A/N: You guys are the best human beings. Thank you for being awesome cartoon-loving weirdos like me.

I guess I'm getting a little overzealous with the short timespan of these here chapter updates... but then again, curling up in my room for two days straight without going outside and/or initiating human contact means I'm ready to post it, so why the heck not?

6: That Oh So Special Someone

It was odd. But as Lila Sawyer made her way down the hallway that day, she couldn't shake the strange, tingling sensation that she was being watched.

It was an oh too silly idea, of course. She couldn't even put her finger on why she felt that way. Had she seen anyone watching her, even out of the corner of her eye? No.

So she tried to put the thought out of her mind as she wandered out of her chemistry class with Nadine, delicately placing her sequined messenger bag over one shoulder. The bag, glittery and embroidered with silver hearts, had been a gift from her favorite, most special pseudo-Big-Sister of six years, Olga Pataki.

"You know, Lila, I'm really glad we have so many classes together this year," Nadine was saying.

"I'm certain that I'm glad too, Nadine," Lila told her.

They curved through the bends in the hallway, carefully dodging by other students, including an enthusiastic Chocolate Boy making out with his girlfriend near the doors to the cafeteria.

"I don't know what's going on with Rhonda these days," Nadine continued. "All she wants to do anymore is hang out with this group of total airhead seniors. All so she can try and date this guy - some hot football player. He was a lifeguard at the pool over the summer."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah." The blonde-braided teenager looked slightly down in the dumps. "I just don't get her sometimes. I mean, what's so great about hanging out with football players or girls who are shallow and mean all the time, anyway?"

"You know, I'm not sure," Lila agreed, because truthfully, she wasn't.

A shadow of a smile crossed Nadine's face. "Any new guys in your life lately?"

"No," Lila said, shrugging good-naturedly. "But I'm ever so certain that when that oh so special person comes along, I'll know. I'm focusing on my schoolwork for now."

"Hey, that's cool," Nadine replied, giving her a wider, appreciative smile. "That's how I feel about that stuff." She paused. "So the rumors about you and Arnold aren't true, then?"

Lila blinked at her. She was certain she had no idea what Nadine was talking about. "I'm certain I have no idea what you're talking about, Nadine."

"Oh, I dunno. I guess some people saw you guys hanging out a couple times and thought it might be, like, a thing."

"A thing?" Lila repeated.

"Yeah. You know, they thought he might like you or something."

Lila giggled. "Oh, no. It's not a thing. He's a nice boy," she added kindly. "But just a friend. Not that oh so special someone."

They arrived at their lockers and began twisting the combination locks. Twelve... seven... twenty-six...

The metal door popped open. Lila looked immediately at the top shelf, where a folded piece of paper was resting precariously beside her jacket. Someone had to have slipped it inside the front grates.

"Is that a flyer for something?" Nadine asked curiously. "How come I didn't get one?"

"I don't think it's a flyer," Lila told her uncertainly, as she unfolded the paper and began to read.

Arnold's memories kept resurfacing - his mind playing dolls with the past, as though if he recalculated the moves, turned over their hazy figures enough in his brain, he might find some answer he hadn't known he was looking for.

In this particular memory, they were thirteen. It was a cool evening in the fall of eighth grade. A breeze ruffled through the yellowing trees, making the ribbon in her hair fold and rustle in the fading light. He remembered that she smelled like the cherries he'd given her for lunch, and all he wanted to do was kiss her.

They weren't going anywhere in particular. They did that frequently: took walks around the city with no destination in mind, spinning aimlessly by the jungle gym-dotted asphalt of the elementary school they'd left behind a few years prior, or wandering through the park to watch kids chasing balls across the grass. His palm brushed gently against hers in their usual way. Touching, but not quite holding hands.

She was scowling. Her unibrow creased and humid eyes narrowed as she recounted some harrowing tale about Olga's newest success story.

"What do you think, Football Head?" Helga asked him, stopping to fold her arms across her chest. "Is Olga ever gonna stop being such a priss? Is she ever gonna care about anything except herself?" She kicked a stone in front of her with the toe of her sneaker.

"Maybe you could try talking to her more," Arnold suggested. "Maybe she really does care. But she doesn't have a starting point. It's hard to ask questions if you don't have a starting point."

Helga snorted. "That is the stupidest idea you've ever had."

"It's worth trying, Helga," Arnold said hesitantly, shrugging.

"Yeah, well, I could try to talk to Olga for seventy-two hours straight, and the only topic would be herself. Guarantee it."

He came closer to her, placing his hands, gently, on her shoulders. With his heart quickening in his chest, he noticed the way her mouth quivered, just slightly, in response to his touch. It sent goosebumps up and down his arms. He closed his eyes and pressed his own mouth softly to her forehead, just above her nose, where her eyebrow met in the middle.

He heard the trembling, barely audible sigh. Her body was melting into his with blindsided delight.

He opened his eyes. "Helga, I..." he started.

"What?" she asked him eagerly. "You what?"

But it was then that they heard a familiar sound nearby - a high-pitched, wind chime giggle, the kind that seemed to float by as easily as the leaves in the wind.

"Oh, Mommy, Daddy, it's so good to be home again," Olga Pataki was telling her parents. And Arnold turned to see the three of them moving down the park's gravel pathway. They were all holding hands, like a sort of twisted Brady Bunch clan missing several members. Miriam was stumbling sloppily over her feet.

"Olga," Big Bob said heartily. "It's great to have you home. You're the most stinkin perfect daughter on the planet."

"You are, honey!" Miriam laughed. Mother, father, and daughter walked by without even noticing Helga, whose mouth hung slightly open as she watched her family pass.

She continued staring after them for several moments, her hands clenching into fists at her sides.

"Helga," Arnold said finally, tentatively. She ripped her gaze away from the other Patakis, now trickling off into the distance, and turned to look at him again, breathing so hard he could hear the exhalations through her nose.

"Helga," Arnold said again.

"They're such jerks."

In that moment, he wasn't making guesses. He could see the fissures in her anger - the hurt teeming hard and fast from somewhere deep, deep beyond her fury-contorted face. She had always carried it, like an ancient stubborn wallpaper that wouldn't come off no matter how many times you tried to peel it.

"I'm sorry," he told her. He reached up and brushed his fingertips against her cheek.

"Quit touching me, Arnoldo!" she snapped, leaping away from him as though he had burned her. He blinked. She began stalking off, as though she were suddenly in a hurry to get to some place or another.

"Helga, wait," he called after her, jogging to match her stride.

"I don't want to hear it. I just wanna get out of here."

"But, I..."

She turned around again to glare at him, her eyes piercing and fierce.

"I..." he continued to stammer. She was shifting in front of him, suddenly, a moving maze, or a kaleidoscope, the colors exploding and falling down in circles of dark red he realized he didn't know how to handle at all. Sweat was pooling up and trickling down his forehead. She was waiting for him. Why was she always so far ahead of him? How could she ever expect him to catch up with her, when she was always moving so much faster than he was?

His mouth opened, then closed. For the life of him, he couldn't find the words for what it was he'd felt only minutes before he had needed to say.

"Criminy," she snarled.

And, sick of standing there - tortured with impatience - she ran away.

The suds bubbled up in the sink, forming a mound of sponge rainbows. For a moment, Stella paused to watch them - lovely, frothing jungles of grease and oil and Palmolive. They squirmed and danced for a few slow seconds before disappearing down the drain. Her hands moved gracefully as she placed the last metal pot on the rack to dry, her skin pruny from the warm water.

"Looks good," Miles mused from the kitchen table, where he was sitting with a mug of Gertie's tea. "Funny how much cleaner this place looks on your dish-duty nights than when any of the other boarders are in charge of cleaning."

Stella laughed and pulled up a chair beside him. "Doing the dishes is just relaxing to me."

"I know," Miles told her. He leaned over to nuzzle his lips against her cheek. And in her mind, Stella took count of the scattering of pills on the placemat in front of him: melatonin; his selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (Lexapro); and reliable old Vitamin D. Following her eyes to the table with his own, he collected the tablets in his hand and swallowed them with one large gulp of tea.

They sat silently for a moment, listening to the white noise of the boarders around them. Suzie and Oskar were snapping back and forth at one another in the living room, their yells rattling through the rickety walls.

"I'm worried about Arnold," Miles mumbled softly.

Stella swallowed. "I know."

"He's just not himself lately."

"He's growing up," she told him. "This is what happens when kids grow up. They date each other. And they go through breakups."

"I just wish I could do something," he continued, running a hand through his hair, which had turned from sandy to almost completely gray over the past year alone. "Something to make him feel better. It kills me to see him in pain."

"Me, too. But you can't protect someone from feeling pain, Miles. Even your son."

Miles stood up suddenly, pacing back and forth across the cracked floor tiles.

"We should plan something special for his birthday this year. Maybe a trip. We could take a family vacation to Tuscany, or Thailand. Or how about the south of France?"

"With what money?" Stella asked skeptically. She regretted it when he stopped in his tracks, shoulders sagging defeatedly and face darkening with gloom.

"Well, I'll think of something good. And affordable," he added. "Just you wait."

"I know you will," she said quietly, soothingly. "You always do, honey."

"Has Miriam told you about how Helga's doing?" Miles asked, slumping back down in his chair. Stella knew he was feeling the loss of the sharp-tongued teenager in their lives as much as she was - it was odd, to find the girl who had become something of a daughter to them over the past four years suddenly missing from every occasion she'd been a part of.

"Sort of," Stella said. She hesitated. "They have a rocky relationship - you know that. I don't think she knows a lot of what goes on in Helga's life herself. Not because she doesn't want to," she added hastily. "It's just..."

"I know," Miles completed for her. "Complicated."

"Raising a teenager seems to be," she sighed.

Miles opened his mouth, then closed it again. She could see the question swimming in his eyes, the question they couldn't seem to stop asking themselves, despite knowing that the answer would never present itself in an obvious or helpful way: how did we get here?

"How was work today?" he asked instead, filling the silence with his gentle voice.

The smile that spread across her face was genuine, induced by the kind of warmth that couldn't be forced from either politeness or the desire to be strong. She'd gotten her job at Hillwood Medical Center six months after awakening from her nine-year slumber - it was the only part of her life that had remained steady in the four years that followed. She worked in the maternity ward now, an assignment that infected her daily with its love and magic.

"Every day is a celebration," she told him.

He smiled back at her.

"How was the day here?" she asked, and he shrugged.

"Heard back from the Hillwood Times. They like my writing style, but turned down the idea," he paused to take another gulping sip of his tea. "Something about my column not sounding relatable enough. Guess most people don't really need advice on how to re-adjust after waking up from a ten-year nap."

"I'm sorry, sweetheart."

He tried to hide the heaviness in his sigh. "I said, 'But anyone can relate to re-adjusting. How about the sixteen million adults living with depression? How about death or addiction?' They weren't going for it."

She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. "You'll find something soon. I know you will."

"Right," Miles managed a lopsided grin. "Just have to keep trying. Keep my head on straight."

"You..." Stella began, but couldn't quite find it in her to continue: always do wouldn't have been honest phrasing.

There was a struggle. But Stella was the only one who could see it.

In the dark, even while his eyelids were heavy with exhaustion, Miles would lie awake, staring up at the shadows on the cracked ceiling. They played tricks on him, those shadows. In their fragments and shifting shapes, he could make out the forms of ghosts. They rattled from the roof of the boarding house.

She would turn to face him, breathing softly. He couldn't sleep, and so, neither could she.

"Miles," she mumbled. She lifted her hands out from underneath their nest of blankets and cupped his cheeks in hers. There were embers burning in his olive eyes - the flames of anguish would rise up in them again soon.

"I failed at everything." His voice was soft, barely a whisper.

"That's not true," she told him. It was a conversation they had been having nightly. She began stroking the sweat-laced hair back from his forehead. "It's not true."

"Arnold - you - the Green Eyes - " he rattled incoherently, as though unable to hear her. "Work - you - Arnold..."

He shook his head back and forth, wriggling her palms away from him.

"I couldn't keep you safe," he continued. "I couldn't keep him safe. I can't even work, Stella. I can't even find a job."

"Go to sleep," she pleaded with him quietly.

She pressed her mouth against his, grabbing onto his chest. If she could only hold him there, she thought. If she could hold him there, he might grow steady again in her grasp.