Helga arrived at the Hut at her regular time on Saturday, having freshly cleared her soul the day before of incriminating verses and fully prepared for another Slam win. After a few days of awful silence, she had finally approached Phoebe in the cafeteria with a mumbled apology, and the two picked up where they left off, if not a little stiffly. Despite her clean slate, her nerves were shot.
After a convincingly solid performance, Helga still felt extremely jumpy, ready for her friends to suddenly exclaim an embarrassing and completely unwanted "Surprise!" at any moment, but it didn't happen. The pizza was the same, greasy, yet better than no food at all—anything was better than whatever she could scrounge around the house with her parents out of town on their weird marriage bonding retreat.
The Slam competitors tried their hardest to beat her but didn't—no surprise there. Arnold and Phoebe and Harold and all the others congratulated her as they always did—nothing out of the ordinary. Gerald did give her a creepy wink and a thumbs up at one point, but if anything, it made the situation even more cryptic.
In passing, she gave Peapod Kid a consolation high five for his poem about a man morphing into an insect—while it was disturbing, Helga could appreciate the symbolism. Nadine definitely could too—she'd given him an enthusiastic standing ovation as Rhonda slumped in her chair, attempting to hide her face with her hand.
The noise of metal scraping on metal somewhere near the stage startled her enough to swivel her head around. Sheena was busy taking her bass clarinet out of its case and was helping Eugene affix a triangle to a rickety music stand—he could at least play that one-handed. After a while, the low tones mixed dreamlike with the infrequent high pitched dings, and the poker players drew up their chairs around two of the larger tables. Stinky emerged from the kitchen wearing his "card-playin' hat," plopped into a chair, shuffled the deck, and held it out for Patti to cut the cards.
Deep into a competitive round of betting, Helga was about to call Stinky's bluff when the music stopped. Her classmates' voices blared sharply into focus and then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Phoebe and Arnold slowly make their way to the stage. Sheena and Eugene trotted over and pulled up their own chairs to their respective tables. Phoebe was hauling her cello out of its case while Arnold slid a chair helpfully towards her. Duets and trios, even full-blown ensembles weren't unusual—especially with Eugene and Sheena or even Stinky and the Strings (as he affectionately liked to call their collaborations)—but Arnold and Phoebe had never attempted one.
"So that's it…" Helga whispered to herself, completely unimpressed. "Big whoop." Her arms reached out to scoop her winnings towards her—she'd have first dibs on the pile of candy on the adjacent table if her luck continued.
Phoebe's bow began to move. Helga tried her best to concentrate on the game. When she could bear the curiosity no longer, she glanced up to monitor the situation, feigning interest in what Rhonda was saying about her most recent shoe purchase and nodding dumbly in what she hoped were the right places.
Arnold, who had been sitting completely still until this moment, began to play. Helga's breath caught in her throat. She knew this music. It was the same captivating melody she'd heard him play weeks ago in this very room, when it was just him and her sitting together in the echoing space.
Bewildered, Helga placed two chips at random on the table. Phoebe continued to play smoothly, adding dimension to the piece and filling the room with reverberating warmth, but it was Arnold who was leading this performance, and it was Arnold who was looking up from the piano directly at her—Helga felt a sharp elbow in her side and distractedly folded her hand. Gerald caught her eye from across the room and nodded once, a grin spreading across his face.
The piece was hauntingly beautiful, hints of soulful jazz interwoven with a bittersweet waltzing tune—it shouldn't have made sense, but it did. The notes played together, were sad together—her mouth hung slightly open in awe. Arnold had closed his eyes, clearly letting some sort of passion take hold of him and carry him through to the end of the piece.
It didn't take long for Helga to become aware of the entire room enveloped in a tense hush, watching her watching him. Was this actually happening?
When it was over, Phoebe looked up, beaming at Helga. Arnold lifted his hands from the keys and turned to smile shyly at her.
Rhonda was gaping in surprise, the tale of her shopping escapades completely forgotten. Lila and Gloria were nudging each other, sharing some smug secret.
Two playing cards fluttered ghostlike to the floor, and the door to the Coco Hut opened and slammed. Stinky let out a low whistle. Everyone in the room turned sharply to him. "What?"