A/N: Not much…just trying to hammer this thing out…

Disclaimer – I don't own Hey Arnold!

A Sure Thing

Chapter 13 – Father of Mine

"That is the single worst fucking thing I have ever fucking done."

Arnold was too worn out to comment. He had just completed a three hour history exam, and he was pretty sure his brain had been reduced to mush. Beside him, Gerald was babbling like an idiot as they walked out of the exam room to their lockers.

"Seriously! People should be fucking locked up for doing that to children! Children, Arnold! Fucking weak!" he shouted.

Arnold glanced at him and shot him a dark look. "Would you please stop yelling fuck in the hallway? Somehow I don't think you could talk yourself out of trouble in this…er…state of mind…"

"Fuck that!" Gerald yelled. He grabbed his pencil and hurled in back at the exam room. "Fuck that!"

"Tell me, Johannson, is that was your essay was comprised of?" a cool voice breathed behind him.

Gerald and Arnold exchanged looks before turning around to face Helga, who was smirking at them. She rolled her eyes as they stared at her. "Move," she demanded, pushing them out of her way. Gerald chased after her, and Arnold stood stunned, glued in the same spot for several seconds before following him.

"Okay, Miss Hot-Shot, that didn't faze you at all?" Gerald demanded. Behind the two, Arnold was staring wide-eyed and open mouthed. It was the first time she had spoken to them in days. Maybe Mickey was right…maybe all she needed was a little time to cool off, see things from a different perspective.

"Oh, let's see…" she pretended to think. "No, not at all. Then again, I actually have a brain that's capable of a coherent thought more advanced than, what was it, 'fuck that'?"

Gerald's face darkened. "I am perfectly capable of intelligent thought and making sentences of academic merit."

Arnold stared from him to her. Helga apparently hit a nerve that Arnold was not aware existed.

Helga, however, did not miss a stride. "I must have caught you on an off day, than." She smiled. "Sorry boys, but I must be going. My poor innocent, virginal ears can't listen to this nasty talk for another minute."

Gerald snorted loudly. "Innocent and virginal my ass! Helga, you are the furthest thing from that!"

She glared at Gerald before turning to Arnold. "Who do you agree with?"

He watched her dark eyes as they searched his own, trying desperately to look for an answer he was unwilling to give. He knew exactly what she was alluding to. He watched her stare back at him, her anger and annoyance slowing draining from her face, and a small smile spread on her lips as the corners of her mouth curled upward. "I see I caught you on an off day as well." She looked back a Gerald, her face once again angry and forceful. "As for you, I think your date would more than match you in surpassing any sins I may have committed."

Gerald's eyes flared and his fists clinched in anger. "Excuse me? What the hell does that mean?"

Helga's face turned blank and serious for a moment. "It means to watch her." She turned to Arnold. "That goes for you, too."

And with that, she left them, darting in and out of the crowd that now filled the hallways.

Gerald pulled his eyes from Helga's disappearing figure and turned to Arnold. "What was that?"

Arnold shook his head, still full of disbelief. "I don't know. I haven't talked to her since our fight last Friday." He started walking to the lunch room, Gerald strutting slightly beside him. "That was a good thing, right? I mean, she basically was completely hateful to me, but at least she's talking to me now. It was like old times, when she basically bugged the hell out of me."

Gerald frowned. "Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows with her, anymore? I think you sent her off the deep end." He paused as they got in line. "What was she talking about, anyways? The whole 'innocent and virginal' thing?"

Arnold shrugged, trying to downplay a conversation that he knew was not going to go well. "Oh, nothing. Lila, gets around more than we thought, that's all. And Helga knew."

"What?" Gerald's eyes were the size of small saucers. "Lila's a whore? Lila? Miss Goody-Two-Shoes-Holier-Than-Thou Lila? What's she playing at?"

Arnold fixed his eyes on a poster Ichiro with a milk mustache that was stuck on the back of one of the coolers. "The truth," Arnold said bluntly. He sighed. "Lila's a slut. She told me herself."

"No!"

"Yes."

"No!"

"Yes."

"She can't be!"

Arnold felt like strangling him. "Would you shut it? She is. I heard it straight from the horse's, or whore's in this case, mouth." He grimaced. "Sometimes the devil does tell the truth."

Gerald wrinkled his nose in thought, or perhaps in response to the smell of the tuna casserole that was for lunch. "We couldn't have missed that. Seriously, I can sense those things."

Arnold closed his eyes to prevent saying what he thought. Of course you can. Who would you date if you couldn't sense that? He opened his eyes, which rested on a girl across the cafeteria who was busy chatting with a circle of girls, occasionally tossing auburn hair over her shoulder, then pulling it back, twisting it between her thin fingers. Anger and disappointment flooded his chest. For years he had pined over Lila, or over what he thought was Lila. Somewhere along the line, the real Lila and the façade had separated, and he missed it. He thought she needed him to protect her from the horrors of the world, but she obviously threw herself into such a world. He longed for an ideal, while the girl he had a sinking feeling he had long had feelings for grew up more isolated and in more pain than he realized or ever gave thought to. Helga needed his protection, but he did not even believe that anymore. Helga could handle herself, a fact she had proven tenfold. No, he needed her. "We did, and now I'm stuck with her for tomorrow." He threw himself down into a chair. "I'm gonna hang myself, Gerald. I see no way out of this."

"Don't be such a girl, Arnold," he said as he sat down across from him. He shoved a forkful of casserole into his mouth. "You have to look at the bright side."

Arnold looked at him in surprise. "There's a bright side to all of this?" He shook his head. "I'm the damn optimist, and I can't see anything good here. Please, enlighten me."

Gerald smiled. "You might finally get laid."

"Gerald, I don't want to get laid."

Gerald dropped his fork. "Ever?"

Arnold chucked a piece of bread at him. "No, not ever. Of course I want to have sex, but not with Lila." He shivered. "God knows what I'd get."

Gerald nodded knowingly. "Too true…yeah, stay way from that."

Arnold rolled his eyes. "Do you have any other advice for your padawan, oh great master Obi-Wan?"

Gerald wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Yes, Anakin. Get Padmé back." He smirked. "And stay way from Mustafar. And evil emperors with nasty looking faces."

Arnold could not help but laugh, ignoring the somberness of his situation. "Will do."

"Arnold, what are you doing home on a Friday night?" Myles asked as he joined his son in the living room.

---

Arnold was currently lying on the couch, watching the Mariners get crushed by the White Sox. He was wearing a born baseball t-shirt from freshman year that barely fit him; he had put on nearly twenty pounds of muscle since then, and his flannel pajama pants, also from freshman year, showed around a good three inches of ankle. His blond hair was matted down from wearing a hat at practice and from lying on the couch for nearly three hours. A half-eaten slice of pizza and several potato chips were sprinkled across his chest. The pizza box, chip bag, and several bottles of water and cans of pop littered the coffee table beside him. "Wallowing in the misery that is my life," he muttered gravely. He decided that he could not kill himself because he was not that selfish; it would break his parents' hearts. Instead he decided to be a normal teenager and mope around, while possibly developing an eating disorder of some sort.

"Oh." Myles put down his newspaper to study his son. "Your mother said you'd been doing that all week. I'm not going to have to go out and buy you a whole new wardrobe that's all black, do I? Because we just spent a fortune fixing the washer and dryer."

Arnold turned to stare at his father. "You two are way too much alike." He returned his gaze back to the television. "That's what she said last week." He frowned and stared at his clothes. "I could use some new pants to sleep in. And a washer and dryer can't cost that much." Arnold frowned. He knew his parents were relatively well-off. He vaguely wondered why they were making such a big deal about money, but he decided that going for ten years in a jungle was enough to make anyone stingy.

"Somehow I don't think that's what's bothering you." Myles paused. "Though if it is, I think we might actually have bigger problems."

Arnold smiled in spite of himself. "No, that's not what's bothering me."

Myles propped his feet on the ottoman and put his hands behind his head. "Then shoot. Your mother took your grandparents out to a show or something….whatever your grandmother's been clamoring on and on about for weeks. So I don't have anything to distract me from my boy."

Arnold sat transfixed with the television for a few minutes, not willing to talk to his father about anything. He was ashamed of himself already; he did not want to add his father's disappointment onto that. He was the pride and joy of their lives, and for some odd reason they believed him to be some kind of perfect child who rarely made any major mistakes.

"Arnold?" he asked after an inning past. Arnold responded by opening up another can of pop.

"Arnold, damnit, you have a problem and I'm here to help. I didn't get to do this for years, and I'm not going to let you turn yourself into a shell like this. Now talk!"

Arnold turned to look at his dad, and the shame he had been dreading ran through his veins. His parents were rather pushy when it came to helping him with his life problems, again, due to their long exile away from him. They had missed so much of his life, and they seemed to be making up for that lately even more than usual. Arnold sighed, deciding he could not avoid the matter any longer. Besides, his father might have some useful advice for once. "It's girl problems, Dad," he said simply.

Myles nodded. "Well, I'm the right person to talk to. I'm always in trouble with your mom."

Arnold laughed. "I'm in love." Might as well just throw it all out there.

Myles frowned. "Not with that Lila girl."

"No!" Arnold cried. Wait… He glared at his father. "What makes you ask that?"

Myles shrugged, the very same shrug that Arnold used when trying to downplay something important. "She's…just not for you, son," he ended lamely.

"Why—"

Myles raised an eyebrow. "Arnold, I would have figured that after living in this house for years you would have figured out when it's okay to ask questions and when you are better off not knowing anything."

Arnold scratched the back of his head and turned his attention back to the television. Well, that explains a lot. Dad chooses to be dense. Good to know.

"So what is the problem with Helga?" Myles asked, reopening his newspaper. "Huh, Super Sonics traded that point guard. I liked him."

"Well, nothing except that she hates me." He sat up and told his father the entire story. Well, the abridged version. "She did finally talk to me today. Is that a good sign?"

Myles laughed. "Generally, but with women, you never know."

Arnold made a face and slumped back down.

"Arnold, I'm going to let you in on something."

He watched his father with interest, realizing how much he reminded him of his grandfather.

"Men in this family have always been attracted to, crazy women, to put it nicely. I mean, look at my mother."

Arnold smiled.

"And your mother, although normal on the outside, is completely crazy on the inside. In a different way from your grandmother, but definitely crazy." He scratched his head. "My point is, because we love crazy women, and we're not exactly the most gifted men when it comes to dealing with them, which is why I was so happy when you were a boy and not a girl. It never is easy for anyone, but especially not for us."

Arnold frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Basically, we mean well, but we always mess up in one way, shape, or form. But when we see the woman we love smile, we knew it's all worth it, no matter how many blooming apologies we have to make for things we didn't do."

"That sounds very familiar," Arnold said.

He nodded. "You're going to mess up, Arnold. And you, my son, seem to have very elaborate taste in how to do just that."

"Thanks, Dad," Arnold said sarcastically.

"Arnold, the hard part isn't in getting her. It's in getting her back. You can't hold back there. Now, my advice to you is to let her relax a bit more. Clearly she's starting to come around. Give yourself time to think of something, elaborate," he chuckled as Arnold glared at him. "And get her back."

Arnold grinned. "Thanks, Dad."

Myles reopened the paper and resumed reading. "Any time. Also, I've found showering and not kissing other girls to be very good things to remember as well."

Arnold groaned and threw a pizza crust at him, never happier to have his father around.

---

Helga sat Indian style on the dining room table, checking her fantasy baseball rankings on the Internet. She had yet to figure out why the signal for the wireless Internet was strongest in the dining room, and, because Miriam had insisted on buying the most ugly, most uncomfortable chairs that she could find simply because they were the most expensive, Helga had no choice but to perch in the middle of the table, just behind the every expensive Tiffany vase filled with dying calla lilies. She stretched her arms out and over her head, placing them on the table and shifting her weight as she watched the newest music video from The Used. She had spaced out watching it that she failed to notice her father entered the room. She had forgotten he was even home; Miriam and Olga had been gone all day at the spa and would not be arriving home until the next morning.

"Get off the table," Bob muttered as he poured himself a drink.

"Get off the booze," she retorted. She looked up at her father's angry face. "Sorry, Miriam's problem. Uh, get off the bacon?" her voice trailed off as she wondered where that came from.

"Your mother does not have a problem, and get off the table." He managed to get several olives out of the tiny bottle with his fat fingers and replaced the bottle with a loud clunk.

Not willing to continue talking to him any longer, Helga complied, not paying to much attention to the vase as she slipped down onto one of the chairs.

"Careful! Do you know how expensive that is?" he snapped as, to Helga's horror, he joined her. He was at the other end of the ridiculously long table, but it was still too close for Helga's taste. She could not remember the last time she was alone in the same room as her father for more than a minute. He usually avoided her. "What are you doing home on a Friday night?" he asked as he drank his martini.

She glanced at him before returning to her computer, desperately trying to think of an escape. "Nothing major. Just reorganizing my coke ring." She looked up at him with a brief smile. "Got some new customers. Real heavy hitters. My profits are going to skyrocket. Oh, and my pimp's on holiday in Bangkok."

His face remained stony. "I see you're still into that whole sarcastic phase."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Seventeen years and still going strong."

For several moments, the room was filled with an uncomfortable silence sans Helga's quick typing. She was IMing her friends, begging someone to call her cell to save her. Of course, not many people were at their computers on a Friday night.

Bob cleared his throat, ready for another round of failed conversation with his youngest daughter. "So, did your dress come in?"

"Yea, it was delivered Wednesday."

He swirled the liquid in his glass. "So, how is it?"

She glared at him. "Expensive."

The dress, in reality, was a gorgeous designer dress, and looked amazing on her, but it reminded her of something Olga would wear, only in pink, which did not surprise Helga because Olga and Miriam picked it out for her on their latest shopping escapade. "That's what I like to hear," he said as he went back into the kitchen. Helga's sigh of relief got caught in her throat as he returned with another drink. "Only the best for my Olga."

"Helga," she said automatically.

"Didn't I say that?" he asked, pulling his Blackberry out.

"No. You never do."

"Well, I'm a busy man, Olga. You can't expect me to get everything right every time."

Not everything, just your daughter's name. Not even every time. Once would be wonderful. She had had enough, snapping the lid of her computer shut. "Well, I'm tired so I think I'm going to go to bed. Big day tomorrow and all."

"Not so fast," he said without looking at her. Helga stopped half-way up from her seat. "I want to talk to my youngest daughter. Catch up."

She sat back down out of curiosity. The last time he did that was three years ago and the torture lasted long enough that Bob got wasted and ended up breaking her wrist after she accidentally got him to admit to his affair with his former secretary. She grabbed her wrist and fought back tears as the memory rushed back to her. "Really, I'm tired. Big test today, and I'm wiped."

"Nonsense," he growled. Helga could hear the anger begin to creep into his voice and thought it was best to do what he said. It was rare that she was afraid of her father, but she was worn out from her personal problems and did not have the strength to fight him verbally and still protect herself. "So, who's the lucky boy who gets to take my lovely Olga to the prom?"

"Um, my friend Cory's going with me. You remember Cory, right?"

Bob finished the rest of his drink and grabbed a six pack of beer. "Yeah, that chubby little kid that followed you around all the time when you were little. Nice boy."

"Thanks."

He eyed her as he opened a can. "You want one?"

She frowned. "I'm seventeen, Bob."
"Huh, I thought you were older than that. You're sure your not twenty-one?" he asked as he quickly finished the first.

"It would be something if I was of age and still in high school," she said, unable to stop herself.

He stared blankly at her for a moment, as if unable to listen to her clearly. "Right. No Pataki's that stupid, right?"

"Right," she said uncomfortably.

He laughed. "God, that kid ate us out of house and home. Thought our house was a Goddamn smorgasbord."

"He's thinned up now," she said as she glared at her father's rotund belly. Two heart attacks had yet to change his ways, and only made him think he was more invincible.

"Good." He belched loudly. "What ever happened to that orphan that brought you home a few weeks ago? When you broke your arm."

"I sprained my ankle, and Arnold's going with someone else." She felt some of her edge creep out of her fear. "And he's not an orphan. He found his parents several years ago."

"Huh. I'll be damned. Probably crazy hippies like his grandparents, on welfare, living off of us hard working Americans, just living their lives as perpetual freeloaders."

Helga's fists clinched underneath the table and away from Bob's gaze. "His parents aren't hippies. They work at the university, developing cures for diseases and such."

Bob looked at her for a moment. "Well, I'm sure they probably grow medical marijuana there and steal it. You can always tell with that type of people."

Helga chewed her lip. Bob had never met Arnold's parents, who were probably the best people she had ever met. His grandparents were pretty wonderful too. It was no surprise that he turned into the man he was. Tears threatened to spill down her cheeks as she thought of her own family. It was no surprise she had turned into the person she was. She had always thought she was somehow different then them, but Arnold's words from their fight echoed in her mind, and she realized she was no different from them. Selfish, hateful, and unable to be happy to save her life.

"Anyways, that dress will look amazing in the newspaper."

Her father's voice brought her back to the conversation. "Newspaper? What newspaper?"

"The newspaper. Society pages. You're a Pataki, and we're important to this city. That's why I was so worried about your date. Got to have someone who'll look good, you know? And that designer dress will sound really good. Show that business is booming, and that the Pataki's are classy. It'll be great for business." He shook his head. "Great thing you're not going with that orphan. That's just depressing. We're not going for any sympathy angle here. Just straight class and money."

Helga snapped her eyes shut. "He's not an orphan," she said in a low voice.

"Well, whatever."

She stood up, loathing for her father flowing through her veins. "I'm not your doll! I'm your daughter! I'm not some puppet you can parade around and show to help your business!"

He stood up and walked over to her. The alcohol was strong on his breath. "How do you think that fancy dress was paid for?"

"I didn't want it," she muttered.

"What?" he yelled, grabbing her shoulders.

"I didn't want it!" she cried.

He shook her. "I work hard building an empire and this is the thanks I get? I give you a palace in the sky, and you speak to me like this?"

"I didn't want any of it!"

He put her down and raised his hand to hit her. "Don't you dare talk to me like that! No daughter of mine will ever talk to me like that!"

She stared at him, gazed into a face that was so similar to her own when enraged. She hated him. "And no father of mine should ever touch me like that."

Blinding pain was the next thing she knew. She was on the ground, thrown off her feet from the force of his blow. She stared up at him, only to see a face empty of remorse. "Get out of my sight," he whispered. "I don't want to see you the rest of the night." He turned away from her and sat back down. "We need to have you looking your best for the pictures tomorrow."

He went back to his work as if nothing had happened. She picked herself up, grabbed her computer, and walked out with her head held high. The moment she reached her room, however, she broke down and threw herself on the bed, sobbing uncontrollably. The sting from his hand was fading, but her pride was bruised. "Where are you, Arnold?" she whispered as she cried herself to sleep under the starry sky.

A/N: Sorry for the Star Wars allusion…minorly obsessed with that at the moment…

I think I may have led this story into a dark place, considering it's supposed to be funny…I think it has to be dark, and it'll get happy again, I promise, but let me know if I've gone to far or if it's not that funny, the few humorous spots that are there…thanks. I also am considering upping the rating, not sure if I want to, because at 13 or whatever I could handle this, and 13 year-olds now I think can handle it, but I don't know. The language might be a bit strong, and the sexual overtone will get a bit heavier, but not much… but that's high school. Just please let me know.

later days.