A/N: Happy Sunday. X

8: Ain't the Heartache That I Thought I Knew

"Oh, honey," Stella Shortman was musing, her eyes filled with inexplicable pride. "A Halloween party, huh? You're going to have a nice time."

"You'll have a blast," Miles added. "A real ball!"

Arnold rubbed the back of his shoulder with one hand. He couldn't make sense of the slightly crazed look on his father's face - so he merely offered a small smile instead, nodding as though he, too, was desperately looking forward to Rhonda Lloyd's Halloween bash. He allowed both of his parents to kiss him stickily before he zipped up his jacket and headed out into the streets.

The wind was howling and sky darkening to black by the time Arnold reached the front stoop of Gerald's house. He buried his hands inside the pockets of his jacket as he waited, teeth clattering in the wake of the sudden cold snap.

"Hey, man, took you long enough," Gerald greeted him, opening the door to let him inside and through the mud room.

Timberly was carving a pumpkin in the kitchen, her tongue sticking out of her mouth in concentration. The floor was littered with seeds and guts, their tangled strands forming sticky webs that the boys had to tiptoe over as they made their way across the tiles.

"Looks good, Tim," Arnold told her. "Scary."

Timberly whipped around and smiled at him sweetly, face brightening. "Oh, hi, Arnold. Thanks."

"What are you gonna wear tonight?" Gerald asked, surveying Arnold's flannel and jeans. "You can't go in that. Rhonda said we all have to have costumes."

"I know, but I couldn't think of anything."

"Mm, mm, mm," Gerald said, shaking his head. "Well, we'll have to make a ghost out of you. Or something. I'm going as a blood sucking zombie. Timberly, can we borrow your face paint?"

"Only if I can come to the party!" she told him eagerly. "Can I?"

"No!"

"Why not?" she pouted.

"Because. It's for high schoolers. No way Rhonda would be okay with my seventh-grade sister showing up."

Timberly looked extra mopey as she stabbed her jack o' lantern again with the carving knife. "Fine. But if you're gonna use my makeup, then I want five dollars. I paid good money for that color set."

"Yeah yeah, alright," Gerald said, rolling his eyes. "Come on, man, let's go get ready."

They traipsed up the stairs. Truthfully, Arnold wasn't particularly excited about the night ahead of them. It wasn't that he disliked Halloween - but rather that he didn't think a huge high school party filled with hormone-induced madness would really be his kind of thing. Admittedly, though, he hadn't been invited to a party like this before. Come to think of it, he hadn't been invited to any event of Rhonda Lloyd's in several years.

"Do you think there'll be a lot of people there?" he wondered out loud. Gerald was rifling through his dresser drawers in search of a white T-shirt for Arnold's ghost outfit.

"No idea," Gerald returned. "Phoebe seemed to think there would be."

Arnold tried to hide his slightly exasperated exhale.

"Maybe you'll have some fun tonight," Gerald said, wiggling his eyebrows. "Find a cute girl dressed up like a leopard, or something like that."

"A leopard?"

"I dunno. Don't girls like dressing up like leopards on Halloween?"

"Not sure. Maybe." He tried to hold still as Gerald neared his face with Timberly's makeup brush, preparing to paint him in a mask of white.

"You gotta let go, Arnold. You know that."

"I know," Arnold said quickly. "Of course I know that."

"Feel the vibe. Go with the flow. And don't think about -"

"I know," Arnold repeated, fingernails digging into his thighs. "Yeah, I know."

"Stop shaking like that, or I'm gonna accidentally dig this brush into your eye."

"It's just so frustrating, Gerald. Of all the years of - the torture, and abuse, and then she just - without even - and..."

"We're headed down this path again, aren't we?" Gerald said, shaking his head.

"No, no, we're not," Arnold said, running his hands through his hair. "Never mind."

"Look," Gerald said, a bit more quietly this time. "I understand how you feel. I do. It's just - this is always the way you've been, man. You mull over situations forever. She wanted what she wanted. You respect that, don't you?"

"Yeah," Arnold replied immediately. He didn't know how to voice the thought that had been keeping him awake for nights on end: the feeling that it wasn't really what she wanted, and he knew it. Was that true? Or was it not true? Did he know her as well as he'd always thought he had? Or was his own heart getting in the way again, clamoring in futile hope for a girl who was and always would be an unsolved mystery; a girl who'd moved on a long time ago?

"You just gotta remember," Gerald told him wisely, on sage-advice mode again. "If you keep reopening a wound, it's never gonna get the chance to heal. You think you're not ready, but sometimes it's not about being ready. You hafta take the leap, or nothing's ever gonna change at all."

Harold Berman was trembling slightly as he stepped into the foyer of the Lloyd house. The note in his pocket felt heavy, somehow. His plan was to slip it into the purse of its intended recipient.

"Harold, dear!" Rhonda greeted him upon his arrival. "Smashing zombie costume. How simply charming of you to come."

Harold gathered that she'd had a few drinks, given that she barely even talked to him ordinarily - much less referred to him as dear. She stood up on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek. He placed a hand to his skin where her lips had touched him, his face burning.

"Oh yeah, I mean, uh - thanks," he stuttered. "Hey, are there gonna be any snacks at this thing?"

"Of course. Right inside."

"Oh, great. I'm starved. There a lotta people in there yet?" he added. "Like say, uh, that one friend of yours, Lila Sawyer?"

"There are tons of people," Rhonda told him, smiling. "Yes, Lila's in there. Having a couple of drinks and being her sweet little self. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason," Harold said, rubbing his elbow nervously. "It's not like I'm gonna get smashed up like a cream puff if I don't make sure she doesn't hook up with any random guys tonight, if that's what you were thinkin."

"Huh?" Rhonda looked completely bewildered.

Harold gave an anxious chuckle. "Well, see ya around!" he called casually before turning to make his way towards the living room, where music was beating like a pulse.

"Hey, babe! Hot devil horns."

The third rando of the night to approach Helga Pataki was already drunk off his ass - and it was only ten PM.

"God damn it, Pheebs," Helga muttered under her breath, after she'd decked the guy and sent him sailing into the wall for good measure. "Can we go home yet?" she asked rhetorically.

Phoebe - looking simply adorable in her historically accurate Sacajawea costume - appeared to be having the time of her life. And all she was even doing was making small talk with a kid she'd said was in her global history class, who'd come to the party dressed in some indecipherable outfit that included multiple swords.

Helga, on the other hand, was already ready to pound a hole in the wall with her fists. She stood scowling in the corner of the room, returning to the refreshments table every now and then to grab another handful of chips. One too many horny boys had come up to her to compliment her on her costume, or - in the latest sorry case - actually dare to try to press his sweaty body against hers. The nerve of these creeps.

Beyond that, the throbbing music was giving her a headache. So were the droves of Hillwood students, seemingly increasing in number by the minute as they trickled through Rhonda Lloyd's living room like members of an ant farm headed towards a castle of crumbs. The refreshments table was adorned with the Lloyds' expensive Portuguese vases, as well as ceramic bowls of chips, spiked punch, and an assortment of fancy dessert liqueurs that Helga could only assume Rhonda had stolen from some secret stash belonging to her parents. Rhonda's mother and father were currently vacationing in Prague, a fact the dark-haired beauty had mentioned importantly to every guest who walked through her front door.

"Helga, darling!" a familiar, irritatingly cheerful voice called out behind her. Helga turned in time to see the hostess herself stumbling towards her, obviously buzzed. She was wearing sequined cat ears and leggings paired with a silver bra, showing off her toned abdomen.

"Helga, darling?" Helga repeated, scoffing. "Yeah, hi, Princess."

"Cute outfit. Are you enjoying yourself?"

"Sorta," Helga told her, downing another several chips.

"Well, it's simply a pleasure to have you," Rhonda promised stickily.

"Right. Where are people I know, anyway? Like... Tall Hair Boy and his sidekick the Football Head, for example?" she asked, trying to feign casualty.

"Oh, they're here... somewhere." The wink Rhonda gave her was maddening. But before Helga could respond, a tall, tanned boy appeared, stooping to hand Rhonda a red solo cup.

"Awesome party, beautiful," he told her approvingly. Rhonda blinked at him before throwing her head back and erupting in giggles.

"Thanks, Samuel," she responded, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him closer to the center of the room, where throngs of kids were in varying stages of make-out sessions and public displays of sexual excitement.

Helga glared at them for a moment before clenching her hands into fists at her sides and forcing her way through the maze of heated bodies.

She didn't stop until she had arrived at the Lloyds' back porch. Pushing open the sliding glass door and taking in a gulp of the cool evening air, she sighed angrily. At least out here she finally felt like she could begin to breathe.

She was so caught up in recovering from the exhaustion of the scene she'd left behind that it took a moment before she noticed the black-haired boy slumped over one of the round mesh patio tables, his head resting in his arms. The handmade wings strapped to his back suggested that he was meant to be dressed as a bird - or maybe an insect of some sort - or a tooth fairy?

"Curly?" she gaped at him. "Didn't know you were even invited to this shindig."

Curly drew his head up to look at her. If he was surprised to see her, his face didn't show it. "I'm a person, too. Is that so hard to believe?"

"Yeah, kind of," Helga admitted, shrugging. She'd never been one to beat around the bush.

She hoped Curly would be offended and shoot back with an off-color remark.

But it was worse. He looked down at his hands instead, biting on his lower lip. "I don't know why I was invited. It's not like she's even bothered to acknowledge my presence."

"What - you mean in between the hours acknowledging her own stunning reflection in the mirror?"

"It's not funny."

"Okay, okay." She sat down in the wicker chair across from him, noting the crushed beer can at his fingertips. "Look, she's probably just... stressed out. She's got a lotta people milling around and having orgies in her house right now," she said reasonably.

"She doesn't even like me, Helga. She doesn't even want me as a friend. She doesn't want me as anything."

Helga chewed on her own lip, feeling her heart swell up in her chest. "I mean... you don't know that."

"Did you see the way she was hanging all over that Samuel guy?" Curly demanded bitterly.

Helga sighed again. "Yeah, I guess I did."

"That's what she wants."

"Maybe."

"It's what she wants, Helga!"

She threw up in her arms in frustration. "Then let her want that! I mean, Jesus, you could do so much better. You're caring, funny, smart. What does Rhonda have that you find so irresistible, anyway? Other than unbelievable selfishness and an acute knack for forcing even people who were previously indifferent to hate her," she added.

Curly looked away from her and out at the Lloyds' sprawling backyard. The perfectly cut grass quivered in the breeze, garden of crimson tulips by the oak tree following suit.

"I love her," he said finally. His voice was quiet, but steady in its finality. From inside, they both heard the music change to some popular song that elicited an eruption of cheers from the drunken party-goers. "Is that so hard for you to understand?"

Helga wished the aching in her chest would go away. But it didn't. It grew stronger, fanned by the flames of the October wind and the familiar sight of those wells of eyes across from her: broken, coal-black.

"No," she told him at last. "It isn't."

Curly rested his forehead in his hands again, breathing quietly.

"Listen, Curly," Helga continued. "I get that you're upset. You're heartbroken, prolly. Feeling like a real pathetic wimp, right about now."

"Takes one to know one."

"Not really," Helga said, squeezing the skin on her elbow and trying to look offended rather than anxious.

"Oh, yeah? Built any new shrines lately? Sacrificed the blood of any lambs to the Arnold gods of-"

"Shut up." Her voice was even as she extracted her hands from her pockets and propped her cheeks up in them. She could feel her face getting hot.

The look he cast her then was uncharacteristically gentle, full of sympathy. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Helga cut him off.

"Look, Curly, but I've been thinking. And we don't have to be like this tonight, okay?"

"We don't?"

"No." She shook her head furiously. "I mean, think about all those... fun people in there. They're just having a good time, and you and me? We could be like that, if we really wanted to. All carefree, and stupid, and shit like that."

"We could?"

"Yeah," she said impatiently. "We could."

She seized him by the hand, feeling his cold, leathery skin under her fingertips.

"Let's go." Her voice was bold - much more confident than she felt on the inside. "Let's just get on back in there, alright? It's gotta beat moping around out here like a couple of whiny losers."

Curly followed her sideways through the sliding doors, like a puppy blindly following its owner. She felt her resolve harden as they pushed their way back through the still-growing throng of teenagers, dancing and laughing and kissing one another, heads clouded up with obvious delight.

"Ya know, maybe you're right," Curly was muttering at her side. "Maybe-"

But Helga had stopped in her tracks. The world around her turned icy, her body flooding with a kind of numbing dread.

They had run straight into Arnold. His nose was inches from Lila Sawyer's, his hands nearing her waist as she smiled at him, sparkling white teeth shining. Her lips found his in the dim light, and then she was giggling, whispering in his ear, like she was extracting some promise Helga had prayed she would never have to overhear.

Eugene Horowitz was out of his element.

Admittedly, of course, it didn't take a lot to make him feel that way. He'd already learned from his first fifteen years and eight months on earth that he just wasn't all that high-performing in social scenes - not unless they involved a group of Mathletes team members, or wild speculation over the special effects used during the filming of Star Wars to achieve the look of highly realistic anti gravitational tumbling on the planet Alderaan.

Anyway, the scene in front of him almost certainly did not qualify as something he would excel in. In fact, he was morally opposed to everything about it, from his intense proximity to half-naked teenagers practically fondling one another in public to the heavy scent of marijuana wafting through the living room to the crushed cans of beer and huge bowls of spiked punch he could see on the refreshments table.

No, he didn't want to be here.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. And, well, Eugene was desperate. That much was the simple truth.

"Horowitzzzzzz! Didn't expect to see you here, man!" a voice rang out loudly, followed by a couple of snickers.

Eugene turned in horror and disgust towards its source: Wolfgang Walker, the quarterback of the Hillwood football team. The same Wolfgang who'd shoved Eugene in the cafeteria in the eighth grade, sending him facefirst into his macaroni and cheese and effectively making him the laughingstock of the school for a good three and a half hours. The same Wolfgang who'd... no, he couldn't. He couldn't go there. Not now.

All thoughts of malice and undue aggression, however, seemed to be far from Wolfgang's mind as he ambled over and clapped Eugene roughly on the back, smelling like alcohol and cologne and wearing his usual Cheshire grin that seemed to charm the daylights out of female recipients for reasons Eugene would never understand.

"Looking good, dude, looking good," Wolfgang told him, running one hand through his short blonde hair.

"Um," Eugene replied uncertainly, "Thanks, Wolfgang."

"Hey, look, man, long as you're here," Wolfgang continued, placing an arm around Eugene's shoulder and leading him away from the buzzing living room and down a slightly quieter hallway, "Wonder if I could ask you a couple questions."

Eugene winced. They were stepping over beer puddles, plastic cups, and even a couple of bodies on the floor - what he could only assume were wayward partygoers who'd had a little too much to drink. The music pounding through his ears only added to his mounting nauseous headache.

"Questions?" Eugene repeated.

Wolfgang laughed. Eugene furrowed his eyebrows, bewildered.

"Yes, quesssssttiions," Wolfgang slurred. "Questions about your hot little friend and what it's gonna take for her to - you know - "

"No, I don't know," Eugene said, but his blood was beginning to boil.

"Course you do," Wolfgang said, removing his arm and giving the red-headed boy a little punch on the shoulder. "Have you seen her yet tonight or not? Little Sheena looks hot as shit, wearing her tight little number. What's it gonna take for me to get in on that?"

Eugene felt his heart hammering in his chest, an angry heat rushing to his face. "Sheena will never..." he yelled, but then just mouthed wordlessly, unable or unwilling to continue. He swallowed instead. "And you just - don't even - stay away- and - don't touch her, okay?"

For a moment, Wolfgang just stared at him, like he was waiting for more.

Then he grinned again and gave Eugene another clap on the back, like they were good pals enjoying one another's company.

"Whatever you say, fag," Wolfgang said in a voice that made Eugene's stomach churn, and without another word, he went off again towards the throng in the other room.

"Sheena's mom would be having an aneurism right about now," he mumbled to himself, slumping with his back against the wall. This kind of behavior was precisely what had served as the motivating factor for him to come here tonight.

"Eugene?" came another voice, high-pitched and disbelieving, suddenly right next to him in the hallway. "What are you doing here?" Sheena demanded.

Next thing he knew, she was grabbing his shoulders with both hands and forcing him to look up at her. He blinked rapidly as he took in her platinum blonde wig and tiny dress that just barely covered her thighs. She wore a pair of strappy black shoes on her feet, which added a good three inches to her height.

"I..." he mumbled, lost for words. "I... what, I'm not allowed to enjoy a good party now and then like every other teenager does?" he chuckled nervously.

"No," Sheena hissed impatiently. "You've never even been to a birthday party that didn't involve pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey or your mom's low-fat cream cheese celery snacks."

"Well, I'm turning over a new leaf!"

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, and now how about you tell me why you're really here?"

Eugene hesitated. At last he decided on the truth, if only because nothing much else made sense, and Sheena knew it. "I was worried about you," he admitted sheepishly. "I - just - don't go anywhere without a friend tonight, okay? It doesn't have to be me. Just - someone."

The look she gave him was long and confused. It was several moments before she reached out and brushed her fingers against his, breathing rapidly.

"I won't," she promised finally. "I'm with you."