A/N: Welcome back to the show.
I apologize that the intermission has been so long. I'm sure after my breakneck pace of updates in the first half of the story, a nearly six month pause seems practically infinite. Well, I'm back, and the story continues. I will try to keep a reasonable pace, most likely an update a month, until we are done.
Thank you all for your continued reader support and feedback. I'm excited to get back to our kids, and see where the road takes us.
Oh, also, many thousand apologies, but we won't get to see Helga and Arnold in present day for awhile...better strap in, it's time for flashbacks and exposition.
Emergency Edit: Due to massive brainfarts, I was calling Nadine Sheena. I blame liquor, and today's public schooling system, and the corruption of our youth.
Keeping Arnold, Chapter 12: To Be a Child Again, and Easily Forgiven
"No [one], for any considerable period, can wear one face to [them]self and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Her face shielded by the open blue door of her locker, Lila stood in listening distance of two familiar faces, bent close in conspiratorial whisper. She stood very still, not even breathing, listening with every ounce of concentration she could muster. Rhonda and Nadine were trying to keep quiet, but the subject matter of their hushed conversation caused them to unintentionally raise their voices from time to time, giving Lila tasty little tidbits to piece the meat of their secretive exchange together.
Such subterfuge had become a common practice for Lila, who moved in secret unbeknownst to any of her friends as the shadowy entity known only as Fuzzy Slippers.
She hated the name, for the record, and regarded the childish nomenclature as a troublesome artifact of the immature mind that cooked it up in the first place: Gerald. Though the idea was his humble creation, the reality had taken a monstrous life of its own with Lila behind the veil. If she was honest, she adored a juicy mystery story, and in the grandest traditions of Moriarity and Count Mountebank she orchestrated disaster, tragedy, victory, and loss for the lives of her completely ignorant peer group.
Nobody knew who moved behind the name Fuzzy Slippers, after all, except for one person. And as long as she kept to her side of the bargain - which suited her ultimate game just fine - her secret would be kept safe. Besides, she wasn't as simple to leave such an obvious weakness unchecked. A devastating trick, a masterfully planted and tended dead man's trigger, awaited the off chance that her identity could be compromised.
Helga G. Pataki was safe from her direct actions as Fuzzy Slippers thanks to Brainy's little secret, but a terrible fate awaited her should there be some tragic slip of the tongue somewhere.
But Helga was not someone Lila spent a lot of time thinking about. The shadow of the person Pataki used to be moved through the hallways of their highschool, haunting the spaces of friendly memory with sepulcher expression and distant eyes. Totally uninteresting, and a bit of a drag. Lila liked happy things, happy endings, and there was no happy ending for Helga. Not anymore.
Arnold had more or less stopped mentioning her in his letters to Lila a year or so ago. He always wrote to "tell everyone I say hello," but Lila didn't count that as anything explicitly for Pataki. Not that Lila was jealous of Helga, not in the slightest. Truthfully, she was always rooting for the troubled girl to finally express her crush and capitalize on it. It was a secret she was glad to keep, and in fact maybe the only one she had still kept so far. The fact that her story ended sad, unacted on, a footnote in the past was a bit of a disappointment for Lila when she was younger. Now she hardly thought about it at all, as newer disasters and star crossed love affairs began to spring around her in fierce bursts of teenage passion, and a girl has got to keep busy with her interests. And Lila had ever so much to do.
Namely, stay a step ahead of her worthy opponents in Gerald and Phoebe.
In her two friends, Lila had found truly dangerous foes, capable and clever and determined to hunt Fuzzy Slippers down and end their campaign of making things interesting. They had no idea it was her. They never would. That secret was something she would preserve and guard with all her efforts. And just in case things got too heated, she had a thousand ways to kill the trail cold stone dead, and would simply shed the identity altogether. Although she had fun spicing up the lives of her friends and fellow high schoolers with the sort of sordid, scandalous tales and rumor-spreading that would typify your worst dime-store soap operas, she felt no attachment to the identity that others called Fuzzy Slippers in hushed tones. It was a useful mask, and Lila was familiar with masks.
Once, she wondered if what she did made her a bad person. But she reasoned that if there was no malicious intent behind the moving of information in surreptitious ways, all she was really doing was accomplishing the inevitable in a merely more interesting, constructive way. She'd ended friendships by revealing secrets, true, but were friendships built on lies and misinformation really worthy of the title? Did two young lovers deserve to stay together and pretend to be happy if one or both of them had proved unfaithful? If dirty laundry was everywhere - and at her high school, there were oh so many piles of the stuff - it wasn't really wrong of her to tidy up. If people she loved and considered friends needed to be burned a little in order to learn an important lesson, was she a bad person for willingly holding the irons over the fire?
To Lila Sawyer, morality was a grey area that had a lot of room for interpretation, and unlucky for her friends, the sensitive, sweetly-dispositioned and nurturing side of her was balanced perfectly with the frank, ever-so-honest and clever side of her, and both sides were balanced against her private self, a more closely guarded self, a Lila Sawyer of cunning and guile that lived within her own pre-set boundaries, and loathed the insecurities of the uncertain. It was a secret she'd carried with her from her home town that she had been quite the gossip and harpy, devoid of all the sweet charm and honest smiles. She had decided to change herself when she moved, seeing a fresh start as a new opportunity for a new Lila. But she simply could not discard the things that made her up. Rather, she found better ways to apply those habits and compulsions, and learned to smile at the absurd, laugh at the ridiculous, and honestly enjoy the idiotic. It made her seem sweet. It made her seem kind. That was fine for Lila.
At first, simply deflecting Arnold's romantic advances had been a wearying, although thorough distraction. His attentions, while sweet and honest, unfortunately did not interest her, and so she found herself patiently, ever-so-sweetly reminding him time and time again that she simply didn't feel that way about him. Were it not for the fact that he was especially persistent and dashing and attractive, she would likely have been far less forgiving. She liked nice people. Arnold was a nice boy. And as far as she could tell, he was impeccably clean. Everyone else at PS118 had something to hide, and something she found lacking in their basic characters. Harold was a selfish loudmouth momma's boy. Phoebe was a perfectionist and a snoot. Rhonda was putting on airs and far to big for her britches. The only flaw she could find in Arnold was that he was so gosh darn in love with her. It's a shame she wasn't interested; but she simply wasn't.
That all changed, though.
It is hard to say when the boy in the letters became more than a friend in the spaces of her heart. How does one even pinpoint the exact moment when the dial switched over from like to love? It wasn't some instant of eureka, with a grand brilliant flash of understanding and romantic intent. Rather, simply, one day Lila realised she was trembling with excitement as she read one of Arnold's doting and sweet missives, and that she had been staring at the picture he sent of himself with his parents much taller and much more handsome than she remembered. Ah, that must be it, the feeling I was missing, she had thought, and was then decidedly smitten.
He didn't know of course. It was hardly the right time for it. And Arnold also didn't know that she planned to go hunt him down once she graduated, or sooner if she could work out studying abroad with her family. She didn't half-ass things. She had too much to do in this life to hesitate. Again, she was reminded of Helga, hesitating, always hesitating. Poor fool.
Rhonda slammed her locker shut suddenly, bringing Lila back to the present from her little moment of daydreaming, and Sawyer busily pretended to be loading and unloading textbooks in her book bag so she could listen.
"I simply can't believe you, Nadine, after everything I've done for you. How could you?"
"How could I?" Lila heard the eclectic girl shoot back, apparently uncaring who heard because the volume of her voice has escalated significantly. "Don't you dare try to twist this back onto me, Rhonda, not when you've been ignoring me for some time!."
"Hardly!" Rhonda spun dramatically to face her shorter friend, and Lila could see they were almost inches apart now. As their conversation left the discreetly whispered bickering Lila had been eavesdropping on and became a full blown shouting match, it quickly left the realm of usefulness for her purposes, but it would still be interesting nonetheless. Lila closed her locker and made a point of being seen by Nadine over Rhonda's shoulder. Nadine's eyes recognized her, and then darted onto Rhonda's face nervously.
Rhonda continued, tearing in. "Who was the one that begged me to join her on that absurd camping trip? Who was the one that forced me to keep Chocolate Boy busy while you gallivanted off with your tawdry little love interest, only to turn him down? I barely lifted a finger to put an end to what was already a dead end relationship. I resent that you would even accuse me of such a thing, when the blame is so squarely on your shoulders!"
Lila knew the incident they were arguing about now. Nadine had arranged a camping trip with Rhonda, Chocolate Boy, and Lorenzo. Lorenzo wouldn't go without Chocolate Boy, and Chocolate Boy wasn't interested unless Rhonda was going. Lila guessed it hadn't gone well, because not long after that trip Nadine and Lorenzo stopped talking and the tension between Nadine and Rhonda had built to boiling. Fuzzy Slippers may have had a hand in adding some baseless speculation about why it went poorly, however, and heavily insinuated that Rhonda had put the moves on Lorenzo behind Nadine's back. There was some evidence to suggest Nadine's primary reason for being upset with her best friend was jealousy.
It looks like Lila wasn't far off the mark.
"I told you, Rhonda," Nadine spoke slowly, eyeing Lila again with concern. "That was a misunderstanding. A big one. If you would just listen to me about that-"
"I refuse!" Rhonda interrupted. "And now, weeks later, you come to me with petty complaints and trifling grievances, and I've had it. I think we need to spend some time apart."
Lila turned away, as if to give the two of them privacy, but continued to listen to their very public meltdown.
"No, no, Rhonda, you're missing the point! I'm upset because we're spending too much time apart already!"
"Not enough, by my estimation."
"Don't, please," Nadine seemed to be almost panicked. Lila heard the strain of emotion in her voice.
"Don't call me." Lila heard Rhonda turn, watched as she stormed past her and turned down the hall in angry silence. The slow sound of a bag slumping to the floor, followed by its owner, told LIla that Nadine wouldn't be moving for some time.
Best to move on and let them stew on their feelings. Lila began to puzzle out what in the world they were actually arguing about as she stepped into her next class, mind completely in the complex social web Fuzzy Slippers had helped to weave.
"You'll be paired off into twelve groups," Lila's English Literature teacher began, handing out project packets to the front of each row of the class. "You have three weeks to complete the projects. Each packet has a number on the last page, please take note of it as I give you more details."
Lila sat at her desk, mind divided into two halves, each working on a separate issue. On the one, she had her attention squared onto the teacher and her class, and the surprise group project she'd be involved in apparently. The other was still ruminating over the Rhonda and Nadine problem. He took a packet from the boy in front of her automatically, passing the rest of the stack backwards.
"There's twenty poems listed in the packet, and you and your partner will select one of them to analyze and read aloud to the class for discussion. You will lead the discussion as a team. Furthermore, your analysis will be turned into me in the form of a six page paper, and will serve as the basis of your discussion with the class."
The teacher, Mr. Oswald, was a man that Lila could tell was handsome twenty years ago, but who had succumbed to a mostly sedentary lifestyle and a few decades of teaching hormonal teenagers the poetry of love. Now, he looked tired, and sounded worse off. Still, she liked him, mostly for his efficiency and impartiality in his grading. Lila always did well in this class.
"Since there's twelve groups and twenty poems, there's the possibility of overlapping, so you and your partner will number off three poems in terms of preference and turn it in to me by the end of today. I'll assign poems based on preference. Now's the time to check out that number on the back again. Your partner has the matching number. So, everybody, get acquainted with your partners."
Mr. Oswald stood back and crossed his arms over his argyle sweater, watching the class stand up and begin noisily and excitedly bustle about to find their missing half from above his round wire rimmed spectacles. Lila saw a special twinkle in his eye, directed at her. What was that?
She flipped to the end of her packet and saw the number, 12, and then scanned the room, unsure what she was looking for. Most of the rest of the class was noisily shouting out their numbers, pairs separating off and pushing tables together to get started. She sat at her desk, looking around, wondering-
"Yo, number 12. Looks like we're partners, Sawyer." The one voice in the classroom Lila didn't want to hear belted out from behind her.
Helga Pataki chewed her gum noisily, looking unimpressed at Lila, dressed in what was typical of Pataki these days, which translated to "casual, flannel, torn, dirty-looking, diy, trampy, etc, etc, etc."
"Ah, you have the other number 12 then?" Lila turned to face Pataki, equally as unimpressed.
"Nah I'm just standing here for no reason, figured I'd check out the view from your seat. What th'fuck y'think?" There it was. That ever-so-charming Pataki charisma.
Lila gave Helga a look. It was awfully disappointing to have to be paired to her, but more than that, it was obvious to Lila now what that look meant. Mr. Oswald had distributed the packets on purpose. He knew the way the papers were stacked, Lila was going to draw the number 12 and so was Helga. Clever, David. Unlike the other students, Lila occasionally had reason to call her teachers by their first name. Like when she was uncovering their secrets as Fuzzy Slippers.
Helga walked around the front of LIla and noisily turned her former neighbor's desk around, then swung one long gangly leg into the seat to face her. She slapped the packet down and started running her finger down the lines, browsing the poetry selections and the rubric.
"So whatcha thinking, figure if he's got some Whitman in here it's an easy A, Oswald's a sucker for that Mystic Masculinity stuff," Helga started off. "Or Plath, since he's got such a boner for her."
"Please, Helga, there's really no reason to be vulgar here. Let's just select a poem that resonates with us."
"Fuck that, and fuck you, I'll be vulgar if I want. I'm not interested in resonating with this project, Mr. Oswald, or especially you. Just want my easy A we can crank out in one weekend so I can goof off the other two."
Lila pressed the paper on her desk with her hands firmly, scowling openly. Helga, much like Arnold, was one of the only people that really ruffled her.
"Fine, if that's what you want, ending this partnership quickly is ever so fine with me. What are you preferences, I'll mark them on the sheet."
"Let's see, Whitman, obviously, number 1. Plath, 2. And, let's see….oh, shit, here we go! Shelley, 3. No, wait, 1. Bump Walt and Sylvia down a notch."
Lila sighed and wrote down their preferences, then corrected them, then wrote them down again. She wrote their names on the top of the sheet, feeling a little loathsome that her name was next to Pataki's. It wasn't that she hated her. She just pitied her. And pity was a disgusting emotion to LIla.
She handed off the sheet to Mr Oswald, who took it and whispered "Good luck, Ms. Sawyer" with a mischievous glimmer in his eye.
David, please, do not cast such impish looks my way, she groaned inwardly as she returned to her desk. Not after what you did with last year's valedictorian. Lila had dirt on Mr. Oswald, too. Of course she did! But she wouldn't use it, not without a really big reason. It was the kind of leverage that ended careers, maybe even lives. She didn't need that type of leverage. Yet.
"So, since it's Ozymandias, I figure we'll knock this out this weekend, what's your guess, Sawyer?"
"Please call me Lila, Helga. I think that with your expertise and my familiarity with Mr. Oswald's preferred method of poetic analysis and discussion, I'm ever so sure that we'll be able to finish this weekend without any problems."
"Killer. Brainy and I got band practice most of the weekend, but we can meet somewhere Saturday afternoon and get this knocked out. Don't forget or fuck this up, I want that A."
"I'll take it seriously, so I just hope that you will, too."
Helga tilted up one of her big black eyebrows, looking Lila up and down in the way she used to when she was actually frightening to Lila. She used to be able to send a little shiver down her spine with a glance, or make her dread going to school if she and Arnold were fighting. Now, Lila felt like she was sitting across from an unloaded gun. It was dangerous in theory.
"I take everything seriously. Even slacking off. When I slack off, I seriously slack off. So don't worry your pretty little head and those adorable pigtails about me."
How boring. Lila finished writing her notes for the project, and picked up her notebook to take with her as she handed their packet in. As she stood up, one of Arnold's letters and the accompanying photo of him spilled out of the loose pages, sliding in front of Helga in naked slow motion.
Helga stared at what she saw while Lila held her breath, sure as she was ever sure that Helga would blow up in fury.
Instead, she slowly lifted the picture of him, eyes wide, and seemed to lose herself in the sun-kissed messy hair, the easy smile. His teenage appearance must have been a shock for her. Still so good looking, but just a bit sturdier and more dependable from a few years of wild adventure.
"Arnold's sure doing well down there." Helga put the picture down and mechanically pushed away from the desk, leaving it behind on her way to the classroom door. Lila detected no emotion. Nothing but a statement. It sounded haunting and hollow.
She's hardened her heart so thoroughly, Lila observed with a bit of sadness. The strength of her own emotional reaction surprised and disappointed Lila, who had thought she had written Helga off for good. Worse still, she hated being directly to blame for another person's misery - at least, while they also knew she was to blame. It was less a conflict of conscience, and more of a discomfort with culpability. The whole situation made her rather disconcerted, and it was an unwelcome sensation.
She was left with that vaguely unsettling feeling until the weekend came, and she was forced to confront Helga in close quarters again, unbalanced and vaguely unsure how she should proceed with her former friend.
Lila's bangs blew messily in the sudden cold blast of air in the handicap-accessible walkway from the red-eye flight she took to Hillwood first thing in the morning. The kind steward carried her carry-on bags, which stuffed to capacity represented the whole of her current belongings not boxed up in her childhood home, put up for sale. She was mostly silent the entire flight, nursing a killer hangover and the results of last night's bourbon binge. She was sure she looked a fright, but, how she looked mattered precisely dick all when compared to the work she had left to be done.
For starters, she had to come to terms with the facts: Arnold and Helga had most likely reconciled, possibly while in severe states of inebriation, and were almost definitely hooking up. A lifetime of romantic and sexual tension built up to a crescendo by Helga's re-ignited passions, and expressed by means of extremely powerful music were not likely to end in a chaste evening. Lila could handle the fact that Arnold's flesh had most likely given in to the temptation. She could even handle the fact that Arnold probably thought he was in love with her still and that this was the right thing to do for his happiness. She was even ready to accept that maybe he was right.
But she wouldn't accept a damn thing without a fight. That's not who she was. Lila Sawyer didn't bow out gracefully for anyone, she would only accept total defeat. She wouldn't concede until every last trick and weapon she had at her disposal as Fuzzy Slippers was exhausted and Arnold remained lost. She owed it to herself, but more than that, she respected Helga enough, she would offer nothing less.
Lila reflected on her relationship with the troubling young woman as she rode the elevator down to the baggage claim and her waiting taxi. Lila and Helga had been rivals in one way or another multiple times. First, when Helga had gone to such extreme and remarkable lengths just to get to kiss Arnold in their school play, Lila had seen a girl with such fierceness and strength that she would take risks Lila would never consider just to get a little closer to someone she cared about. Lila liked Helga right away. She had always felt bad, then, that Arnold had fallen for her instead of noticing Helga's affections and seeing through the obvious bullying and bravado. Truthfully, that more than anything else had driven her to not care as much for Arnold as she might have otherwise.
She had assumed their rivalry ended when Arnold left their town, and Helga gave up. She, of course, discovered in high school that Helga never really gave up, just forced herself to try. Without success, but, the effort was remarkable just the same. If it hadn't been for their meddlesome English teacher, she would never had the opportunity to discover just what lengths Helga had gone to in her attempt to murder her heart. Again, Lila was awed with Helga's private strength.
Now, she was forced to go up against that strength in earnest. It would be her life's challenge. The thought made her headache much worse.
She made a mental inventory of her action items once she arrived at her destination. Her Big Sis had been overjoyed to hear that Lila would be making a surprise visit first thing in the morning, and made arrangements with Miriam without delay. That was the obvious first step, simply make her presence in Hillwood known, and especially make it known with whom she was staying.
Second, she had to immediately shift blame for the picture that was distributed by Rhonda to the actual source. It wouldn't work if people thought Fuzzy Slippers was actually going after Helga directly, but it did serve her purposes to make people suspect it at first. Once Rhonda fessed up - and she would, no question - the appearance of the real Fuzzy Slipper's handiwork would send everyone into a panic.
That was where her opportunity lied. Throw questions into everyone's memories. Force confrontations that had remained un-approached for a decade. Unearth ancient grudges; reinvigorate quelled rivalries; enflame forbidden and secret affairs. Hillwood was about to get significantly more interesting, Lila mused, now that the status quo was about to be disturbed by her ministrations once again.
Her hand squeezed the little black book she had kept through the years reflexively, keeping the precious object close and safe. She once again silently praised her foresight in having kept two copies, and the brilliant masterstroke of simply letting one of them fall into Gerald and Phoebe's hands. Their pursuit had been cunning, troublesome, and admirable. It was also really futile. She had engineered their every success herself. Oh, Pheobe and Gerald had certainly found ways to surprise and challenge her, of course. They weren't stupid, far from it, but the fact they were smart was also one of the things she used to manipulate them.
When you got to Lila's level, even your strengths became your weaknesses.
She sat outside the baggage claim gate, looking haggard in the dress she fell asleep in the night before, patiently awaiting the person who would be picking her up. One of her weapons, in fact.
Nadine walked out of the airport in stylish sunglasses, rolling a suitcase behind her. She saw Lila, her pencil thin eyebrows arching up on her high, noble forehead. A smile creased in her golden brown features, and the tall, braided girl approached Lila's wheelchair with a quick step.
"Girl, you look like shit. Did whatever put you in that chair also fuck up your hair?" Nadine grinned, setting her bag down to stoop for a hug.
Lila squeezed Nadine's shoulders with the strength she could muster on less than four hours of sleep and a massive hangover, and let herself laugh.
"Actually, yes, and I'm here to see him. I'm so happy you could come."
"For Lila Sawyer, I can make the uncomfortable trip back home." She stood back up, tall, lean, and with an energy in her muscles that made it seem like she was always about to bolt.
"I hope ever so much it won't be too uncomfortable, Nadine. That's not why I called you to come to Hillwood., to put you through a ringer of emotional distress" Yes, in fact, it actually was.
"Yeah, yeah, but, there's always gonna be bad blood in this town. Just hope I can avoid most of it."
"That's not likely, I'm afraid." Lila readied herself to arm the first weapon she had loaded. She needed to get Rhonda so thoroughly under her control that her actions would be precisely accurate to Lila's needs. Nadine was the leverage she acquired for that purpose.
"Fuck me, I was afraid of that. Okay, Sawyer. What's the score?"
Lila's taxi van drove up, a little ahead of schedule. She frowned. She hated when her timetables were disturbed. She was still perfectly capable of winging it.
"Where are you staying? You should ride with me, we can discuss it on the way."
"I'm just in the Stinton Hotel downtown. I'd love a ride, thanks."
The driver from the taxi assisted Lila with her bags, and after a brief wait she was in the van, hands folded in her lap. Nadine kept the conversation moving.
"You staying with Arnold?"
Lila's hands twisted a little tighter in her lap, and she shook her head. "No, I wont be at the boarding house. I'm staying with friends."
"Who? Rhonda?"
Oh, Nadine. She was, unfortunately, a little transparent. After she managed to grab herself a semester studying abroad, Nadine had simply never come back. The timing was singular, if you knew the whole story the way Lila did. And the way Rhonda did. Now, the successful photographer lived in Philadelphia, and had her work printed in a few magazines. Life had been decent to Nadine after she left Hillwood. One of the few success stories, in fact. It was a shame, Lila thought, that the circumstances of her leaving had to be so painful.
"No, I'm staying with Olga and Miriam."
"The Patakis?" Nadine gawked with an open-mouth grin, then shook her head. "That's brave. Or stupid."
"I count Olga as one of my very best friends, and Miriam is ever so sweet." Lila believed what she said. She felt very protective over the Pataki family - at least, the half of it that she liked. She hated when people called Miriam a drunk, or Olga unhinged, or any of the other nasty things that Helga - and she - had to endure in high school.
"Yeah, sure, but they're pretty damn loco if you ask me." The look on Lila's face must have clearly said that she hadn't asked, so Nadine backtracked. "Ah, but, you know, what do I know, I haven't been back in years. Sorry, Lila."
"It's quite alright, you didn't hurt my feelings. But I'm sure they would be hurt if they heard how you feel."
"Yeah, you're right. It was out of line. I'll, uh, send them a postcard."
Lila knew that was a lie. Nadine shifted and cleared her throat to slice through the uncomfortable pause. "So, uh, the plan?"
Lila smiled and nodded. Oh yes, the plan, she indulged in the satisfaction she got from people asking her for the next step. "Well, you came back for a reason, yes? Not just because I asked for help."
Nadine nibbled on her lower lip and looked troubled. She finally fell forward in her seat, hunched over her knees, and heaved a huge frustrated sigh. "Augh! Yes, I did. I have unfinished business. You know I do."
"Well, why don't you just take care of your unfinished business, then?"
Nadine rose up, looking at Lila with curiosity while her braids fell back into place over her shoulders and her face. "Wait, you don't need me to do anything?"
"I'm ever so sure that I just asked you to do something, Nadine."
"That's it? Just...go talk to Rhonda?" Nadine was appropriately cautious. It's rare that you get a late night call from an old, old friend you haven't seen in years; it's even rarer they request using irresistible methods that you spare no expense to meet them in the hometown you fled in disgrace said years ago. To think the request came with no strings attached was naturally suspicious.
"For now, anyway, yes. I think that's the best course of action - for you. You can't really be a lot of help for me until you get the closure you need anyway." A lie, and Lila told it confidently. It was far simpler. All she called Nadine down to Hillwood to do was to talk to Rhonda. Whatever happened in the aftermath of that would serve her purposes regardless of the outcome. Lila found it was easiest to get people to do your dirty work if they already intended on doing it in the first place.
Of course, it was Lila who got Rhonda involved anyway, with her late night tipsy phone call. Rhonda's furious reaction and subsequent meddling was intended. Both moves were valid; one was just misdirection, and the second was to exert control. Lila wasn't playing around this time. There would be an aftermath in her wake, and people would get hurt. She would guide them to the conflicts they were already poised to have, but bent towards her own ends. Nadine and Rhonda weren't exactly innocent, either.
Nadine seemed to process what she must have thought was a reasonable point. Lila tried to look composed despite the throbbing in her forehead, and said as little as possible to keep the nausea rolling in her abdomen quieted.
Finally, when they arrived where Nadine was staying, she decided to speak.
"I don't really get this, you could call in that favor basically any time. For anything. Just having me come here and...finish my unfinished business, I don't know. It seems like it's either too nice of you, or maybe something else."
Lila looked patiently back at Nadine from her wheelchair, hands relaxed in their folded spot in her lap. She didn't offer a rebuttal.
"But, that's not really any of my concern, I guess. Thanks for the lift, Lila. I'll call you to tell you how it goes - once I get checked in I am just going to get this over with."
"Rhonda will be with Sid across town, I'd start with the hookah lounge on Harbor Street. He sells to the owner of the shop, so they'll likely have the place to themselves for her to do her work."
Nadine flicked a smirk onto her cheeks, shaking her head. "I'd ask how you know that, but I probably don't wanna know. Oh hey! Also, that reminds me, there's this great exhibit in Philly, the Giant Beetles of South America. You should bring Arnold when all this is done and check it out! I know the entomologist who curated the collection, kind of a funny girl. Cute, too."
Lila nodded. "That sounds ever so interesting. I'm sure when all this is over, Arnold and I will be glad to make a stop in Philly. To show our thanks, if nothing else."
"Alright," Nadine hoisted her bag and stepped out of the taxi. She lingered at the door, putting her hand in her short khaki jacket pocket and pulling out her cell phone. "Let's synchronize our watches." She grinned at Lila, sounding far too playful for the misery she was likely about to go through.
"See you soon, Nadine." Lila calmly replied, and Nadine shut the van door. The van pulled away, and Lila closed her eyes to try to get a moment's rest before they arrived at Miriam and Olga's flat.
Lila dreaded the coming few hours. Hosting Helga in her bedroom for a school project was one of a handful of things she never wanted to have to endure.
And yet as she hurriedly scampered back and forth in her home, making sure that nothing was out of place, and that her room in particular looked spotless and pure, she also had to admit that she was a little excited. Lila had friends over often, but a rival was a rare visitor. It was her chance to sharpen her claws, so to speak, and make sure that her polish was still flawless as ever.
"Okay, everything seems to be in order," she murmured to herself, straightening the daisy yellow dress she chose to wear. This level of preparation was normal for people that were coming over, but Lila was particularly careful to make sure that she was emotionally guarding herself as well. Arnold was going to come up. That wasn't even in question, and it wouldn't do to get caught off guard when Helga inevitably started asking questions.
Lila intended to use this opportunity to put an end to their rivalry once and for all. Not out of any ill will, but, she truly felt it was best for Helga to give Arnold up. She couldn't win, and the sooner that the nail was in the coffin, the sooner Helga might be able to find true happiness. Lila even entertained the possibility of a future in which they became friends, once the Arnold problem was no longer between them.
Not likely, she admitted, pouring herself some iced tea while she waited for the troubling Pataki girl to show up. But it's nice to hope.
Helga's knock was sudden and irreconcilably obnoxious. Lila sighed and went to answer the door, sure this was going to be interesting in the very least of her expectations.
"Sup, Sawyer, nice place." Helga stood on the stoop, messenger bag at her hip, looking disinterestedly at Lila's building and past her through the doorway.
"Good afternoon, Helga, I appreciate you being on time ever so much. Please, come in." Lila escorted the tall, lanky blonde to their living room, where she had some iced tea in a big sun pitcher beaded with condensation appealingly on a small tray with an empty mason jar for her guest. Helga noticed the spread, whistled, and dropped her bag where she stood in the entryway.
"Is that some of your sweet tea? Nice, I am totally jazzed to have some. You may not be much to look at, but you brew a mean sweet tea." Helga stalked into the room, flopping in an empty chair and kicking a leg over one arm. "So considerate of you, and so refined."
Lila smiled and ignored the sarcasm and the way Helga was treating her furniture, and poured the tall girl a big healthy glug of her sweet tea, handing her the mason jar. Hega took a big drink right away, and Lila moved back to the entryway to pick up her bag, and brought it into the room with her.
"Now that you're refreshed, we should get started." Lila was eager to get the work done so that she could get on with her day, and meet whatever drama Helga would bring to her head on.
Luckily for her, Helga wasn't in any mind to waste time. The two of them cracked into their poem, Ozymandias, and had a workable draft of a fairly thorough analysis written within an hour. With Helga rattling off ideas with an expert's eye, and Lila's attention to detail and precise rhetoric, they were sure to get an A. This suited them both just fine. It wasn't lost on Lila that, when they both had an interest in the notion, the two of them worked together extremely well. Lila wasn't sure, but she felt it was likely due to the fact that they had very similar areas of interest, were approximately as smart as one another, and had, deep down, a lot in common with the way they approached the world.
Lila was caught by Helga staring at her thoughtfully. Helga was staring back, looking slightly annoyed back at Lila from over the bridge of her upturned nose.
"You know, I don't like you either, Sugarboobs. No need to stare me down, the message is clear." Helga's voice was almost tired, as if she was expecting this to happen, but weary that it had.
Lila felt embarrassment that the things she was thinking apparently found their way to her features in her reverie. Lila was a woman of superlative emotional control, but she wasn't perfect. Things got through, often at inopportune times.
"Helga, I'm ever so sure I don't know what you mean, I was simply lost in thought-" Lila started to explain.
"Yeah, no, you had a pretty fuckin' nasty scowl going on, but that's okay. I get it. The feeling's mutual, kiddo. Hate your guts, hate you to death. Every breath drawn is in antithesis to yours. But, hey, we're pretty much adults here. No reason we can't just be civil and get through this and then go back to pretending the other person doesn't exist."
Lila found herself with the confusing sensation of being genuinely hurt. She knew Helga considered her a rival. She wasn't prepared to hear that Helga hated her, and in such florid language.
"Helga, I like you." Lila offered up the truth.
Helga's eyes did the rolling thing, and she leaned back on a knifelike elbow, stirring her sweet tea with a long finger. "No need to lie to my face. Believe it or not, I'm not going to haul off and hit you. I'm not the same violent psychopath I was in elementary school."
"No, Helga, really. I don't hate you." She felt she might as well tell the whole truth. It wouldn't hurt anything. "I'm just ever so sad for you, and think you're a disappointment. But I don't hate you."
"A disappointment?!" The shock in Helga's voice trembled into the hint of fury. "Who the fuck do you think you are?!" Real anger now. "Helga G. Pataki is not a disappointment by any standard of measurement!"
"Well, since you asked, and if you must know, I'll gladly tell you. But can you please calm your tone down first, it's ever so threatening and I'm afraid it's made me just the smallest bit uncomfortable."
"Fuck off, Lila. Uncomfortable? You just called me a disappointment!"
"And you just said you hated me, and that every breath you draw is in antithesis of mine."
Helga quieted down, intense blue eyes burning with a barely contained fury."
"That's right. I did say that," she finally admitted. "What of it?"
Lila searched Helga's angry scowl for something. "Well, why on earth do you hate me ever so much?" There it was. She'd had her answer, and much more. Lila was right to mentally prepare for a confrontation with Helga about Arnold; inadvertently, it had prepared her for a rather uncomfortable conversation about her instead.
Helga seemed outraged that she would even be challenged in her feelings. Lila imagined it was something simple, something like my feelings are my own and who are you to question them. A simple, unexamined gut response to stimulus, carried with absolute conviction and armored with the invincible idea of being correct. She started to talk a few times, each instance stopping short to growl and hem and haw. She finally stood up, and paced the room like a wild, cornered animal. She clearly wanted to unleash, to let fly, but something was keeping her in check.
With a shock, Lila realized that Helga was keeping herself in check.
Finally, Helga turned on Lila, pointing a finger at chest level and defiantly making her bold declaration.
"Ever since you moved to Hillwood, I've been up against you! Pretty, popular Lila, so sweet and proper with your ever so and I'm so sure. Never makes mistakes, perfect marks in school, beloved by all! Lila, Lila, Lila!"
"Certainly I have never made a comparison between us, Helga. Do you think it's fair to resent me for something you imagined?"
"Fair?! Imagined! Oh ho, that's good, that's rich. You think it was lost on me who stayed with Miriam and Olga after the divorce?! You think I don't hear your name every goddamn time I visit? I am sick to death of your presence. You chafe me wherever I turn. You never had to make a comparison between us; everyone else already does it for you. I'm second best or last when measured up to you, even with Arno-" Helga slapped a hand over her mouth and turned away.
There it is. Lila girded herself in all her cunning, ready to put an end to this once and for all.
"Arnold? Surely you don't mean you're second best with him."
"I never said Arnold, I was saying...'or not!' Yeah, I was being sarcastic. What does football head have to do with anything! Stop changing the subject."
Lila wore her least impressed look. "You can't fool me. Everyone at Hillwood knows how you feel about him, but I was one of the first."
Helga shook with fury, defeated for the moment. Her tone became more shrill. Familiar. "And so what! So what if they all know about some old stupid crush that doesn't even matter anymore!"
"I should say, Helga, that we are getting closer and closer to why I said what I did-but your deceit rings empty to me. Arnold cares about you, ever so much. After all, that tender moment you two shared in the jungle, and then all the letters you write to each other-"
"What the fuck are you talking about." Helga interrupted, looking more distressed than angry.
Lila had her. The knife was in, all she had to do was twist it. "The letters you two exchange, I'm sure there's overflowing with sweet nothings of shared affection and mutual adoration. It's ever so romantic, really, Helga, there's no need to be shy."
Helga's face was a mask, a featureless space where the rather pretty girl's unique expressions usually danced. "He tell you that, did he? In the letters he writes you?"
"Well, no, he never mentions you at all," Lila lied, and planted the fatal seed. "But surely I'm not wrong. It's okay, Helga, if you two are in some kind of ever so sweet long distance commitment, I think that's oh so special! You don't see love like that every day."
"Shut up." Helga's voice was trembling, she was looking away.
"What do you mean? Is...am I wrong? Are you two not speaking?" Lila carefully sculpted the concern and mock ignorance in her voice. It helped that Helga refused to even glance in her direction, her whole body clenched and shaking. "You did write him back, right? Helga, right? You wrote him back?"
"Shut UP, Sawyer, I swear to fucking God if you speak one more sentence about Arnold I-"
"Don't threaten me in my own house, you coward." Lila's tone totally changed, all the false concern gone. It was enough of a sting to snap Helga's eyes upward. They were red from stress.
"What did you say to me?"
Lila stared her down, standing up. "You are my guest and I will not be threatened by someone without the guts to write Arnold back."
Helga was astonished, staring at Lila like she was an alien. Of course, Lila was making a gamble. A calculated risk, designed to totally unbalance Helga and reveal her true, inner self. Nobody had seen it before. Not even Arnold. The experience was shocking because of its scarcity.
"I thought that naturally, Helga Pataki is writing Arnold letters. He told me he wrote you, he still tells me he writes you. He tells me he writes you a lot. I never in all my years ever imagined that Helga Geraldine-"
"Who told you my middle name!" Helga shrieked.
"Helga Geraldine Pataki wouldn't be able to write Arnold back." Lila found that the anger in her throat was real. That fact surprised her. She barely had time to think before her real thoughts started to pour out, enveloped in sincere emotion. "I won't have threats of violence in my home from you. You didn't even write him back?!" Her volume rose, and Lila was shaking. Part of her was screaming to get back in control, but it was too late.
Helga's jaw was moving, and she clearly had something to say back, but Lila tore in.
"ForGET him. You lost him. Arnold writes you for years and years, and you offer his homesick, lonely heart a wall of impenetrable silence. The selfishness of you. How ever so cowardly. And how disappointing."
Helga finally got it. She stood ramrod straight, hands clenched into white balls of hate. Lila stared back at her, hands held at her sides.
"You're right." Lila felt herself smile with satisfaction. "I am a coward. I can't write him back, and I never did. I wanted to. I tried. But," Helga lifted a finger and pointed squarely at Lila's heart. "He's with his parents living his life-long dream. Last thing that kid said to me? That perfect, sweet, darling boy, blameless and pure?"
Lila felt her heart tighten in her chest. She was not prepared to hear something intimate between them.
"He said, 'I may be leaving Hillwood behind, but I'll always take a piece of it with me.' He's looking back. Regrets. Second thoughts. We are an anchor around his neck, a big fat speed bump in his new life. I may be a coward, but at least I'm not selfish."
Helga grabbed her back, and bolted out the front door, slamming it behind her. Lila's jaw snapped shut, and she felt herself blinking and reeling from the encounter. She heard faint shriek from the street outside the house, and then, empty silence filled the space where Helga once stood.
Lila shakily stood under the hot cascade of the shower, bracing herself on the handicapped railing and trying to enjoy the soothing heat of the water on her tired face and her unsteady limbs. Getting into showers was one of her least favorite new struggles since her accident, but she was thankful that she could at least manage to stand on her own after many weeks of intense physical therapy. Her therapist even said she might be able to fully manage a walk in a few years, though she would always have to walk with assistance and would never regain full movement.
It was an easy price to pay, she remembered the wet, doll-limp form of Arnold against the waterfall cliffs, looking broken and small against the jungle background. Even in the memory of that grim scene, Lila felt her stomach flip and her heart sicken. Putting a hand up on the cool tile next to the faucet, the girl recalled the slippery, mossy surface of the rock wall she scaled, heard the roaring rush of a river freefalling next to her ears in the insistent hissing crash of the showerhead. Everything in that memory moved too fast to recall, all movement and rushing and the sick cold panic in her guts that she had actually lost something important to her.
Arnold lived. He earned a nasty wine-hued scar that traced in inner thigh and hip, and a long lifetime of survivor's guilt, but he lived. Lila was so thankful when she woke up in her hospital bed to his worried face, free of the hideous dreams where the last thing she saw was his still, shattered body.
Lila turned the faucet off, squeaking the knob to manual tightness, and the rush of the shower quieted to the gentle gasp of the bathroom vent and heater. She carefully moved herself around the swing-arm of the special assistance tub, and sat on the wheelchair where her towel was laid out in advance. She learned early on that little tricks to make the dressing and cleaning process easier went a long way. It helped that her hosts were the ever so considerate and helpful Olga and Miriam.
She finally rolled herself into the guest bedroom where she was staying, her clothes laid out on the floral-printed duvet of the spacious double bed. Even though the two women lived in extremely tight, humble means, they didn't compromise in the decoration of their living space. Lila liked that, she respected it. Their tenacity in the face of the monstrous lousy luck that bastard Bob Pataki dealt them was heroic in Lila's eyes.
Lila lay on the bed next to her clothes, still in her towel, staring up at the ceiling and lost in thought.
Helga is more worthy of my admiration than my enmity, she realized. She was as wrong as wrong could be, but stuck in her ways or not she managed the impossible. Lila respected a strong opponent. They were rare. Where Lila was locked in an endless scheme, moving plots within plots and keeping herself in check through a myriad of veiled identities and mimed personalities, Helga was Helga. She had nefarious plots, oh ever so many of them, and in their childhood Lila learned more about how to effectively plot and ploy than anywhere else. But the difference between them was philosophical; where Helga hid herself and her truest passions from a place of protective fear of others, Lila obscured her true personality beneath a blanket of existential terror.
Rarely had she ever had to address the basic lack of security in her own heart. Arnold was not an anchor for her, more of a beacon. A chance to love someone simply. To love and not be needed. To love with her whole self, without restriction, and with no need for hidden motives and masks. If she won, she would have to tell him everything eventually. Well, almost everything. He would get a tailored version of the truth, one that fit her new narrative better and allowed their love room to blossom without the troublesome details of the past.
She longed to simply return to when she was that drunk teenager in the barn with her first true love again. She held the memory of her kiss with Arnold that night with overzealous fervor. There would be hell to pay for anyone that jeapordized her opportunity to return to that simple feeling. The absence of complication.
She had invented herself from an idea. Lila Sawyer existed as a construct of her own making. She would do anything to escape her creation. She would destroy everyone in her way, if necessary.
When Lila was done, Hillwood would never be the same again.