A/N: A new Hop Along album is out. Needless to say, my muse is returning. Maybe this means more regular updates? Stay tuned.
Keeping Arnold, Chapter 14: The World is Small and Embarrassing
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
― Ernst F. Schumacher
Sid drummed his fingers on his energetically bouncing knee in the cab, irritation and agitation clear on his face and in the way he chewed his inner lower lip. It was a nasty habit he picked up with his uppers habit, and it left a sore, raw spot just in front of his left canine tooth that he worried and fussed with during times of stress. This was a time that pretty clearly qualified.
He lifted a tense fist to his mouth, watching the avenues of Hillwood pull themselves by the cab window with the tilted clarity the comedown his modest cocktail of casual drugs brought. He did not like how today was going.
A bubble of aggravation built and burst, coming out of his mouth with a growled, "Yo man can you put the lead out?!" The cabby uttered something, maybe apologetic, maybe rightfully calling Sid an asshole. Tension continued to boil just beneath the surface of Sid's nerves, and he was impatient to get back to his place. Notably without Rhonda.
This week had been full of interesting surprises, but none were as unexpected and as nasty of a surprise to Sid as Nadine knocking on their hotel room door and more or less forcing Sid out. Forced out of the room he was paying for, no less.
Rhonda looked like she had seen a ghost, and rightfully so. Nadine hadn't shown as much as a fingernail in Hillwood since she tucked tail and ran out. Fuzzy Slippers had leaked her biggest secret, and the times were different then. People were different. Sid understood why she bailed, he's not sure he wouldn't have done the same damn thing given the circumstances. It ain't easy coming out lesbian in a town like Hillwood, not with the rat bastard Fuzzy Slippers about trying to make everyone's life miserable besides. He always thought leaking her secret was extremely uncool.
But it was kind of disappointing, frustrating, and scary for Sid that Rhonda so eagerly pushed him out the room with Nadine's sudden appearance at their door. She could have at least raised a complaint.
"Am I just her dealer or something?!" Sid growled under his breath, vowing to start charging her regular price for anything she asked him. Maybe. If he could resist her. A disgusted portion of his conscience knew he wouldn't be able to resist her, and this was one of the reasons he was currently en route to his loft apartment to smoke a bowl and crash. He and Rhonda hadn't slept much in the previous night, in fact he'd been up for the better half of two days straight preparing for the party, actually going to the party, and then enjoying Rhonda's company in the aftermath. Truthfully, he was exhausted, and he had the wherewithal to acknowledge he wasn't the type of man who could function without some rest.
Sid's phone, the private one he didn't use for dealing, started to make a small fuss in his pocket. Automatically he had it out in front of his face, scanning the notification screen for whatever it was that called for his attention.
"Oh shit," he said suddenly, and loudly, startling the cab driver.
"Sorry, sir, did I miss the turn..?" He called back in a deep, brassy voice.
"Nah, dude, keep going, just-" Sid's mind reeled as he stared hard at the picture of Nadine and Rhonda mid embrace, faces nearly touching. "Just shut up okay?"
Another gruff sound from the front seat. Sid dropped the phone, both hands wiping his face and pulling at the skin in a primal need to loosen the tension in his face. He felt hot in his clothes, and the cab suddenly felt small.
Rhonda's done with me, he despaired internally, the image of Nadine's face smiling and mouth opened just so for an intimate kiss burned in his retinas. Why do I give a shit? As he began to feel nauseated, hyper-aware of his skin, and his tongue seemed to grow in size and texture, cottony and fat in his throat, he realized he was having a minor stress-induced psychosomatic reaction to the designer cocktail of pleasure-inducing and energizing narcotics. Shit, I cannot handle this right now, he mentally choked, and started to slap his palms against the window of the cab.
"Hey, dude! Hey pull over! Let me out! I gotta get out, let me out!" Sid's voice carried the frantic tone of someone without any idea what in the world they were supposed to be doing. The cabdriver obediently, almost too-quickly yanked the cab out of traffic, against the curb of the avenue.
Sid threw a handful of fifties at him from the backseat and stumbled out the cab, falling onto all fours on the sidewalk and dry heaving repeatedly. He knew he didn't have the contents required to actually vomit, having eaten little else in the last forty eight hours besides several vodka tonics and a designer cocktail of uppers.
Standing with a renewed vigor, and wiping his cheeks free of a fresh, slimy film of saliva, Sid spotted a bodega he was familiar with and hastily crossed the street to get inside. The cashier had seen him before plenty of times, and the regular pile of two Gatorade bottles and a small rattling bottle of extra strength Aspirin didn't even register to the seasoned owner. Sid was gulping down a mouthful of brown pills in between glugs of sickly sweet orange syrup water in no time. He was hunched on a bench beneath a small poplar tree along the street, wondering what the fuck had happened to Hillwood, and what the fuck everyone was going to do now that Fuzzy Slippers was back, and what he was going to do about Rhonda and Nadine.
When Sid didn't know the answers to questions, he went and asked someone that did.
A short walk through the downtown alleys took him to Stinky's place, a small house with an overgrown yard and huge garishly painted plaster sculptures that gave Sid the creeps. Stinky was what he heard someone call an "Underground Artist," which basically translated to Sid as roughly "rich folks will buy Stinky's weird garbage." He passed a huge bulging brown teddy bear head with working floodlights for eyes grinning with childish innocence from the overgrown grasses of the yard, hating every inch of the walk up to the porch which was festooned with ashtrays. Each was a massive monument to Stinky's habit, a huge pale pile of ashed and stubbed butts full to spilling.
Sid pounded a skinny fist against the paint-peeled wooden screen door, which was hanging slightly ajar and rattled fiercely when he hit it with impatience.
"Just a darned fucking second," he heard Stinky curse from inside. He also heard something else, something mechanical, sputtering inside. The heavier full wooden door swung open suddenly, and the smell of motor oil and dirty steel hit Sid like a slap to the head.
"Oh shit, Sid. What's brought you to my humble abode my minute Machiavellian friend?"
Stinky had scored ridiculously well on the English portion of his high school exit exams. When it came to vocabulary, Stinky punched well above his weight, and was awful proud of it too. It drove Sid nuts.
"Yeah, shut up you lazy hippy. Where's my money?"
"Well gosh, Sid, I didn't think I owed you any monetary compensation on account of I have been clean for about three months, I reckon."
"Oh yeah. Sorry, force of habit I guess." Sid had tried to forget that Stinky had hit rock bottom not so long ago. He stayed away from his close friend unless he had business to attend to. The sober people in his life had a way of making him feel an unidentified uneasiness with himself. That empty yawning sensation settled on him again. "Ya gonna invite me in?"
Stinky moved out of the way, long tall frame stalking back to the machine in the center of his cluttered living room. Crap was everywhere. Sid could barely identify most of it. The walls were wood panel, aging the house as a relic of the 60's, and every available surface of wall hung a grotesque painting of every sort Sid could imagine. Stinky painted nudes. A lot of them. Most of them his own.
In the center of the room, however, an old, nearly rusted out lawn mower motor ran and sputtered next to a large blank canvas which was carelessly decorated with paint. Instead of the expected blades on the bottom of the motor, Stinky had fashioned what looked like a bristling array of differently sized paintbrushes, each dipped in bold and bright paints. It looked like an awfully complex way to make a mess..
"What the fuck is this thing, you building a car?" Sid stepped over a pile of empty tin cans that were filled with dirty paint brushes, and stood next to a huge wooden Indian Chief carved statue, bold red mahogany and looking serious as hell. That thing gave Sid the creeps. It had to be bad luck.
"I'm figurin' out myself a new way to paint. I figure if one of my hands gets the brush movin' pretty good, well a few horsepower will get the job done right quick."
"You gonna sell these, uh, paintings at your next show or something?"
"Sure as sloths shit themselves," Stinky grinned down at his machine, and kicked it off with a nudge from his boot. The room was suddenly so quiet Sid could hear the symphony of wind chimes that carpeted the back porch of the little two bedroom house. It sounded deceptively peaceful.
"Fuzzy Slippers is back, Stink." Sid stood with his hands in his pockets, knowing he looked furious.
"Yeah I reckon I got that text along with all of dang near half of Hillwood. I had no Earthly idea Rhonda was a dyke, though it makes sense if you stop and give it a good ponderin'."
Sid felt his hands tighten in their pockets.
"Rhonda ain't gay, she's bisexual. NADINE's gay."
"Well we all knew that on account of that bastard Fuzzy Slippers telling everyone in high school."
"That ain't the real reason I'm here, Stink."
"Yeah I figured you would have something to worry about with this new mysterious development."
"Fuzzy Slippers has my rap sheet, man. Yours, too, don't forget."
Stinky rubbed his cleanly shaved chin thoughtfully. "I reckon most of Hillwood knows you are up to the drugs business anyway."
"Yeah the half I want to know. And we both know that's not the worst FS has on you and me."
Stinky peered at his friend from over his prominent nose and the ridiculous curl of his mustache. Sid thought it made him look like a porn star.
"Well what is there to be done about it? Pretty much nobody could figure out who it was last time, not even Phoebe and Gerald."
Sid pushed some pizza boxes off a coffee table to make room for his boots when he reclined to sit at a couch opposite. Stinky made a token effort to remove them from the carpet, stacking them on a record player that looked so dusty it probably hadn't been used in years. Sid wasn't sure if Stinky was a hoarder or if he just was a terribly messy person. Once comfortable on the tacky yellow orange corduroy couch, he decided to level with his old friend.
"Rhonda was the one that sent out that candid pic of Helga mid tantrum."
No reply from the tall hipster artist. Just a look of mild surprise.
"And I guess her posing as Fuzzy Slippers on Lila's behalf must have pissed off the REAL fuzzy slippers something awful," Sid sighed, leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling fan limned with dust bunnies. "So whoever the real FS is back to old tricks. Probably didn't take too kindly to being imitated by someone they knew."
"Gosh, you think it was Helga?" Stinky innocently asked.
Sid lifted his head in surprise, hearing himself intake a little gasp of surprise. "Helga! Hey wait, why not? Rhonda embarrassed her pretty bad - and it's just the kind of thing Pataki would do!"
It made a lot of sense to Sid. He knew it wasn't Lila - why would Lila retaliate for Rhonda doing what she asked? Sid knew Rhonda's entire plan in that little blunder, he was there when she cooked it up.
"I don't think I can recall even a single time Helga Pataki got the business from that terrible Fuzzy Slippers," Stinky said slowly and carefully. "And she did hate Lila and Rhonda something fierce. She even stole homecoming queen from Rhonda on account of her bitter jealousies."
Sid nodded, remembering the fiasco well. Rhonda played it off, told everyone she knew that she set up Helga to win herself. Sid knew the awful truth. Helga was pretty vocal about how she took it from Rhonda, and always had been. Now, Sid suspected that it was Fuzzy Slippers, aka Helga Pataki, all along.
The ghostly memory of Rhonda's gross sobbing on the other end of a telephone, miles from where he could help her, fueled a fury in Sid he was unfamiliar with.
"So let's go get her!" Sid barked, sitting up.
Stinky blinked at him slowly, and rubbed his unkempt, stubbled chin with a grease-smeared hand.
"Well let's not be too hasty here, Sid. We don't have any proof at all that Helga is the one what cooked up all that trouble and mess in High School. It could be anyone."
"Anyone except the people we know it ain't, like Rhonda, or Lila."
"Or Gerald or Phoebe."
"Right. And I hate to say it, Stink, but who else we know that's smart enough to pull off that kind of villainy? The list is short. And Helga never got one bad turn, not one!"
Stinky rubbed his chin again, looking distressed but convinced. Sid felt like it was an unattractive look for his friend.
"Gosh, when you think about it, the evidence does seem to incriminate our fiery friend Helga, don't it? And we just went to all that trouble on her account last night. I played my steel drum and everything."
"Right! So I say we round up a few of the old gang and see what they think, and then we go GET her."
Sid watched the idea blunder it's way across Stinky's features while he decided. You could trace the internal disagreement leaving his cheeks and dropping off his fuzzy chin in slow motion. When he finally replied, merely moments later, he had the iron conviction of someone absolutely unsure of themselves but too anxious to make a decision.
"Well I reckon we can at least get a few folks together and see if she can answer some questions in a reasonable and forthright manner."
Sid and Stinky went through their extensive lists of contacts and did what the two of them did very very well; stir trouble. Before the hour passed they had a few old friends ready to join them in a direct confrontation with Helga. Sid was unsurprised that many others had come to a similar conclusion that they all had - Helga was probably Fuzzy Slippers and the hated enemy they'd all known to be synonymous with treachery and deceit.
The two of them headed out to Gerald Field to meet with the rest, Stinky glad to see his friend more and talkative as usual, and Sid pensive and quiet enough to keep his thoughts to himself.
Sid was sure that whatever happened there would be a serious reckoning in Hillwood tonight.
"Give it up, Pataki, there's too many of us!"
Helga turned on her heel, exhausted thigh muscles screaming for oxygen and rest while she executed a sharp turn down a sidewalk path, sprinting with every ounce of strength she had. Behind her, about a dozen old faces she never thought would be turned in anger towards her, murder in their eyes.
She held her breath and darted suddenly into traffic, sliding over the hood of a car that nearly hit her and dashing across the street when her sneakers hit pavement. She thanked her years of gym conditioning and athleticism with every breath she sucked in, kick-jumping off an open dumpster to grab an errantly hanging fire escape ladder and ascended as fast she could.
As she looked down the metal lattice she scaled with tired limbs and raw palms, she only saw stranger's expressions on the crowd that was beginning to try to follow her up. Helga was honestly surprised, really shocked beyond what she could process. It was really happening.
She was running for her life.
"I can't believe this," Rhonda blurted out, guts feeling empty and full of wind all at once. She scrolled through the text thread that Fuzzy Slippers had started with damn near her entire contacts list, furor and tumult coming from the text crowd while F.S. fueled their building rage with more and more pictures.
Apparently, Rhonda's old nemesis had been busy collecting ammunition in their long departure.
"I-It's really not that bad," Nadine nervously ventured, placing a hand on Rhonda's shoulder. There was tenderness, concern, in the feather gentle weight of that palm. Rhonda felt like there was half a decade of forgiveness in that touch.
It just made her more sick.
"No, Nadine, this is bad. This is very bad."
"Why? So some sneak got a candid photo of us kissing. I was outed in high school, unless you forgot." There was that acid bitterness Rhonda remembered.
"No, who cares about that? What's the real problem is everything else that's being sent."
"I mean, everybody's grown up now, all that kiddy high school shit doesn't matter," Nadine tried to reason.
Rhonda shook her head, her dark bob bouncing slightly. "People grew up, and their problems grew up with them. Affairs, disastrous rendezvous, illegal shit; Nadine, Hillwood hasn't changed since you left. If anything, it's cascaded into a beautiful crescendo of horrible."
Nadine stuffed her hands into the pockets of her short jacket at waist-height, pacing the large hotel room back and forth. Rhonda was too worried to even take the time to admire the taut, lithe sculpt of Nadine's legs in her grey jeans. The color contrast did wonders against Nadine's dark skin, a gift from her mixed heritage, but the aesthetic appreciation was lost on her.
"For example," Rhonda began, scrolling the lengthy mass text thread towards an particular photo. It was dark, but the contrast of an amber streetlight illuminated the unmistakably round forms of Harold and Patty, conspicuously dumping something with shoes that was rolled up in a sleeping back into a dumpster. The shot was taken from across the street, and zoomed in to such a degree that the fidelity was totally lost, but all it really had to to was hint. Cast suspicion.
She slid up next to Nadine, her arm snaking around her waist, and brought the phone's screen up to her face for a closer inspection. Nadine narrowed her eyes, and Rhonda watched the almond slivers of doe-brown scan the image, and then at once recognize the implication it offered.
"Holy shit, did Harold and Patty off someone?" Nadine's voice trembled with a hushed note of strain.
"Probably not," Rhonda said, returning her phone to it's place in her purse quickly. She had taken care to scroll right past all the pictures that had been taken of her. No need for Nadine to see them right now. "There's almost certainly a logical explanation for that picture, as I'm sure there's logical explanations for everything that's sent by Fuzzy Slippers. The truth is boring. But Hillwood doesn't care. All they have to do is hint and the barnyard beasts get to braying."
A hot breeze from the open balcony door stirred the long, heavy-draped curtains into waving the midday shadows about the teal-green carpet playfully. Nadine moved to stand in the sunlight, and the late summer sun set her beautiful hair aglow, like spun gold interwoven through clean hay. Rhonda couldn't help but notice her natural beauty this time. It softened her worries, smoothed the dangerous edge in her nerves for just a moment. She was thankful she had someone as earthly and human as Nadine as a friend again. Maybe more? If those kisses meant anything, definitely more, Rhonda mused.
"I still can't believe Sid's face when he saw me in that doorway," Nadine said, laughter in her throat. "I don't think I'll ever forget it."
"Well, poor simple silly Sid. I'm sure he was stupefied. Not that it's particularly difficult to produce stupefaction in Sid. But a radiantly aglow Nadine was the last person he or I expected to see at our hotel room door. You can't really blame him."
"He sure got mad." Nadine was all grins again, a cocky cant to her chin. It was a flirtatious look. An alive spark to her eyes promised Rhonda something that thrilled her inwardly.
"Well, when the former best friend of his current FWB arrives and asks to be alone with said paramour, it sets the imagination spinning, don't you think?" Rhonda's tone returned to that coy, playful bounce she used when she intended to capture prey.
Nadine, however, was a lioness. Though she wasn't a very physically imposing person, for some reason when she stood unmoved in that sunlight, hands in her pockets and a troublesome grin on her golden features, Rhonda felt legitimately small and intimidated. Another thrill she wasn't expecting.
"I'm sure if he knew that moments after he left I'd have my tongue in your mouth, he'd be fit to be tied."
"Nadine!" Rhonda feigned shock and outrage, unable to help herself. She'd had oh so few chances to play the game with a worthy opponent - that is, someone female - and every chance had been twenty times more rewarding than with even the most savvy man. Part of her wondered if she'd ever have need for a man again, if it felt this good to flirt with girls.
"Oh shut up, you love it. And what's the deal with this former best friend crap? How's about current best friend."
"We have yet to reconcile, despite your amorous advances." Rhonda receded, coquettishly twisting her hips in a retreat to the bathroom opposite the open balcony door. In truth, it was a real retreat; she needed to get her hammering heart under control. She was still riding the variety of drugs she and Sid had decided to spend their evening with together, and the adrenaline excitement from this very unexpected, and very physically confrontational reconciliation messed with her guts. She turned the water on to wash her face, splashing cold water delicately over the areas that could be washed - not all her makeup was waterproof today.
Nadine's hand daringly slid around onto her slender tummy, pressing intimately onto it when Ronda's eyes were pressed into the hotel room towel. She dropped it like a hot iron and spun, face to face with Nadine again.
How delicate Rhonda felt, pressed against the bathroom counter by the soft strength of Nadine. She imagined herself no more heavy than spun sugar. Her feet barely touched the ground, kissing it with the balls of her designer shoes. Her hands rest against the mountain presence of her old friend, finding her shoulders as sturdy as they looked.
The interlude was put to a short end when things began to become too intense for Rhonda again. She had stopped Nadine from kissing her three times now; a desperate need for an explanation busied itself within her mind.
"Is this too much?" Nadine blessedly offered Rhonda an escape path. "I don't want to push you to do anything-"
"No, darling, Nadine, this is okay," Rhonda slipped from the bathroom, explaining. "It's just such a shock to see you, and after so many years, and after such a parting, I am having a bit of trouble processing all this...kissing."
A lesser woman would have been deflated by the admission, but Nadine pressed her hand to Rhonda's, and backed away.
"When I confessed what was really going on with me, with us, I never expected it to be told to the school."
"I didn't say a word, I swear." Rhonda meant it.
"I left town to protect you," Nadine started, shrugging her shoulders at the memory. "Did I even need to bother?"
What was clearly a double edged accusation stung Rhonda more than she expected; outrage she was surprised to feel began to surface in her expressions and words.
"I had nothing to do with that information getting out, and you left despite my most earnest pleas. I can't believe you would insinuate that our parting was anything less than agonizing. I surely had my share of the blame for everything that happened, but I was torn apart when you were forced to leave. I didn't just lose my best friend."
Nadine wanted to be mad, Rhonda could see it on her face. But the last tidbit pulled a curl of a smile on her face, and the tension was dispelled.
"Well, I made my apologies, and I know enough about Rhonda Wellington Lloyd to count that as yours, so are we square?"
Rhonda squeezed the fingers held her in hand. "Square. But you are being far too blazé about this Fuzzy Slippers re-emergence problem."
"You could just leave Hillwood."
The suggestion was moot, however Rhonda nodded by moving her chin very slightly. "Mm, yes, and don't fret, I shall leave Hillwood, once I'm done here. There's salons in Paris and New York that have not yet been graced by my radiance, and we can't have that." Rhonda playfully touched Nadine's nose for emphasis, stepping away to get back to her phone. Being even a few moments of flirtatious conversation away from regular updates on the mass text fracas set her nerves alight.
Of course, updates did not disappoint.
"Nadine, we have to leave this hotel room right now."
"Sure, babe, but, are we...a thing...now?"
"You can say girlfriends, I am comfortable with it. And I don't know. Maybe? Maybe not! There's a lot of mess to sort out first. I'd like to start with being friends again before we start doing the bravery thing and announcing our truest love to the world and my parents."
"Don't blame me if I can't help but try to kiss you from time to time, when you're looking especially cute and interesting."
"Like one of your bugs?" Rhonda teased.
"Just like them! In fact you remind me of this particularly interesting genus of bombardier beetle," Nadine began to animatedly dive into one of her old-school insect geek outs, and while Rhonda found it adorably nostalgic, she really did have more important things to do. She shut Nadine up with a gently lifted hand.
"Shh, Nadine, darling, you can compare me to something that sounds positively insultingly gross during the pillow talk. I'm not kidding; we have to go."
A laugh like the sun bounced Nadine's hair and shoulders. "Sure, where to?"
"We need to get Eugene, and then we need to stop Sid."
Nadine was grabbing her things while she nodded along, shouldering her very chic designer bag while Rhonda threw together the remnants of her outfit the night before and stuffing them with uncharacteristic haste into her own very chic designer bag. A small thought of We are indeed compatible touched her surface thoughts for an instant.
When Rhonda's miscellaneous accoutrements were gathered, Nadine held the hotel door open for her and they walked quickly towards the elevator.
"So why are we off to go get Eugene?" Nadine ventured. Nadine had left before the major Eugene fallout, but Rhonda was sure she had probably heard the gorey details anyway. At least the hesitance in her voice seemed to betray so.
"He's one of those impossibly positive voices of reason that we'll need to quell the angry mob Sid is in the midst of stoking." As if in response, her phone angrily chirped with the notification of yet more texts in the massive chain. Rhonda's initial count was at least sixty people responding actively to the pictures that were coming from UNKNOWN01, which was obviously Fuzzy Slippers. Some people had made futile attempts to "hack" the number of the sender, but, it turns out it's just not that easy. Nobody seemed to have the necessary technological skill to crack the anonymous number.
Not that it would have made any difference. They'd picked their target.
"Helga is in very real danger," Rhonda sighed once they were within the privacy of closed elevator doors. "Sid's got most of these mooks on his contacts list and deals to the rest. He's got real clout. And he and Stinky seem to have been convinced that Helga is F.S."
Nadine shrugged her shoulders. "Is she?"
Rhonda paused, given the sudden reason to be unsure. She had to admit, the circumstantial evidence pointed solidly at Pataki. And the tone Fuzzy Slippers took when they chose to respond to the texts directly definitely took on the familiar imperious arrogance that the bombastic blonde had always wielded like a blunt instrument. But something just nagged at Rhonda, it didn't fit quite right.
For one thing, nobody could claim that Eugene hadn't been defended with damn near violent vociferousness by Helga when his dark secret was unfortunately leaked. Rhonda did not like revisiting that memory.
"I don't think she is," Rhonda finally responded. "But regardless of her guilt, Sid has to be stopped."
Helga yelped and held the fresh wound on her calf in reflex, nearly stumbling while she ran. The rock that had been thrown clattered away off the resonant exterior of a dumpster, to settle innocently among the rest of the urban detritus as if it had not just been thrown in hatred by a former friend.
She picked up her pace automatically, the clamor of pursuant footsteps a constant motivator for her tired legs and her burning lungs.
The chase had started moments ago, ignited by an angry spark and false accusations.
Helga had been on cloud fucking nine, mid-monologue.
"He cares for me! He cares for me! Arnold Shortman, object of youthful obsession and target of my matured desire, actually really literally LIKES me, for real! It's not some stupid fantasy anymore," she paused, clapping her hands together and squeezing them breathlessly to her chest. The terrible fluttering in her rib cage threatened to strike her suddenly dead, and she squealed loudly while she gleefully silenced it. "And we have a date! An honest to god, actual fucking date! The man's gonna get dressed up for me! Me! Helga Geraldine Pataki, nobody's anything, is gonna be opposite Arnold Shortman dressed to the nines and the focus of his attention! I'll get to watch him talk in private without distraction! Oh my god, I'll get to see him drink water from a glass-" the mundane idea somehow set her mind spinning "-if he excuses himself to use the bathroom I'm gonna take a SHIT with excitement, I swear to God! Oh God, I have to hurry! I have to get back! Shower! Makeup! Clothes! I have to tell Phoebe, I have to tell-" Helga stopped suddenly, her mouth snapping shut and her instincts firing off.
About a dozen or so people she recognized, lead by that shitheel greaseball Sid and his womanizing shadow Stinky, milled aggressively down the block, watching them. They looked pretty fucking mad. Something screamed at Helga that this wasn't right, and she needed to go.
"Pataki!" Sid suddenly barked out. People walking the sidewalk between her and the mob - Helga was pretty sure this was a mob - turned and looked at Sid curiously. Some people got the picture and hustled out of the way of the tall blonde that was clearly squared off with the aggressive-looking gang.
"Yeah, in the flesh." She surprised herself by how cool and calm her response came. What was going on? This wasn't right. She felt extremely unsafe.
"What have you got to say about all this?!" Sid held up his cellphone and pointed at it dramatically, as if that was something that meant anything at all, and was a usual thing to do in any way.
"Nice...phone?" Helga tried to guess, hunching her shoulders and lifting her hands in confusion.
She saw Stinky look nervously at Sid, put his hand on his shoulder. "Sid, I'm not sure it's Helga, on account she seems to have no Earthly idea what the heck you're talking about."
"Yeah, listen to the hipster with the mustache. I've got no idea what this shit is about, but it's isn't funny." Helga balled her fists, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet slightly. She was ready to bolt. A shitty feeling in her guts told her this was about to get intense. Schoolyard instincts sharpened with self defense classes and a lot of full contact sports gifted Helga with a natural instinct about when her ass was at immediate risk. This was one of those times.
"Yeah? How come it's all happening right now? Huh? Can you answer that, Helga? You never got hit by Fuzzy Slippers once and then Lila comes back in town engaged to Arnold and then all this shit starts happening?! You honestly expect us to believe you got nothing to do with it?!"
Helga furrowed her brow, shaking her head once. "Fuzzy Slippers? Wait, Lila's in town? What's this about-"
"Shut UP! I'm sick of all this cat and mouse bullshit! First you get us all to dance to your tune to fuck up Arnold and Lila's engagement, and now you're out to ruin everyone else's lives, too!" Sid's voice was raising in volume with every false accusation. Helga's skin pricked up, tiny hairs standing on end.
She bolted.
"Get her!" someone yelled, and then the chase began.
And now she was running like mad, trying to scale a fence as fast as she could. Four blocks of chasing had felt like an eternity. She'd caught a thrown rock on her left calf, and the spot on her leg throbbed with fury when she put any pressure on the leg, but she wouldn't stop running for anything.
She was charging through a crowd of people down a busy sidewalk, pushing through with sheer force of inertia, hoping and praying someone would get a clue and call the cops. All she got were angry shouts of surprise and dismay while she bulled through, but the general disordered chaos she left in her wake served to slow down the pursuing gang.
I am not supposed to be running for my life, she angrily thought. I am supposed to be pampering my skin with lava soap and expensive French moisturizing creams and getting ready to see Arnold. The hateful scenario propelled her faster. She was about to turn a corner and head through another group of people when three arms shot out of an open storefront and yanked her bodily inside.
The shock of the sudden change of momentum sent her barreling ass over teakettle into the small, dark room, and her still elevated sense of survival had her on her feet and ready to fight instantly.
"Helga!" she heard a small, familiar voice squawk, and her raised fists hesitated.
Eugene was on the ground in front of her and groaned "I'm okay," with Rhonda's ass directly in front of his face and her legs thrown up awkwardly in the air. Layered on top of her, a tall, dark skinned blonde in a fashionable outfit that looked vaguely like Nadine groaned. "I should have got that accidental death and dismemberment life insurance," she moaned, and Helga had no idea what was going on for the second time that day.
Thinking quickly, she threw herself against the door to slam it shut, and sank to the ground beneath the window. The tumult of her pursuing crowd passed the door soon after. Helga waited until the shouting and sound of footsteps died off before she turned back to look at the trio, now helping Eugene stand and dusting each other off.
"What the fuck is going on?!" Helga demanded in a harsh whisper.
"You were being chased so we pulled you in here to lose them." Eugene offered, moving over to help Helga up. She started to stand, but her legs wobbled and refused immediately. Eugene sank to sit next to her instead.
"Where is this," she looked around, chest finally calming so she could catch her breath.
"This is the magic shop. They'll probably come back to check here, so you should catch your breath and double back." Eugene produced a bottle of water, which Helga tore open voraciously, still struggling to comprehend why this felt like a fucking action movie all of a sudden. Wasn't this a romance?
"Sid got some people together to form a lynch mob," Rhonda explained, looking down at Helga. "They're after Fuzzy Slippers. And I guess he and his posse decided that means you, Helga."
Helga didn't reply, far too busy gulping down the bottle of water with voracious need.
"So does it mean you, Helga?" Rhonda asked, her tone lifted with suspicion.
The water bottle lowered slowly, and Helga's glare was revealed, two blue eyes clearly staring Rhonda down with outrage.
Finding strength in her legs again, she stood slowly while she pushed the bottle into Eugene's hands. "You saying it does mean me, Lloyd?" She was tired, but she was absolutely sure she could kick Rhonda's ass right this instant, even with the tall leggy blonde that looked like Nadine looking pretty protective of her.
"Just answer the question, Helga," the Nadine-stranger urged.
"Okay, are you Nadine? This is fucking obnoxious," Helga growled.
"Yeah. Long time no see. You look like hell. Now answer the question."
"No. No it most certainly fucking does not mean me. I am not Fuzzy Slippers. What the fuck, Rhonda."
Rhonda, perhaps feeling brave with Nadine standing next to her, shot back, "There's a lot of people that are pretty convinced it's you, and even I have to admit the evidence is hard to ignore. If I wasn't fairly certain that you don't have the level of actual malice and nastiness in you to do it, I'd swear it was you. You're certainly manipulative enough. Smart enough. Jealous enough, too."
Helga took a step forward, and Nadine tensed. "Jealous! Jealous of what exactly?"
Eugene put a hand on Helga's arm, and he spoke up. "Listen, Helga, I know it's not you. I've been telling Rhonda all about how you helped me. Even the stuff she didn't know. The things I made you promise not to tell anyone."
Helga loosened up, still on edge but not as dangerously so. "So that's what that was? That's why I got rocks thrown at me and threats to throw me off a bridge?"
"I'm afraid so. They're all convinced it's you. Don't get me wrong, I don't trust you, Pataki. It could be you. I'm just not sure that you're not being set up."
"That is most certainly what is happening." Helga held her head with a hand, suddenly very sick to her stomach again. "I can't believe this fucking week, man. First Arnold and the party and the hospital, now this."
"Hospital?" Eugene started to ask, but he got interrupted by Rhonda.
"Helga, you have to get out of here. Maybe out of Hillwood, at least until this blows over."
"Wrong again, Lloyd. I've got a date with Football Head in less than half an hour, and it's not one of those rain-check possible dates. I'm going to be there, looking amazing. Which means I have to get home, showered, ready, and dressed all in about three minutes."
Rhonda shook her head in disbelief. "Absolutely not! That's simply not happening! Did you forget that they threw rocks at you? You can't just go nibble hors d'oeuvres with Arnold and pretend this didn't happen!"
Eugene tugged at her tshirt. "Helga, please listen to her. Rhonda came to me first to get my help. She knew I wouldn't believe Sid and that we could help you. You're extremely lucky you ran by here. You have to get out of town safely, right now."
Helga was surprised to find herself crying. Already hot cheeks suddenly stung with lines of hot tears that dragged across salty red skin in immediate volume. Shaking, she steadied herself on a plastic skeleton display, leaning against a bony shoulder while the deluge hit her. It wasn't fair. She'd finally settled the bad blood between her and Arnold and had a real chance at reconciliation. A decade of build up was about to be concluded. Closure. Finality. She'd finally know one way or the other if Arnold loved her, and it was being taken away from her. She let herself cry for minutes, uncaring that made her seem weak in front of Rhonda. What use did she have for strength when all her efforts were being invalidated? Somewhere deep inside the despair, outrage was building itself a volcanic pressure.
"Helga," Rhonda began carefully, almost sounding sincerely concerned. "If we work together we can probably root out the real Fuzzy Slippers, but it's going to take time. Maybe weeks, or months. I might be able to calm Sid and his goons down later, but that accusation...it's pretty ironclad. If we're going to nail this bastard, it's going to take work. Hard work. I'll help you as long as I'm convinced you're not the culprit."
Listening with silence, Helga's emotions boiled in a maddening mixture of rage, sadness, and envy. It was never easy for her, not like other girls. Not like Rhonda, or Lila.
Lila.
"Hold the fuck up-" Helga suddenly stammered. "It's Lila." She spoke with absolute certainty. She knew it was her. She had no evidence whatsoever, but she just knew.
"What? Helga, don't be ridiculous-"
"It's not ridiculous. In fact," she suddenly began seeing the clues that had always been before her, and the epiphany set her voice to animation. "it's always been her! Except when we were little kids, like, really little, it's always been Lila!"
"It can't be Lila, though, she was very viciously mocked many times. Only you were never attacked," Eugene reminded patiently.
"No, listen, it's her. I know it's her. I can't prove it yet, but, get me in a room with her and I can make her confess." Helga stood straight, suddenly awash with the iron of her conviction.
"I don't think so, Helga, I'm not going to get tricked into taking you to her so you can settle an old score in the guise of finding Fuzzy Slippers." Rhonda crossed her arms over her chest defiantly.
"I don't need you to lead me to anything, Rhonda. I know where she is. She's with my sister and my mother. It's where I would go if I wanted to send me a message."
The three others in the room stared at Helga, uncomprehending about what message could possibly be sent.
"What message?" Rhonda finally asked.
"Come and get me." Helga grinned.
Gerald ran out of his frat house and jumped into the open van door where his girlfriend and Brainy were waiting. The van was moving before Gerald finished closing the large sliding side door and buckled in.
"Alright, let's go do this!" he growled. This Fuzzy Slippers shit had him on edge. He hated this shit. He knew it was going to get bad this time around, but not this bad.
"Gerald, we have to find Helga and Arnold before the others do," Phoebe turned in the passenger seat to face him, looking tired and stressed.
"Yeah, no shit. Brainy, you know where to go?"
Brian nodded, turning through a red light without stopping. The van's tires squealed in protest at the maneuver that was far beyond their usual performance specifications.
"We're headed towards Eugene's magic shop. Rhonda texted me that they have Helga there. No sightings of Arnold yet, but we're using Stoop Kid to keep an eye on the boarding house."
"Fucking perfect," Gerald growled again. "This escalated way too damn quickly. It's shameful. I thought all us PS118 kids were a lot tighter than this."
Phoebe frowned, turning back to face the road. "Yes, I find it disappointing as well. I never imagined things could become so positively Antebellumesque. Any victory we are able to achieve over Fuzzy Slippers will be purely phyrric at this point."
"Babe, I love you, but cool it with the academia. I am having enough damn trouble putting all of this together as it is."
"Oh, sorry," Phoebe replied with tired irritation. "I'll dumb it down for you both." Gerald let her rudeness pass-they were all on edge, and someone besides tall, quiet, and ugly had to keep the peace.
"Just run through it with me one more time," Gerald said.
"Right, well," Phoebe began, and suddenly pointed out the next turn. "Left here, Brian. Anyway, as far as I can piece together, sometime last night Lila called Rhonda and told her of her engagement to Arnold. This upset Rhonda so she had someone - my suspicion is Sid or one of his goons - follow Helga and Arnold and snap that unfortunate picture of her during her meltdown. Rhonda's idea was to copy Fuzzy Slippers, but the attempt seems to have angered the real Fuzzy Slippers. And it is our misfortune that our mystery figure has been gathering substantial ammunition to use against Hillwood in their hiatus. We were wrong to think we'd won against them, Gerald. They let us think we won."
Gerald remembered the day they'd finished things with Fuzzy Slippers. Chasing the guy with Lila. Losing them, but finding the book, which was just as good as catching them. The attacks ended shortly after. He'd thought they'd won.
Finding out they'd just been played again really pissed Gerald off.
"I can't believe we got played like puppets, man," Gerald shook his head. "We bought it totally."
"Ah," Brian suddenly started to talk, and Gerald and Phoebe both started as if they'd forgotten he was in the van, driving it. He just had that way of silently blending in that made it easy to forget he was pretty much always around, watching and listening.
Gerald and Phoebe both seemed to think of the same thing simultaneously.
"Brian, are you Fuzzy Slippers?" Phoebe asked directly, and Brian stopped hard at a red light. They all fell forward and then back into their seats from the immediate stop. Brian looked at Phoebe slowly, then at Gerald. Gerald watched him closely, feeling like he was ready to beat some ass.
"Uh, no," he started. "But I was at first."
"You wanna explain that, my man?" Gerald tried not to sound as threatening as he felt.
"I uh," he started the van moving again, flicking his eyes to the rear view mirror to catch Gerald's angry look. "back when we were kids. Like second grade or third."
"You?" Phoebe simply asked.
"Uh, yes."
"But not anymore."
"No."
"Bullshit," Gerald growled a third time.
"I quit. Someone else started doing mean things and using my codename. So I quit. Didn't like it."
Phoebe turned in her seat. "Gerald, I have no idea if we should believe him or not, but I did hypothesize that there were two iterations of Fuzzy Slippers. I abandoned the theory once all the attacks stopped when we found that book, reasoning that the attacks could only stop if there was only one, as we only had one source of the rumors. What do you think?"
Gerald scoffed. "I think Brian's been fooling everybody, going after everyone but the girl he's in love with 'cause he's too scared to be our friend. I think this fool's just confessed, and we oughta throw him to the wolves."
Brian nervously looked at Gerald in the mirror again.
"No, it's not me. I wouldn't." He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "You are my friends."
Phoebe shook her head. "I'm afraid you'll have to prove it to us. Helga was never attacked. I at first suspected Helga for that, but knew that she wasn't capable of the kind of viciousness towards me and you and Arnold that Fuzzy Slippers displayed. However that detail would make perfect sense if it was you, simply unable to attack the woman you've been in love with since childhood. If it's not Helga, it has to be you."
Brian gulped visibly, his adam's apple moving slowly. Gerald was ready to strike.
"It's not me." He insisted.
"Then who?" Gerald demanded, putting a hand on Brainy's shoulder and squeezing.
Brian hesitated, visibly nervous to respond.
"Who is it, Brian?" Phoebe reiterated. Brian's shoulder slumped, and a great tension seemed to escape him suddenly. His body language changed. He sighed, his hands loosening their grip on the steering wheel. He gave up.
"Lila."