"Oohhh, Arnold… what's wrong?"

Arnold looked at Lila, sitting down next to him at lunch the next day, in surprise. "Huh? Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason, except for the fact that you look ever so miserable," Lila said with concern.

"I didn't realize it was that obvious," Arnold muttered, staring back at his lunch tray. Actually, he would have thought that he would have sulked out all of his misery by now. He had certainly looked completely crushed when he had arrived back at the boarding house yesterday afternoon, sniffling back tears and shaking with both anger and rejection.

"What's wrong, Arnold?" his grandmother, Gertie, had asked him. She and Phil were sitting at the kitchen table.

Arnold wiped his eyes and nose before answering. "You… you know that girl trouble I was telling you about, Grandpa?"

"Oh no!" Phil yelped. "Don't tell me you actually asked her out! I told you that there was no hope for that relationship, remember?"

"I'll listen next time," Arnold muttered, still wiping his eyes even though that didn't seem to stop the tears from coming.

"Is there anything we can do to make you feel better?" Gertie asked.

"No, I just want to be alone for awhile…"

"I'll tell you what," said Gertie with a smile. "I'll bake cookies for desert tonight. That ought to put a smile back on your face."

Arnold made a loud sniff before speaking. "Molasses cookies?"

"What else?"

He managed a tiny smile. "Thanks."

And they had helped. A little. But apparently not enough to hide his sorrow from Lila.

"So what happened?" Lila asked. "Are you going to be alright?"

Arnold sighed. "Lila, you'd think I'd have learned by now to not listen to you when you say I should date someone…"

"Oh… oh dear." Lila looked down at her feet in embarrassment. "So she said no then?"

"No?! She called me a liar, and other worse things I won't repeat, and she said she never wanted to see me again! And when I closed the door, I swear she threw a book at me!"

"Oh dear," Lila murmured again.

"So I say to you, again, it's quite obvious that she has no desire to date me at all," Arnold muttered. He lifted his fork and picked at his spaghetti.

Lila picked up her fork, too, but made no further movements with it, as if in deep thought. "No, it's not," she said softly.

"What?"

"Arnold, forgive me for saying so, but does her reaction make any sense coming from someone who's truly over you like you say she says she is?"

"Of—of course—but…" Arnold shook his head in confusion. "Look, Lila, if she wasn't over me and was still in love with me, her reaction wouldn't make sense either! I mean, if she was still in love with me, she would have accepted right away!"

"If she knew she was," Lila agreed. "And if she accepted that she was. Perhaps she's just scared of being happy."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm just saying I don't think you should give up on her," said Lila with a shrug. "And I think that she needs, at the very least, a friend right now. And you are a very good friend."

"Good for throwing books at," Arnold muttered.

"You caught her off-guard, Arnold. And she gets angry when people do that. And she gets really angry when someone says something that might expose her feelings. Especially her feelings about you. Trust me, I know from experience."

Arnold looked at Lila, not knowing what to say to that.

"Just… don't jump to conclusions," Lila said. "I still think that if she was truly over you, she would have turned you down in a much less defensive way."

"And if she was really in love with me, she wouldn't have yelled at me that she never wanted to see me again."

"Oh, I don't know… that's what she always said to you in the past, isn't it? Maybe that's just her way of showing love."

"It's not," said Arnold forcefully. Lila looked surprised by his intensity. "I know how she loves, Lila. I have a book of love poems that she wrote about me—don't ask me how I got it, even I'm not really sure—and she can be really tender and gentle sometimes and… and I like that side of her. And maybe… maybe I could even love that side of her." He turned back to his spaghetti, looking vulnerable and hurt.

"Then you just have to patient with her and give her another chance," Lila said gently. "She's not going to show you that side right away, after all."

"Why can't she, though? Why does she have to make things difficult?"

"Because that's who she is, Arnold. If you want to try to love her, you're going to have to love all of her, not just one side of her. Can you do that?"

"I… I don't know," Arnold admitted, looking down at his feet. "But I want to try."

"That's all you need," smiled Lila.

…………

Arnold was not quite as miserable the rest of the day, but he certainly wasn't feeling happy or even all that optimistic either. What he was feeling was just plain confusion. He now had even less of an idea of how Helga felt about him, or how he felt about her. And he certainly was at a loss as to what to do next.

Darn his friends for being able to read his emotions so well.

When their psychology teacher, Mr. Perry, told the class to break up into pairs to work on personality assessments, Gerald immediately pushed his desk next to Arnold, and immediately after that launched into his own assessment. "For crying out loud, Arnold, you're still mopey? What's going on?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Nuh-uh. That's what you said in PE, and clearly keeping quiet about it doesn't work. Come on, man, I'm your best friend. You can tell me anything."

"You wouldn't believe it if I told you," Arnold mumbled, turning his head away from Gerald.

"Alright, and now you cannot not tell me after that kind of lead-in. Try me. What's the matter?"

Part of Arnold still didn't feel alright with blabbing Helga's secret, but another part didn't really care anymore, and at any rate was tired of keeping things hidden from his best friend. "Let's just say I took Lila's advice."

"Regarding…?"

"Helga. Asking her out."

"Are you crazy?!" Gerald yelped. "Or are you conducting a scientific experiment or… or what?"

"It's not like that, Gerald," Arnold sighed. "I know you think I'm crazy, but I really do like her. A lot. And I asked her out and she pretty much exploded in my face and… she really hurt my feelings."

"Well, really, Arnold, I'm sorry and all, but honestly, what did you expect? That girl can't stand you on a good day! And she's always been like that!"

Arnold sighed again. "Gerald, she was madly in love with me in elementary school."

"Come again?" Gerald asked. "I could have sworn you just said that Helga was in love with you."

"That's exactly what I said."

"Wait a minute. You're saying that Helga G. Pataki, the girl who used to have blonde pigtails but now has a black bob, and who apparently gets dressed in the dark, is in love with you?"

"Was. In elementary school."

"Are you sure you're talking about the same Helga that I am?"

"Positive."

"You're as crazy as Lila. She hated your guts back then! What makes you so sure she loved you, anyway? Did Lila tell you?"

"No, Helga told me."

Gerald sighed and shook his head. "Well, jeez, Arnold, there's your problem right there. Helga never really loved you. She just told you to mess with you, so that she could hurt you again. She's playing you for a sap and having a good laugh over it right now. You can't believe what she tells you! She needed some way to torture you after three years of nothing, and that lie was it!"

"Gerald," said Arnold sternly, "she told me in the fourth grade."

"What?" Gerald asked, his confidence and handle on the conversation completely derailed. "But that was… that was six years ago!"

"Five and a half, actually," sighed Arnold. "She was Deep Voice. I caught her and demanded to know why she was helping me, and eventually she admitted that she did it because she loved me. I'm really sorry for keeping this a secret from you, but… well, it was Helga's secret, not mine. I wouldn't have felt right breaching her trust. I still don't, actually."

"Come on, Arnold!" cried Gerald, looking far more flustered than he had earlier but still trying to rationalize. "She wasn't telling the truth then, either! She was hiding her real reason, because… because it was too embarrassing or something!"

"Gerald, what could possibly be more embarrassing than admitting you're in love with—and kissing—someone you've made it a point to hate? She was telling me the truth, Gerald. I know she was. Do you remember that book of love poems about me we found at the beginning of fourth grade? She wrote them. Remember how much she wanted to be Juliet in our play? It was because I was Romeo and she wanted to kiss me. Remember… look, just so many weird things Helga did can be explained by realizing she was in love with me and trying to hide it. I know it sounds bizarre, and it does to me too, but she loved me, Gerald. I know she did."

"But… but…" Gerald gave a sigh of resignation and leaned back in his desk. "Man, I feel like I've just entered the Twilight Zone or something."

"You're telling me," Arnold groaned.

"Okay, so… so she loved you. But the real question is, does she still love you?"

"I don't know, and that's the trouble," Arnold said helplessly. "So she yelled at me and called me names and said she never wanted to see me again. That's how she treated me in elementary school, too, as a cover-up for her true feelings. Is that the case now? Or does she just genuinely hate my guts?"

"That is the million-dollar question," Gerald agreed.

"How are you boys doing?" Mr. Perry was going around to all the pairs of students, checking their progress. He raised an eyebrow at their empty sheets. "This is no time for socializing. Get to work."

Both boys grabbed their worksheets and pencils. "Gerald, do you generally prefer to work alone or in groups?"

"In groups. You?"

"In groups." They both marked down the answers.

Gerald looked at the next question and smirked. "This is a doozy. Do you believe people are generally good with a bit of bad, or generally bad with a bit of good?"

"Generally good with a bit of bad."

"What a surprise." Gerald circled Arnold's response and said, nonchalantly, "When did it happen? Yesterday at the tutoring session?"

"Yeah. How about you? Good with a bit of bad, or bad with a bit of good?"

"Bad with a bit of good."

Arnold made note of Gerald's response.

"It might interest you to know," Gerald said levelly, "that… she wasn't in history class today."

Arnold looked up from his paper in surprise.

"In fact, I haven't even seen her in the halls. So I know she's not here, because when she's here, you can see her."

Arnold hesitated before looking back down at the questionnaire. "Would you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist?"

"Oh, an optimist, except when compared to you. And how about you?"

"Today, or in general?"

"Uh oh."

"Optimist, usually."

"And today?" The corner of Gerald's mouth tugged up in the beginnings of a smile.

Arnold's mouth did likewise. "Optimist."

…………

Gerald was right—Helga wasn't in school that day. She had been sick, although without a fever, ever since she stumbled her way home the previous night, and that morning had pretty much screamed at her parents that wild horses couldn't drag her to school that day. Even Bob didn't want to argue with her. They allowed her to stay home. She found her way to the medicine cabinet, took a whopping four sleeping aid pills (the dosage was two, Helga knew it could be dangerous but didn't really care), and almost instantly fell asleep, and was such until Miriam shook her awake at about two-thirty that afternoon.

"Criminy, Mom, I'm sick," Helga muttered as her eyes groggily cracked open. "Let me sleep."

"I just don't want your sleep schedule to get out of whack, honey," said Miriam.

Helga's eyes were only half-open, but she still managed to roll them. What did Miriam know about sleep schedules? She was half-asleep thanks to the booze pretty much twenty-four seven.

"Anyway, I'm going to the grocery store to pick up a few things. Do you want anything?"

"Stronger drugs that'll make me sleep longer."

"Oh, you poor thing, I hope you feel better soon." Miriam placed a hand on Helga's forehead and her brows raised in confusion, most likely due to the continued lack of any sort of fever. She shrugged it off, though, and sat up from the side of the bed. "After the store I'll be at Olga and Owen's taking care of Stan. Call me on my cell if you need anything. Your dad should be home around five-thirty."

"Roger," muttered Helga, rolling over to her other side. Soon she heard her mother's car drive away, leaving the house empty—just Helga and her thoughts.

And her thoughts were so overwhelming that she knew she was going to need at least four more sleeping pills to silence them again.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "No, that's avoidance. And I can't keep avoiding this. I either have to deal with this or take enough sleeping pills that I never wake up. And I don't like the second option." She thought for a minute. "Although I'm not too crazy about the first, either."

Her thoughts snapped back to Arnold. Arnold was her mind's auto-pilot, as it was.

"Shit," she moaned helplessly, feeling her throat constrict. "What the hell is my problem? He asked me out and I threw an algebra book at him! Why didn't I just say yes?"

Her body tensed. "No! No! I can't say yes! You're not in love with him anymore, idiot!" She was gripping her wrist so hard that her hand was turning white. "And I need to end this once and for all! I cannot keep acting like my twelve-year-old self around him anymore! I'm a different person now!"

She leapt off her bed and pawed through her closet—her shrineless closet that had been shrineless for three years, she reminded herself, thank you very much—for the box that held her elementary school yearbooks and class pictures. Finding it, she pulled one out and looked at the front cover. PS 118, 1996-1997 school year. That would have been fourth grade. Perfect.

She flipped to Mr. Simmons' fourth grade class and looked at the small number of photos on the page—their class had always been one of the smallest throughout elementary school—finding her picture right away. They were printed in black and white, but she knew that the bow and dress she was wearing were pink; that the hair, sticking out to her sides in two pigtails, was blonde. "See?" she said to herself. "I'm a completely different person than that girl there. I've changed a lot in six years. I don't dress like that, my hair doesn't look like that… I'm not even the same person anymore. That girl there? Not me."

The picture of fourth grade Helga showed her sporting an annoyed smile, one that clearly said, "I'm only doing this to humor you." A very familiar smile, in truth—Helga still flashed it all the time to her parents, teachers, peers—

"Oh God, no!" Helga shrieked, pushing the book aside. "I'm not that person anymore! I'm completely different! Which means there's no way in hell that I love…" And, despite her better judgment screaming at her to stop, she pulled the book back to her and looked at the picture of the boy right below her, the picture that had been adorned with hearts and starbursts by the pencil of a fourth grader.

"Arnold," she whispered.

That picture was gorgeous. That half-lidded smile, one that betrayed that his imagination had taken him somewhere else, somewhere better, had been enough to make her nine-year-old self swoon and it was enough to make her fifteen-year-old self swoon too. That boy was amazing. He was still amazing.

"And he asked me out… and I threw my fucking algebra book at him!" Helga screeched, tearing at her hair in frustration. Her short black hair, not her long blonde hair. Not like it mattered what color or length her hair was. Any dope could change how their hair looked. It didn't mean they were suddenly a different person. What a moron she had been for believing that!

"No, I'm a different person," she insisted wildly. "Even if I was still blonde I'd be a different person. Dammit, Helga, don't you remember how much you hated who you were back then?" As opposed to how much you hate who you are now? Doesn't seem like that big a difference. "I was a MORON! A complete and utter MORON! And I'm not going back!"

The frustrating thing about her idiocy was that she couldn't make any excuses for it other than the embarrassing truth—that she had been in love. And even after she had done away with the old Helga, she could still never deny that what she had felt had been true—not just a crush, not just an obsession, but real, honest-to-goodness love. Calling it anything less than that would have made her actions as a child ten times stupider. Also, saying that she hadn't been in love with Arnold was such a huge insult to him, because honestly, like she said to him before, how could she have not loved him? How was it that every girl in the city wasn't as crazy about him as she was—no, as she had been, because it wasn't there anymore. But still, loving him was just natural! And true, she didn't love him anymore, but that was through no fault of his—he was still the same optimistic, caring, gentle dreamer he always had been and that she had loved so dearly. She wasn't in love with him anymore because she had decided that it was time to move on. Love worked like that… right?

Love's an on/off switch? Come on, Helga, GET REAL.

"Shit," she whispered, tugging at her hair again. "I'm not giving into this. I'm not in love with him. I'll rip my heart right out of my chest to stop myself from falling in love with him again."

Falling in love with him again? Who are you kidding? You never STOPPED loving him. You're just falling deeper into the pit that you never escaped from—and never will.

"No…" Her voice broke, and tears blurred her vision. "I… I killed you…"

Not entirely.

Her head jerked back up, causing the tears to run down her cheeks. "Of… of course! That was my mistake!" She ran back into her room and opened the drawer of her nightstand.

Because she had not burned all of her Arnold-related things that day three years ago.

Most. But not all. There was one thing that she couldn't bear to destroy, one thing that she had allowed herself to keep, albeit hidden in the far back of her nightstand. Still, she found it easily.

Her locket.

"Arnold," she whispered again, lovingly, touching the picture so affectionately kept inside—his sixth grade picture, still with that beautiful half-lidded smile that made her heart melt.

She frantically shook her head.

"I know what I have to do," she said, running downstairs and rummaging through the tool drawer, pulling out the biggest hammer she could find. "It'll hurt like hell, just like it did three years ago, but it's the only way." She made her way back up to her room, positioning herself over her nightstand and the locket on top of it, wielding the hammer high in the air…

Well, get on with it!

Her arm started to swing.

Only started. But then she shrieked, stopping the motion and throwing her arm back, dropping the hammer to the floor.

"Fuck!" she moaned helplessly, falling to her knees. "What's happening to me? I… I burned him! And then I was over him! Remember?! The next day I thought of him and didn't feel any longing whatsoever!"

But you still thought of him.

The tears were back, in full force. She couldn't see. She didn't care.

She had thought of him all the time during the last three years.

Marcus Rowe had fancied himself a good kisser. Marcus had used his tongue, something Helga hadn't been accustomed to. And, all in all, his kisses were alright. But still, even with the tongue, she always thought that they couldn't even hold a candle to that gentle peck Arnold had given her while playing Romeo in the school play of Romeo and Juliet.

Marcus had wanted sex. Helga wasn't completely opposed to the idea, but she still held off every time. She didn't particularly buy into the notion that anyone's virginity, much less hers, was worth anything, but still she thought it deserved a little more respect than just handing it off willy-nilly to someone like Marcus. Or… well, to anyone other than Arnold.

"Why are you dumping me?" Marcus had asked that January.

Because you're not Arnold, had been her heart's answer. Her rationality, appalled, had twisted that sentence and molded it so that it came out, instead, as, "Because you're a jerk." But that really hadn't been the true reason.

She had looked at Arnold—not just glanced, but actually looked—every time they passed in the hallways in junior high. She did so because she wanted to make sure he was happy. And I'm glad you are, she'd always think in satisfaction—although it was a sad satisfaction. Odd that she had never really seen him wander the halls with Wendy… but that would have been around the time she had started dating Marcus, and she had completely thrown herself into him, trying to prove to herself that she could love someone else—and failing. When she had brought Wendy outside of the dance to see her traitorous boyfriend in the flesh, Arnold had been the last person she had been expecting to see—although not that she could blame him, especially after the verbal beating Wendy gave him for just stepping outside. In fact, Helga had been downright furious at Wendy for that. Needy, controlling bitch. How dare she treat Arnold that way? "Wanna trade?" Helga had asked, and she almost wished Wendy had taken her up on her offer. Wendy deserved a lowlife like Marcus. Helga didn't come close to deserving an angel like Arnold, but at least she could appreciate him far more than that bitch…

And then she had seen him in the hallways with Melissa Hopkins later that year, and while part of her was glad that he had apparently given Wendy the boot, the other part of her was furious again—Arnold, can't you see she's just another Wendy? They held hands and smiled and laughed, and Helga couldn't bear to look at them, her jealousy was so great. She had identified the jealousy as wishing that she could just have a happy, functional relationship like theirs in general, but deep down her heart always knew.

She reached for the locket, her heart so full it was bursting—and simultaneously breaking. Her vision was still clouded by tears, but she could somehow see the locket and Arnold's sixth grade picture perfectly.

"You are my sunshine…" she sang hoarsely, "my only sunshine… you make me happy… when skies are gray…"

Her throat was constricted so much she could hardly get the next line out, but out it came, and with it any remaining attempts at denial.

"You'll never know, dear… how much I love you…"

She held the locket to her heart, crying freely now that her last wall of stubbornness had been knocked down, the last line of the song breathed out in a whisper.

"Please don't take my sunshine away."

She sat on her bedroom floor, crying and doing nothing else, for a good ten minutes.

Finally, her eyes seemed to be mostly dried out. She wiped away the last of her tears, looking again at the locket. "Oh, Arnold, my love," she murmured—and it came out so naturally, so clearly, that she wondered why she hadn't been referring to him as such all this time. "I'm such a basket case, darling, and it's all because of you… what ungodly force possessed you to want to spend time with me?" She sniffled. Okay, scratch that about her eyes having dried up; there seemed to be more tears just waiting to fall out. "My selfish, egotistical heart wants nothing more than to have you all to myself… but nevertheless, I know what I must do." Yep, the tears were back. "I know that you are far better off without me, my angel. And while I must right the wrong I have done you and finally tell you the truth about how I feel, I also must explain why it is you are better off far, far away from me. It won't take much explaining, dear." She touched the locket and gave a sad smile. "After the way I treated you yesterday in my foolish attempts to deny my love for you, you probably already want nothing more to do with me, and as for me… you mustn't worry about me, my love. I have long since already resigned myself to a miserable, lonely life. I will be content to love you from afar. Watching you be happy and successful as I know you will be is all I ask for."

Her smile broke, and in anguish she set the locket face-down on top of the nightstand. "No matter how much I want you," she whispered.

If only she had fully realized her feelings yesterday, when he had actually asked her out! Then maybe, just maybe… But no. No wondering what could have been. It was better for Arnold this way.

Although, if what he wanted was to spend time with her… and she wanted him to be happy… and spending time with her made him happy… was it really a win/win situation?

"No, I can't," Helga snapped at herself. "I love him. I want what's best for him. And that's certainly not me. Besides, not even Arnold could forgive what I did yesterday. He'll probably be glad to finally be rid of me."

She uneasily rose to her feet, picking up the locket again, thinking for a foolish second or two that she needed a more recent picture of him in it—but no, this thing was going back in the drawer where it belonged. "If only I could be rid of you half so easily, my love," she murmured.