"And so, being the lady that I am and having to protect my virtuous honor, I punched that fucker in the eye. It had nothing to do with my knee being over my head, or whatever the hell he was telling everyone." Helga, sitting on the counter with Arnold standing to her right, grinned and took another sip from her beer.

Arnold chuckled. "I think it was actually your foot." There had been a particularly nasty rumor that went around their senior year that, during particularly rough sex, Helga had 'accidentally' kicked Roger Daniels in the face, resulting in a black eye. Turns out he was coming on to her and had some particularly forward words that Helga hadn't appreciated.

"Whatever. He was an asshole. I never liked that kid, ever since the seventh grade."

Arnold feigned surprise. "You mean that you actually liked anyone? Ever?"

She just rolled her eyes and took another sip of her beer. "No, I just didn't like assholes like Roger. And 99% of the student body."

"Ah, so then there was that 1%."

"Yep. Guess I do have some sort of soft spot."

They stayed silent for a few moments before Helga let out an exasperated sigh and put down the bottle. "God, what time is it? When are they coming to let us out? This is ridiculous now." For the umpteenth time, she began to fiddle with the handcuff on her right hand.

"It's just before 5."

"Ugh! Do me a favor, will ya? Check the drawer there behind you and see if there's any sort of tool that we can use."

Arnold turned and lifted up his left arm to start rummaging through the drawers with his free, right hand. "I really doubt that there's going to be a saw or metal cutters in here."

"Well, then, what about a piece of metal?" She jumped down and pushed him aside to start going through the silverware drawer. "Go look through the other drawers over there."

Arnold gave her a look and started opening the empty drawers. "Bossy, bossy."

"Oh, shut up and do what you're told." Closing the drawer with a huff, she moved to the left, opening up the drawer there. With the distance apart, their arms hung mid-air in between them. It was starting to itch and get really annoying. How long had they been in these now?

"What about a bobby pin?" Since the two drawers by him were empty, he came out empty-handed rather quickly. It was when he had turned to watch her that he noticed the pins she was wearing.

Helga smacked her forehead. "Doi! Yes!" Reaching up to the back of her head, she pulled out both bobby pins that were holding her hair in place. She had put them in this morning to keep her grown-out bangs in place. When it came to her hair, she was completely restless. In high school, it had gone through many different styles and colors, ranging from burgundy to brown to red to pink to teal. She hadn't been blonde in so long that most people didn't even know her true hair color. Right now, it was black with two stripes of bleach blonde on other side of her face. It was an A-frame bob that Victoria Beckham would make popular until the following year.

Arnold watched as Helga bent the tip of the now-stripped bobby pin and began to twist it in the keyhole. Within moments, it clicked and she let out a triumphant yell. "Got it!"

Arnold was impressed. "Wow, how'd you learn how to do that?"

As she worked on his, Arnold noticed her face immediately turn a deep shade of red. He blinked, wondering if he was really seeing that. "Oh, well…ya know…" she led off as another click sounded. She immediately turned towards the fridge after laying the make-shift key down on the counter. "I'm hungry." She really wasn't, but desperately wanted to change subjects.

Rubbing his wrist, he couldn't help the small grin as he realized she was definitely blushing. He couldn't remember if he had ever seen her blush before. It was a contrast to the black of her hair and very alluring. "How can you be? You just ate."

"Yeah, like, fifty hours ago. I eat four meals a day, thanks for asking." She snatched the bag of mini carrots, shut the fridge door, grabbed her beer and made for the boarded up window. Hopefully she could figure out a way to get it open.

At least she hoped. Helga stared at it for a few minutes, munching on the carrots after dropping the bag and bottle on the nightstand. There had to be a way out of here. It was just a piece of stupid plywood. They weren't going to spend a lot of money on it if they were going to replace it with an obviously expensive window.

Swallowing the carrot and ignoring Arnold as he came up towards her, Helga lift up her leg as high as she could and slammed her heel into the center of it. Normally, this would have been the weakest part of the board but, unbeknownst to her, the owners were afraid of hooligans. Their precaution of someone knocking down the board was sedated by adding the 2x4s on the outside. It would be some time before the windows were put in and they had no interest in having to replace the drywall should some punk kids decided to do some serious damage. The extra lumber was worth it, in their books.

So, as Helga put full force into the wood, she was surprised to feel the hard impact and bounced right back. Unfortunately for her, because she was expecting to move forward through the wood, she wasn't prepared for the bounce-back and landed hard on her ass. She blinked at the wood, pain running down her thighs and up her back. Did that really just happen?

Arnold, having not expected that at all, immediately began to laugh at her. Holding his stomach, he laughed harder when she just turned at him with a blank, confused look, which almost immediately turned red. There was Helga's missing scowl. "Inertia's a bitch, isn't it, Buttercup?"

Helga stood up, gingerly rubbing the sore spot on her back and just flipped him off, having nothing to say to him. Arnold just laughed harder.

Could this night get any worse?