Helga plowed her way through school the next day, Friday, more irritable than usual.

She had burned him. She had burned everything that she had of him and thus erased him from her life. It had been a new beginning, one that she needed. It was shortly after that, just after Olga's wedding, that she had cut her hair short and ditched the bow. It was the summer of 1999, a new millennium was almost there, a new start, and Helga embraced it. It was December of that year when she had first dyed her hair. It had just been a very natural shade of brown that first time, but it was liberating. Helga felt more and more like a new person the more she physically changed herself. After the brown, she had gone for black. Then red—a very bright, hardly natural looking red. Then pink. And that was about the time she started wearing Miriam and Olga's old clothes in the most bizarre combinations she could come up with. She got attention now. And she looked nothing like the girl she had once been.

You can change your outward appearance, but you can't change who you are inside.

The color of her hair had nothing to do with it, as well it shouldn't. She wasn't falling in love with him now and she wouldn't be if she was still blonde, either. She was a different person now, both on the outside and on the inside. She was smarter now. Perhaps the old Helga would completely abandon all sense and reason because she was in love, but the new Helga wasn't going to let that happen to her. She was completely through with that, she had decided a long time ago. So she certainly wasn't falling in love now. Especially not with the same goddamned person you were in love with in the first place.

But damn, he was so hard to ignore. She was right; he hadn't changed at all. Well, yes, he had obviously grown older. But everything about him that she had once loved was still there. He was still gentle, caring, sweet, polite, intelligent, still completely and utterly amazing. She felt a warm glow whenever he was near her and she was finding that she had to stop herself from smiling like a fool whenever she even just thought about him. All this after less than two days together.

Not together as in "together", of course. Because they weren't together, and they weren't going to be, because she wasn't in love with him.

She hadn't gotten much sleep that night, because despite her frenzied efforts to the contrary, she had stayed up wondering what it would feel like to have him run his fingers through her hair. Purely hypothetically, of course. It's not that she actually wanted that. Anyway, regardless, she hadn't gotten much sleep and was now sitting in her fifth period algebra class looking completely zoned.

"Alright, class," Mr. Quincy was saying. "I've got your quizzes graded, but I know from experience that if I hand them back to you at the beginning of class all you'll just be focused on them and not the lesson, so I'll give them back to you at the end of the class period. For now, let's get back to fractions."

Helga dutifully pulled out her notebook that she had hardly used and wrote the day's date: Friday, September 6, 2002. Normally she barely took any notes in any of her classes, and certainly was far from organized with them, but focusing on note taking seemed to be a good way to get her to think about something other than Arnold. Not that she had any real reason to be thinking about Arnold, of course, which would make keeping her mind off of him easy.

Easy, dammit, do you hear me?

The dead Helga didn't listen, though. And by the end of the period, Helga found that her notes consisted of nearly nothing about algebra and nearly completely about jumbled lines of romantic poetry.

"Oh shit," she muttered, slamming her notebook shut defensively. Hopefully nobody saw that. Although even if they did, luckily she hadn't written down any names—which made sense, after all, because she wasn't in love with anyone and thus had no particular names to mention. Of course, there had been a few mentions of a blonde angel, an emerald-eyed darling, a football-headed wonder…

Whoever in the hell that was. Those were just random descriptors, not tied to any actual person. Duh.

The bell rang, and the students all began to leave as Mr. Quincy handed back the quizzes. Helga's was the last one he handed back. She looked in surprise at the grade—an 86%. A B minus. Considering she had actually failed the last quiz, this jump in grades left her completely speechless.

"That's a mighty big improvement after a single tutoring session, and I'm not one to beat around the bush, so I'll just ask you straight out—Did you cheat?"

"What?" Helga jerked involuntarily. "No, of course not! Cross my heart and hope to die! To be honest, I don't care enough about my grade to even consider cheating."

"That's what I thought, too," said Mr. Quincy. "Relax. I guess it was the tutoring, then."

"Yeah, I… I guess so. Arnold fed me some crap about believing in myself and as hokey as it sounds, I guess it worked."

"Well, I'm very pleased with your improvement, Helga, and I'm not sure if a tutor is still necessary… unless you still want one."

"Yes!" Helga yelped out instantly. Wait, she did? Why was that? "I mean, yeah, sure, let's raise this grade to an A." Of course. She wanted a better grade. The fact that Arnold happened to be her tutor had nothing to do with it.

"Alright then. Go ahead and meet him after school as usual."

Helga nodded, sliding the quiz in her binder and standing out of her desk unsteadily. How on earth had that just happened? She had moved from an F to a B minus, a whole twenty-four percentage points, just because Arnold had suddenly returned in her life. Oh, and given her motivational bullshit and crap like that. It wasn't him, it was what he said. He liked the way she dressed.

No, not THAT thing he said!

She got out of the room as quickly as possible. Her next period was lunch and she was hungry—not terribly hungry, but she still focused all her attentions on her stomach, rather than her heart.

…………

Arnold also spent that day trying to avoid the subject of Helga, but not to the counterproductive extremes that she had. Instead, when conversing with Gerald during PE and psychology and Lila during lunch and English, he just made sure that the topics brought up didn't center around his tutoring. He was successful, too; the only time Helga was brought up was at the very end of psychology, eighth period, when Gerald asked, "So are you tutoring Beelzebub again today?"

"Beelze… oh, Helga. Yeah, I am."

"Sorry."

"Gerald, she's really not that bad. I actually kind of enjoy spending time with her."

"I always knew you were a masochistic freak of nature." Gerald shot Arnold a good-natured grin to show he was joking.

"I must be," said Arnold with a helpless sigh. "I helped her take care of her baby nephew yesterday."

"Good lord, Arnold. Why are you always helping people?"

"Because they need it."

"Yeah, yeah. Listen, good Samaritan, can you take a break from the do-gooder thing for a day or so and come over to my place tomorrow? I've got a ton of new video games that need trial runs, and I can't do it by myself."

"Oh, sure you can," laughed Arnold. "But I'd love to. I'll see you tomorrow."

"See you, Arnold." They quickly did their thumb "handshake" and parted ways.

Arnold was glad to get to algebra, his last class of the day, of the week in fact. Of course, he still had to stay after and tutor Helga, but that didn't seem so bad. As long as they could avoid looking in each other's eyes like they had yesterday. Arnold felt himself blush just thinking about it. What had that been about? Okay, yes, so Helga was going on about how she used to be in love with him, which definitely explained her reaction. Getting completely worked up in your own emotions, even if they were past emotions, could certainly make you become a little dreamy-eyed. But what about what he felt? He couldn't ignore the flutter in his stomach when he had looked in her eyes.

Lila thought he should date her.

Part of him was honest-to-goodness thinking in response to that, Why not? He liked her, and there was obviously some level of attraction that he felt for her… but that was the problem. Arnold wasn't one to rush into an infatuation. And he knew that the reason for that attraction probably came solely from the fact that he knew that she had once loved him. There was certainly something very attractive about someone who loved you—after all, being loved was a wonderful feeling. But Arnold wasn't sure if his attraction stemmed from anything other than that. And besides, even if it did, he highly doubted that Helga still had any interest in dating him.

Besides, he was tutoring her. To date her at the same time would be just awkward.

He couldn't help but smile to himself as he sat down in his desk. How weird was it that it didn't feel weird to think about Helga in this way? After all, this was the girl who had tormented him all throughout elementary school. At that time—well, at least before a certain time on the rooftop of a company headquarters in the fourth grade—the possibility of his ever feeling any kind of attraction towards Helga would have been laughable. And even now, her harassment still felt like a bit of a road block. A small one, yes, but still a road block. When he thought of Helga, even now, he couldn't help but remember how she used to treat him. He had long since forgiven her, even before she ever admitted she was in love with him. He had always known that she at least had a deeper, kinder side to her, and after all, Arnold was not one to hold grudges. He had forgiven her, yes. But forgetting was another matter.

And there was no way in hell he could ever forget her.

He was realizing even more now, now that he was actually interacting with her again, that probably a big part of the reason why his relationships with Wendy and Melissa hadn't worked was because he was holding them up to the impossibly high expectations Helga had set. He had always known that Helga's declarations of love (because he had actually heard two separate ones from her, although one was given in a very indirect manner) and kisses (again, more than one—six in fact, if he was counting correctly) had deeply affected him, even the first ones where he had believed she was just acting. But he was only now coming to the conclusion that when Wendy kissed him, when Melissa kissed him, neither had done so with even half of the passion Helga had had, and he had inwardly been disappointed. And Melissa's very unremarkable statement that she was in love with him? How could he possibly believe that after how Helga had confessed to him over five years ago?

Helga had set the standard, Arnold realized, and he'd never even dated her. He was comparing his girlfriends to the girl who had been his constant bully and thorn in his side. But she had also been his first kiss, and the girl who had taught him what love was.

That had been right after their performance of Romeo and Juliet, when Helga had stated that she thought it was a stupid play because the protagonists were promoting that true love meant killing yourself for a person you had only just met, throwing your life and common sense out the window. She then went on to state how she would write a romance play… and of course directed her "hypothetical" dialogue directly to Arnold. Now Arnold realized that the framework of writing a play was just that, a framework in order for her to confess to him, at least indirectly, how much she loved him.

There were very few things that he could remember word for word, but strangely Helga's first, roundabout confession was one of them, despite having only heard it once. And when he had been with Wendy and Melissa, he had silently hoped, prayed, that they would say those words too: "I love you… if there's only one single solitary truth in this entire miserable world it's that, you have to believe that… I light up with happiness every time I see you… I don't know what I'd do without you… I don't know how I'd be able to go on… But I do know that I somehow would go on, for your sake… I couldn't just end my existence and ignore everything you ever taught me… I love you too much to do that…"

He waited for Wendy, for Melissa, for anyone to say something like that… but no one ever did.

But that was the kind of love he wanted.

And Helga had once had it, and was practically begging for Arnold to take it. But he never did.

"I wish…" Arnold murmured aloud.

"You wish what?" Melissa asked. She had stepped into the classroom right after him.

"I, uh, wish that the day could just be over already," Arnold quickly said. In some ways it was a cover for what he really wished, but he also didn't know what it was that he really wished.

"Me too," sighed Melissa. "I heard we get our quizzes back today."

"Oh… that's good," murmured Arnold, hardly listening.

Melissa rolled her eyes impatiently and made her way to her desk, apparently deciding that attempting to hold a conversation with him wasn't worth the effort.

Don't talk when you don't know what you're going to say, Arnold mentally chided himself. This was actually something that he followed more often than not, since he was not particularly gifted with words and knew it. He always made an effort to take care in everything that he said. And did. And felt. He rarely did anything on impulse.

Right now, though, he didn't know if his feelings were merely impulses or something more, and they were growing harder and harder to ignore.

…………

Helga could have stood to adopt Arnold's philosophy of thinking before she spoke. Sometimes she did blurt out things she didn't mean, or if she did mean them, she certainly knew that they were better left unsaid.

But there were also many, many times in her past where she had in fact put a lot of thought into what she said, and even thought it might have seemed she was just blurting something out without thinking, the truth was that she had known exactly what she was doing.

The day Arnold got thrown into the dumpster in the fifth grade had been one of those days.

She was never not going to help him. Luckily at first there had been no one to witness her good deed, but even if there had been she would have hastily constructed some excuse as to why she was helping Arnold, even if said excuse was as flimsy as, "Well, come on, he got tossed into a dumpster, and even I'm not heartless enough to just leave him there."

She was only going to pull him out and be on her merry way. Nothing more. It would be her one good deed for the day.

But she froze when she touched his hand.

The wave of love for him that swept through her entire body whenever she thought of him, while certainly intense, was nothing compared to when she actually physically touched him. It was literally as though she forgot how to move. And Arnold had looked up at her, his eyes glowing with understanding—well duh he understood, she had out and out told him a few months ago—and yet not recoiling. He just waited, patiently, gently, wanting to know what she would do, even if it was violent… even if it was passionate… because now he knew she was capable of both.

"Arnold—" That, yes, had been said without much thought, but she wouldn't have taken it back. She loved the way his name felt on her lips when she spoke it, especially in that tone of voice, and he had never quite heard that before. And she wanted him to hear it. She wanted the sound of her saying his name to make his knees buckle just as the sound of her hearing him say her name made hers. But it didn't stand on its own, and instead of buckling he still waited for something more, and Helga knew what she needed to say.

But she never said it.

Which was why, after ninth period, instead of going to the tutoring room, she sprinted to the hall where Arnold's locker was, waiting behind the corner for him to finish with his books. He didn't take very long, very soon on his way towards the library, and Helga, when she was sure he was gone, discreetly ambled down the hallway and, before better judgment could interfere, slipped a folded up sheet of paper through the vents of his locker.

Oooooohhhhh shit.

Why did she do that?

Well, no going back now. That slip of paper wasn't going anywhere now. The locker was locked. Besides, Arnold probably wouldn't know who left it. And he probably wouldn't understand the message, anyway. But that didn't matter. She was finally, although five years late, saying it, and maybe now, finally, the elementary school-age Helga would get some closure and die for good.

There was still a number of students in the hallways, chatting at their lockers with friends, and the individual voices all blurred together into one indistinguishable mull. And yet, somehow, Helga suddenly recognized a single voice that she hadn't heard in years.

"See you tomorrow, Jenny."

Helga turned around and stared at the source of the voice, who returned the surprised stare for a moment, clearly not expecting to see Helga there.

"Hi, Phoebe," Helga finally said, smiling.

The way Helga had treated Arnold wasn't the only thing that had haunted her to the point of a total change that summer between sixth and seventh grade. She had also realized how much crap she had put Phoebe through. Long-suffering Phoebe, so different from Helga and yet Helga's only true friend, who knew all of her personal demons and bore them with her, uncomplaining, completely trustworthy, even with Helga's deepest secret (a secret that went by the name of Arnold). And yet Helga had completely taken her for granted. Part of her always meant to at least apologize in junior high, but she had started hanging out with different friends and, suddenly, she realized that Phoebe wasn't a part of her life anymore. At the time, she had considered this a good thing—Phoebe was part of the old, dead Helga's life and had no place in the new Helga's life—but she couldn't ignore the simple fact that her new "friends" were total losers, and she wouldn't trust them with even a quarter of her secrets. Not the way she had trusted Phoebe.

"Hi, Helga," Phoebe answered, also smiling a little bit. "I like your vest."

Today Helga was wearing a red and white checkered vest over an orange tank top, along with a black satin sash tied around her waist and light blue leggings. Helga's smile grew broader. "Thanks. I like your sweater."

Phoebe was dressed far more conservatively than Helga, simply wearing a gray sweater and jeans, but she still appreciated the compliment. "Thanks."

"Listen, Phoebe, I've been thinking about something," said Helga. "I owe you an apology. You were pretty much my only friend in elementary school and I totally took you for granted. And then I completely ignored you in junior high. Basically, I was an ass to you, and I shouldn't have been."

"Well… I didn't exactly do my part in trying to keep our friendship together either," Phoebe admitted. "So I'm sorry, too."

"Don't give me that. You have nothing to be sorry for. Besides, there's something else." Helga took a deep breath. "Basically, I've realized that all of my friends now are morons and jerks, whereas you are decidedly neither. And maybe it would be good for me to go back to hanging out with you for a change. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is… do you want to see a movie or something tonight?"

Phoebe's face fell. "Actually, Helga, today's my dad's birthday and we're going to celebrate tonight…"

"Oh. That's okay. I understand." Helga turned away, realizing how stupid of an action this was. Duh. Of course Phoebe wasn't suddenly going to want to hang out with her, after being ignored for three years.

"But I'm free tomorrow night," Phoebe suddenly said, smiling.

"Really?" Helga asked, surprised.

"Yeah. In fact, I've really been wanting to see 'Night of the Half-Living Zombies V', but Jenny isn't really into monster movies…"

"Well, you know I am. I've actually seen it twice, but it's definitely worth seeing a third time. So… you wanna meet me at the theater at seven or so? I usually get off work at six, so I can make the earlier show."

"Sounds great," smiled Phoebe.

"Perfect. Look, I've gotta go get tutored now, but I'll see you tomorrow night, alright?"

"Alright, see you tomorrow. Oh, and Helga… I forgive you." Phoebe smiled warmly.

"I forgive you too," smiled Helga. "In fact, I was never angry at you."

"Me neither," said Phoebe.

…………

The tutoring session that day was decidedly quieter than the last one. Helga had shown Arnold her grade and gloated about it for awhile, and then they worked on fractions, which Helga did genuinely have a little trouble with. They spoke of little else, Helga throwing her all into the homework, attempting to avoid looking at Arnold because every time she did her heart rate suddenly picked up. And it was already racing enough from just hearing him talk. Remember, you're dead, she thought bitterly to her old self, threatening to distract her from her work by swooning and sighing and squealing.

"We talked more about dividing fractions today, even though not all of it was on the quiz. Do you have your notes from today?" Arnold asked.

"Yeah, I—" WAIT HE CAN'T SEE THESE NOTES! "No! No, wait, we can't use my notes, I—I take terrible notes." That was an understatement. Her "notes" weren't notes at all, just lines of poetry. She quickly glanced at the clock. "Besides, I'd probably better go. Owen's probably already steamed that I'm not there yet. We, uh, we can talk more about dividing fractions on Monday." She hurriedly began gathering her books into her book bag.

"Okay," said Arnold agreeably. "I think you're getting this pretty well anyway. So… got any plans this weekend?"

"Work tomorrow. I'm going to see a movie with Phoebe. Sunday's my veg day. I never make plans, I just sit around and watch TV all day." She swung her book bag over her back, wanting desperately to leave before he had the chance to ask her to do something with him over the weekend and yet hoping that he'd try anyway.

"Sounds like fun. Everybody needs an off day." Arnold smiled at her and put his book away too. "Well, see you Monday. Have a good weekend."

"Uh, yeah, you too," Helga stammered, feeling relieved and disappointed at the same time. She quickly left the room, not wanting to give herself any more time to have to fight the urge to gaze into his eyes.

Arnold raised an eyebrow as she left. She was acting kind of odd, he noted, although it was probably because she still felt awkward over yesterday. Truthfully, he did too, and didn't want to try to bring that up again… well, part of him did. He sighed. Why did Lila have to plant the bug in his brain about possibly dating her? Why did Helga have to have once loved him in the first place? It couldn't work out, he knew; Helga didn't want to date him, and probably wouldn't even if she did still love him. She had told him that she wasn't in love with him, and she wouldn't suddenly decide she wanted to date him after that… she was too stubborn to admit that she was wrong, he knew. Besides, he was her tutor. If anything were to ever happen between them, it would have to be when that hierarchy was gone.

At any rate, she had said in a very definite manner that she was over him, and he had no real reason to doubt her. They way she was acting around him could definitely be explained as awkwardness from once having been in love with him, rather than actually still being in love with him.

He made his way to his locker, the school eerily quiet, to pick up his biology book and put away his algebra book. He had gotten most of his algebra homework done while tutoring Helga, and for biology they actually had a book assignment for the weekend. He groaned before he had even opened his locker, thinking about the heavy biology book on his back. Groaning wasn't going to get his homework done, though. With a sigh, he opened his locker and replaced his algebra book with his biology book, and moved to close the door—

Wait. There was a folded piece of paper on the floor of his locker.

Curious, he leaned down and picked it up, unfolding it slowly. It looked like a note of some kind—maybe a secret message? Maybe a long explanation for something?

But when he opened the note, there were only five words on it.

"I'll make it all better."