Once upon a time, Helga would have swan-dove into a woodchipper for just one Thanksgiving where Miriam burnt nothing, Olga didn't go on a decorating bender, and Bob had no such urge to glue himself before the television and the hours upon hours of football it promised.

But as she descended the stairs and let the overwhelming potpourri of seared animal flesh, salad and Naan pummel her olfactory senses, Helga found that the universe has a funny way of granting your wishes; Bob and Miriam glumly sucked down glasses of water as they huddled around a cheap metal folding table beginning to buckle from the weight of the salad and naan. At the stove, Olga put the last touches on their main course.

"So…um…no football I take it?" Helga asked in slight shock as she lingered about the threshold.

"Nah, TV's too small. Besides why should I give those stinkin' bums my money and time when they're just gonna kiss up to whatever pansy-ass SJW cancel culture crybaby whines the loudest this week? 'wE'rE tEh 'wasHiNGToN fOOtbaLL tEaM nOW. pLEasE lOVe uS.'"

"Now daddy." Olga chided. "The original team name came from a term that maybe was acceptable back then but-"

"Ah, criminey. Not this again Olga!" Bob groaned gripping his face in frustration. "But I guess it's my own damn fault for letting you go to that $75k daycare center for four years."

Even seeing Bob briefly locking horns with his precious Olga over something did little to spark any sense of joy in Helga that morning. Grabbing a glass, she poured herself some water from the sink and watched as Miriam tried to reacquaint herself with the idea of drinking any liquid that hadn't undergone a fermenting process (a spectacle which also failed to live up to the hype). After a final stirring, the eldest Pataki daughter announced that the main course was ready.

"Now." Bob began authoritatively. "Before we begin, it's time to go around the table and say what we're thankful for. Let's start with Olga."

Helga groaned into her arm as she watched her family basically parrot off each other their own version of 'we finally got the house back'; Olga was happy that she had a place to live again (and not have to depend on the kindness of college friends to crash when Winter Break came), Miriam was happy she had normalcy and Big Bob rounded out the trio with a prideful declaration of gratitude over 'the Pataki gift for shrewdness and competition'; traits which in his eyes 'won [him] back [his] well-deserved slice of the American Dream.'

"Ok, is that it? Good!" Bob said with great finality. "Let's eat!"

"No, no, no, daddy." Olga interjected. "Helga hasn't said what she's thankful for."

"Oh yeah, alright what are you thankful for Helga? And make it snappy ok, I'm starving!"

Time came to a sudden, grinding halt as Helga looked long and hard at the trio of faces that made up her immediate family; their strained smiles, their baited breath, and mostly the famished wolf-like desperation in their eyes. Caustic as she was about the day, there were reasons she had to be genuinely thankful; (coming back from a harrowing jungle adventure alive, obtaining the affections of the boy she loved since preschool, having a patient best friend who took her crap in stride, and the restoration of some measly scrap of a dignified livelihood to name a few). Unfortunately, the present company she was about to break bread with had no hand in anything she had to show gratitude for. If anything, every ugly, miserable, loathsome, misfortune in her life seemed to be a direct road map back to them. Finally, she spoke. Stressing every syllable to make her statement clear.

"I. Am. Thankful. For absolutely. Nothing."

Shock and fury constricted the air: Bob's jaw plummeted to the ground while Miriam mumbled into her arm something along the lines of 'oh, not this again.' By contrast, Olga composed herself the quickest and emitted a condescending giggle in some attempt to keep appearances.

"Oh, silly. Now come on Baby Sister, there has to be something that-"

"Nope." Helga interjected with finality.

"You better find something quickly before-" Bob began clenching the plastic cutlery.

"Daddy please." Olga pleaded. "But he's right. I'm sure if you really put your mind to it, there's something."

"You know what Olga." Helga began snarkily. "You're correct. I have much to be thankful for. Let's start with you. I'm thankful my older sister has fortitude and patience of a saint when it comes to enduring the constant strain of being the Pataki Family's Official Show Pony. A lesser woman in your shoes would have mentally disintegrated a long time ago knowing that mommy and daddy's love conveniently seems to come with whatever trophy or medal you win this week. A revelation like that would have eroded anyone's self-esteem into being a pole dancer, or a cam girl, or (even more frightening) some back-page bimbette one emotionally stunted client away from being hacked into chum on a secluded beach at 2am somewhere. But there you are, blissfully cheerful with your lot in life. Ready and eager to perform Chopin or Beethoven concertos at the drop of a hat for some orphanage or another, mostly at Bob's behest, but tomato tomahto. Am I right sis?"

Right on cue, Olga began to weep. Rivulets of mascara marred her face as she bolted from the room in a flood of bitter tears.

"It's true! It's all true! WAAAAAH!"

"Well, that wasn't exactly in the spirit of things sweetie-" Miriam began.

"Enter Miriam." Helga continued. "Who to the surprise of not even the densest creature on the planet would have some authority when it came to knowledge on 'the spirit of things.' I'm grateful for the 50-50 genetic shot I have in inheriting a liver of steel given your talent for fashioning daiquiris out of thin air."

"Smoothies Helga." Miriam said. "We've talked about this, they're Mommy's Special Smoothies and they help me get through the day."

"Please, I've cracked the code between the bottles piling in recycling and your lapses in reality when I was in preschool." Helga shot back. "And if by 'getting you through the day' you mean getting DUIs, having your license revoked, passing out all over the house at one point or another, talking in a slurred voice and sending me to school with shaving cream in my lunchbox than yes, those 'smOOtHiEs' of yours seem to be doing a good job. And on the topic of passing out, I guess I can find space in the withered raisin of my heart to be thankful for you teaching me that a bed isn't the only place one can catch a few Z's."

Miriam stammered for a while, trying and clearly failing to make some attempt at defending her position, but like Olga before her, she knew Helga had cut her very deep when it came to her failings at being a mother over the years. She too joined her oldest daughter in fleeing the room in tears, leaving Helga with a seismically irate Bob trembling with fury.

"Look Little Lady-" He began.

"Robert. Robert. Robert." Helga replied slowly as a newfound layer of venom oozed into her once monotonous voice. "Where do I begin with you? Taking out of the equation how you've spent the last year driving the family into the ground over your puerile fetish for power by means of making beepers great again, having you as my foremost model of manhood (and by extension the estimation by which I govern all my adult relationships) has been a gross and traumatizing misfortune. From letting me walk unaccompanied on rainy derelict streets to preschool, to working me like a horse to win some stupid spelling bee AND staking bets on my aptitude to boot, to the time you basically helped serve this city on a silver platter to some psychopathic developer, to writing checks your mouth can't cash, to simply fostering a long-term environment of neglect, favoritism, self-centeredness, and disfunction Still, I guess I can say that I'm thankful for having you as a life lesson of sorts on all the ways not to act in polite society."

"OH REALLY?!" Bob bellowed back. "As if you're such a picnic Olga! Maybe you could have just held your horses that day and not barreled out of the house in a huff. But you didn't. Maybe you could have done your job all those years ago at the spelling bee, maybe we would have had some more money to stave off our problems. Again, you had to prove some point about sportsmanship or whatever and cost me how many thousands of dollars in beepers in the process? Maybe you could have found the gumption to find your fire about SOMETHING in life. But what did you do? [You] stomped around with a chip on your shoulder until that egghead principal of yours took it upon himself to throw you in therapy."

"Maybe therapy wouldn't have been an option if you chilled out about all this 'Patakis are winners' bullshit and actually did something as basic as remember my name. H-E-L-G-A HEEEEELLLLLGGGGAAAAAA!"

"From the girl who gave us 'Qualx.'" Bob shot back. "Who spells 'qualm' with an 'x'? Oh, right. H-E-L-G-A. HEEEEELLLLLGGGGAAAAAA! And look at that. I remembered your name. Happy now? Now other than blowing high stakes spelling bees, what other talents have you been hoarding all this time?"

"Poetry!"

As quickly as she said it. Helga's hands clasped around her mouth with all the speed of a cheetah pouncing on a hapless gazelle. Still, as Bob processed the information that his comparatively aimless daughter had a talent for verse, the young Pataki girl realized there was no going back from this moment.

"wooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhh!" Bob roared as he waved his hands about dramatically. "I DIDN'T REALIZE I WAS IN THE PRESENCE OF SHAKESPEARE OR SOMETHING! GUESS YOU NEEDED YOUR STRENGTH TO COMPOSE 'OTHELLO 2' OR WHATEVER WHILE SOME SCHMO LIKE ME HAD TO MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH WITHOUT ANY SUPPORT GETTING MY BUSINESS BACK ON TRACK!"

"ARNOLD! SHORTMAN! GOT YOUR BUSINESS! BACK! ON! TRACK!" Helga shot back. "Between the viral commercial, building off your 'beeper king' premise, and inadvertently gift-wrapping the hipster demographic for you, he's done more to launch your silly little empire into the 21st Century in a month than you and your childish sense of pride ever could have imagined in ten lifetimes!"

"Hey! HeyHeyHeyHey! Just because that Osmosis kid put a crown on your head for a minute doesn't mean-"

The room suddenly went dead silent.

By no stretch of the imagination was Bob what you'd call a cerebral man. The light that went off whenever he had an idea more often than not had all the wattage of a standard Christmas tree bulb. Nonetheless, the wheels in his head furiously whirred and clanged as he processed his youngest daughter's outburst. Sure, he didn't always get the names of her snot-nosed friends right (like any parent cares who their kids pal around with), but a cataclysmic epiphany seemed to seize the man upon a) not only inwardly acknowledging he had used the wrong name in regards to Arnold but also b) registering the words 'Arnold' and 'Shortman' and their use within succession of each other.


(Flashback POV Bob)

The girl's school time was the most optimal for me to clean the house out.

Her almost purposeful lack of progress when it came to packing up her room was starting to piss me off. What made her so special? Me and Miriam (on the rare occasions she's lucid enough to do so) had been hauling bag after bag of garbage to the point where it laid at our curb looking like its own land mass. As it stood, here we were with a week out from the bank officially taking back the house, and the box of garbage bags sat in the middle of her room.

Furiously, I throw open the door and in my quest for things to toss out, I come upon that stupid pink book she sometimes carries around with her laying at the edge of her open closet door. This weird feeling forms in my stomach as I pick the thing up…a feeling only grows as I leaf through it.

"'Arnold…Your eyes like two green jelly beans…Arnold…your grungy chic…oh flaxen-haired angel…you make my girlhood tremble…Arnold…Each morn I see you bend to drink from love's own crystal pool…Sadly, I stash my passion deep in this secret pink place…' Yeesh. What an absolute fruitcake."

I toss the book back in the closet and hear a clatter of things falling over and see a candle roll out to my feet. As I crawl into her closet, I'm taken aback to see this odd little shrine celebrating some oval-headed god. A ring of familiarity hits me, like I've seen him before from somewhere.


"What happened Bob, cat got your tongue?"

"This…Arnold." The Pataki patriarch pondered slowly. "Did he by chance compete in a spelling bee some years back?"

"Yes. You tried to buy him off."

"Did he happen to have some scrappy bone-bag of a guardian with a green Packard and a chin that looked like a-?"

"Doi!" Helga interjected. "Please don't tell me you're just making that connection right now."

"And wasn't he the kid that drove that tin can of a bus to stop the developers, and the winner of that St. Lawrence trip where your class got kidnapped and that goon broke Olga's heart?"

"Nothing gets past you doesn't it?" Helga scoffed.

"AND YOU LET ME TAKE ADVICE ON RUNNING A BUSINESS FROM THIS KID?!" Bob bellowed. "YOU WANT ME TO START BEING A MORE ATTENTIVE PARENT HELGA? WELL, YOU JUST HIT THE STINKIN' LOTTERY! NOT ONLY ARE YOU NEVER ALLOWED TO GO NEAR YOUR LITTLE BEAN-HEADED BOYFRIEND OR HIS CIRCUS OF WACK-A-DOODLE ANCESTORS EVER AGAIN, BUT IF HE COMES ANYWHERE NEAR MY HOUSE OR MY STORE AGAIN, ALL YOUR LITTLE SHRINES AND POEMS WON'T SAVE HIS KEISTER FROM FINISHING OUT HIS CHILDHOOD IN JUVINILE HALL!"

Something about hearing Bob refer to Arnold as her boyfriend sent Helga into an entirely different level of mad. Technically his status as her boyfriend was correct, and comprised all of the bliss that had carried her through thus far. But Arnold Shortman would be just another kid she interacted with had she lived in a house with a functional and supportive family unit who scoffed at the idea of playing 'heir and spare' games with her and Olga. On top of all that, knowing her father (of all the possible people in the world) stumbled upon her shrines and poems only hastened Helga's descent into fury. With a level of rage alien to even her, Helga barrels toward the cheap table and with a potent push hurls it onto it's side; sending their impromptu feast sliding onto the floor. Taking full advantage of how wrath paralyzed her father, Helga grabs her coat and leaves.

Outside, after casting one venomous look at the Pataki brownstone, Helga fiddles for her phone and finds Phoebe's contact info. Her fingers furiously push at the little keyboard on her screen as she tells her friend to save a space for her at the community center. Within seconds, response bubbles ebb before a ping emits from her device.

['Saving.']