There would be no happy endings for her. At the age of eight, Helga Pataki had already known this.

Her father had moved out of the house not too long before she'd started the ninth grade. He hadn't bothered to say anything to her before she left, and the transition had been depressingly smooth. It wasn't like he was around much anyway, and it wasn't like they'd had much of a relationship. He had the perfect daughter, and she was supposed to have been his perfect son. But she'd come out wrong, all wrong, and she'd turned into some angry, closed-off tomboy. He didn't love her, and he didn't want to see her.

His absence had caused her mother to start drinking, sometimes mixing the alcohol with her pills. Helga would sometimes wake up and find her in the kitchen, fixing a drink and measuring out her anti-depressants.

"Mom," she almost never bothered to say anything anymore, "You're not supposed to mix those."

"Oh, honey," her mother would say, in that painfully sad voice every single time. Usually she'd follow with some non sequitur, like "You're growing up so fast." or sometimes, "Where is your little bow, Helga, why did you stop wearing your little bow?" And sometimes she would start crying. Sometimes Helga would stay with her, because what else could she do? Her mother refused to get help, and none of their other family members cared enough to force her. Helga knew; she'd called. And Helga wasn't strong enough to force her.

Helga knew.

She'd tried.

Even with her mother her older sister won out. Helga could not outmatch Olga ever, in anything, and when the elder sibling came over there wasn't a drink in sight, and her mother always did her best to be sober. Though she couldn't ever really manage anything other than being buzzed. The world was a hard place, and her mother hardly ever kept to reality. Sometimes she'd tell her stories of her teenage years, and sometimes Helga would listen. It didn't really matter, her mother didn't care if she was listening or not. She just wanted to talk about a better time, to remind herself that things weren't always so incredibly terrible. Sometimes her mother smiled.

She was always happier in the past.

Helga never said anything, though. Nobody knew, except Phoebe, and even she didn't know everything. The only one who might ever notice anything was Arnold.

Arnold, Arnold, Arnold. He was the only one who'd ever seen her cry, other than Phoebe. He was always willing to help, no matter how she treated him. And she treated him terribly. How could he ever know the way she felt about him, then? She'd never tell him, and she kept everything except her frustration with everything locked up inside. She was mean, except for those rare moments.

Once, on a rainy night, maybe a week after her father had left, he'd found her sitting outside on the sidewalk near the park. He'd been looking for one of his grandma's cats, one that had run off into the storm, and he'd found her instead.

"Helga?"

She hadn't looked up from her position, sprawled out on the cold concrete and leaning against the chain link fence. She was clammy and soaked, and she couldn't even muster up the energy to be pleased-or even upset. The rain had suddenly stopped pounding down on her as Arnold, clad in his raincoat, seated himself directly next to her, the umbrella shielding them both.

"Helga? Are you okay? Aren't you cold?" She was freezing, but she still hadn't looked at him, keeping her gaze on the street. He'd ended up sitting with her for a while after that. The boy had endless patience. Eventually he repeated his question, and she made herself shrug, if only to reassure him that she didn't want him to leave, "What's wrong?"

"Everything." She'd said simply, her voice small and almost a whisper. But she still didn't cry, not yet.

"What happened?" He'd asked immediately, voice thick with alarm and concern, and she'd felt tears welling up in her eyes when she thought about it. About how unwanted she was, pretty much everywhere. Not at home, not at school, not anywhere, not by anyone. Her parents hadn't said anything to her, but she'd heard the argument, and she'd heard him pack. She'd waited up for him in her room, waited for him to come in and say the usual spiel parents usually said when they were getting a divorce, or they were having an argument that required one of them to leave for a while. But he didn't. The front door had slammed, and then she'd heard nothing.

Still, she'd waited for her mother to come up and talk to her, to reassure her that everything would be fine, probably, and that this was only temporary. She would have even taken sweet lies if only her mother had opened that door, if only she had please just opened the door.

But she hadn't, and she eventually heard the door slam a second time. Helga had tried to sleep, but she couldn't, she could only wait up, wait for one of them to remember she was there, that she existed. Remember that she was worried, that she was waiting, remember that they loved her. She waited and waited for one of them to come back, but neither of them had.

She'd warily wandered downstairs the next morning, and had found the place empty as she had dreaded. So she swallowed the lump in her throat, cleaned herself up, made herself lunch, and did what she did best: She dealt with it. But they still hadn't returned, no notes and no calls, a week later. She couldn't deal with it anymore.

As she explained all this to Arnold it became harder and harder to see the road, to see anything. It was all so blurry, and when the weight of his arm settled onto her shoulders she lost it, broke down sobbing in the cold rain with the boy she treated like shit holding her and telling her it'd be alright. And for a while, it was alright. It was even still alright when her mother came stumbling home two days later, drunk and confused. Because Arnold had told her it would be, and she had to hold onto that. She had to hold onto that because she didn't have anything else.

How could he ever know how much that night had meant to her? How could he ever guess?

By the time they'd graduated she could count on two hands the number of times she'd cried in front of Arnold, had been comforted by Arnold, and the number unsettled her because why should he care if she was miserable? Why should he invite her to go along with he and his friends to the movies, why should he ask her to the Senior Prom (as friends) because he didn't want her to stay home? Why should he be friends with her? Why should she get that much when she so clearly didn't deserve it?

For a while things were okay, even if it was only at school. For a while it seemed like maybe she had a chance with him, but then they'd graduated. They'd all exchanged numbers, of course, and she'd logged his away immediately, the only one she cared about keeping. She didn't really need to record it-she'd memorized it as soon as he'd given it to her.

But then she could only go home.

She didn't have the excuse of school to see Arnold, and she didn't have any excuses to call him.

"Just do it," Phoebe had told her one afternoon, applying mascara in her vanity in preparation for the date she had with Gerald, "just call him, it's been two weeks and you've done nothing but mope!"

"Fuck you," Helga had muttered halfheartedly, laying on her stomach on Phoebe's bed.

"I'm just saying," the other girl had said, finishing with the mascara, "You're going to miss your chance."

That was scary.

That had scared her.

That night she'd called him.

"Helga?" His voice sounded confused, curious as to why she'd called him so late at night, but not upset, "Hello?"

She waited a minute or so, and then shoved the phone to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Hey, there you are."

"Football Head? Shit, I must've accidentally called you." she lied, screaming at herself to stop, please stop in her head, "It's kinda late, you know?"

"Oh, haha, yeah," he didn't sound upset, or even uncomfortable. He only sounded like he understood, which made it even more terrible that she'd said that. Why couldn't she just say what she wanted to? Why was it so difficult for her to just tell him? 'I wanted to hear your voice, I'm going mad here not being around you. I love you, Arnold. I always have.' "Guess I should be getting back to sleep, then."

"See ya around, Arnoldo." She hang up, and then proceeded to slam her head against her bedroom wall. She was such an idiot, she was such an idiot.

It turned out, that was her last chance. The next time she saw Arnold, he was in a relationship with Lila, and they looked like they were going pretty steady. She didn't talk to Phoebe about him anymore, because she knew her friend was getting tired of hearing about it. But still, it tormented her to even see them together, to see what could have been, what she could have had. By the time she'd turned twenty nine and already had a shitty job she hated and an apartment to match, she was being invited to their wedding.

She'd missed her chance.

There wasn't anything for her, now.

Arnold was her one, true love, she knew it, and now he was gone forever. There was no way he'd leave Lila, she made him too happy. In the end, that was all Helga really wanted, she guessed. For him to be happy. She'd rather he be with someone else, as long as he was content, even if she had to suffer.

She'd received a letter not too long ago from him, telling her he was having his first child soon; that he missed her, and that Lila missed her. She couldn't really bring herself to be happy, and she couldn't even use this to force herself to move on. She didn't have room for anyone else in her heart. She just couldn't do it. She couldn't love someone who wasn't Arnold, but she could never have him. Once, she might've had a chance, but it was long gone now.

Eventually she started drifting away from everyone she'd once knew, as they all either moved away or just stopped talking to her (or visa versa). After a time there was no one left, except Phoebe, who occasionally called, sharing news of her life in New York. Helga tried to make her life seem more interesting than it was, but she was running out of stories to tell, and the calls were getting farther and farther apart. After a while she'd worked herself into such a miserable rut that she didn't even notice when the calls stopped. She had bills to pay, an apartment to keep up, and a mind that needed distracting.

No, there were no happy endings for her.

But there could have been.