Chapter 1

"What I really want is a girl who's not afraid to be herself, who tells the truth even at the risk of not being accepted," Arnold said.

"So, a bold kid like you?" Gerald said with a smirk.

Arnold laughed. "I guess so," he said. He thought for another moment. "It would also be nice if she talked about the deeper things. It's hard to find someone to talk to who can see into things like that."

Gerald gave a sympathetic smile. "You might have to wait until college for that, man. High school isn't really the place for depth."

"You never know. It could happen." Arnold shrugged optimistically.

At that moment, the bell rang, so they grabbed their books from their lockers and headed to their next class together. As the two of them walked away, the open locker someone had been standing behind slammed shut.

"Criminy! How am I supposed to compare to all that?!" Helga leaned against the lockers and glared in front of her. The halls had cleared, but she looked from side to side anyway before pulling out her beloved locket.

"Oh, Arnold, bane of my existence, keeper of my soul, if only you knew what you asked of me, your one true love! To expose my innermost self, not just to you but to all our ignorant, misguided peers. On the one hand, I would finally know if it were possible, turning this one-sided love into something so much more, a life with you by my side as not a fellow classmate but as - dare I say it - a lover, a best friend! On the other hand though, there is the far more cruel, and even more likely outcome, that even if I showed you my soft, mushy interior, you'd still not see me as more than a girl you grew up with, someone not worth remembering, or knowing." She sighed and slid down into a sitting position against the lockers, staring at Arnold's picture.

"Hey!" Helga looked up to see the principal staring down at her. "What do you think you're doing? Get to class!"

Helga jumped up and headed to chemistry class. Nobody turned to look at her when she walked in except Phoebe, who waved her over. She had to admit, she'd be quite lost without her best friend guiding her through every class except English.

"Hey, Pheebs," she said quietly.

Arnold glanced back at her late entrance as well. Helga caught his eye and cocked her eyebrow in question, nothing more. These days, she wasn't about bullying or irritating Arnold, or anyone else for that matter. In middle school, she'd gotten her fair share of bullying herself, and although she fought back, something had changed that made her a little quieter in the face of her own vulnerability, a little more willing to let off steam in a more productive way outside of school.

Arnold turned back to Gerald. "How is it that Helga is almost never here, yet she's still passing?"

Gerald looked over at Phoebe, who blushed and stared down at her desk. "I mean, she is best friends with the smartest girl in school," he said, peeking over at Phoebe in a flirty way.

Arnold sighed. He guessed he was right. Arnold himself had no trouble passing his classes. In fact, next period would be his first time in an English class that only seniors and those with special permission were allowed to take. He was sure he'd be the only sophomore there.

He stole another glance at Helga. She sure had changed since their days in elementary school. Nowadays she wore her long hair down, parted far off to the side, tucked behind her ear to show off five ear piercings. Today she wore a long, slouchy sweatshirt as a dress, black leggings, and combat boots that tapped the whole way through class, as if she couldn't wait to be somewhere else.

Helga impatiently watched the minutes tick by. It seemed she was always waiting for this class, full of formulas and numbers and precise answers, to end so she could get to her English class. It was the only class that seemed to make any sense to her, drawing multiple pathways through the heart that she'd walked a million times because of one stupid, football-headed kid and his neverending ignorance of her existence.

When the bell finally rang, Helga was the first out of her seat. "See you at lunch!" Phoebe called after her, and Helga held up a hand to show that she heard her.

Arnold and Gerald started walking separate ways. "Hey, English is this way," Gerald called after him.

"First day of my new English class, remember?" Arnold said.

"Oh, right, for gifted kids such as yourself. Well, good luck, man. I'll see you at lunch."

They did their usual handshake and parted ways.

When Arnold finally found the right class and walked in, he was stunned to see Helga sitting in the back row, doodling absently in her notebook. She hadn't noticed him yet, and he decided to sit in the open seat next to her.

"Hi, Helga."

"Arnold!" She slammed her notebook shut, hiding her musings from his eyes. "What are you doing here, football head?"

He rolled his eyes. Some things never changed. "I got moved up to this English class. What are you doing here?" he asked, out of genuine curiosity.

"Oh, you know, some goof-up in the office I never corrected," she said with a nervous laugh.

He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could ask anything else the teacher started the lesson. Helga stared straight ahead with a laser focus he never saw her use in any of their other classes. Not only that, but she seemed genuinely happy and interested in what the teacher had to say.

"So, what did everyone think about Charles Baudelaire? Anybody like his work?" A few mumbles, but no one raised their hand except -

"Yes, Helga."

"I loved him," she gushed. "He talks about death the way that people talk about love. He uses such beautiful language to talk about something that people tend to fear, and that care gives a less terrifying and disgusted perspective of death."

Arnold stared at her, open-mouthed. He tried catching her eye, but it seemed she was deliberately not meeting his dumbfounded gaze.

"Very good. Other opinions?" the teacher asked.

A senior girl in front raised her hand. "I think it's gross. Why would someone write about a rotting corpse unless they're a necrophiliac?"

Other kids in the class giggled. Another boy raised his hand. "Yeah, I thought poems were supposed to be about love."

The teacher slowly paced at the front of the classroom. "All very valid opinions," he said. "But who's to say where we should find beauty and what is worth writing about? As Roman playwright Terence once wrote, 'I am human: nothing human is alien to me.'"

Helga wrote this down in her notebook. Arnold watched her like he'd never seen her before. Snippets of their childhood started coming back to him. She was always carrying a little pink book with her, scribbling furiously on the bus rides home. When he was nine, he hadn't thought anything of it. But now, he realized she was in this class not by mistake but because she truly belonged here.

When the bell rang, she made no move to get up. As Arnold gathered his books, she cleared her throat. "Look, I know we're not great friends or anything, Arnoldo, but I need you to keep your mouth shut about me being in this class, got it?"

"Okay." He seemed to be processing something.

"You still here?"

"Helga. Why don't you want anyone to know you're in Advanced English? Does it really matter so much?"

She growled under her breath. "It matters to me, okay? You wouldn't understand. Just leave it alone, okay?"

"Okay," he said, recognizing the old walls she kept up so people wouldn't get close. She stared down at her desk as he hitched his backpack on his shoulder. "I just don't think it's anything to be ashamed of."

She watched him leave, all the while thinking, That's easy for you to say, hair boy. People like the real you.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. She couldn't focus. The one class she could truly be herself in was now compromised by a classmate from P.S. 118, and it was the one person that she both did and didn't want to know her real self.

"Helga?" Phoebe was waving a hand in front of her face.

"Huh?"

"You weren't listening at all, were you?"

"Oh. No. Sorry, Pheebs. I guess I've got a lot on my mind."

"Is it… ice cream-related?" she asked, using their old code word for Arnold.

"What? No! I've been over that for years! Why would you ask that?"

Phoebe smiled. "Because he's been staring at you the entire lunch period," she said.

"What?! Arnold? Staring? At me?!" She calmed herself and pretended to drop her fork. When she leaned down to pick it up and looked up through her lashes, he was indeed staring at her from a few tables over. "Ugh, why me?"

"Did something happen, Helga?"

She put her face in her hands. "He just got transferred to my English class," she said miserably.

Phoebe looked thoughtful as she ate her pudding. "And that's a bad thing?"

"Is our student body full of blithering, cliched, brain-dead idiots?"

"Well-"

"Yes, Phoebe! It's a nightmare! I've gotten by the last few years by specifically not being myself. You remember what happened in middle school."

Phoebe winced. "Yeah." Not wanting to push her friend, she opted for a gentle reminder. "But Arnold has never judged you."

Helga gave a small smile. She was right. Maybe this wouldn't be so terrible. Uncomfortable as hell, maybe. But maybe Arnold could understand her.

"Arnold. Hellooooo?" Gerald waved a hand in front of his friend's face.

"Huh?"

"Snap out of it, man. Were you even listening?"

"Sorry, Gerald. I was thinking about my English class."

"Oh? So how was it, being with all those smart, literary seniors?" Gerald rested his chin on his hands.

"Actually, there was…" He racked his brain, trying to think of a way not to betray Helga's confidence. "...this girl. Really smart. And passionate." He couldn't believe he was talking about Helga.

"So older girls are what you're looking for?"

"Actually, she's a sophomore too." Gerald threw him a look. "You wouldn't know her." Technically not a lie. He definitely didn't know this side of her. "But, she was really amazing."

Gerald looked at the far-off look in his eyes. "Sounds like you like her."

"What? No!" He glanced over at Helga. "I mean, I don't even know her."

Helga and Phoebe got up and strolled out of the cafeteria together, and he wondered if he could like Helga G. Pataki if he really knew her.

Helga breathed a sigh of relief when the school day was over. She'd seen that football head around every corner of the school, and every time she did, he had the same curious look on his face, like she were a lab rat or a type of mold he couldn't identify. It made her feel more self-conscious than usual.

When she got in her car, she started the two-hour drive to the next town over from Hillwood, a drive she made every Monday night.

Ever since she'd gotten her license, she'd also gotten with it the chance to escape her false identity and slip into her real one. For just a few hours each week, she became the person she always needed to be, instead of opting for the person she thought everyone else could tolerate.

She didn't need to defend herself here. She could pour out her heart without the cold fear of being shut down for it. Her parents weren't there, her perfect sister wasn't there, her friends and classmates weren't there. There weren't any expectations to meet.

For those few hours at The Grind coffee shop's weekly poetry night, she was free to use her voice, read the words that built up in the face of bullying, or people ignoring her, or her pain and anger at both. It was the only outlet that had given her some peace.

She grabbed her pink book and headed inside, hoping that tomorrow wouldn't bring another onslaught of questions from Arnold.