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10: The King of Sabotage

It was eight-thirty on the dot when Arnold arrived at Lila's house, checking his watch and pulling his jacket tightly around his chest to shield himself from the gusting wind.

At first, he paused outside, weighing his options. Was Lila the kind of girl who would want her date to be fashionably late? He couldn't help it: he found his thoughts straying to Helga as he remembered how it had been picking her up for the various nights they spent traversing through Hillwood or getting dinner at Bigal's or throwing rocks at dumpsters. He'd always known that, inevitably, she'd be waiting anxiously for him long before he arrived, no matter what time it was. Consequently, he'd never had reason before to stop and consider frivolities like pretending to be too distracted to be on time. Was that an important thing to girls who weren't Helga? Would Lila think he was acting too eager?

By eight-thirty-two, he decided to take the plunge and ring the doorbell, footsteps padding softly across the crumbling front stoop. The door swung open almost immediately.

"Well, hello," Lila's father greeted him. Arnold had met him several times before. He was a kind-looking man, with hazel eyes the exact same color as Lila's and coppery stubble around his chin. Arnold was relieved, in any case, that he was smiling softly at him rather than staring him down, as Big Bob Pataki had seemed to take great pleasure in doing on more than one occasion.

"You must be here to pick up Lila," Lila's father continued, his smile now widening slightly. "Come on in. Can I get you something to drink?"

Arnold shook his head as he stepped through the threshold. "Thanks, but I'm alright, Mr. Sawyer. I'll just wait for Lila here."

"Lila, honey! Your date's here!"

Arnold took a seat on the couch, which had several wads of cotton stuffing poking out of the arms. He found himself feeling fond of the appearance of the Sawyers' living space, for which the term humble abode would be an exaggeration. He'd known that Lila and her father weren't exactly well off. But maybe he hadn't understood the extent of it, he thought, as his eyes wandered the length of the peeling walls and stained floorboards surrounding him. He felt more comfortable than he had only minutes prior. He'd always been more put off by the trappings of wealth than their reverse.

"Hello, Arnold," came a familiar wispy, flowery kind of voice. Lila was standing in the entranceway to the living room.

"Lila," Arnold said immediately, standing up and suddenly feeling his face get hot. "Hi."

She looked especially pretty, with her long hair tied in a braid and cowgirl boots on her feet.

"You look ever so nice," she told him sweetly, and his face grew even hotter.

"So do you. Come on, we better get going. Thanks again, Mr. Sawyer," he called out, and they headed outside and into the chilly evening air, walking side by side.

"Are we still seeing a movie?" Lila asked, and Arnold hesitated.

"Yeah, I thought so. I mean, unless you don't want to," he added quickly, and cringed at his own awkwardness.

"Oh no, I'd love to. There are some good ones out now," she said cheerfully. He remembered with some trepidation the taste she'd had in elementary school, which included room for The Enchanted Bunnies series and not much else.

"Guess we'll check out the options when we get there," he suggested.

"Oh yes, Arnold, that sounds like a just lovely plan." Lila stopped in her tracks suddenly, eyes flashing in the puddling darkness. "Maybe we can watch something really meaningful. Something just ever so special and poetic."

Arnold rubbed his upper arm with one hand, blinking. "Uh, sure, Lila."

She sighed as she picked up her pace again. "You know, I've been thinking a lot lately," she mused.

"You have? What've you been thinking about?"

"Well," Lila said slowly. Her braid was bouncing in rhythm to her steps as she walked. "About love, I suppose. It's been a long time since I've dated anyone, you know."

"I didn't," he told her, although honestly, he did. He'd heard an earful about that in the boys' locker room at least once a week for the past year, from every annoyed guy who'd asked her out and been turned down.

"I suppose I just, well, I have my heart set on thinking there's an oh so special person out there, just for me. A soulmate. My daddy always said my mother was his soulmate. That's why it's been so hard for him. Once you find true love, you can never settle for anything else again."

"What happened to her?" Arnold found himself asking. "Your mother?"

In all the years he'd known Lila – including this past summer, when he'd spent more time with her in the wake up of his breakup than he ever had before – he didn't think he'd ever asked her that question. It had felt too personal, too prying. But now that she was offering her mother's name on her own, it was only natural for him to wonder out loud.

"Oh, she passed away," Lila told him. Her voice was full of the wistful but resigned candor of someone who had accepted something a long time ago. "When I was just a little girl."

"I'm sorry, Lila."

"Me too," she said quietly. "She was sick. She died a few months before we moved to Hillwood."

"I never even knew that."

"Well… I'm certain I never really told anyone. It all happened so fast. We lived on a farm, you know. It was so beautiful, Arnold. We had so many animals and loved them all. Chickens and cows and pigs. My mama used to wake me up at dawn every day. You'd never believe how beautiful the sunrise looks when you're not surrounded by all of these skyscrapers."

"I guess I've never really seen a sunrise like that," he told her. He could feel something warm welling up in his chest.

"Oh, they're lovely, Arnold. Just ever so lovely."

"Sounds like it."

"I didn't know it at the time, but Daddy moved us to the city because it was so different. He didn't want to be reminded of her anymore. He thought coming out here, surrounded by oh so many new things, would be a chance for both of us to start again."

"Well, I'm glad that you guys did move out here, Lila."

"Thank you."

There was a pause as they continued walking, the silence between them growing thick.

"Anyway, I've been thinking lately, about love. And I've wondered, you know. If maybe I've had it wrong all this time."

"What do you mean by wrong?" Arnold asked her.

"Well, I… what I mean is, maybe my soulmate wasn't coming to find me. Maybe he's been here, all along."

"You think?" he said, swallowing, because his throat felt pretty dry all of a sudden.

"Look, we're here," Lila exclaimed. They had arrived in front of the multiplex cinema, its bright, neon lights shining in the dark. "Oh, Arnold! The latest Creatures of the Confetti Dust is out. Do you want to go?"

He'd never heard of the movie before. But he was quick to agree, mostly because he didn't think there'd be anything else the two would have in common and he didn't want to highlight that fact right now. "Sure, Lila," he said, shrugging.

After they'd gone inside and waited in line for tickets, he took her to the concessions stand, where she stood perusing the multitude of options for minutes on end. Rows of brightly colored candies crowded the glass display case beside the popcorn and pretzel machines. He remembered with a sudden pang in his stomach how Helga used to stack the snacks one on top of the other, Sour Patch Kids falling into her red-and-white-striped bag of popcorn and Milk Duds dangling precariously into her soda cup.

"Are you alright?" Lila asked him.

He blinked at her. "Oh yeah, I'm fine. Are you?"

"Oh, yes. You just looked so far away for a minute there."

They were drawing closer to the countertop. "What would you like, Lila? Popcorn? A hotdog? Maybe some—"

But they were interrupted then by a large crash, and some kind of spray of cold liquid behind them, which Arnold instantly felt seeping into the back of his denim jeans. Lila shrieked. Her entire dress, he saw, had been drenched in that half-second. In fact, the deluge of liquid had hit her so hard that it was dripping from the ends of her hair.

They both whipped around at the same time. Arnold wasn't sure what he was expecting – but it certainly wasn't Harold Berman, standing behind them with a guilty expression on his face, the rug around him soiled with a fallen cup and an overturned bag of popcorn.

"Oh man!" Harold yelled loudly, pressing his hands to his cheeks. "Didn't see you guys there! What a terrible accident! Gee, it's too bad that sticky, sugary soda had to fall all over Lila's dress!"

Arnold stared at him, raising an eyebrow.

"What a horrible turn of events," Harold continued shakily. "Anyways, sorry about that."

He began to casually walk away from the mess on the floor.

"Hey, wait! What are you doing in the snack line if you already got your popcorn, anyway?" Arnold asked skeptically.

Harold blinked. Beads of sweat were collecting noticeably on his forehead, further adding to Arnold's confusion. "Huh?" Harold said. "Oh, I was – uh – I'm really hungry. That's all. I decided I needed some candy. What's it to you, anyway?" he added, glowering.

Arnold glanced at Lila. She was attempting to smooth out her drenched dress with both hands.

"Don't worry," she said quickly to both boys. "I'm certain it was just an accident."

They moved up to the display counter. At Lila's request, Arnold bought them one bag of popcorn to share, and two Sprites to go with it. But as the two of them made their way through the roped bend to the ticket collector, he couldn't shake the odd feeling that their encounter with Harold had been purposefully planned. Why, though? What did Harold have against them? He'd outgrown his off-the-cuff bullying stage years before.

"Oh, Arnold, I'm ever so excited," Lila was saying, apparently having moved on quickly from the fiasco, despite the fact that her dress was still dripping soda onto the floor. "Aren't you?"

"What?" Arnold replied distractedly. "Oh, I mean, yeah… really excited."

They passed the suited attendant their tickets and headed into the theater.

"Where do you want to sit, Lila?" he asked her.

"Oh, at the front of the theater, of course. I just love being extra close to the screen. That way I feel like I'm really a part of everything."

He shrugged as he followed her into the second row. The screen was much too close for his liking, but he didn't feel that that was especially important, in light of the fact that he wasn't expecting to be particularly engrossed in this movie, anyway.

They sat down on the fold-out seats, sipping their sodas and politely letting the popcorn go uneaten until the start of the movie. The trailers were only just beginning.

"Ooh, I just love trailers," Lila squealed quietly as they settled in. Her hand was reaching closer to his, palm almost brushing against his knuckles.

He jumped slightly in his chair – he hadn't been expecting the skin-to-skin contact.

"Arnold, what's wrong?" she asked him, removing her hand immediately.

"Oh – nothing," he whispered. "Sorry, I just… never mind."

He thought he saw her frown slightly. Rather than attempting to hold his hand again, she reached into the bag of popcorn, munching quietly

"Oh, look, the eleventh Evil Twin is coming out soon," he mumbled as the screen begin to flash with the upcoming movie's trademark block letter title. Several appreciative shrieks ran through the auditorium as a knife-wielding twin appeared on the screen, chuckling maniacally and dripping with blood.

Lila's yell was the most pronounced of all. In fact, once she had started screaming, she couldn't seem to stop.

"It's okay," he tried to tell her soothingly. "Close your eyes, I'll tell you when the trailer's over."

"No, it's not that! Something is BITING ME!"

"Biting you?" he repeated in a hushed voice. "What would be biting you?"

"I DON'T KNOW, BUT I'M EVER SO CERTAIN SOMETHING IS BITING ME!" Lila shrieked urgently. "I CAN FEEL IT!" she leapt up suddenly from her seat, her perfectly manicured fingernails digging tightly into some sort of rasping, scaly creature that looked to Arnold like a tiny dinosaur in the dark. It was hissing, its curling tongue reaching out again and again to lap at Lila's skin.

"What is that?" he gasped, his heart rate gathering speed as he jumped up, too. They had attracted the attention of everyone else in the theater now, who were staring at the scene in front of them rather than the screen with gawking eyes.

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS!" Lila screamed, almost in tears now. "GET IT OFF ME, ARNOLD!"

Gallantly, he reached for the lizard-like animal, pulling as hard as he could. Its teeth were sunken into Lila's arm so deeply that it took several yanks before it finally gave way. Arnold toppled backwards onto the floor with the force of his momentum. Still holding the creature, it only took him a minute to realize that there wasn't one but at least a dozen of these mysterious serpents, all glaring at him with beady yellow eyes as his head hit the ground with a resounding thump.

"Oh, Arnold!" came Lila's voice above him, somehow both drooping and frantic. "Be careful!"

He clamped a hand automatically around the tails of two more of the closest lizards and began to rise slowly from the ground, holding their wriggling bodies tightly in their grasp. All around him, screams were erupting as the audience members began to charge down the aisleways as though running for their lives.

Somebody definitely did this on purpose, Arnold suddenly thought, the realization burning into his brain with the force of a freight train ramming into a bundle of passengers. I know somebody did this on purpose. Was it the proximity of the lizards surrounding his hair and closing in on him to peck at his face, all the exact same size, and all mysteriously crowded into this one miniscule area of the theater? Or was it the familiar laughter he could hear behind him, the deep, unmistakable voice ringing through the darkness? He turned around, feeling as though he were moving in slow motion. He'd have recognized the brooding eyes, that sinister smirk of Curly Gammelthorpe anywhere.