A/N: We are rapidly approaching the end now. I expect to write three (maybe four) more chapters and then an epilogue. I have no idea what the final word count will be, but it's been quite a doozy so far.
I haven't said it much yet, but thank you so much for your extremely kind words. In truth, this is the first fanfic I've ever written, but it's also the longest story I've ever written by about one hundred and twenty thousand words. So believe it or not, I have no idea what I'm doing, and kind of just making up this writing process as I go.
I will be forever thankful that I decided to go for it and write this thing, and that I've had such a rewardingly vocal audience. Thank you! This chapter's for you, my readers.
For you, I have this little tidbit. I have the ending almost written, and it is going to KICK your asses. :)
Keeping Arnold, Chapter 15: I Call You Enemy Cause I'm Afraid of What You Could Call Me
"The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling." - Lucretius
With steps as light as the sunlight on blades of grass, Arnold Shortman hurried himself to the boarding house in pursuit of what he was sure was destiny. Though he was caked in the terra cotta dust of Gerald Field and the sweat of catharsis, he felt cleaner than any bath or shower could ever afford him. His was a cleanliness of the spirit, a psychic housekeeping that swept clean a decade of bruised sour feeling and unchecked romantic yearning.
Helga was really, deeply in love with him, and tonight he would finally have the opportunity to return her feelings honestly and without restraint. Regret seemed an alien word to him as he very nearly skipped his way through Hillwood; champagne joy sparkled noisily in the veins of his heartstrings.
He really couldn't place the intangible feeling of immortality that came with a certainty of his own pure truth. Arnold was not a poet. He was restricted in the articulation of this effervescence to big and broad ideas, however, they felt no less profound and verbose in his chest for their lack of thesaurus reach. He wanted to roar. A great yaulp was within him, high and huge, and with every step his legs eagerly kicked up under him in their own effort to skip to buoyancy, the barely-contained strength of his voice faltered and threatened to escape in massive keening bellows of mania.
So he yelled his fucking head off.
Uncaring of the alien presence of a very tanned, dusty looking grown man screaming and shouting incoherent whoops of pious ecstasy among the typical urban surroundings of Hillwood, an Arnold that felt younger than he'd ever been in San Lorenzo proceeded like a comet inexorably towards the sun to his home, the boardinghouse. In a little less than an hour, Arnold anticipated knocking Helga's socks off with the caliber of handsome he could unleash in a fine suit with his scruffy week's growth of beard cleaned. She has no idea, Arnold thought, imagining with nearly sadistic relish the anticipated look of visceral, physical amazement on Helga's face when she saw him. That look would make this whole trip worth it, and then some.
Excited cultivated within him. A new start, on the back of the roughest first year in this new decade of his twenties, was a gift he was unprepared for entirely. It consumed him, but he felt renewed by it just the same.
Finally settling down the ruckus in his throat, Arnold simply proceeded with maximum haste to his home, to a shower, to the hated and treasured time he would spend apart from Helga.
Something touched his thigh, and he had to remind himself he had a cellphone while he was absently investigating the tickling buzz with his errant hand.
His cellphone, an anchor to this real mortality of his, a brief window outside the escaped paradise of his Helga feelings.
Ah yes, he remembered his present. I am still here where Lila exists.
His phone was heavy. Lila was calling him, the day after the party. After Helga's music, and her body, and the music he made with her body. He was answerable to someone still, a promised someone to whom he had already broken one promise.
His pace slowed to a wandering stroll with automatic control when he accepted her call.
"Hello Lila," he started the conversation, as much a greeting to him as it was private accusation, private request for forgiveness.
"Arnold, I'm ever so glad you took my call," she said, sounding tired but relieved. "I was fretful that my abrupt parting from our last conversation had been taken as a formal 'Goodbye,' and I have dreaded calling you again since."
"Oh, right. No, I didn't take it as that." Arnold dreaded telling her the truth of the night far more than Lila had dreaded calling him, he wagered.
"And I have been doubly sick because I tried to get the party called off, a desperate silly hopeless attempt, and I did it to keep you with me as much as I did it to spite Helga, and I'm miserable and sick. I feel so sick that I did that, Arnold, and I am sorry."
Arnold listened with the quiet patience of a hanged man.
"I wanted to make it up to you, the guilt just ate me up, that I could do something so sneaky and try to ruin your big welcome home party. I've never done a thing to try to hurt you, in my entire life, not once. Won't you forgive me? Please don't take me out of your life."
He had never heard her ask him something so direct before. It sounded small and meek from her, when she was anything but.
"I am so sorry if I ever hurt you," she begged, and the emotion in her voice was unmistakably real.
"Lila, it's okay." Arnold hardened his gut with the weight of what he had to tell her.
"So I'm forgiven?"
"Forget you ever did it, because it doesn't matter. It was sweet in a way. You really care for me, Lila, and I won't ever make you apologize for that."
"Oh Arnold," she sighed. She was silent for a beat, and then, "I'm in Hillwood."
His easy slow stride stopped on a heel, which lowered itself slowly while he felt a woozy wave of dizzy panic hit him.
"You're in Hillwood?"
"Yes, I took the redeye out of Atlanta and arrived early this morning. I'm staying with Olga and Miriam for now."
Panic panic panic!
"Why did you come here?" It was all he could manage to ask.
"To see you," she calmly replied. "And to help."
"Help? Help with what?" He was truly lost.
"I don't imagine you know too much about it, but," she began slowly. "Back in middle and high school, there was someone using the old name Gerald used to tell tall tales to terrorize us. Everyone. It was horrible."
"Fuzzy Slippers." He remembered the details Gerald had written him about the mystery and the adventure of the chase. He had wished he was in Hillwood to help, but that was one time he was not able to save everyone.
"Right. Well, I am afraid that...Arnold I really shouldn't tell you this over the phone. Can you meet me here?"
Arnold remembered the time. He had so precious little left to get ready and meet Helga for their date. But the guilt of his escapade with Helga pushed him to rationalize something he had no business deciding: he had time to spare for Lila.
"Sure, but it has to be fast, I have to be somewhere in an hour or so."
"Oh? Where are you going?" Surprise in her voice.
"I really shouldn't tell you this over the phone," he parroted, and prayed Lila had the brilliance to read between the lines and the mercy not to tell him she did.
"Well then you'd better hurry here to me."
Arnold picked up his pace back to his previous reckless haste, but turned left instead of right at the critical juncture. His feet took him to Lila, out and away from the little aglow walkway of his mind that led patiently to Helga's table. He sped up, and then hurried, and his legs were a whirlwind tumbling towards a past promise and the heap of regret he named Lila.
Olga was heavier than Arnold remembered, and very tired in her face.
"Hello Arnold," she had politely answered the door. Where time had harnessed Helga, it had obsoleted Olga. She resembled every painting Arnold had ever seen of the mourning Madonna in Latin America: a too-young face pulled oblong down towards the ground, pulled there by unspeakable tragedy. Mary meant "Ocean of Tears," Arnold recalled his mother Stella telling him, and Olga was for every inch of her face Mary.
She looked so similar to Miriam.
She had still managed to keep relatively in shape, he noticed, but the angular litheness of her frenetic youth had softened into a settled shape, a welcoming domestic body.
Arnold was led by a mostly silent Olga to the first floor guest room where Lila was staying. She made polite small talk about being glad to see him, and that he had become a handsome man, and she was certain she saw clearly what her little sis saw in him.
Something in her choice of words in that comment made Arnold hate her.
Miriam was nowhere to be found, and Arnold didn't ask. The house had the smell of a lot of cleaning supplies, and it was kept spotless of dust and mess. It was likely Olga, Arnold reasoned, who was so bent towards a life lived cleanly that she made every evidence of the collective mess around her vanish. It felt like a museum, and devoid of life everywhere but the guest room.
Lila was like the sun in a barren landscape.
When he saw her, he sucked in a breath of surprise. She was out of her chair, laying in repose on the large fluffy guest bed, hands folded on her waist and her eyes closed. Even when she lay so still Arnold wasn't sure she was breathing save for the gentle lift and fall of her bosom, she glowed with fire. Her radiantly powerful presence billowed out and down the bed, cascading with gravity like smoke under a closed door.
Arnold stood in the doorway watching her, not even noticing that Olga had escaped into some other silent corner of the house.
Lila breathed quietly for some time, and then, without opening her eyes, slowly turned a hand and held it out for Arnold to take. His body jerked forward in automatic obedience, but he hesitated, chewed his lip, and then went to stand next to her, his hand deposited into hers.
She was hot to the touch like branding irons.
"My Arnold," she softly spoke, and a smile was most imperceptibly on her lips.
"Hello, Lila," he began, struggling to find the courage necessary to be true. To be honest.
"My Arnold," she continued, speaking over him. "That is who put his hand in mine just now. There's a different Arnold that came here, but it was mine that touched me just so." Her green eyes opened, and found his.
"Lila," he felt emotion knot in his throat, the way it did when he was a little kid with an accidental knee scrape and his Grandpa encouraged him to 'Be A Man'; and though it stung and it hurt and he wanted to cry, obligation demanded he choke on it. So he choked.
"My Arnold wasn't at that party last night. My Arnold didn't even come to Hillwood. That was someone else. That was someone that hasn't been seen or heard in ten years. That was just some different Arnold, who had never met his parents, and had never loved me, and never asked me to be his wife."
Her voice shook.
"So I don't need to forgive anything that Arnold did. Because it wasn't my Arnold."
She knew. Arnold wasn't even partially unsure. She knew, and she was tactfully, romantically saving him from the awkward Hell of telling her.
"Explain your face," she commanded, calm eyes resting on the ugly wine bruising of trauma on his cheek where Helga had hit him.
"Helga socked me pretty good when I told her we were engaged."
Lila's smile took a twist of satisfaction. "I'll bet she did. Did she do anything else violent? Hurt anyone else?"
Arnold wasn't sure; the chaos of her apartment suggested that maybe she had. He didn't like to think of it. "I don't know, but I'm not really worried about it. I had it coming. I'm sure she took it all out on me."
"I would not be so sure," she replied. "Help me into my chair, please, my sweet Arnold."
Lifting her felt like lifting a coffin, though she weighed very little. Once she was in her chair, a practiced transition Arnold had helped her with countless times, she smoothed out the sundress she was wearing on her thighs and sighed.
"Arnold I am ever so sorry to have to tell you this," she began. "You know I have a bias in this scenario, and I know that there's probably some reason to doubt what I say, given how sneaky I had tried to be. But since that was done out of love, and you saw that and you forgave me, in your oh so gallant way, I have hope you will see that what I tell you is the truth and there's no reason for me to lie to you."
Something felt very strange to Arnold. He had nothing on his radar that she could be speaking so gravely about.
"What is it, Lila?"
Lila lifted her chin and grabbed eye contact with him, face as serious as he'd ever seen it.
"Helga is Fuzzy Slippers."
"Lila, come on, be serious."
"I am ever so serious, Arnold. It really is Helga. I didn't want to believe it myself; she's always been someone I deeply respected, even if we never had the opportunity to become good friends. And I certainly never imagined she could be capable of...of that."
Arnold removed his hand from Lila's, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Lila, I don't want to say something really rude here, but this seems like a jealous accusation that isn't based on any fact. I don't think you like Helga and I don't think you are as respectful of her as you say. I also think that is fine, and understandable given the circumstances, but it's not okay to pretend that isn't true."
Arnold didn't like the look on her face, it seemed far too serious. She only got that look when things were extremely real. She wore it as a child when her father, then single, was long out of work and bills were stacking up on the two of them. She wore it the week her father and stepmother had passed away, and she wore it for months after the accident. It chilled his impatience. It made him reasonable to her suggestions.
"Arnold I will be ever so patient with you right now because this is no doubt quite the surprise. I will be gracious and ignore the insinuation that I am ever not acting with your best interests in my heart. My feelings are less important than the truth right now."
Arnold remained standing impassive, arms crossed. She had explaining to do. "Hurry then. I don't have a ton of time to waste." He hated how dismissive he sounded of her time, but, Helga was probably already on her way to the restaurant.
"Olga? Miriam?" Lila summoned them like royalty calls her courtiers.
Arnold turned when the two women materialized into their conversation, moving into the room with obedient quiescence. If Olga had become elongated by time, Miriam had shrunk. He barely recognized the ninety pound stick figure that steadied herself with a yellowish leathery hand. Hard years had tanned her skin, dried it, shrank her entire. He thought it was sad.
"Tell Arnold what you found in Helga's storage boxes." Lila patiently watched Arnold's face. He looked at the two Patakis expectantly.
"Well, Arnold, you see," Olga began for the two of them. "While we three were going through little sister's old things, we found some of her old journals. We were going to make a collage out of her poetry and frame it for Mama's bedroom. Mama always loved Helga's poems."
"I can't believe you would violate Helga's privacy like that," Arnold scowled. "Whatever, go on."
Olga blinked heavily mascaraed eyes at the stinging rebuke, and glanced at Lila's stern face before pressing on.
"Well at Lila's suggestion when she arrived today, we went through the piles of journals quite thoroughly, and we found...this." Olga's hand extended, pressing a small leather black moleskine journal towards Arnold. It was very similar to the one Gerald had. Too similar.
Taking it into his hands, a bolt of anxiety twisted in Arnold's fingertips. Dare he look inside? He was terrified of finding something he couldn't forgive in those pages. A vast valley of the unknown spread out before him, and by cracking the pages of the book open, it would yawn into a chasm of disaster.
He put the book on the nightstand table without opening it and looked firm at Lila.
"I don't know what is in this book, and I don't need to see it. Helga is not Fuzzy Slippers."
Lila seemed tired again, no trace of disappointment in her soft movements, but merely an exhaustion.
"Olga, please open the book for him since he refuses to confront the truth in front of his face."
Arnold was starting to get angry again, a bitter resentment for the inconvenience of a new dramatic development souring him towards them all.
And then Olga opened the book.
Helga stormed the sidewalk like an approaching army towards the battlefield, flanked by Rhonda, Nadine, and tiny Eugene in behind. The trip had been fraught with narrow escapes and unlikely turns of sudden fortune as they dodged the pursuing crowd of rabble whipped up into vengeful frenzy by Sid and Stinky.
And now the goal was in sight, and Helga was intent to visit some devastation upon the household Pataki. She imagined herself as a great wind, pushing forward to bless the roof of this house with an ancient bellows of fury. She named herself Fury and had bloody-minded vengeance girded about herself as her Aegis. Her teeth were lightning; her hands spears; her voice was ashen destruction.
And somehow still the doorway she had herself never crossed, that immortal gateway into a life she eschewed as a shunned stranger loomed with towering sentinel strength before her. A fight she had not yet fought, choosing instead to flee. The unfinished business with Olga and Miriam had been another source of regret in the young woman; Helga did not respond well to regret.
And yet still, she had to press forward if there was going to be a solution to this nightmare. She was already going to be woefully late for her date; she prayed Arnold was forgiving of tardiness, because if Arnold had showed up late she would not have been so gentle.
"Helga, let's get this farce over with," Rhonda grumbled, breaking the moment of internal hesitation within Helga, bringing her to the present.
"Just give me a second, Rhonda, I'm getting in the zone." A blatant lie, but told boldly enough to be believable.
"We are going to need to see this little plan of yours first hand or there's no way anyone in Hillwood will believe you. We're the only reliable witnesses you are gonna get."
"All you three have to do is make sure that everybody gets a copy of what goes down in there. Any idiot could do it."
"I still can't believe that is your grandiose plan. Helga, I expected better of you," Rhonda sneered. "It's so expected, so cliche. You think you can get her to confess everything while you secretly record it?"
Helga continued to hesitate at the doorway, definitely sure her plan sucked. But she was at too great a disadvantage, with only barely twenty minutes of experience in this fight. She barely even knew that she was truly up against Lila until the magic shop, and even though she had considered Lila her rival for the majority of her existence, it wasn't until just now she realized just how powerful a foe she had in Sawyer.
The situation was just a hair south of nightmarish. If Lila really was Fuzzy Slippers, and Helga had no doubts at all in that regard, it meant she was far and away the trickiest person in Hillwood. Helga had always thought of herself as an absolute mastermind in her schemes, but once Arnold left there was little she cared about enough to actually scheme about. The Prom Queen thing was a notable exception, but beyond that one outstanding instance, Helga's practice at layering subtle lies and misdirecting behaviors all to achieve some distant, unknowable goal had basically rusted into stillness. Without Arnold to pursue, she had nothing to be faithless and deceitful about.
And suddenly she had to summon up all those hibernating skills and form a rudimentary defense against what was surely the death knell. Lila wasn't playing around. Helga suddenly felt a little regret for the bold trash she talked when she caught Lila on the phone the night before. She had spoken brashly, and if she wasn't Helga fucking Pataki, she's have been speaking out of turn and out of her depth. Luckily, even on her worst day, Helga was beyond a match for Lila. She knew she could win; she just had to make Lila make one simple mistake.
She had to get her to talk.
It was the only way; the circumstantial evidence was so overwhelmingly stacked against her, the only way to shake it was a verbal confession, candidly captured, secretly broadcast, and permanently archived. Helga hated how Hollywood it felt.
If Lila Sawyer was Fuzzy Slippers, she had been adopting that identity without a single ounce of suspicion from anyone in Hillwood for over a decade. The disguise was so perfect, so practiced, and so thorough, it would take a master of manipulation and rhetoric at least Lila's equal to undo the mask. It would take everything Helga had, brute force and precision and flexibility all at once. And she had no time to practice. Simply stated, Rhonda was right. Helga's plan was shitty because it was no plan. She just intended on going in there and making the confrontation so legendarily awful that Lila spilled her guts. Somehow.
For just a second, she doubted herself.
There had been four times that Helga had totally given up - four times, and four only, and she had a good reason for each occurrence. It didn't make their memory any easier.
The first time was when she had gotten teased as a three year old for having a crush on Arnold. Giving in to the pressure of being judged by others for her true feelings had started the spiral of self-flagellation that she was still in the throes of. In the face of ridicule for what was really a perfectly natural emotion, Helga had chosen Flight. It was the first surrender, and it was the worst, because it had done the most damage and set up a pattern of running from her feelings.
The second time she had given up belonged to Arnold again-when Arnold had asked her if she really meant what she said on that rooftop, the fear of rejection and the empty yawning void of what would come after that rejection terrified her from the lines of battle. In full retreat, she routed, waving her white flag and yielding all the ground she had conquered, lying to her boy and denying her true feelings. She could have been brave, could have faced the music. Her choice was surely the practical one, and in the end, her denial had spiraled a series of events into place that ended with Arnold kissing her, but it was still giving up. She chose Flight.
The third time was also about Arnold-but it was different from the rest. When Arnold asked her, that fateful day, what she thought about him moving to be with his parents finally, Helga had chosen Flight for the third and final time. She remembered with awful clarity the very moment it happened.
Arnold was sitting pensively, looking despairingly adult in his ten year old frame. A decision he had never anticipated making was before him, and Helga knew it was about her as much as it was about him. That thought sent her mind into dizzying pleasure, a confusing mixture of joy at even being included in his decision making process, and a horrible sticky fear that despite that massive milestone, she'd still end up on the losing side.
But as Helga had watched the boy she loved struggle and wrestle internally with his decision, the choice began to make itself obvious to her. Moment after moment, the terror-logic of his decision unfolded neatly across her consciousness, and a future bereft of his presence made itself known in the corners of her sight.
Arnold had his hands folded together, thumbs worrying over each other with uncharacteristic anxiety. She'd never seen him so upset, even though only days before he had finally found his parents after a decade of wishing harder than anything to find them. He should be happy right now, she lamented as she had watched him. It wounded her to see him so eaten up by the burden of her existence in his heart. It shattered her to be the fulcrum of his misery, and yet she loved him so she would willingly wound him still.
"My parents want me to stay with them, now that they've reunited with me and everything." He began speaking for them. Arnold you saint. Helga loved him for being the braver of the two of them at that moment.
"Sounds great, Football Head," she heard herself casually remark. "It's what you've always wanted." She couldn't believe the words she was saying. What am I doing? Lying to him again-only this isn't a total lie. That was what made it harder, the truth of it.
"Yeah, it's great. Only I would have to leave Hillwood." He spoke slowly and carefully in the way Arnold did when he was trying to imply something unpleasant.
"I imagine so, seeing as how you guys are basically the Swiss family Robinson and all."
"Maybe for a really long time," he pleaded. "Miles and Stella, mom and dad, I mean, they said I would probably be tutored privately by them or go to local schools part time while they worked. Their work is important, Helga, they are saving thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands."
"I'm in no doubt that they are really wonderful, Arnold. So what," she swallowed, finding it hard to ask this next part. "What's the problem?"
"I would have to leave Hillwood, for a long time. All my friends, grandma and grandpa, the tenants! And you."
Helga writhed internally at her inclusion, a frenzy of ecstasy she had never imagined, coiled around a heavy guilt.
"Yeah, Arnold, that's real sweet and everything, but this is what you have always wanted. You can't give up on that." Saying that was the hardest thing she had ever done.
"Helga, what about that kiss? What about what we said in the jungle? Am I supposed to just put that aside?"
For reasons her young mind could only begin to articulate, she was very mad at Arnold.
"Yes of course you are!" She shouted. Arnold stared at her with dumb shock.
"What are you, stupid?! We are ten, TEN! Ten years old. I say I l-love you, you...you s-say it back. So what. We are j-just kids! They are your parents you stupid boy. Arnold, you're not an orphan anymore. Don't let anything stand in the way of your happiness. Especially not me."
Arnold looked at his hands, and the sad frown she saw take over his normally peaceful quiescence shook her into terrified reverence. She did that to him. The realization hit her in her guts.
"Arnold," she softened. "Arnold, I think you need to remember what this whole adventure was about. It's not a choice. It's about making your life happier. Better. There are some children who long for their parents to divorce, like me. There's children who only have one parent, like Lila. And then there's orphans, like you, and, and there's nothing this world has done that was just or right except give you back your parents. You are going to stay with them. It's not even a choice and you know it isn't. You are just pretending it is in the hopes that the choice will get made for you."
Suddenly Arnold looked up at her, no mirth in his face.
"Stay with me."
Helga's legs gave out instantly. She was on her knees, hands struggling to find purchase while the words he spoke to her robbed her of every strength and armor she had ever wore. She felt dizzy, so dizzy she felt like she wasn't even on the ground, but floating above herself in an adrift haze. Reality hit her hard, then, and it came with Arnold rapidly making his case while she listened, dumbfounded.
"You said yourself you wish your parents would split, so why stay with them. Your mom doesn't care, your dad is probably going to be glad to get rid of you," Arnold stopped suddenly, aware he had gone too far by the turned look of wounded grief on Helga's plain features.
"Oh Bob would LOVE to get rid of me, Arnold," she bitterly spat at the floor, unable to look at him for the pain. "Miriam too, just to be rid of the last nag of reality that still gives two craps about her. Oh criminy, Arnold, you don't have to remind me how little I am wanted by the Patakis, so please spare me your oh so convincing argument. But you don't really expect me to drop everything and come live in the freaking jungle with you, do you? We are ten years old. Bob would never allow a Shortman to raise me, first of all, he'd rather send me off to boarding school if only he wasn't so cheap in my regard. Miriam would object because she would look bad if she didn't. You aren't thinking straight because you kissed me. I get it, it was your first real kiss with someone you like like. Big, heavy stuff, trust me. After the first time I kissed you, I could barely think straight around you for weeks. So since you aren't thinking straight, let me do it for you, Football Head."
Helga stood, pushing her flashing despair to the earth at her feet while she rose away from it. Someone had to think of Arnold, and like always, it had to be her.
And she was terrified of leaving home for him, just in case he changed his mind and came to his senses and realized how terrible she really was.
"You're going to stay here, with your mom and dad. I am going back to Hillwood. Our lives will go on, maybe a little bit less interesting, but, they'll go on regardless. You'll get tall, and probably ridiculously good looking, and win a Nobel peace prize at sixteen for solving world hunger. I will go write poetry in obscurity and get the hell out of Hillwood as soon as my legs can carry me. Maybe you can visit, soon? But, your home is with your parents. Mine is not."
By the time she finished her short speech, Helga was as convinced of her own sad prediction as she was hoping Arnold would be. He had to forget her. And she was positive he would.
Arnold hadn't answered her for a long time. He had finally stood, and crossed the short distance to stand on his toes and kiss her cheek. "I'll write," is all he could say, and left her.
It was ten years later he walked back into her life, and she chose flight for the fourth time.
She wouldn't run this time. She would Fight.
"Alright." Helga growled, teeth bared and ready to fight. "Let's bury this bitch."
Arnold left the building, feeling gutted. He had never imagined that this kind of confused pain was possible.
Helga is Fuzzy Slippers?
Just hours before, he had nearly confessed his love for her, and now, he had to face the possibility that she was in fact the horrible secretive rumor monger that had ruined many of his friends' lives. Lila had shown him nearly irrefutable evidence; there was no mistaking that poem.
And yet, something felt so wrong about the scenario.
He couldn't place it, but a nag of memory chirped against his worried conscience, fretting the frayed edges of a mind harrowed too often and too acutely. He didn't want to believe Lila. He promised he would go out and find Helga, and get this mess settled, and hastened to leave her despite her desperate and needy pleas.
Out in the open air, Arnold merely struggled to understand which was was up. Nothing made sense to him, because reality had dealt him a blow so severely he couldn't reconcile it with the rules he was used to following. If up was not down, then how could Helga be Fuzzy Slippers? It could not be; his mind wouldn't accept the evidence directly in front of his eyes.
Even still, he doubted.
The doubting was torture beyond compare. No pain was as sweet as this, the doubt of his lover, a confused and trusting doubt. You didn't do this, Helga, he pleaded internally, quite desperate for it to be the case that she hadn't.
Even still, he had to confront the possibility that she was in fact the nigh demonic influence over Hillwood, secretly orchestrating disaster and ruin on everyone and everything around her. Ruining marriages. Shutting businesses. Ending careers. Destroying friendships. Nothing was sacred to Fuzzy Slippers, except that the culprit, whoever they were, never once attacked Helga.
It couldn't be a coincidence.
Not with her poem in the journal.
What do I do if it is her? He gasped for breath when that question hit him, and he had to sit down. What would he do? Did he still love her, if she was so terrible? Could he forgive her? Should he?
Moaning in place, Arnold held his hands to his eyes and tried to imagine a life at her side despite her secret identity. It felt awful. There was nothing but misery and blood down that path. And yet, when he attempted to imagine a life absent her presence at his side, a pain more deadly flashed within his breast, and he nearly fainted for the shock of the sensation.
He didn't trust that it wasn't her.
He despaired to realize it, but a different, younger Arnold would have believed her, and he didn't.
Smashing his fists on the sidewalk where he sat until they were red and bloodied, Arnold mourned Helga before she ever knew he made the choice. There was no way he could forgive this, if it was her. And if it wasn't, he was certain he couldn't forgive himself for not believing in her.
He couldn't be with her. Not because of Lila, not even because of Helga, but because of him. A drastic difference was inside Arnold, now an adult with many years of horrible experiences under his belt, and he was too different and too dirty to love her as purely and as completely as he had at age ten. They were different people now, he realized through his tears, and their past was not their future.
Hiccuping his first sob, Arnold began to lament the passage of time, and his inevitable crawl towards isolation, and the lost love of a girl that had always loved him even if he never returned the favor for a single day. Without Helga, he wasn't sure what he was, but the silhouette of what remained saddened him profoundly.
Openly crying at the side of the road now, Arnold Shortman broke up with Helga in his heart, and buried himself in the agony of the loss. So empty, so bereft was he, that he didn't even notice Brainy's can pull up, the side door slide open, or Gerald pull him into the van.
He was only dimly aware when Phoebe and Gerald urgently rushed to tell him the story of how Brian had been the first Fuzzy Slippers, and relinquished the name to Lila at her request when she moved to Hillwood. He was tear-sodden and nodding dumbly when they told him Lila's enormous, circuitous plan, and the intended target of all her secrecy: Helga. He bawled openly to their absolute bemusement when they told him how Helga was innocent, and they were on their way to nail Lila with the truth, because he knew it didn't matter.
He couldn't be with Helga, because his heart was too weak and small to believe in her.
The house was quieter than Helga expected when she stepped in. The front door was unlocked. She was expected, that much she knew, but the total lack of security and violence inside the house just felt totally wrong. She felt very keenly that this was definitely a trap.
No hesitation now, Helga old girl. Time to ferret this harpy out and get the fireworks flying.
She started to call out for Lila, but the sudden appearance of her wheelchair, swinging into view around the kitchen door and turning to face her directly, shut her up. Helga's blood boiled the instant they made eye contact, but Lila's impassive green gaze met her strength for strength.
"Welcome, Helga. I was expecting you sooner. You just missed Arnold."
Arnold was here? Shit. Helga feigned a smile, and lied. "I know."
Lila didn't seem phased, as if she had suspected as much perhaps, or that she saw through the lie. "Why don't you join me in the kitchen. Miriam poured us some tea when I mentioned you would be joining me this afternoon."
"Did she now?" Helga flinched when Lila mentioned her mother, and Lila noticed it. Helga saw the look of awareness in her empty green eyes and fumed. "Better check it for flammability, Miriam's never been able to resist spiking anything."
She imagined hauling Lila's much smaller frame out of the chair and suplexing her into the walls while she strode powerfully forward, pushing her chest up straight and projecting as much invincibility and strength as she was able. Lila nudged her chair out of the way for Helga to pass, and she snorted a short snarl to count the victory.
Straddling one of the cushioned kitchen chairs casually, Helga draped her arm over the front of the back of the chair against her chest, planning to keep the barrier between them both for Lila's safety and to hide her breathing. She needed to seem calmer than she felt, because Lila had her beat handily in the icy and cold department.
Lila wheeled across the kitchen to settle opposite Helga, and steadily poured two cups of tea that were set out on their saucers, sliding one across the table in silence to Helga, and then folded her hands on the napkin in front of her.
They stared across the table at each other in silence, calculating the weight and cutting edge of each word they were preparing to speak. Like two ancient swordsman weighing the potential outcome of each parry and strike before the killing blows were traded, the bulk of their battle seemed to be taking place invisibly in the spaces of their imaginations. Helga needed this extra time to prepare her weapons so hastily girded; Lila took the time to hone the killing sharpness of hers.
Helga didn't want to be the first to flinch and speak, but the overwhelming rage she felt over the whole affair was draining her patience quickly. She still didn't have her perfect opener, the blitzkrieg gambit that set Lila off balance and started her down the tragic slope towards unraveling her secrets. She needed time to prepare that exchange, and the only way she thought to buy time was to shock Lila into outrage. But she wanted Lila to speak first, to give that ground in front of her feral fury, to show weakness.
Lila was stonelike. Helga hated her for it, but the shapely little bird had a nearly perfect mask of impassive emotionless disappointment. The superior way she seemed to be regarding Helga, as if this was a hunter merely ending the misery of his trapped prey, set Helga's jaw to clenching and unclenching subconsciously; Lila's green eyes flicked to her cheeks, and Helga noticed she was doing it and reddened in her face.
She flinched first.
"You know Arnold goes completely silent when he comes?" Helga spat suddenly, offering the juicy factoid about the object of their mutual affection rapidly. "Oh there's a mess of sexy groaning first, don't get me wrong, but oh man the intense look in his eyes when he's inside you and he's in the moment! I'll never forget it. It's priceless."
Lila pinked, and seemed genuinely put off by the frank and deeply intimate jab by Helga, but then calmly lifted her teacup for a sip.
"Really, Helga, there's no need to get started with vulgarity. Besides, I lived with him for almost two years. I'm his fiancée."
She left it there; it was enough. It made Helga's hands shake with rage, but she steadied them by slapping her hands on the table suddenly. That made the waif jump, and look up in surprise.
"So let's cut the shit then, Sawyer, and get this confession started."
Her rival dabbed her mouth daintily with her napkin, folded it, and nodded curtly. "Yes, whenever you feel like confessing your guilt, I am glad to hear it. Perhaps you could earn some grace and leniency by finally owning up to your years of dishonest misconduct. But that," she slowed, narrowing her green eyes for dangerous effect. "Won't be for me to determine."
"Confession? Confession! Oh, that's rich. That's true comedy. You should try a stand up routine with that material," she cruelly sneered. "Your bullshit stinks to high heaven. Lila. You know that it won't be my confession today, Sawyer, because your web of lies is getting unraveled right here."
"You should taste your mother's tea," Lila offered. "I imagine it will be the last time you have the opportunity. She plans to disown you on my ever so regretful recommendation. I simply couldn't bear to see her in pain over your lies and your awful, brutish behavior again. It pained me oh so much to do it, but, I had to keep her safe from you."
So there it was, her final blow. Lila's final slap to Helga's face. To get disowned. A piece of her heart felt broken, perhaps the last valve she had left that still recalled Miriam fondly. She was surprised by how it hurt. If that was all Lila had left, however, Helga felt like she could still win this.
"I ain't drinking a damn thing that faithless woman serves, and I ain't gonna let you dodge my accusation. You are Fuzzy Slippers."
"The irony that you, utterly defeated, would attempt to so weakly accuse me of your own misdeeds after all your careful years of practice and planning, when I have been your most ardent supporter for years and have respected you more than anyone, even more than Arnold, is as tragic as it is useless. I know you feel cornered, Helga, but, really, it's such a weak and predictable move to try to pin the blame on your romantic rival. You have no evidence to support your claim, and nothing less than a mountain of it pointing at you. Including tangible, hard evidence."
Helga blinked in furious surprise. "You don't have any physical evidence," she growled. "You don't have a goddamn thing."
Lila watched Helga's forehead vein throb, and seemed almost about to say something, but then she slipped a black journal from under the table in front of Helga, and tapped it with a manicured nail. "I do."
She finally understood the missing pieces of this labyrinthine puzzle, staring at the black journal book set in front of her.
"You've been planning this for years," Helga laughed in surprise, a strange giddy elation in her throat. She had her neck in the hangman's noose since they were kids, and never knew it. "Two copies of the same book, Sawyer you fucking supervillain."
"Is this my book, Helga? That is passing strange, considering you literally wrote your name in it." She turned the book over in her hands, flipping through the pages with an ease that betrayed her familiarity with the text to Helga. This was clearly some sort of mental trick, some strange double psychic reach around intended to get Helga confused and helpless. Lila continued to pretend she was ignorant, stopping on a page near the center.
She started to read.
"H is for the head I'd like to punt.
E is for every time I see the little runt.
L is for longing for our first kiss.
G is for how good that longing is.
A is for Arnold. Doi!"
She set the book down and calmly regarded Helga, who's mouth was open in a snarling smile. "Oh, you're good, Sawyer, you're so fucking good, and I owe you an apology for not seeing how good you are and always were. Using my own poem to implicate me. Too damn good."
"I didn't write that; Helga, that is your poem. It has your name in it. It's about wrote it when you were nine, before I even met you. And even more, it's also the cipher that was missing in the copy I helped Phoebe and Gerald get when we chased you that fateful day in high school. Once I saw this poem, missing from the other book, I instantly knew this was the key. The letters in your name are replaced with the first letter of the last word of each line, really, quite genius. It made the writing in the book just close enough to jibberish to confuse Phoebe. You knew it would be the right touch of simple and confusing to work against her tendency to overcomplicate problems. You knew that, because you're her best friend. Or, maybe, were her best friend. I don't know how she'll react to this."
"Interesting theory, told boldly like the faithless liar that you are, Lila. But here's the problem; that's not how the poem goes."
Lila blinked, a twitch at the corner of her mouth. "It's your poem, Helga, how am I supposed to know?"
"That's the thing. That's not my poem. The third line actually goes 'L is for longing for our firstest kiss.' You got cocky. You messed it up. I don't know how you even know that poem, but clearly, you don't know it well enough."
"And so I am clearly the culprit because you wrote an alternate version of your own poem. Please, Helga, don't be so transparent. You're reaching for straws. Besides, Arnold's already seen this. He recognized the poem instantly. I'm ever so afraid the effect it had on him was deeply painful for me to see. I still love him, regardless of his confused heart. Which was only thrown into deeper turmoil by the vast web of lies you've woven."
"Oh, so you wanna talk Arnold instead of address how badly you fucked up? Alright, I'm all ears. Please, tell me, what did Arnold say when he saw your amateurish attempt to capture my brilliance?"
"Arnold said some very drastic things. He wants to leave Hillwood tonight."
Helga's gut dropped. It had to be another lie. Lila was a serpent, a peddler of falsehoods. And yet, the reason she was so successful was her expertise in blending the false with the true. What if she was telling the truth? What if Arnold hadn't seen the fatal flaw in her mockery of her poetry? What if he didn't trust that she was incapable of doing something like this? Everything was over, if that was the case. There wasn't any way she could trust Arnold to trust her ever again, if he believed for an instant that she was responsible for all that Fuzzy Slippers had done. He had to know she was innocent, even in the face of well crafted and damning evidence.
She was deeply worried this confrontation had already failed, despite having caught Lila in a fatally clumsy error.
"I'm so sure," Helga feigned a lack of concern. "Arnold probably swore off ever seeing me again, and dropped to his knee and proposed a second time."
"Yes." Lila's smile was as sweet as it was hateful. "That's exactly what Arnold did."
Helga's hands curled into white knuckled fists.
"Remember the last time you and I had a confrontation, Helga? It was high school, before I moved to be with Arnold. You were so angry at me, and so impotent. I was just reminded of that moment, because just like then, you are a paper tiger. Your threats are empty and your façade has fallen. You've lost. Utterly and completely, you have lost. Arnold renounced every word of affection and love he ever spoke to you as a lie. He cursed your name and spat on the ground. He begged me, on bended knee, to forgive his errancy and his forgetful heart. How fast he flashed my engagement ring back onto my finger, after I had so solemnly removed it also at his request. Like my dutiful knight he swore me loyalty, and pleaded to be worthy enough to be my husband."
Helga's vision was almost totally blurred, a whirlwind of pressure and violence swimming in her awareness and threatening to crush Lila where she sat. The Goddess of light and hunger inside her shrieked to be released, the lioness roared for her chance to feast on this empty small thing. Helga heard drumming in her ears, and was only dimly surprised it was her own heartbeat calling her to action. She gripped the chair she was in as if her hands were all that kept her anchored to this Earth. She wanted to drink Lila's blood under the witness of the moon, and howl her ghost into the sky. She wanted to see the dance of her jugular under her teeth. She wanted to rip her apart. She had never felt such intense violent urges while also still being in total control over herself; in every instance prior, she succumbed to the manic fury in her heart. It was with cold precise calculation that she kept her bounding muscles in check, their twitch in her forearms visible beneath her skin. With grit teeth she weathered Lila's empty falsehoods, they must be falsehoods or else all was already lost. She wouldn't let Lila win, and goad her into hitting her. Then, Helga would really lose.
She reached into her pocket while Lila finished her speech, and turned on the recording app on her phone.
Lila pressed on, clearly eager to get Helga to act out her fury. It would be how she cemented Arnold's heart against her. Helga knew she couldn't actually do it, or everything was lost.
"You know why you lost, Helga? It's because I am better than you. I have always been more than your equal. And where I spent years getting better, you let your cowardly heart stagnate and finish."
"Is that what you think I did, Lila?" Helga needed to keep her going, no matter how furious and angry and hateful she became. She had to get Lila to spill it.
"I saw it happen! It was pathetic. I hated you for it, because you had this limitless potential, as great as mine, and you squandered it. Rock music and a public university and no Arnold. You were content to live like that. Are you kidding me? How dare you think you are worthy of him or my time?!"
It wasn't enough to convict her. That thought chewed within her just as much as her fury at Lila's audacious lies, but even worse were the totally accurate truths she was laying on Helga like heavy blows now.
"You were never there for him, you spent ten years making a fine habit out of not being there for him! And before that, what an oh so lovely time you had of bullying him and tearing him down every chance you could rather than say how you really felt. Oh no, Helga, you don't deserve one inch of any amount of Arnold you got, you don't even deserve to look at him!"
Tears of an unimaginable anger pushed themselves fat and hot out of Helga's eyes and crossed her now scarlet cheeks. She felt dizzy she was so angry. Her shoes were scraping the ground beneath her like a newborn foal attempting to find her legs, desperate not to push off the iron springs in her toes and fill her teeth with Lila's face and her hands with Lila's neck. The outrage was so sublime, so pure, it lived in her like she was the skin covering the body it kept. When she saw Lila it was rage looking through her eyes to memorize the way the redhead's lips moved when she spoke with such hatred and anger. Helga almost felt like she was disassociating from herself, merely watching the scene play out as Lila hurtled insult after insult and her fleshy body writhed under the weight of every word, begging to be released.
There was a light at the end of the tunnel, a distant star, and all she had to do was navigate through the worst rage she had ever felt in her entire life, and quiet the dangerous riot of cosmos beneath her muscles long enough to get the confession from Sawyer.
And then, all bets were off.
Lila, for her part, kept pressing the attack, convinced she was finishing Helga off. "I hate you, Helga Pataki, I hate you more than I hate anything. You are the empty, dark reflection of what I could have been if I gave up, and look at you now, powerless and impotent and starving to kill me. You won't, because you know Arnold would never dream to speak to you again. Even after what he saw in the journal and the vows he promised me, you might have hope, and that what stays your hand. Your hands are too timid, you are gutless. You were only ever unafraid of hurting someone if it meant you couldn't be hurt yourself. Empty bully. Useless coward. This is your dirge, and I am ever so satisfied to be the conductor with her baton at the ready for the finale."
In the small, small part of Helga that was holding on and keeping her hand in her pocket on that record button, a light sparked. This was the way she got Lila to make her final mistake. She had to press that last point, somehow. With a snarl, she slammed her face on the table, squeezing her eyes shut and baring her teeth while she struggled to maintain enough composure to speak.
Lila didn't let her catch her breath. "There's no use crying about it now, it's too late for you. You may have taken Arnold from me for one night, and it'll be a night I can never take from him. I will concede that to you; I underestimated you and I thought him too good to betray me. But I swore I wouldn't let you get away with it, and now look at you. I beat you. I didn't just win, it was a total disaster. You have nothing left. I even took your family away from you, not that you ever appreciated them when you had them to begin with. Do you know how badly I MISS MY MOTHER?!"
Helga looked up with her face red and wet with tears to see Lila standing over the table in her chair shakily, red-faced and eyes watery, a grimace of absolute hatred tearing her pretty face into an ugly toothy frown.
"Is that why you set me up over these years, Sawyer?! To get your mother back?!" Helga's voice trembled with outrage.
Helga watched in sublime, agonizing awe as Lila unmasked herself. She lifted her hands up to her face in balled fists, pressing her wrists to her eyes and pulling at her hair. She trembled, nearly falling to sit in her chair with a single unsteady wobble, but remained standing and took a deep breath. Helga made sure the recording button was pressed when Lila's shriek pierced the room, long and high and releasing who knows how many years of desperate secret hatred.
"I hate you!" She finally shouted. "I hate you ever so much! I hate you because you remind me of myself! I hate you because there's nothing this world hasn't taken from me that it hasn't handed you! When I moved here my father had nothing and I didn't have my mother! And you had a rich dad and a cool older sister and your mom was alive and you couldn't wait to get away from them all! And Arnold just wanted his family back, like me!"
Helga held eyes with her, also crying but for want of release. She couldn't take this anymore, she was about to break. She needed the confession!
"And now I am his family. Lila Shortman! It's his ring in my finger, and I took him from you just as I took your mother, and I am taking your friends. No one will even want to remember your name!"
"You did this, Lila! Say it!" Helga shrieked, slamming her fist on the table and shaking with anger.
"OF COURSE I DID IT! I set you up, hook, line, and sinker! Of course I am Fuzzy Slippers you stupid bitch! I won, I am smarter and better than you, and I won! WHO ELSE COULD DO THIS BUT ME?!"
Helga's entire body sighed loose. She unfurled from her taut position cupped against the chair and table, and slowly, steadily slid her hand with the phone out onto the table. The record button was still pressed; several minutes ticking away on the counter. Enough to win. Lila's eyes slowly turned down to see the screen with a mad look of disbelief, as a man who has just been shot regards the sudden mortal wound. She shook her head once, and reached her hand out to grab the phone.
Helga snatched it away, and pressed the send button. "Too late," Helga laughed with a mucous nose, and dropped the phone to the floor with a cracking clatter.
"Everyone on that fucking imbecilic thread you started just got that recording. Rhonda has a copy for safe keeping just in case you can erase it with your weird fucking hacker shit." Helga leaned back in her seat, arms slowly spreading like wings around her. Hands curled like claws and wrapping themselves into hard fists. She held her hands straight up above herself, fists bared, and stared at the light of the kitchen while she felt the impossible gravity of the anger she had boiled beneath simply escape her through her eyes.
"And Arnold got a copy, too." Bitter laughter spilled from Helga, and she saw Lila slump weakly into her wheelchair without a word.
"You lost," Helga continued, slowly standing in her spot, shoulders slumping over from the stress of the cathartic confrontation, at last completed. "And now I can strangle you to death here on this kitchen floor, and nobody will say a fucking word to convict me. Understand, Miss Sawyer, your life is absolutely at my whim in this moment. I can so easily...easily...snuff your light out."
Advancing like a predator closing in for the kill, Helga stopped inches from Lila's chair, and turned it to face her slowly. Lila merely stared off into the middle distance, eyes a river.
Helga sank to her knees slowly, so she was face to face with Lila, her enemy, her former friend. Fuzzy Slippers. Lila Sawyer. The same monstrous person, hid beneath two different masks. Helga took Lila's face in both hands, and pressed with a dangerous strength into her cheekbones.
"I should drop you in a sack and drown you like a cat," Helga laughed, looking from each of Lila's green, bloodshot eyes in turn. "I should enact every horror you put in my mind with your absolute fucking filth, ten times over. I should kill you."
Lila's eyes betrayed that she still felt fear. Terror was in those stricken green eyes, so full of self pity.
"But instead, I am just going to let you go out into the street, right now, and let all your victims decide what to do with you. My victory is your punishment, and it's something you'll never forget. You hate me so much, so much, that you couldn't help but drop the act and rub it in. That was your downfall. If you kept lying, I had no way to beat you. My victory isn't just because I won, it's because you lost. And all I had to do was not hit you."
Helga's thumbs suddenly pressed over Lila's eyes, and the girl let out a small cry in surprise, her hands grabbing Helga's wrists. Helga pressed, very hard, gritting her teeth and hissing through them, trembling with bloodlust. For an instant, she relished how helpless Lila looked, and wanted nothing more than to pop her eyes and bash her head in. For an instant, that was what she was doing, until she suddenly let go, and a frightened and disarmed Lila helplessly grabbed her face in agony.
Helga stood without a word while Lila sobbed in her indignity, curled like an infant in her chair.
"Never forget I showed you mercy because I pitied you."
Staggering from the kitchen, Helga disappeared into the stairwell, marching up the stairs to find Miriam and Olga.
Nobody disowned Helga Pataki.