Chapter 7

Little Miss Perfect

"Oh, Arnold," Helga sighed, once in the sanctuary of her stall. "Bless this rare moment when I get to be your wife! Pretend, yes, and only for one day, but still! Oh, Arnold, my beloved angel, I shall not waste another minute of this glorious opportunity. I shall march back to that classroom, and together we shall put our differences aside and work out the details of our future life together!" She sighed with happiness as she leaned against the wall. Suddenly she heard the bathroom door open and then slam shut again.

"How dare she, how dare she! She'll ruin everything! She'll ever so destroy my beautiful scheme!"

"Lila," whispered Helga, peering through a crack in the stall.

"Arnold is growing ever so more distant from me, I can feel it. He'll not be under my spell for much longer. Especially with her hanging around. Well, I'll just have to take matters into my own hands. I can't let Helga win so easily. She'll not steal Arnold from me! Not if I have anything to say about it!"

"Lila?" asked Helga, stepping out of the stall. "What on earth are you doing?"

"Me? Oh, I'm…uh…just rehearsing for a play! Well, I, uh, guess I better get back to class!" Lila said, in her all too sweet voice.

"Yeah, right," muttered Helga, after Lila had left. "I've used the 'rehearsing for a play excuse' too many times to not be able to see through it. Something is seriously not right here. I mean, I always knew Lila was an annoying little phony, but I never knew she was, I don't know, out to get Arnold or something. I'll have to keep my guard up. I should really tell Arnold what she's up to, whatever it is she's up to. But why would he listen to me? He's too into Li-la anyway. I can't believe that he likes her likes her. And the worst part is that I did that to myself."

She thought back to a couple months ago when she had been having one of her obsessive moments about Arnold…

"With this chalk and no witnesses in sight, I will write the words upon this wall which bare my soul, expressing all I hope, I dream, I pine and I pray was true, forever and a day." Then picking up the chalk she wrote on a wall in the ally in which she was hiding, "Arnold loves Helga," and sealed it with a heart.

Suddenly she heard laughter and the sound of people coming down the street.

"Oh, criminy! Why on earth did I just write that?"

As she heard the people draw nearer, she unthinkingly erased her name and wrote in big letters "LILA," before running and hiding behind some trash cans.

"Hold up, girls," she heard Rhonda say. "Arnold loves Lila?"

"Gosh!"

"I wonder if it's true?" Nadine asked.

"Of course it's true. It's written on the wall. 'Arnold loves Lila.'"

"Oh, but I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation," Lila protested.

"Of course there is. The explanation is that Arnold loves you."

"Well, it couldn't possibly be true…could it?"

"Now why wouldn't it be true? Everybody likes you, Lila. You're smart and funny and, next to me, you're the best dresser in the whole class."

"Makes sense to me," Nadine stated.

"He's probably just to shy to tell you himself, so he wrote it on the wall anonymously, hoping his secret wish would come true. It's so romantic."

"Gosh, I never really thought about Arnold that much. I mean, I always thought he liked me, but I never thought he liked me liked me."

"Well, he does, Lila, and I think it's just terribly sweet. He's really a very nice boy."

The next couple of days were complete nightmares. Lila, convinced that Arnold loved her, decided to spend every waking moment with him, much to Arnold's dismay. It wasn't until after Arnold had dumped Lila that he realized that he liked her, only to be shunned once he told her this.

Helga had been eavesdropping on their whole conversation, hidden on a tree branch. Lila calmly told Arnold that the only reason she had ever liked him liked him was because she thought he liked her liked her. But now that he told her that he really did like her like her, she only liked him but didn't like him like him. She walked away, leaving Arnold feeling alone and forgotten. Then the branch broke.

Helga fell out of the tree, right in front of him.

"Helga?"

"Hey, football head, how's it going?" she said cheerfully, glad that Lila no longer liked him liked him.

"What are you doing here?"

"Climbing trees!" she lied. "Boy, do I love climbing trees. Good healthy exercise."

"I guess so." He started to walk away. She ran to catch up with him.

"So, I…couldn't help overhearing. I guess Lila dumped you pretty good, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Dumped you flat, hung you out to dry, doesn't like you like you, but still wants to be friends?"

"Uh-huh." He stopped and stared at the ground, too depressed to go on.

She saw the hurt look in his eyes and couldn't stand it. She had to help. But how?

"You okay, Arnold?" she asked, putting her hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"Don't worry, you'll bounce back. I mean, there's plenty of other fish in the sea, right?"

"Yeah…" He turned around to look at her. "It's funny. When you like someone, and they don't really like you back, it's not so bad. But if you really like them like them, but they just like you, it hurts. Have you ever felt that way about someone, Helga?"

She stopped in shock. She hadn't been expecting that.

"W-who, me?" she said nervously. "No, no, of course not! Don't be ridiculous! But I…can understand how you must feel."

"Thanks. You going home?"

She shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Could I maybe walk with you?" he asked hopefully.

"Well, sure, Arnold!" she said, a little too excitedly. She shook her head. "I-I mean, whatever floats your boat, football head."

"If only I had left what I wrote on the wall!" she thought desperately, "instead of changing my name to my would-be arch nemesis. Then everything that happened to her would happen to me, except, of course, that I wouldn't dump him like that evil Little Miss Perfect did. If I only hadn't changed my name, then Arnold would love me instead of that phony little nobody. It's all my fault," she sighed, as she leaned against the wall.

"Criminy, I must have spent like ten minutes in here!" Helga exclaimed, snapping back to reality. "I've got to get back to class!"