A/N: You guys! Thank you so much for your reviews! They each mean so much to me and I appreciate it a lot. Hey Arnold is amazing and you are, too.
4: Outside of That
It was a bright Sunday morning, sunlight slanting through the boarding house windows in white stripes.
Arnold sat at the kitchen table with his head propped up sluggishly in one arm, ballpoint pen cap in his mouth. Try as he might, he couldn't find the inspiration to begin his paper for Mr. Turner's class. What did he hope to take away from reading The Great Gatsby or Hamlet or The Scarlet Letter, anyway? He winced as he found his thoughts straying to Helga again. In times past, she would have been sitting at the table helping him with the assignment, her natural knack for putting words on paper contrasting with his own often stifled sense of creativity.
"You're looking a little under the weather, Arnold. Just not yourself lately."
Grandma had one hand on her hip as she surveyed him. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, the papery skin around her mouth creasing as she frowned. She was preparing a bowl of chips and a homemade bean-barley-herring flavored dip to bring to the living room, where his father, Mr. Potts, Grandpa, and Oskar were noisily enjoying a football game. Grandma had been wearing her 49ers jersey all morning, although Arnold was fairly certain the 49ers weren't playing.
"I'm fine," Arnold promised her. "Really."
"But you aren't even celebrating the Commonwealth Games."
"It's football, Grandma," he reminded her. "And I never liked watching football all that much."
As he said the words, he considered the fact that he'd long been under the impression that his dad didn't like watching football all that much, either. Unemployed and seemingly endlessly energetic, his father had been darting from activity to activity lately, as though determined to find something new that would stick with him.
Grandma came closer, a familiar mischievous sparkle growing in her stare. "Well, what do you say we have ourselves an adventure?"
"An adventure?" Arnold repeated.
"Just like old times."
"What exactly were you thinking of?" he asked warily.
"There's a creature out there who needs us, Arnold. He's been crying out to me for weeks now. Enslaved - miserable - battered."
He tried to hide his sigh. "What kind of creature?"
In response, she lowered her voice to a deep, expressive contralto and let out a growling meow.
"Cat?" Arnold guessed.
Grandma nodded. "A feline in distress."
"How do you know he's in distress?"
"He spoke to me, of course."
Arnold rubbed the back of his shoulder with his hand.
"We must go to him as soon as possible!" Grandma cried.
"Grandma, I..."
"Please, my partner in crime."
"Grandma, I'm supposed to be working on a ten-page paper today. I haven't even started it yet," he said weakly.
"But I need you. You're my only hope." There was a pleading look in her eyes, a hunger that he recognized and knew too well by now to try to avoid. He was the only one in the house she would be able to rope into accompanying her, and both of them knew it.
It was love, and only love, that made him knead his fingers into his side and tell her he'd be ready in five minutes. He buttoned up his flannel over his T-shirt, sighed heavily again, and then waited while she disappeared upstairs.
When she returned, the 49ers jersey was gone, replaced with an all-black jumpsuit and dark charcoal streaks painted heavily under her eyes. Arnold followed her lead as they exited the door and made their way down the front steps. From the living room, a series of enraged yells shook the walls as someone or other on the TV screen fumbled a play.
Grandma made the decision to take the subway to Klaxon and Thirty-Second Street, where, she claimed, the little animal with whom she'd shared a spiritual connection was waiting to be rescued. She grabbed his hand and pushed them so violently through the turnstile that a little girl ahead of them was knocked to the platform floor.
"I'm sorry," Arnold told the girl fretfully, stopping immediately to help her stand up while she wiped the dirt from her knees. There were tears welling up in her eyes. Grandma was racing obliviously towards the doors of a subway car.
"Here, take this," he said anxiously, trying to think quickly as he reached into his pocket for a wad of crumpled bills and placed them in the girl's hand. "You can go get some ice cream. Or whatever you like. It'll make you feel better."
He rushed across the platform and made his way through the closing doors just in time.
"Fight for the little guy, Arnold; that's what I always say," Grandma proclaimed. He gripped the metal railing above them, but she balanced with her arms held out at her sides, as though surfing on the litter-laden gray floor. "Protect the innocent. Serve justice to the ones who need it most, and justice will be done unto you!"
There was a scattering of applause and wolf whistles from several of the riders around them.
When they arrived at their destination, Arnold followed Grandma on a zigzagging course, jaywalking across streets, darting though alleyways lined with rusting garbage cans and graffiti murals. He was assuming she'd lead them to a litter of strays, or a lonesome kitten inside one of those trash bins.
She stopped at last in front of a white house, encircled by a jagged chain link fence. He waited, thinking she had lost her way, or maybe had remembered the cat never existed at all.
"Okay, Kimba," Grandma hissed, eyes narrowed determinedly.
"Yeah? You see him?"
"He lives in there." She pointed at the peeling paint on the shuttered bay window.
"In the house?" Arnold raised his eyebrows. "The cat lives in the house?"
"Well, of course he lives in the house."
"Wait a second," he fumbled. He was trying to think quickly of a way to get out of this now that they had already come so far. "Grandma, we can't take the cat if he has an owner. Look, there's a car in the driveway and everything. Someone obviously lives here."
"They live here, alright," Grandma said darkly. "They torture him. Neglect him. Leave him without food for days. Step on his tail, just for the fun of it," she spit out the last words in disgust.
"How do you know that?"
"A tail is very important to a feline. It's their lifeblood and their soul. Their source of balance."
"But how do you know, Grandma?"
"Well, how could I not know?" she asked, as if the question had a glaringly obvious answer. "He's a member of the animal kingdom."
Arnold exhaled patiently. "Listen, Grandma, I know you want to do what's best but - we can't just break and enter into a person's home. We don't even know who lives here."
"I'll tell you who lives here. The enemy."
"What enemy?"
But there was a rumbling yell from inside then and she grabbed him by the collar, pulling him hastily and running with him in tow towards the side of the house. They slid down onto their stomachs on a small rectangular patch of grass, staring through the hexagons in the fence.
"He's there," Grandma said, pointing up at the side window. Arnold stared into the glass and caught sight of the familiar-looking figure, whose large, bulky frame and bottle blonde buzz cut stood out to him immediately.
"Hey," he said with a jolt of recognition. "I know who that is. His name's Wolfgang."
"Wolfgang," Grandma repeated sourly, her lips curling.
"Yeah, he goes to the same school as me. I've known him since way back. He was always kind of a bully."
"He still is. We have no choice but to save our furry friend from the jaws of destruction."
They watched as Wolfgang disappeared from view. Within seconds, they heard the door at the front of the house open. His heart racing, Arnold tried to crouch lower on the ground, pushing Grandma's head down beside him.
"Catch ya on the flip side, Padre!" Wolfgang was shouting. A gate in the fence clicked open, and then his pounding footsteps trickled off into the distance as he sauntered down the sidewalk.
Grandma's head popped up. "He's gone. I'm going in."
"How are you - you can't just - wait!" Arnold mumbled helplessly as his grandmother sprang up onto her feet and began to climb the chain links.
"Justice must be served!"
"Come on, Grandma, get down from there!"
"In the name of all things righteous, for all innocent creatures of the planet, we must rise to action!" She was moving faster now.
"Oh, God," Arnold groaned. He had no choice but to follow her, latching onto the fence and trying fruitlessly to keep one hand at her side in case she fell. That was the last thing they needed: to go to jail and to have her break every bone in her eighty-seven-year-old body.
They managed to clear the fence in minutes flat. Grandma reached the top, then leapt to the ground below them in Wolfgang's yard, somehow landing gracefully on two feet. Arnold jumped and felt his shirt rip as it caught on a snag in the fence. He cursed under his breath.
"This way, Arnold." She crept towards the side window on tiptoe and pressed her face up against the halfway open glass.
"Be careful," Arnold whispered nervously. "Someone's gonna see us."
Grandma cast a daring look around and began fumbling with the screen. When it wouldn't budge, she extracted a jackknife from her pocket and - before he could stop her - slashed the wires with two long diagonal cuts. Ripping through the slashes with her hands until there was a large hole in the screen, she turned and nodded at her grandson as if to say, You know what to do.
Don't get arrested, don't get arrested, don't get arrested, Arnold pleaded silently. Grandma lifted the window up a little higher, then hoisted herself through the hole in the screen. She dove head first into the house. Sighing, Arnold followed after her. Unfortunately, it proved to be a bit of a challenge fitting his head through the narrow space, and he ended up with several throbbing scratches on his cheeks and ears.
They found themselves in a dining room carpeted with fancy Persian rugs. A large wedding cake chandelier hung above the table in the center of the room; the glass sparkled as it caught the light streaming in. Arnold rubbed the cuts on his face as he looked around him nervously.
"I know he's here somewhere," Grandma muttered as she darted across the rugs. He had to follow her as she sidled into the kitchen, down a hallway, past a flowery-smelling bathroom.
"Cadence!" she began calling softly, pressing her lips together and purring enticingly. "Cadence!"
"Cadence?" Arnold whispered in annoyance.
"That's his name. You'll understand when you meet him. He has the rhythmic grace of a..."
"Grandma!" Arnold clapped a hand over her mouth. He could hear footsteps approaching from another room. They pressed themselves quickly beside a portrait of Alexander the Great, backs flat against the wall.
"Who goes there!" Grandma attempted to cry out. Luckily, her voice was mostly muffled by his hand still covering her lips, and he heaved a sigh of relief when the footsteps disappeared in the opposite direction.
"Look, Grandma, I think we better get out of here."
But his grandmother clapped her palm to her forehead, her face suddenly lighting up. "I know exactly where he is!"
"Grandma, please, someone's probably calling the police right now, I think we should-"
"Come on, Arnold!" She grabbed him by the wrist and started racing down the hall. They bounded up a staircase, through another hall, and into the open door of a bedroom.
It had to be Wolfgang's room, Arnold thought. He could tell by the assortment of sports trophies, and the pictures lining the wall - framed photos of Hillwood's football team, on which Wolfgang was the quarterback.
"Cadence, sweet boy," Grandma sung. "We've come for you."
She looked around for a moment. Then, snapping her fingers, she dropped to the floor and crawled under the bed, inching her way across the wood.
"Hurry!" Arnold urged her.
Then he stepped back in disbelief. Grandma was emerging again, and in her arms was a tiny orange tabby cat. The kitten mewed softly, rubbing his head up against her fingertips.
"Hey!" he said, blinking in surprise. "You really found him!"
"Well, of course I did."
Arnold came closer, scratching Cadence behind the ears. "He does look skinny."
"Oh, yes," Grandma said sadly. "He hasn't eaten a proper meal in days."
"He's pretty cute," Arnold admitted, smiling slightly as the cat yawned and closed his eyes.
"HEY!" a booming voice screamed suddenly from somewhere downstairs. "WHO THE HELL IS UP THERE?"
Arnold's chest seized up. He glanced at Grandma.
"I GOT A GUN! I DON'T NEED TO CALL ANY COPS!"
They could hear footsteps creaking up the staircase.
Both of them shifted their gaze to a window just above Wolfgang's bed.
"Grandma," Arnold whispered. "We're one flight above ground."
"You got it."
"Please be careful."
"Same to you, ranger." She placed Cadence gingerly in Arnold's hands as she reached into her pocket again for her jackknife. The slashings were even faster this time - ten seconds and she'd ripped her second hole of the day in a window screen. She gave Arnold a quick nod and then crept up onto the bed, grabbed hold of the windowsill, and leapt through the hole to the grass below. Arnold stared after her for a moment before doing the same.
His knees buckled underneath him as he landed with a thud in Wolfgang's yard. Cadence, somehow, had his eyes closed and was now purring peacefully against his chest.
"Run, Grandma!" Arnold yelled, frantic. He opened the front gate and they tumbled out and down the sidewalk, heaving, running until they were about three blocks down from the house they'd broken into. He collapsed onto his knees.
"We did it, Arnold," Grandma told him proudly. Her face was glowing as she swooped the cat up and kissed his whiskers.
"Yeah," Arnold panted, bent double over the cement. "I guess."
"Let's do it again soon."
He didn't bother to try to hide his moan this time, accepting Grandma's outstretched hand as she helped him to his feet.
"Harold Berman."
The oversized sophomore was shaking from his head to his toes as he came closer to the source of the foreboding voice. Of all the ways he could be spending a perfectly beautiful Sunday - like playing games at the arcade, or ordering a pizza, or eating leftover spaghetti, or Oreos, or Fig Newtons, or marshmallows, or -
"Harold Berman, you betta get to explainin."
Big Gino's lair still looked the same as it had back in elementary school - the spare tires and tools hanging on the wall; stock items stashed in various places around the garage. So did Big Gino himself, whose small stature belied his intimidating power.
"Gino, I mean, Big Gino, sir," Harold said meekly, his voice shaking. Beside him, two muscular assistants had each of his arms in a viselike grip. "I didn't finish selling the stash yet. I'm gonna have the money for you soon, I promise."
Gino jumped down from behind his desk and drew himself closer, dark eyes leering. "Interesting. Very interesting. I seem to rememba you sayin the same thing sometime's about last week."
Harold stumbled backwards. Gino's assistants tightened their grip. "I know, but it's just taking a little longer to sell than I thought," he pleaded. "There, uh, there aren't as many potheads out here as there used to be, that's all. I'm gonna get the money to you, I swear. I wasn't gonna run away or nothin."
"Berman," Gino said coolly. "Your excuses mean nothin to me. I'm gonna give you a break. But just this once. You have till sundown Monday to get me the money."
"Yes, sir, thank you so much, sir, oh thank you, thank you-"
"That's enough. Just rememba. You can run, but you can't hide. No one hides from Gino."
Gino snapped his fingers; his assistants released Harold so quickly that he lost his balance and fell over. Shaking, he stood up and gave the menacing figures around him a quick nod before shuffling out the garage door.
Once he had reached the open air, Harold cast a glance behind him. He looked carefully down at the toes of his worn sneakers. Then he began racing down the sidewalk, running as fast as he could down.