Before the Next Teardrop Falls

SOPHMORE, HIGH SCHOOL

I dated Johnny for two months before he got kicked out of school last year. He put marijuana into cookies during Cooking and someone ratted him out. We haven't stayed in touch.

I wouldn't have really called it 'dating' anyway, other than just hanging out. We barely held hands and never kissed.

For the first eleven years of my life I was ignored by my family. Nothing I did was good enough for them to even to remember that I was there. My father didn't even know my own fucking name. It was always Olga this, Olga that. Never Helga. Never good job Helga. And never, ever I love you, Helga.

Sure, my family got better. My dad remembers my name more often than not and we still do Game Nights. But the l-word is still pretty much taboo in the Pataki household.

Luke was the first to tell me he loved me. He was the first to hold me tightly in his arms and was the first to whisper promises of the future. He made me feel like I was worth something without having to prove anything and just be myself. I felt safe with him and he gave me the attention I didn't realize that I desperately wanted. He seemed to give me the care that I had never received before from any guy and made me feel like I was worth something.

There's a difference between being friends with guys and finding yourself the object of desire. It changes you and even if it wasn't Arnold, something deep in me craved it more than I realized. And I really needed it because I was starting to fall for Arnold again and I couldn't let myself do that. Luke was a fail-safe and said he would always be there. And like a damned fool, I fell for it.

I am not an object and for a wasted bit of time I allowed myself to be someone I'm not. All for fake feelings of splendor and pleasure. I was an idiot. Am an idiot.

The tears I had tried so hard to keep in finally break loose and nothing I do makes them stop.

I ignore them as they fall down my neck. It should itch like crazy, but I don't feel anything. I am numb except for the pain in my chest. It has to be my unbalanced teenage hormones, the same fucking hormones that made me such a simpleton when I first agreed to date Luke, because something like this should not make me hole up in my room, refusing to go to school or show my face in society. I should be over there now, at his place, beating the living shit out of him. I should be unleashing Hell's fury onto that pretty face of his, cutting off protruding body parts and handing them back in a rusty can. But instead I am sitting on my bed, crying into my pillow.

I have experienced heartache before, but this is nothing to what it felt like when I was ten. The entire pain of my childhood dulls in comparison to this. It literally feels like my heart is being ripped from my chest. I have never been so humiliated or felt so absolutely destroyed in my entire life.

For eight months Luke had been there. We had met last year when Gerald and Arnold made it onto the baseball team and our group of four started to merge with a lot of their teammates. We had all hung out in the spring and into summer, but then on Independence Day he asked me out. I didn't want to say yes, I was nervous and afraid, but Phoebe told me I needed to do this. I felt comfortable with Luke and I liked him, and if it didn't work out, it didn't work out. But I would have the experience of 'real' dating and truly letting go.

And it had been great.

We had been happy together. There had been many nights that we had snuck away to over look Hillwood, and shared secrets and dreams; most of them Luke's. We were comfortable. I wanted to believe in us, in our possible future, but most of all I wanted to believe that I could be desired; to be loved. I let my guard down and gave him everything. My virginity. My trust. Two nights ago had changed everything.

My throat clenches tightly and I sob harder. How could he have done this to me? Am I really that horrible that I cannot trust my own fucking boyfriend? Am I cursed?

Logically I know that cannot be. If anyone has seen any 80's teen movie they know that High School is full of betrayal and backstabbing and cheating and drama. But nothing could have prepared me for this.

I vaguely hear something at my window but I don't give it any attention. I am too consumed with necessity to stop crying and telling my heart to stop killing me to pay attention to anything else. But then the window is open and rain is rushing inside.

I turn away and wipe my eyes as the window closes. There is some water on my bed but I ignore it, just like everything else. It doesn't matter. I blink back the tears that distort my vision, but I can only see yellow. I know who has snuck into my room and I wipe my eyes again, biting my lip to keep from crying anew. The small distraction seems to have only been temporary and I want to cry harder now than before.

Without saying anything, Arnold takes off his jacket, dumping it onto his also discarded, sopping shoes. Still silent, he hands me a paper bag and sits on the edge of the bed, his leg underneath him. Why is he here after what he's heard that I've done?

Surely he's heard.

With hands that are not my own, I take it from him, sniffing, and peer inside. It's probably the homework I missed or some sort of other goody-goody, football-headed thing.

Instead, there is a brown, cardboard lid with the magical words Chunky Monkey on the center. I choke out a cough that was meant to be a laugh and look up at him with bleary, red eyes. I do not ask him how he knows because it's the same way how I know his favorite is basic chocolate. No doubt my eyes are puffy and gross, and my nose is runny, and normally I would have been mortified for him to see me like this, but I don't care. It just feels like a nightmare.

He must think that I was out sick today, just like I told Phoebe to tell everyone, because if he had heard about it, he wouldn't be here.

But then he looks at me with that pathos look that is purely Arnold and my stomach is tight.

"Who knows?" Whose voice was that? It was tight and quiet and was barely a noise; it couldn't have been mine.

"Just me and Matt." Just me and Matt?I cannot breathe and feel as if I am going to hyperventilate. They all know then. And he knows.

"He has been...persuaded...to keep his mouth shut. And the tape was destroyed." I hear him but I cannot listen. I am crying again and cannot stop. He does not say Luke's name and I am grateful.

Suddenly his arms are around me and I am crying into his chest, but I am not fully aware. My agony is choking me. Why am I crying? I don't love my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. It is not our inevitable breakup that made me miss school. I weep for the lose of my innocence. Before Luke, I had hope. Now, I am just empty.

He has proven to me what I had feared all along: I am unloveable and unwanted. I am nothing to everybody.

I do not know when I stop crying or how I came to be laying my head on Arnold's lap. I am worn and empty. I am in pain but feel nothing.

"How?" There is no elaboration of the question and I myself am not exactly sure what it is that I am asking. How did they find out? How did he find out? How was Luke 'persuaded?' I don't know.

"A few juniors from Lincoln were up in his room Saturday at the party." I had to be at the dance studio and could not make it. Fresh tears of humiliation fall again, but in silence. At least it's a change.

I could hear the hesitation in his voice and I cringe, fighting the sudden onslaught of hard tears that I just fucking thought were going away. "He brought it out to show them." My hair is plastered to my face but I do not move. Arnold tucks it behind my ear.

His voice is low and his heart is racing. I can hear and feel it, thumping as hard as mine. He shifts but not enough to force me off his lap. "Matt and I walked in." He went quiet and the tears are still falling.

I swallow hard and it is audible.

"He wasn't at school today either. He won't say anything. We made sure of it." It was Matt who had shown up at my house yesterday morning, looking distraught. He hadn't gone into detail, just that Luke had a tape of us having sex and had shown a couple of random guys from the neighboring high school the night before. Bragging.

Impossible. There was no tape. I had laughed at him. He hadn't laughed back.

"I haven't told anyone and neither will Matt; the principal or anyone... But if you want me to, I will."

When I called Luke, confronted him, all I asked was if it was true. He didn't play dumb like I thought he would. "Yes." It had been as simple as that. He had just rattled on about how he was sorry and that it was stupid of him and that it wasn't his fault, that they had forced him to show it to them. Yeah right, forced my ass. I think he may have actually started crying at one point.

He knew I was going to rip him a new asshole, but I didn't. I just hung up. It should have scared him more than any words I could have said.

I want Luke to hurt as much as I am hurting now. I want him to burn for this and I want him to be just as humiliated as I am. I want revenge.

But not by telling the authorities. They will make it public and then everyone will know what I had not known. Not to mention I was just shy of my sixteenth birthday. Who knows what trouble that would bring. "No." I clear my throat. It does nothing but create another lump that I try to swallow. "Something else. Not that."

Arnold's fingers are in my hair again. I'm not sure if they had ever left, but I can feel them. "I can put Icy Hot in his jock strap."

I don't know how, but I give curt laugh; if it could actually be called a laugh. It was more like a dying hippo. I sit up then and rub my eyes with the heel of my hand, still miserable and humiliated. But I can hear and feel again so I'm not as bad. "I can't believe you can even look at me right now." It's not just because I haven't showered today. My heart clenches tightly because he knows. I don't ask if he saw anything.

"Helga, he's an asshole. And you didn't know. And even if you did, it doesn't matter. What you guys do, or did, should only be between you two." I make a face and wipe my eyes again. He is right but I cannot respond. If I do, it will be a rebuttal and I know he'll call me out on it. I don't want to be wrong. Not right now when I have never been so wrong before.

"I'm going to kill him. Slowly and painfully."

"Wait until I can get you some gloves. You don't want to leave any fingerprints and I'm sure you'll be the first suspect. Actually, maybe I'll do it instead."

I slightly laugh again but there is little humor. I take a deep breath push back my hair. "Thank you, Arnold. You didn't have to do...all that you did."

"Yeah I did." I do not press and I wonder again what happened that I don't know about, but I'll ask him another time. "Besides, I know you like Chunky Monkey. And what makes anyone feel better than ice cream?"

I blink and then look down at the bag still on my lap, acutely aware of the irony, that hidden meaning he will never know. Yes, ice cream makes people feel better with its magical ingredients...so full of optimism and sanguineness.

"Yeah." I force a smile. "You're right."

He gives me a lop-sided grin, obviously accepting my fake amusement and takes the bag back. As I watch him take the carton out and open it, I try not to think about tomorrow. I will go to school and hold my head high and trust that Arnold is right and that no one else knows about it. Or will ever know. That this tape really has been destroyed and that Luke won't say anything.

I frown. Trust Arnold? Yes, we are friends but that was it. Luke and I had been much more than that. There had never been a 'Helga and Arnold', but there had been a 'Helga and Luke'. How can I trust Arnold when I couldn't Luke?

I keep from hitting myself. What a stupid question. If anyone was trustworthy, it was Mr. Positive himself. And I have never fully trusted him before. I flinch at the realization.

I didn't trust him with my secret as a kid. I didn't trust his friendship or his letters when they first arrived when I was in Kentucky. I didn't trust his judgement when he told me he didn't really like Luke's attitude. I had never truly trusted him, but he had always trusted me.

Just like true Football Head fashion, he took it upon himself to help me. It startles me to realize this, but I believe him when he says no one will know and that Luke won't say anything.

If I had trusted him from the beginning, how different would things be?

Before I know it, he's shoving the pint into my hand with a spoon he brought and I give him a genuine smile. I don't want to eat anything, but who can say no to Ice Cream?