Chapter 25
The True Story of Cecile
"Oh, Arnold, at last, you're mine!" Helga exclaimed sleepily, as she sat up. "Ow!" she cried, as she hit her head on the ceiling. "Where the heck am I? Oh, yeah. I'm trapped behind Arnold's couch." She looked out of the crack at Arnold's clock. "Five o'clock! Criminy! How long did I sleep?" She leaned against the wall.
"Well, this is it, I guess. I'll just starve to death in here, and no one will even notice until the smell of rotting flesh starts to get on everyone's nerves. Then they'll conduct a full course investigation, and they'll finally find the body of a poor, helpless girl, a piece of paper clutched in her hand. Arnold will read it, and he'll realize the horrible truth, that his secret admirer is me. He'll feel so guilty that he'll start to realize his true feelings for me, and he'll be so depressed by the fact that it's too late that he'll…jump off a bridge or something. Boo hoo. Serves him right! Well, now all I have to do is wait until I die."
She sat there for about an hour and started thinking about what Arnold had said. He loved Cecile? Did that mean that he loved her? Well, he didn't know she was Cecile, of course. She thought back to that Valentine's Day…
Helga found an unopened letter from Arnold's pen pal, Cecile. She decided that this would be the perfect thing to get her to spend Valentine's Day with Arnold without him knowing who she was. She changed some words on the letter and made it say that 'Cecile' was coming on Valentine's Day and wanted to have dinner with Arnold at Chez Paris.
She wore a red skirt and a pink long sleeved shirt, and her hair ended up being down. She also wore a pair of red, high heeled sandals, of which she only had one now.
She had a great time with Arnold, except that he kept disappearing every ten minuets. Now she knew where to. She didn't care anymore though, since he didn't love Ruth by the end of the night. Now he loved Lila.
"But he likes me better," Helga thought. "Cecile, anyway."
At some point she had told Arnold that she really liked him a lot and asked if he liked her back. There was no risk in doing this, since she wasn't Helga. She was Cecile. But he didn't tell her. He ran off to Ruth again.
She had gotten really mad that he disappeared. She ran outside and threw her shoes at him. Then the real Cecile had shown up. It was really confusing, and she didn't remember much, except that Gerald was there, and he pretended that he was Arnold, and then the real Cecile went with him. Then she was alone with Arnold.
They both reached down to pick up her shoes, and their eyes met. He picked up one shoe, and she picked up the other one. Then he asked who she was, but she said she couldn't tell.
Surprisingly, he let it go at that. He just asked if he would ever see her again. She laughed and told him probably. He said that it had been the best Valentine's Day he had ever had. She said she thought so too, but she was afraid that he would start to ask her more questions, so she said that she had to go. He told her that they would always have Chez Paris, and then he had done the last thing she would have expected. He grabbed her hand and kissed it.
"Au revoir, Arnold," she had called, before disappearing down an ally. She was in such a daze that she didn't realize that she only had one of her shoes.
Helga leaned against the wall and sighed. That was a night she would never forget.