A/N: So this is it, guys! This is the chapter where you finally find out what happened between Arnold and Helga earlier that day, where they are now going to homecoming together. This flashback is long, and it finally gives you another piece of the puzzle you have been looking for. Enjoy!

"What do you want, Lila?" Arnold crossed his arms impatiently as Lila locked the door to the janitor's closet. He didn't see the thumbs up Lila made to a hidden photographer crouched outside the door to their Calculus classroom.

She turned around to provoke him with her presence and flashed an unexpected, wicked grin at Arnold's annoyance.

"Oh, Arnold." Lila moved closer to him in the already crowded corner of the closet. "Isn't it obvious?" Lila's voice switched from sweet to seductive at her last sentence, still popping her pink bubblegum in between the cheeks of her mouth.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Arnold snorted, scanning a sight toward the closed door of the janitor closet.

"Maybe this will show you what I'm talking about." Before Arnold could retaliate, Lila frantically forced her fingers onto his strong shoulder to lean in and align her lips with his.

Arnold's green eyes flew open in fear and his hands hustled to find her shoulders, progressively pushing them out off their embrace.

Lila's tongue snuck in between the lines of Arnold's lips to proceed, only to discover that Arnold was not about to be ambushed as he successfully slid out of her grasp and lip lock and further into the darkness of the closet corner.

"What the hell, Lila?" Arnold wiped his lips off onto the sleeve of his sweater, still in shock from her sudden sexual advance.

"Ugh!" Arnold reached into his mouth after a sensation that there was something unfamiliar still remaining to realize that Lila had left her pink bubblegum upon the roof of his mouth.

He gradually grabbing out the strings of bubblegum from the upper part of his mouth, choking and gagging at the sight of pink glop oozing from his lips.

"I thought you liked surprises." Lila winked, licking her lips from the previous engagement of their lips linking.

"Not your pink bubblegum!" Arnold spat, finally yanking the remainders of their incident from his opening.

"Look, Lila. I don't have time for this, or you. I'm going to see Helga." Arnold brushed shoulders with her while approaching the janitor's closet door. "I didn't know you were that kind of girl."

The moment he placed his hand on the knob of the door, Lila's covered it with her fresh, kelly green painted nails.

"I just thought you'd like to see the headline for this week's newspaper, Arnold. Considering you are on the staff. With Helga."

Arnold curiously changed his position to once again explore the green eyes of Lila Sawyer. "What do you mean? Helga cancelled the production of this week's edition because she was still in the hospital. Didn't you get the email?"

"See for yourself." Sure enough, Lila held up an edition of P.S. 121's official school newspaper, with the date headed for this coming Friday. The heading was centered right below the title of the newspaper.

"Helga G. Pataki Seeks Shrink!" Underneath was a picture of Helga speaking to a woman, supposedly a shrink, in an office in an unknown building.

"Where…Where did you get that?" Arnold couldn't communicate as he began to read the words of the story, stating how Helga went to the Hillwood Health Center twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays after newspaper meetings to see Dr. Bliss, the school psychologist she met during her days at P.S. 118.

"It's true, Arnold. Every word. Helga told me this all herself. It was easy to sneak a snapshot. I followed her one day after newspaper to capture the picture while she chatting in the office with the shrink through the cracks of the office door." Lila folded the newspaper back up once more.

"How could you do this, Lila? How could you do this to Helga? Your friend?" Arnold asked, leaning against the closet door, his football head shaking. He could not describe the disgust he held against her for such an act.

"I'm not going to allow this article to be published, Arnold. No one knows about this except for you and me."

"Then why would you show this to me?"

Lila laughed as she once again approached Arnold like earlier. "Simple. I'm going to make you a deal."

"What do you want?" Arnold raised his head to meet her gruesome, green eyes.

"Ask me to be your date to the homecoming dance."

"What?!" Arnold shouted, shuddering at the request that she had just mentioned. Lila wanted to be his date?

"I need a date to the dance, and you will be my date by asking me properly. Otherwise, this story will be published on Friday and Helga's secret will be revealed."

"You can't blackmail me, Lila. I was planning on asking Helga to homecoming this afternoon."

"You like her, don't you?" Lila grinned her nefarious, negative grin once more.

Arnold blushed a bright pink at Lila's question. "Well, maybe. I… I don't know… I'm trying to figure that out myself." He searched for words to describe what he was feeling, but nothing came out.

"If you cared about her, Arnold, then you would not want her secret to be released. So you'll accept my offer."

Arnold couldn't believe what he was hearing. The girl that he had harbored a crush on for so many years was blackmailing him to go to the homecoming dance with him, but if he refused, his friend and possible crush of many years would be devastated at her secret being spread among the students of the school.

He couldn't say no. He couldn't hurt Helga. Not again.

He had hurt her on the FTi building, on that night sophomore year, and he couldn't imagine her after this was revealed if it was published in the school newspaper by her own friend and assistant editor.

Arnold sighed. He knew what the right decision was.

Lila Sawyer was successfully blackmailing him.

As he seized Lila's hand in within his, he breathed in once more before asking the question he was hoping to approach Helga G. Pataki with later that afternoon.

"Lila Sawyer, would you like to go to homecoming with me?"

"Yes, Arnold. Thank you ever so much for asking." Lila's lips squished against his cheek like a pair of worms squiggling among his skin.

It was official. He was going to homecoming with Lila Sawyer.