A/N: So, I think it's been like two weeks since I last updated? Sorry bout that semi long wait!
I kinda hit writer's block with this story, so if it takes me a long time to update again... well yeah it's most likely because of that lol. Anyway, this chapter is shorter than my usual updates, but I think it advances the story better.
Anyway, enjoy! Thanks again to all who are showing reading/showing support!
Chapter 4: A Little Chat
"So Lila, what'd you do last Friday?" Rhonda questioned, absolutely eager to hear details from the red-head herself.
Lila paused, refraining from eating her food for a minute, "Um, well I told you guys, I was hanging out with Arnold, Gerald, and Phoebe."
"Oh yeah, so how'd that go?" The extravagant girl placed her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand.
"It went well."
"That's it? Just well?" Nadine interjected, finishing her pizza.
"Um... well."
"Spit it out girl!" Rhonda exclaimed, making Lila jump out of her seat a little.
"Well, we kind of... um..." Lila was stuttering left and right, unsure how to word her close experience with Arnold.
"Did you..." Rhonda narrowed her vision in suspicion and disapproval, "Lila, did you two-"
"No! All we did was kind of cuddle on the couch while watching a movie ok?! Jesus Christ, what do you take me for? A whore?" The usually polite girl interrupted Rhonda before she could finish her sentence, much to everyone in the group's surprise.
"You did?!" Rhonda turned to Phoebe, who was quietly sitting at the edge of the round table.
"Is this true?"
Phoebe shrugged, her mind too pre-occupied with something else.
"Oh. My. God! Lila! You two would be so cute together!"
Lila waved her hands in protest, "Woah, Woah, you got the wrong message, we're just friends ok? Besides laying on his shoulder was the only comfortable position I could find."
"But you just said you two were on a couch, which implies a large seat that is soft and cushioned." Helga said out of thin air. The blonde girl grudgingly stared at Lila, who was now desperately trying to escape her cold gaze; caught completely off guard by Helga's words. She didn't expect Helga to speak up, but then again, she didn't count on confessing that she cuddled up with Arnold in front of all her friends either.
"Helga, you ok?" Phoebe asked, knowing exactly what was wrong with her stubborn friend.
"No, everything is NOT ok." Helga sounded extremely bitter and harsh, getting up to leave the group.
After Helga finally got far enough, the girl's immediately began gossiping about and questioning Helga's strange behavior.
"Well what was that all about?" Rhonda asked openly to her group of friends.
Lila rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly, "Um.. I think I know, I'll go and talk with her."
The red-head approached Helga from behind, noting her blonde friends impulsive violent behavior. Helga was sitting at a bench all by herself, looking rather drained and dulled out.
"Hey Helga." Lila said sitting next to her.
"What are you doing here?" Helga muttered.
An awkward silence briefly lingered between the two, before Lila finally responded back.
"What's wrong Helga? You've been really sad lately, and I know it's not 'family' problems like you claim. Can you please tell me?" The girl asked in the most gentle and subtle voice she could possibly produce.
"You're right... I haven't been myself, and it has nothing to do with my family."
"Then what is it, you know you can tell me."
Helga stared up at Lila, her eyes full of resentment, "You wouldn't understand." And with that, Lila's tomboy friend got up, giving her the cold shoulder as she passed by.
Even though she didn't tell her, Lila knew exactly what was lingering on Helga's mind, and it had to do with the recent interaction between her and Arnold. She felt a bit guilty, but in all actuality, she enjoyed being around the blonde boy, probably a little more than she should. There was something about Arnold that attracted her; he was everything a girl would ask for. But at the same time she didn't want to put herself in a position that would compromise their growing relationship. Also, there was the slowly developing but inevitable conflict brewing between her and Helga, and that didn't make Lila any happier.
The bell rang, which marked the end of nutrition break, and Lila decided that instead of trying to confront Helga about the issue any time soon, she would just wait it out, hoping for another opportunity to talk to her distressed friend.
Arnold and Gerald were in PE class, along with Stinky, Sid, and Harold.
Too their relief, the teacher had dropped the usual running drills for today and decided to just have an easy day playing basketball. They all hated running, especially when they were timed.
Shooting a ball straight into the net causing it to make a swoosh, Gerald turned to Arnold and whispered.
"So... how bout Lila?"
Arnold snapped out of his day dream, his previous thoughts ironically thinking about the said person Gerald was asking about.
"Oh, we're good." He replied back, not really answering Gerald's question.
"You're going to need to give me a better answer than that lover boy."
"Dude! Stop calling me that!"
"Then answer the question without being so vague."
The blonde boy sighed, "ugh... ok fine, but not with everyone around." Arnold raised his brows at the trio.
If it's anything he'd learn quickly in high school, it's that the less people who know you have a thing for someone, the better. It was a standard he was going to try to follow until he finally graduated into college.
But trying is one thing, succeeding was a totally different story all together.
His best friend nodded in agreement, understanding why Arnold didn't want any eavesdroppers closing in on their conversation.
"Ay Sid!" Gerald called out.
Sid stopped dribbling the ball and faced Gerald's direction.
"We're gonna go walk around the gym, be back in a little."
Sid nodded, telling the others while Gerald and Arnold began to walk off.
"So what's the deal with Lila?"
"Um... it's kinda complicated." Arnold responded back.
The boy sighed, "dude, how? You're making it more difficult than it really is."
"It just is man, like I don't know..."
Gerald face palmed himself, totally frustrated by his friend's words.
"Here we go with the vagueness! C'mon Arnold, most guys would kill to be in your position, yet here you are clueless?! It's so obvious you and Lila have something going on."
Gerald did have a point, and he was decent at giving relationship advice... at times.
"But dude, I don't wanna rush anything, what if she doesn't like-"
"Oh. My. God" Gerald interjected, getting annoyed by Arnold's indecisiveness.
Then out of no where, Arnold noticed that Gerald's near whisper voice quickly transformed into total shouting, "Look, just hang out and talk to her more, make some moves, flirt a little, and you'll be good!" Multiple people in the gym looked at Gerald, but all turned their attention back to whatever they were doing.
"Dude OK I will! Just quiet down!" He was sure someone heard it, and if they did well-
"Flirt with who?" Harold came up quickly, Sid and Stinky following close behind.
Oh god, here it goes, now Arnold had to come up with a totally made up story to divert the unwanted spotlight that was shining on him.
"Oh, just um..." He was stumped, his mind was just completely absent from any thought.
"With this one girl from across the city! You guys don't know her."
Arnold widened his eyes at Gerald, who nudged him to play along.
"Err... Yeah! That one girl"
"What's her name?" Harold narrowed his eyes onto a squirming Arnold.
"I don't wanna tell, a secret ya know?"
And luckily for Arnold the bell rang, much to his relief.
"We'll find out eventually! It's high school, nothing's a secret!" The chubby boy commented before he left with Sid and Stinky.
His words echoed in Arnold's mind, was Harold right?
Perhaps his fondness for Lila would eventually come out, but he didn't want it to be revealed too soon.
Lila was sitting in biology, her third period and last class of the day. The way Hillwood high's schedule worked was that every Monday they would have all their classes, then on Tuesday they would have periods 1 - 3, Wednesdays periods 4 - 6, and so on. Unlike most of her peers, she actually enjoyed the lectures her teachers gave, and she found them quite interesting.
But today, Lila found her mind lingering on something else.
Did she like-like Arnold, and if so, how would she be able to handle Helga? So many questions, and little to no answers. Even though she was an extremely intelligent girl, she was unable to find a solution to her growing dilemma.
"So Lila, how many chromosomes do humans have?"
The red-headed girl snapped out of the bowels of her own mind, quickly perching up to answer the teachers question.
"Um, forty six."
"Very good Sawyer." the teacher resumed his lecture, leaving Lila back to her thoughts.
Phoebe, who also had the same class, was sitting directly behind her, tapping away Lila's shoulders. The attractive girl arched her head back towards her Asian friend, waiting for her response.
"Check your phone." Phoebe whispered.
Quietly pulling out her phone from her pocket, she unlocked the iPhone's screen, noticing that she had one unread message from her friend. She opened the message, reading it's contents.
'You ok?'
Lila texted back in response to her question.
'Of course Phoebe, why?"
Several seconds later, Phoebe felt her phone vibrate, and she responded back almost instantly.
'You look like your spacing out, whats going on? You never lose focus in class!'
Lila sneaked her phone into her binder, completely out of view from the teacher's vision. She knew this was probably going to be a lengthy text conversation.
'Well, it's um... complicated.'
Her phone received another message.
'It's about Arnold huh?'
She was about to stop texting back, but if she did, that would only enforce Phoebe's assumptions. Lila knew that no matter how she tried to spin this off, Phoebe was going to get the answer she wanted, making any attempts to cover up her little 'secret' futile.
'Yeah...'
The farm girl swore she could hear a quiet gasp from behind her, followed by another message being recieved on her phone.
'I knew it! Why couldn't you just be up front with it?'
Lila choose her words carefully, trying to avert any sort of mis-communication.
'Well... I don't know, I'm kinda debating whether or not I have feelings for him."
'Omg, are you serious? Everyone knows! There's no need to keep it a secret..."
"But what about Helga..?"
Suddenly, Phoebe stopped replying back, and Lila knew that she had probably asked something too sensitive. Helga's growing bitterness towards her was a growing problem, and she knew that there were no easy ways out of her situation. Instead, she would just have to learn to deal with it.
Ten minutes later, her phone vibrating, revealing a short message from Phoebe.
'Talk after class'
"So you wanted to talk to me after class?" Lila asked, waiting for Phoebe at the class room door.
"Yep... I think I should've talked to you about this earlier..."
The solemness in Phoebe's voice worried Lila, what was she talking about?
"What is it Phoebe?"
"Well... in case you haven't noticed, Helga's been acting weird lately, and since I don't want to beat around the bush, it's because of you."
Lila wasn't that surprised to be notified about this, but regardless, she was still taken back by the Asian girl's bluntness.
"Oh... I figured, but why?"
"You know how Helga said she was over Arnold?" Lila nodded. "Well she lied, she's still has mad feelings for him, and now that you've entered the picture well you've-"
"Got in the way?"
"Yeah... basically."
Lila sighed, "So what do you propose I do Phoebe? I tried to talk to her about it, but she just keeps distancing herself away from me..."
"Well, I say just let her calm down, don't let it affect you too much."
Well that wasn't much help to Lila, that's what she was planning to do anyway.
"So what should I do about Arnold then?"
Phoebe looked up at her red-headed friend, "If you like him, you like him, nothing can stop that. In the end, it's up to you... not too long ago I would've said otherwise, but the more I see you two together, the more I.. well I'll let you figure it out."
She took a deep breath before she continued again "Besides, I don't think her liking Arnold is doing her any good anyway. It's been years and, she's still lingering over him. She seriously needs to get over Arnold, and perhaps with a little push, she will. Anyway, my parents are giving me a ride today, see you tomorrow Lila!"
Phoebe waved off, leaving a deep in thought Lila behind.
What the hell did she mean by little push? Did she basically just give her the go ahead to take her best friends secret crush?