ok, this was rushed. way rushed. i wanted to post a christmas fic on christmas but i guess i shouldn't have started writing it at 10:30 should I? With just 3 minutes to spare, I posted this and now I have to go back and proof it. but I've been thinking about writing this one for awhile and just waited last minute to do it. But I will most likely rewrite this so it isn't as rushed. But I have to work early tomorrow so it may not happen for awhile. any way, this story has a wonderful ending if I do say so myself. But on with the story.

summary: Wonderful things can happen under the mistletoe.

p.s. I put this on another fic of mine but if ne way could tell me what episode Gurtie called Helga Eleanore for the first time, i would really appreciate it

Helga definitely did not want to be doing this. Why did she have to be the one who was chosen to host the senior's Christmas party? Out of the three hundred some odd students in her graduating class her name was the one that was picked. Why couldn't it have been Rhonda? Rhonda liked showing off to her classmates any chance she got. Plus she had more space.

It wasn't that Helga didn't have the space. After Bob's beeper emporium exploded into one of the biggest electronic chain stores in America, he moved his family to the outskirts of town into a newly built mansion. And of course the Lloyds had to out do them and build an even bigger house right next to theirs. Ever since, Helga's father and Rhonda's had a war on who had the most money. Thankfully it didn't effect the girl's friendship.

But Helga didn't have the time to think about that right now. She was to worried about how she was going to get through the next few hours of fake smiling and laughing while trying to make sure that her friends and classmates didn't break anything or wind up pregnant by the end of the night.

Then of course there was Arnold.

She had been, unsuccessfully of course, trying to avoid thinking about him all day. He was bringing Lila to the party. That wasn't news to Helga. Even before the party was to be at Helga's it was common knowledge that Arnold and Lila would be going together. If it was as a couple was to remain to be seen, and something that Helga would have happily put her eyes out to prevent from seeing. It would have been easy to just not go to the party, but she couldn't do that since it was at her house.

A knock at her bedroom door brought her out of her dreary thoughts. "Come in," she called.

She smiled as she watched Phoebe walk into her room. "You look great Helga," her friend told her. "And the Christmas decorations look wonderful."

Helga rolled her eyes and laughed. "That's because Olga did them. It looks like Christmas threw up down stairs. And thank you, you look good too. Gerald won't know what hit him."

As her cheeks turned pink, Phoebe changed the subject. "Everyone should be arriving pretty soon. Don't you think it's time to go downstairs?"

Helga sighed. "I'm afraid that I'm going to kill myself in these heels. I can't believe that I let my mom talk me into wearing them."

"I seem to recollect that you said that if you didn't wear them she would make you wear dresses for the rest of the school year."

"Oh yeah," Helga said. "They aren't looking to bad right now." Looking at the clock on the mantle, she gave in. "Come on, let's go recount of the silverware."

--

If she had to smile any longer, Helga was positive that her cheeks would fall off of her face. She already couldn't feel them. All night it had been "I'm glad that you're here," and "Thank you. You look wonderful," and her favorite, "Please don't touch that."

She didn't know how families like Rhonda's did it on a regular basis. Doing it once was practically driving her insane.

She scanned the room for what seemed like the hundredth time, making sure that no one was trying to sneak upstairs or pouring even more alcohol into the punch.

An hour into the party, Helga was dying of thirst and decided to get a drink. When she had made her way to the table and poured herself a cup, she had nearly gagged when the sting of what she suspected was either vodka or gin hit the back of her throat. Making sure that Phoebe didn't digest any, she had let the punch stay as it was. If her classmates wanted to get hammered, then she was going to let them.

Wanting to put some feeling back into her cheeks, she decided to go M.I.A. for a few minutes. Narrowly escaping Arnie, who had come down to visit for the holidays, she quickly slipped into her father's library and sat on the soft leather sofa.

Slouching back, she rested her head against the sofa and gave a deep sigh as she looked at the ceiling. She had certainly gained an immense amount of respect for Rhonda tonight. The girl had nerves of steel to do this countless amounts of times a year.

Closing her eyes, she let her mind drift to it favorite subject. Arnold had looked wonderful. With black pants and a dark blue shirt that brought out the color of his eyes, Helga had to force herself to look away from him and Lila, who also look wonderful with a shimmering emerald green dress that went wonderfully with her red hair. Helga had wanted to crawl under the nearest rock when she thought about how Arnold must see how she came to a very distant second in her red halter dress to Lila.

After trading pleasant greetings with the couple, Helga had moved away to lick her invisible wounds. That was another why she had to get away. Helga didn't want to take the chance of seeing the happy couple. Not when it would make her miserable.

Hearing the door open, she sat up, ready to send whoever it was on their way, when she saw that it was Arnold who walked through the door.

"Arnold," she said. "What are you doing in here?"

Closing the door, Arnold shrugged. "I needed to get away. And then I saw you sneak off, and figured that I'd give you some company."

"I wasn't sneaking off," she objected.

He gave her a knowing look. "Really? Then what exactly are you doing?"

"Resting my feet," she lied. "Walking in five inch heels isn't easy you know."

"If you say so," he told her, clearly not believing her lie. Walking to the sofa, he sat down next to her. "Either way, I'll keep you company."

"What did you need to get away from," she asked him.

"Lila and Arnie," he told her. "I couldn't watch her run after him while he ran away from her for another minute. It was starting to give me a headache."

"And the fact that you like her doesn't have anything to do with it," she asked him sarcastically.

He looked at her surprised. "I don't like her anymore." He glared at her when she made a sound of disbelief. "I don't," he repeated. "I stopped a few weeks ago and I had already asked her to go so I couldn't tell her that I didn't want to go with her anymore. I figured that Phoebe would have told you. Gerald knows and that sure have been spending a lot of time together."

"Some how I doubt that your love life comes up when they 'spend time together,' " she said ruefully.

Giving her a hear stopping smile, he said, "You have a point."

"Well," she said. "Either way, I'm sorry that things didn't work out the way you wanted them to."

He shrugged again. "I'm glad that they didn't. It's obvious that I would have been a substitute Arnie for her, so in a way she did me a favor by shooting me down constantly. But I do have one thing to look forward too."

"And what's that?"

"Her seeing how it feels to get shot down because the person she likes wants someone else."

"That's a horrible thing to say," she told him, ignoring the irony of his words.

"You're just saying that because you practically ran over Harold when you saw Arnie coming towards you."

"You saw that," she asked, surprised. She was on the other side of the room from him when she had made her exit. She didn't think that he would have noticed that.

Nodding, he said, "Yeah, and I saw when you drank some punched and almost chocked. You'll have to forgive me for laughing."

She lightly punched his arm. "That wasn't funny. People going to have a serious hangovers tomorrow and regret some things."

After their laughter had subsided, they were quiet for awhile when Arnold uncomfortably cleared his throat and turned to her. Taking a deep breath, he said, "And I noticed that you tripped thirteen times in your heels, noticed when you forbid Phoebe to drink the punch and noticed when how beautiful you look tonight."

"Arnold," she said shakily. "Are you my stalker now?" She tried to make a joke out of the situation.

Shaking his head, he told her, "No." He was silent for a few minutes and Helga was dying for him to explain himself. "You never asked me why I stopped liking Lila," he told her.

Wanting desperately to continue the situation, Helga forced herself to let it go. "Why," she asked.

"I realized that I don't really like red hair. I prefer blonde. And Lila doesn't like baseball. I have to have someone who loves it like I do. And she doesn't like to argue either. I know now that I want a certain girl with a strong backbone. And of course she would have to be someone I've known for practically my whole life. Just not since the fourth grade."

What was he trying to say? She didn't want to jump to conclusions and make a complete fool out of herself. She could barely concentrate on his words because she couldn't make out anything over the wild thumping of her heart. "Why are you telling me this?"

He gave an unconcerned shrug. "Why can't I tell you what kind of girl I want?"

"Because you know exactly what you're implying and I don't want to be led on like that."

"I'm not leading you on," he told her. "I was just wondering if you knew a girl who likes baseball, has blonde hair, wouldn't be afraid to argue with me and someone I've known for a long time. Since, say, preschool?"

"Me," she spat at him, not wanting to believe what he was saying.

"Well," he told her, laying back against the sofa. "I guess that you're the kind of girl that I want."

Glaring at him, she said, "What changed," she snapped at him. "I'm supposed to believe that I'm the girl for you?"

"Why not," he asked her. "It's the truth."

"And the fact the you finally came to the realization that Lila was wasted effort has nothing to do with it."

Arnold abruptly sat up. "You aren't some kind of rebound," he told her.

"Really," she asked, not believing him. "So it's just a coincidence that you mysteriously realize that you have feelings for me on the same day you see your dream girl chase after your cousin?"

"You don't listen very well do you," he asked her.

"Oh," she shot at him. "I'm hearing you loud and clear."

"Didn't I say that I stopped liking Lila awhile ago?"

"So?"

"Sooooo," he mocked. "How could you be a rebound if I haven't liked Lila in months?"

"Alright," she told him. "Let's just say that I believe you. What made you 'suddenly' stop liking her?"

"You," he bluntly told her.

"And what did I do to make you fall out of love with Lila?"

"I wasn't in love with her," he snapped.

"Answer the question."

"You just being you."

"Not a good enough answer."

"You really want to know the truth?"

"That would be nice," she told him, highly annoyed.

"What made Amanda finally fall for Preston?"

"Amanda and Preston," she asked, confused. "From that movie about graduation night?" At his nod, she continued. "She realized that he was the one who wrote-"

She abruptly stopped, all the color leaving her face. "She realized that he was the one who wrote that letter to her," she repeated. "B-but what does that have to do with us."

"Do you remember the day a few months ago when I gave you a ride to school," seemingly letting the conversation go.

"Yeah, I dropped all my stuff and you helped me pick it up."

"You left a note in my car," he told her. "It was more like a poem."

Helga thought that her lungs had closed. She couldn't breathe. She had convinced herself that she had lost that poem somewhere in her room, or had thrown it away by mistake. That poem, like many others, had expressed her feelings for him and how much she wanted them to be together. And, stupidly, she had used both their names. She didn't think that he had fond it though.

"I can tell by the look on your face that you know what it said," he told her.

"I-I," she stuttered.

"I was surprised after I read it," he said honestly. "You tormented me when we were younger and we don't talk much now. You were the last person that I would have expected to care about me. Here I was, wanting Lila to be crazy about me and there was already someone who cared more than I could ever imagine. I started to think about you more and Lila less and one day I realized that I cared about you, the way I used to care about Lila, only a whole lot more."

"Why did it take so long for you to say something about it," she asked him, her heart beating faster than she could imagine.

Before Arnold could reply, the door was pushed opened and Gerald and Phoebe quickly walked in. "There you are," Phoebe said breathlessly. Helga could have killed her best friend for her timing.

"What," she asked her.

"Curly drank to much punch," Gerald told the two blonde teenagers. If either he or Phoebe thought that it was odd that they were in a room by themselves, they didn't comment. "He stripped down to his underwear and his reciting one of Shakespeare's sonnets from the top of the stairs to Rhonda."

Helga groaned and quickly got to her feet. She should have known that something was going to happen from the spiked punch.

Without glancing at Arnold, she quickly made her way to the door way, only to stop when Phoebe said, "Helga, I think that you should wait for Arnold."

Helga stopped. There was a strange light in Phoebe's eyes that Helga didn't really trust. Seeing that Arnold stood right next to her, she asked her friend, "What?"

Pointing above their heads, Gerald laughed and said, "Mistletoe. Give each other a kiss."

Before Helga could react, Arnold wrapped a arm around her and asked, "Helga, would you be my girlfriend?"

Not even bothering to answer, Helga wrapped her hands around his face and pulled him into a breathtaking kiss.

ok, i hope that you like it. plz review and tell me what you think. i would really apperciate and i WILL revise it b/c the ending is way to rushed and i can't just leave it like that. but Merry Christmas everyone!!!!

kialajaray

***edit*** ok, i finally changed it and wrote it where it wasnt rushed and exactly like New Year's Kiss. Sorry it took so long.