that I haven't said a thousand times before. Also, I don't want to be some sort of mega heavy cheese fest-"

"The 10:56 flight to London Heathrow is now boarding at Gate 7," a tannoy voice broke in.

"Shoot!" Helga said, stamping her foot as her mother and her sister came running up, grabbing their things and running to the gate.

"Com on baby sister!" Olga whined.

"Just a minute!" Helga hissed at her sister's retreating back.

"Well, this is it Pheebs," she said shortly, pulling Phoebe into another hug. "You're the best friend a girl could ever ask for, you know that? You've been so good to me. I love you Pheebs. Don't forget to write me."

"I won't," Phoebe promised solemnly. Helga turned to run to the gate, but she was stopped by Arnold.

"Helga, wait!"

"Arnold, man," she said as he caught up with her. "You're killing me here."

"This won't take long," he said. "Ok, first off, Mr. Simmons asked me to give this to you." He pushed a CD case into her hands. Helga regarded it for a second before throwing it into her bag. "And also... er..." He ran his hand around the back of his neck in a way Helga instantly knew she was going to miss terribly.

"What?" she asked eagerly, knowing there would be hell to pay is she missed her plane.

"I just... I just wanted to say... that, well, the last few weeks have really opened my eyes. About you, and everything that comes with you. I know I've always been the first to say that perhaps you could be a little nicer, or whatever, but I realise now that's just who you are. I was, well, pretty dense to try and change you. I like you just as you are, exactly as you are."

"Honest?"

"Honest." Helga swallowed thickly. Perhaps confession would be good for them both. She would never get another chance.

"Arnold, there's... there's something I have to tell you. I know I have this way of making you think that I don't like you... but that's, well... not true. You see, the thing is, I lo-"

"Your plane," Arnold cut in, pointing to the gate. The queue was down to the last few stragglers now.

"Right," Helga said, feeling deflated. "Um... bye then," she said quietly.

"Bye," Arnold said. A moment of awkwardness passed between them, before Helga realised what she was supposed to be doing. She bent down and picked up her bag before straightening up to look at Arnold one last time. Their eyes met for a brief second, and then, as much to Arnold's surprise as well as Helga's, he pushed himself up to his tiptoes and quickly kissed her on the lips. For a second both of them were stunned, before Helga inclined her head at the gate and mumbled; "Suppose I should be going, then."

"Suppose you should," Arnold said, his cheeks glowing with embarrassment. Helga threw him one last smile as she disappeared through the gate, and Arnold found that he remained in the airport long after everyone else had gone, just to watch Helga's plane take off.

"Bye Helga," he whispered, resting his head against the glass. "See you around."

-

A/N: Ain't I a stinker? The next installment shall be the Epilogue, and then this long battle is finally over. Anyway, just a question, should it be 'Pheebs' or 'Phoebs'? Right now I think I prefer 'Pheebs', but if there's a proper way of doing it I'd love to know. Hand is miles better now, by the way. -Sky.