Author's Note: Thank you for the supportive reviews. It is so, so appreciated. This chapter is a lot of backstory on Helga's part, which I feel is necessary to the plot.
To the guest reviewer who asked me if I could go easy on the curse words - your review was so lovely and I was so happy to receive it. But there are definitely some profanities in here, and I hope it doesn't bother you too much. It's just the way I see a fifteen-year-old Helga talking. She's a fiery girl who likes to get her point across, after all.
Also, a general warning - this story touches on adult themes, including self-harm, depression, some underage drinking later on, etc. I really love these characters, and made decisions for each based on what I felt they might struggle with as they evolve and grow. I hope that none of the darker themes come across as gratuitous, because my intent is always to stay true to the core of what they are on the show first and foremost.
2: Back to the Start
Helga cursed under her breath as she stomped the dirt from her sneakers on the front mat. She had spent a good couple of hours sulking in an alleyway after her shift ended, and by the time she started to head home it had begun to rain, soaking her from the roots of her blonde hair to the bottoms of her socks. Her father sat in the armchair in the living room in his boxers, face glowing in the flickering light of the TV screen.
"Oh, Maria, why'd you have to do it?" Bob cried mournfully to the television, tossing several handfuls of popcorn into his mouth. "Have some dignity. He would've married you, but now that you've gone and completely degraded yourself..."
Wriggling her feet out of her drenched sneakers, she made out the shape of her mother on the couch beside him, lying on her back and snoring, as per usual. The rain picked up even more heavily outside, making the screen door shake and rattle on its hinges. The sky behind her lit up bottle green and yellow with lightning.
"Oh for crying out loud, shut that door, would ya?" Bob yelled out to her. "Maria, no!"
Helga glared at him as she slammed the front door shut behind her. "Work was just peachy, Bob," she muttered. "Thanks for asking."
"Oh, no, no, no." He clasped his hands to his face, unable to tear his eyes away from the screen. "What kind of a tramp have you turned into?"
Helga stormed up the stairs, shivering slightly. Her room was a tornado of items - bras and shorts strewn haphazardly every which way, wire hangers digging into the rug. She peeled off her wet clothes and threw herself onto the bed in her underwear, moisture seeping from her skin into the blankets below her. Her fingers began dialing the number on her phone almost automatically.
"Come on Curly, pick up," the teenager found herself mumbling somewhat fretfully. "Pick up." Just when she'd given up hope, he answered on the fourth ring, voice slightly hoarse.
"Yeah?"
"It's me. Can you get your butt over here?"
"Here? Where's here?" he asked. His voice sounded muffled with exhaustion, as though she'd woken him up.
"Here, my house."
"And I guess the fact that it's practically midnight and the first day of school is tomorrow shouldn't be an issue?" he said skeptically, sounding vaguely more awake now. Helga rolled her eyes.
"What difference does it make? You're Curly. You've spent the last fifteen years having emotional breakdowns in class, throwing dodgeballs at people's heads, and setting giraffes free to rampage through Hillwood. You're gonna be unstable tomorrow whether or not you get the extra hour of sleep."
The maniacal laughter that bubbled from the other end was comforting in its familiarity. "Giraffes don't rampage. They gallop. They're graceful. Ballerinas of the savanna, some would say."
"C'mon," she replied impatiently. "Just bring your sleeping bag and clothes for tomorrow and spend the night on my floor. Please?"
The call ended instantly, signaling to Helga that Curly was on his way - he wasn't big on the normal forms of salutations, like hellos or goodbyes.
Not many people knew about, let alone understood, her friendship with Thaddeus Curly Gammelthorpe. It had begun when they were thirteen and, after facing yet another not-so-kind-or-thoughtful public rejection at the hands of one Rhonda Wellington Lloyd, Curly came racing out of the middle school and collapsed behind a circle of trash cans on the sidewalk, in the process falling directly on top of an unsuspecting Helga. She had barely had the chance to fumblingly slip her locket back inside her shirt before he was throwing his arms around her neck, blubbering and wailing incoherently about the woes of unrequited love, how Rhonda just didn't understand how much he adored her, how unfair it all was. Helga had no choice in the matter. She found herself patting him awkwardly on top of the head, rendered somehow incapable of shoving him off of her as she would have done anyone else.
It wasn't long after that that they discovered they shared another thing in common, beyond their freakish tendencies when it came to their love interests: an alcoholic parent. In Curly's case, his hulking, husky-voiced bully of a father, who would say any number of horrible things to his son once he was a few beers deep.
"He showed up with Lila?" Curly repeated twenty minutes later. He was sitting on Helga's rug with his knees pressed to his chest, mop of dark hair matted to his forehead with rainwater. "He actually showed up at Slausen's with Lila?"
"Yup."
"Well, what'd they do?"
"What do you think they did?" she demanded. "They ordered ice cream."
"Were they on a date?"
"It sure looked like one. I already texted Pheebs and told her to scrape all the details out of Geraldo that she could. No final word yet."
"Man, Arnold can be a real douchebag, huh?"
This was one of Helga's favorite things about Curly: he didn't mince words, and he never tried to talk her out of it when she was angry. Like her, he was explosive and emotional and - whether reasonable or not - it provided her with a sense of satisfaction, a feeling that she'd been vindicated.
"Yeah, tell me about it," she said bitterly.
"I mean, think about it," he continued, his voice taking on the slightly fevered edge it often did when he was piecing together a story, or more often, a conspiracy theory. "Out of all the places they could've gone, why'd they have to pick Slausen's? What'd he say?"
"He said, 'I didn't know you'd be on shift this late,'" she chose to make her voice as nasally as she could muster in a scathing imitation of Arnold. "Yeah, good one, Hair Boy."
"Of course he knew," Curly agreed heatedly, throwing up his arms for dramatic effect. "You've only been working there the entire summer."
"Hey," Helga said suddenly, staring at his wrists in the air. "What's that?"
He blinked at her before dropping his arms. "What's what?"
"That." She slid off of her bed and grabbed him by the forearm. The sharp, bruising red cuts were fresher than the scars he'd had just the week before. Curly pulled away from her hastily, but it was too late. Helga bit down hard on her lower lip. "Are you trying to kill yourself, or what?"
"No," he said quickly.
"Well, it kinda looks like you are."
"Look, it's just been a stressful week, what with my mom suddenly coming home again from Montana and all."
"Your mom came home again?" she asked in surprise.
"Yeah. But then she re-left. She left, then she came back, and then she was gone... again. Looks like it's just me and my dad for now."
"Oh." Helga rubbed her own arm tentatively. "That really sucks."
"Yeah, it does."
"Listen," she told him, staring as hard as she could into the dark wells of his eyes. "Next time, just call me, alright? I thought you were gonna stop doing this. I can't have you bleeding to death, or I'd probably have to end it all, too."
"I will," he promised. He began unrolling his sleeping bag, smoothing out the nylon material across the floor. He'd brought along a humongous thermos of water and a bag of trail mix, too. "Emergency rations," he explained casually upon catching sight of Helga's raised eyebrow.
"Guess we better get to sleep soon," Helga told him. "School's gonna be a total disaster."
She climbed back into her bed and turned out the lights, encasing them in darkness.
Truthfully, she couldn't be sure when everything had turned to shit. Looking back on it, she thought - maybe it always was shit, even if she had been too blind to see it.
All those years ago now, when her Football Head, her light, her forever love, had finally seemed to reciprocate her feelings - after the eight years of childhood she'd spent pining away in the shadows - the feeling blew everything else away. Before that, she'd lived her whole life as a series of alternating angry tirades and secret reveries, dreams she didn't believe in her heart of hearts could ever come true.
And then, there was him. Him, real and willing.
She was eleven. Every tiny thing was perfect. It was the little things, always the little things that sent shockwaves coursing through her body like she'd been plugged straight into an electrical outlet. The way his face would flush when their arms accidentally brushed against one another, or how he started smirking instead of looking irritated when she sent spitballs sailing into the back of his head in class. The way he'd stack his lunch tray with extra boxes of chocolate milk and cups of pudding for her, or bring her sandwiches and cookies homemade by his dad, knowing that her mom would have forgotten to pack her anything at all.
It took them a long time to even get close to touching mouths again after that initial kiss in San Lorenzo. They were already halfway through the sixth grade when he'd tried it again. It was Valentine's Day, and she had yet to muster up the courage to give him the silver picture frame she'd gotten for him, after much deliberation. It wasn't even a picture of them, or of her - but of Arnold and his parents, smiling in the kitchen of the boarding house with stacks of syrup-drenched pancakes in front of them. She loved that particular snapshot, and she knew that he would, too, since his parents were his whole world and all.
The present was still discreetly stowed away in her backpack when he had finally cornered her behind the trash cans at recess, his face bright red but full of a familiar look of determination. She was reduced to mush on the spot.
"Helga, I - uh- I wanted to ask you if you..." he mumbled, fingers fumbling together, weaving knots that clenched and untangled again and again nervously.
"What, Arnoldo?" she'd snapped. "Spit it out!"
"I... well..." he stammered. He broke off, chewing on his lip.
So she unzipped her backpack and whipped out the picture frame, handing it to him as casually as though she were tossing him a tissue to wipe his face with, despite the clamoring of her heart in her chest.
For a few long moments, he stared. His eyes darted back and forth from the photograph to her, mouth quivering slightly. Then he'd just done it; leaned forward and kissed her, standing on his tiptoes to match her height.
She wrote four new volumes of poetry that year, each book more feverish than the last.
After that stolen moment at recess, she gathered up all the guts she could muster. And she told him again. And again. And again.
They were moments when she felt especially lost - or especially hopeful. When they were alone in Arnold's room, working on math problems and English essays. Or splayed out on his red couch listening to jazz recordings. Once, even when they were out in the vacant lot, their knuckles touching in the clear light of day. When she was beside him, lovesick and drunk on the smell of his gluey hair and warm skin, she would forget herself. Every doubt she'd ever had, every wall she'd ever hidden behind - they disappeared, if only for a few moments. And she would whisper it as sweetly as she'd written it so many times in her journals in purple ink: "I love you."
I love you, Arnoldo. I love you, Football Head. Hair Boy. Yutz. Paste-for-brains. My love. I love you. I love you so much.
"I..." he would tremble, his cheeks coloring, before breaking off to kiss her. Sometimes he would just pat her awkwardly, rubbing circles into her back. Other times - the worst times - he was a deer caught in headlights, blinking uncertainly, frozen in fear.
Sixth grade passed. Then seventh. Then eighth. Their routines were well-versed; their habits steady and simple. He was kind-hearted. He was the way he'd always been: comforting, sweet, empathetic.
The problem, as usual, was her.
"What does it mean?" she'd asked Dr. Bliss on more than one occasion, feet swinging back and forth in anxious pendulum rhythms over the edge of the couch chair, until finally she was tall enough to touch the ground. "I don't think he really wants to be with me at all."
"If he didn't want to be with you, Helga," Dr. Bliss had insisted. "Then I don't think he would be."
"You don't get it," she snapped. She couldn't hide the misery in her voice. "I saved the boy's freaking parents. He's gonna owe that to me for the rest of his life."
"You could ask him," Dr. Bliss suggested. "You could tell all these things to him, rather than just to me."
But she couldn't bear to do that, too afraid of what his answer would be. He couldn't know how it grew to crush her - how she would throw it out there, every inch of herself. And he would falter, never quite getting more than halfway there.
They had been arguing more than usual, over the months leading to their breakup.
It started on a frozen day in the winter of ninth grade. The entire entrance to the high school was slippery, glossed with ice and gray city slosh. By the time she was on her way to Arnold's locker (draped in the hooded sweatshirt he'd given her the day before because she'd forgotten her coat, as usual), she was already in a bad mood.
When she spotted him, he was staring at something vacantly, lips slightly parted. She followed his eyes down the hallway. And she saw her: Lila.
Lila, looking especially stunning, in her turtleneck green sweater and little jean skirt. (Who the hell decided to wear a skirt in the middle of the God damn winter, anyway?)
It's not fair, Helga thought. And in a fit of heartbreak that seemed to spread through her chest in a familiar raging wildfire, the words burned themselves into her brain on repeat: it's not fair it's not fair it's not fair. It didn't feel like a revelation. It felt like a heavy truth she'd known but hadn't faced; one she couldn't keep from falling on her anymore. She'd loved him her whole freaking life, and still, he'd never found it in him to turn his eyes away from his favorite airhead-candy-sweet-talking girls once and for all, had he? He never looked at her that way, did he? Did he?
She completely lost all rationality. Rushing over from behind, she shoved Arnold with her elbow before she could gather the self-control to stop herself, sending him toppling to the ground.
He happened to be carrying a Tupperware container of one of his father's meals in hand - a vegetable-and-rice recipe that Helga recognized as a Green Eye speciality - which split open all over the floor and which Arnold fell face first into. The sauce dripped down his shirt as he stood up, causing several of the high school students around them to snicker at his misfortune.
But the worst part of all of it was the way he didn't even say anything. He just stared at her - his eyes wide, too dumbfounded to even look angry. He was completely bewildered and thoroughly hurt, and her stomach seared with so much sorrow that she could only stare back, devoid of the ability to try to explain herself.
"Now that's an abusive relationship," Helga heard Rhonda whispering loudly to Nadine in math class later. "I mean, poor Arnold. It's like she's some kind of psychopath or something. What kind of girl does that to her boyfriend?"
Helga could feel her throat burning. But she never apologized, incapable of beginning to find the words to explain herself.
But it marked a turning point, whether she wanted it to or not. The two of them were suddenly picking at each other for reasons they never had before - at least out loud. She was too bossy, too cruel. He was an annoying know-it-all. She was tactless; he was blind and naive. They were brushing against each other in all the wrong ways, saying the wrong things, as if purposely attempting to set the other off.
In June, they celebrated the last day of ninth grade with a dinner at Bigal's. She ordered the spaghetti with meatballs, which was one of her favorite dishes at the cafe. As was her typical way, she managed to stuff half her plate in her mouth in a matter of seconds, pausing only to burp loudly. It was Arnold's reaction to this that caught her off guard.
"Helga, that's rude," he hissed, glancing in apparent embarrassment at the guests around them.
She raised her eyebrow. "What's rude?" she demanded.
"We're in a restaurant. You don't have to... burp in everyone's faces in a restaurant."
Helga's eyes widened in disbelief. "Criminy, it was just an accident," she snapped. "What, am I not prissy enough with my bodily functions for you?"
"No, it's just, if you weren't eating your food so fast, maybe -"
She slammed her fists on the table, standing up so fast her chair fell over. "Maybe what?"
"Well, I... maybe... maybe..." he spluttered.
"Maybe I would finally be the kind of girl you want to date?"
Arnold blinked. "What?" he said slowly. "Helga, what are you talking about? I didn't say anything like that - ""
"Well you should say it," she told him furiously, the hurt in her heart burning into anger in a familiar way.
"No, I shouldn't!"
"Go ahead and say it, Arnoldo!"
"No!" he was growing as angry as she was, his ears flushing pink.
"Say it!"
"No!"
"Just quit lying to yourself already, okay?" she demanded, wishing she could keep her voice from shaking so violently. "Put us both out of our misery."
Arnold gaped at her.
"Oh good, that stupid fish-out-of-water face again," she snarled. "A real suiting look for someone so clueless."
"I..." he said, shaking his head. "Helga, I..." But he trailed off, unable or unwilling to complete the sentence.
It was the sudden, horrible prick of heat at the back of her eyes that finally sent her over the edge. Reaching into her pocket and slapping a twenty-dollar bill onto the table, she stumbled backwards over her fallen chair and raced out of the cafe. She was too dizzy, too nauseous to even pay mind to the nosy diners that peered up from their plates of food at her as she rushed past.
He had chased after her. Of course he had. His stupid, noble heart wouldn't have allowed him not to.
The last place she wanted to go was home. So she ran until her legs gave out and she collapsed behind the wall of an alleyway, panting, back sliding soundlessly down the edges of the graffiti-covered bricks. Here, hidden away with her face covered by her hands, she finally let herself cry. The tears tasted hot and salty as they flooded down her face, through her fingers, into her mouth.
It was mere minutes before she felt the warm hand on her shoulder. He crouched beside her on the cement, hips resting flush against hers. She didn't ask how he'd found her.
"I'm sorry," he breathed into her ear. He began rubbing her arm up and down in his sweet, uncertain way. The anger in his voice had completely disappeared.
She knew what she wanted. What she wished, more than anything else in the world, was that he would collapse on top of her. Hold her. She wanted him to be hungry for her. To love her, to need her, just like she needed him. Had needed him, since they were three years old and her eyes bore into his in the rain.
But he wouldn't do that. She knew he wouldn't.
"I guess I was being mean," Arnold told her softly. "For no reason. We have to stop doing that to each other."
She refused to look at him, turning to wipe her nose on her sleeve instead. As they sat there, an old man carrying a baseball hat in one hand stumbled by. He was trembling slowly to the very ends of his white beard. "Need help, please spare some change" read the cardboard sign hanging from his neck.
Arnold reached into his pocket, pulled out a five-dollar bill. He'd lived in the city his whole life, and somehow, he still didn't know how to resist.
"Thank you, kind boy," the man muttered, sticking the money into his cap before limping away.
"Yeah, nice job giving that obvious addict an advance payment towards his next heroine trip," Helga muttered into her hands.
"Sometimes people just need help, Helga."
"Yeah, and it has to be you helping them. You always have to be some kind of savior, don't you?" It made her want to cry harder, and she did.
"Listen, that was a stupid thing for me to say back there. I don't know why I said it. You can burp wherever you want to."
She snorted in response. If she hadn't been so upset, the ridiculousness of the situation would have made her laugh.
"I don't want to stop dating you," he tried again, even more gently.
"Well, that's nice," she choked out. "Did you ever try getting it through your abnormally large head that maybe I want to stop dating you?"
His hand stopped moving, frozen on her forearm.
"I..."
"I don't want to do this anymore, Arnold." She said it more firmly this time. Her heart was cracking open, scattering across her chest in a dusting of a hundred razor-sharp pieces.
"Why?" he asked. He sounded almost frantic now, searching for answers she felt he should already know. "Whatever it is, we can fix this. I know we can."
"We can't."
"We can. We just need to - "
"I can't."
She could hear him breathing rapidly, feel the weight of his hand disappear from her arm.
"Helga."
"What?" she demanded. She was still daring to hope, somewhere deep and buried inside of her. He still had time to say it - the three words she needed to hear. There was a long pause, laden with the wailing sounds of Hillwood ambulances.
"What, Arnold?" she repeated.
"I, just," he stammered. "Is this really what you want?" he asked finally.
She stood up swiftly, brushing the dirt from her jeans. "It's really what I want."
She turned and left him sitting there, and she didn't look back.