Sorry, this chapter is very dialogue- filled, but it was fun to write. Hope you enjoy it! I'm having a blast writing this one..
Miroluv61 suggested a lesson on light physical interaction, so thanks for suggesting a lesson! This chapters for you! Anyone else want to suggest a lesson, feel free!
sadly, I do not own Arnold :/
"That doesn't make any sense!"
"It doesn't have to make sense!"
"Then how am I supposed to apply this? Why can't girls just associate one thing, with, well, that one thing instead of twenty! Why do they have to be so complicated?"
"Because we're girls! We can be!"
"I know you're a girl," I retorted with same emphasis. "I mean other girls. So what if a guy 'accidentally' touches a girl's hand? What if it was legitly an accident and she spends the whole day looking for an explanation that's just not there!" I let my composition book fall to my lap, throwing my hands up in surrender.
"Look, you're the one who asked about it in the first place. That's why you need this lesson, because you obviously don't understand why this is important," Helga snapped back, crossing her arms over her chest. "So just shut up for all of my opening notes here. Hold your questions."
"Would you make David hold his questions?" I mumbled in sarcastic tone.
"Did I not just say hold your questions!?" She cried, throwing her head back in annoyance. "Do you want to hear my lesson on physical signals or not?"
I raised my eyebrows, staring at her with as much force as I could will my eyes to have. Which I instantly realized was stupid because this was not Star Wars, and I could not use the force.
"Well do you?"
"I thought we were holding all questions," I stated a bit smarmily. I threw my hands up as Helga began pelting me with the spare markers, my laugher only infuriating her all the more.
"Your questions, not mine, you buttface!" I brought my fist to my mouth to stifle my laughter, gesturing for her to continue with my free hand. She rolled her eyes, turning to write on the notepad.
"Lesson 4: Physical Signals," she read aloud as she wrote. "What to do to get a girl to think about you. So what touch counts in this? And what do they mean? Any thoughts?"
"I think this is a ridiculously convoluted lesson," I muttered.
"Well I think you're ridiculously convoluted. We're going to cover hand holding, shoulder touching, and hair touching. These are the main touches that will get a girl thinking there may be something behind them. Making sense here?"
"Um…Maybe?" I confessed with a shrug, still feeling clueless. I really didn't have any idea what the difference was between them.
"Okay, so let me show you," she offered, coming to plop down on the couch beside me. She jerked my book from hand, tossing it onto the floor. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing, so I awkwardly folding my hands on my lap, but that just wrong. I then shifted to drumming them on my knees. "So let's say I was this girl you're mooning over," she said, batting her eyelashes at me in an exaggerated manner. "And let's say we're just hanging out, chillin. We're having a grand old time and you want to give me a hint that you like me, but without saying anything. Begin!"
I adjusted my body so I was facing her at an angle. I couldn't suppress a chuckle as she made an overstated show of twirling her hair around one of her fingers, looking around the room like she was gazing at a room full of sweets or something. She looked so unlike Helga in that moment, I didn't know how to respond.
"Oh Ahnold," she piped up in an airy southern belle accent, "it was just eva so nice of you to invite me out ta'day. Tha whetha is just eva so nice ta'day, but it is just awful hot. Look at me ova here; I'm sweatin' like a sinna in church!"
I was doing well to keep my amusement in, but I finally just lost it, falling back against the cushions in a fit of laughter. And the way she turned to peer at me while still keeping up her airy façade made it all the worse, and I found myself clutching my sides as I gasped for air. "What are you even doing?" I managed to gasp.
"Why Ahnold," she said sweetly, bring her hand to her chest in a dainty way, "I just assumed it was my job to start some sort of conversation since you was just sittin' there like a bump on a log!"
I let out another chuckle. "What am I supposed to be doing anyway?"
"Why, I do believe you were tryin' to find a way to slip in one of those physical signals Helga was teachin' you." She turned away from me, daintily crossing her hands over her knees. I took a deep breath to compose myself, sitting back up and exhaling as I peered across the room like she was. I glanced down to where her hands where crossed over her knees. Okay, so there was no way I could go for her hands without that being obvious. I didn't want to just jerk her hands up. So that left me either the shoulder or the hair. After a bit more debating I finally took a deep breath, trying to get over the feeling that I was going to end up looking like a complete idiot no matter what it was I decided to do.
"Hey! Look over there!" I said in a mock chipper tone, nodding my head to the wall to our left.
"What? What are we lookin' at?" she said in her bright tone, making a large movement to bring her hand to shield her eyes as she peered around dramatically.
"Why are you doing that?" I blurted, covering my eyes with my hand as my mouth twitched with my more laughter.
"I figured you'll never be in a situation quite as awkward as this, so hop to it," she instructed in her normal voice, then quickly switching back to her airy tone to say, "Now where are we lookin'?"
"Why, over there!" I said with roll of my eyes, putting my hands on her shoulders to turn to her look at whatever it was I had chosen to look at. Now that my hands where there, I had no idea what to do with them. "I'm totally lost of to what to do now," I admitted sheepishly, and I could feel her shoulders shaking as she tried to keep in her laugher.
"You are hopeless," she said with a laugh, shrugging away from my hands. "You have to do something a bit memorable to make a girl remember a touch. You can let your hand linger just a little too long, or make your pull away extremely tender or gentle. Something to make a girl want you to touch her again. Then she'll remember it, and she'll remember you. Are we making sense?"
"I think I've got it," I replied, nodding my head. "So, it's all in the timing of the touch more than the actual touch itself?" I said, trying to make my thoughts make sense. I reached out to take her hand, pursing my lips for a moment. "So how do I know when it's been too long?"
"Maybe that's something that you have to feel in the moment. It's more so instinctual. When it's with that girl you like, I think you'll just know. That's how it works." She gently extracted her hand from mine, making her way back over to the notepad. She wrote in a few more of the things she had just told me, just a bit more condensed. I sighed, feeling like this was a lesson I'd never quite fully understand. "How about we focus on what goes through a girl's head? Wasn't that your original question?"
"Yeah," I replied, nodding. I was hoping she'd be able to help me decipher what Lila had been thinking about our brief finger brush last night, if anything. Maybe girls weren't the only ones to over analyze things, but I wasn't going to admit that. I coughed to myself, acting like I was diligently copying notes instead of just getting lost in my thoughts.
"So, usually a girls first main thought is 'Did he do that on purpose?'" she explained, writing the question on the paper. "If it's eventually decided that it could have been, the next immediate question is 'Does he like me?' Then, from this simple question spawns all the analyzing of a touch."
"Well, what if a girl touches you?"
"Well I punch her. Dare some other girl to try and get fresh with me."
I rolled my eyes. "I meant a guy. If a girl initiates this 'touch,'" I explained, trying not to seem obvious with my question. Hey eyes widened for a second as she registered the question, and she smirked as she seemed to think it through.
"Oh, okay. I see what you're asking." She brought her thumb to her mouth, chewing on her nail. "Well, I guess it works the same way. If I girl lets a touch linger a bit too long, or adds a touch when she really doesn't need to, then it's possible she likes you. Or she's testing the water to gauge how she feels about you."
"Gauge how she feels?" I inquired, tilting my head to the side. This was getting even more complicated than it already was – and that was saying something.
Helga sighed impatiently, shifting her weight to once leg as she placed her hand on her hip. "Goodness, you are so dense. You know, like with a kiss? You think you may like a person, but you don't know you actually like them or just think you do. So you go in for a kiss, and you wonder if fireworks are real?" Her eyes seemed to focus on something far off in space as she spoke, her entire body seeming to relax in that moment.
"Uh, Helga?" I asked softly, feeling a bit guilty about disrupting her moment. She shook her head violently, snapping back to attention.
"So basically, that, you know?" She capped the marker, making her way over to my desk. She placed the marker in the small cup I had full of pencils, then went about poking around my papers and things. "Hey, what's this stuff?" she asked, jerking open my drawer full of pictures.
"Just things!" I yelped, jumping up from the couch to dart over and slam it shut. Helga eyebrows shot up, a mischievous glint suddenly glinting in her blue eyes.
"Things,huh? What kind of things?" She pressed, pushing my hands aside as she made to open the drawer once more. Normally, pictures weren't that big of deal – except most of the pictures in the drawer were of me and Lila, and it was well know that Helga had some unknown reason for despising her. There may or may not have been some pictures of Gerald's 16th birthday that had gotten a little awkward, but there was most definitely some of my horrendous post-breakup notes I had written to Lila and never had the nerve to hand over. I misinterpreted her strength, and she misinterpreted mine and I took her arms a swung her away from the desk.
"Oh come on, I'm just – whoa!" she cried as she stumbled backward of the pile of markers I had deflected earlier. Her eyes widened as she feel backward, and an strangled cry came from my throat as I found myself falling with her. I immediately released her arms, moving them to wrap them around her head to protect her head from the floor and whatever items were littered across the floor in front of my closet. I jolt shot up my arms as the floor connected with my elbows, and I sucked in a gulp of breath in an attempt to keep the harsh words in my mouth.
"You okay?" I muttered, Struggling to extract myself from the tangle we'd become.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. Get off," Helga was mumbling, wriggling beneath me. I pulled her up into a sitting position as I rocked back on my knees. "I just knocked my head on something," she said with a grimace as she fingered the back of her head.
"Here, let me see." I leaned forward, gently moving her head forward while running my fingers over the back of her head. "I don't feel any bumps," I sighed in relief. "I think you probably felt my head, I was trying to protect your head from actually hitting anything important."
"You mean like your hand?"
"Well, it's alright, I don't really need it?" I joked, flexing my fingers experimentally. My hand was throbbing slightly, but I felt it would pass.
"Sorry about that. Oh snap, I think you have a cut on it," she groaned, tugging my hand toward her. I shrugged as she inspected it, seeming content to find that although I had a smear of blood on the back of my hand, the cut itself was relatively small. She ran her thumb over the area, sending a weird sensation through my hand. I figured the cut must be a little sensitive. "That hurt?" she asked, concern on her face as she peered up at me. I shook my head no. She deviated from just rubbing her thumb over my cut to absentmindedly rubbing her thumb across the rest of my hand. I felt as though I should pull my hand away, but she seemed so lost in thought I hated to break it. I cleared my throat instead. Helga dropped my hand immediately, jumping up from the floor.
"Well, that's pretty much it for today's lesson. Put it into practice or something, I don't know. Sorry about making you trip," she rushed, running over to the door and collecting her backpack.
"You okay?" I asked, scrambling up to follow her.
"I just see you later," she mumbled, slamming my bedroom door shut behind her.
I peered down at the cut on my hand, briefly wondering if we'd already practiced the lesson or not.