Sorry for this being so short! BUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut do not fret! A companion is in the works being thought up and I am excited to begin on it!

Be sure to R&R and let me know what you think and what you think the companion may be about :) I'll give you a hint at the end of this chapter :)

Anyways, as always, I own nothing, Craig Bartlett does :)

Hope you enjoy!

xoxo

Polkahotness

Five o'clock was an extremely early time to get up. I dragged through the boarding house, eyes half-lidded from the sleep that still threatened to take over, despite all my moving about. Downstairs, the boarders awaited at the kitchen table; the smell of freshly made pancakes filling the air and mixing with the smell of bacon and Grandma's famous scrambled eggs. Before me lay a variety of foods all to comfort the boarders of my absence. I knew this, because that was what Grandma always did when somebody left- the food gave us a chance to talk to each other one last time and temporarily forget about the future events soon to take place.

However, I found the meal to comfort me more than the boarders. They laughed, and talked as a usual dining experience happened in the house while I sat staring at my food.

It held little comfort for me.

After eating, I roamed to my room and finished packing the remainder of my toiletries that I had used to get ready. Pulling on my jacket, I wandered downstairs again with bags in hand to see the boarders smiling and waiting at the door. Both Grandma and Grandpa donned their robes at the door and smiled warmly, despite the cold that awaited me outside.

"Guess this is it, huh Shortman?" Grandpa asked.

"Of course it isn't. I'll be back for spring break. You know that."

"Well... I know... but I'll still miss ya, Arnold."

I set my bags down and hugged him tight, feeling small and childish once more.

"I'll miss you too, Grandpa."

And I would. Though a part of me felt ashamed that there was someone else I may miss more.

I stood alone by the bus stop sign.

The winter weather wasn't ready to give up just yet, and small snowflakes fell from the sky to gently lay on my shoulders and heavy bags.

"Hey football-head," I heard a voice calling out from behind me, "want some company?"

I turned around and smiled with a small nod and set my bags down.

"I'd like that."

She walked towards me and quickly kissed my cheek.

"This is it. You ready?"

"Define ready."

"Up to heading on home?"

"But I already AM home."

She sighed and shrugged.

"Time to go somewhere else, I guess."

The bus' loud rumble traveled to our ears from up the street and we picked up our bags full of our clothes and other such useless things. The bus' sign read that of the airport terminal and as we sat in the back of the bus silent, each bump and twist and turn of the driver was that of another twist and turn in life. Another obstacle we were about to overcome.

Love gained and love lost.

"Hey Arnold?"

"Yeah Helga?"

"When is your plane leaving again?"

"Seven. Yours is at seven fifteen, right?"

She nodded and stared out the window.

"You alright?"

"I'm fine, Arnold."

"You don't seem okay."

"How do you want me to act, hair boy? Want me to smile? Jump for joy? Sing some happy song at the top of my lungs on this bus at six in the morning like some Snow-White loving, housework doing, blowhard blue-bird?"

I looked at her expressionless and reached out to grab her hand. Though we must have held hands dozens of times in the past few days, my gesture seemed to startle her, and her eyes grew almost a size larger.

"I want you to be yourself. Like you have been the past few days. I want you to act how you feel."

"Which I am. I don't like this, Arnold."

"I don't either."

"What's gonna happen?"

I squeezed her hand and faced forward, watching as the bus driver pushed on the pedal once we hit the freeway and leaned back slightly on his chair.

"I don't know. But I thought a lot about what you said last night. About how it's all going to be okay because you don't give up on something you love? And... and you're right. It'll be okay. Whatever is meant to be is meant to be."

"I'm not gonna lie, I don't like the sound of that right now."

"Why?"

"Because right now, I just want you to say that we're both going to stay here. That this bus is going to break down, and we'll be stranded just outside of Hillwood until we're old and gray."

"But, hypothetically, how would we do all we long to do? How would we get our degrees? How would you publish your work, and how would we travel the world, hmm?"

"There are ways."

"Where would you live?"

"Well.. I don't know..."

"I mean, you could live in the boarding house, but I'm not going to lie when I say they're an... interesting group of people and take a lot of patience to get a long with them."

"I could do it-"

"And I mean, we're 20. We have so much to experience yet. We aren't even legal to buy alcohol more or less get careers without degrees."

"We could... I could go out..." she tried, struggling for the right sentence or at least a sentence that sounded right. "You're right, Arnold."

I wrapped my right arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head.

"We'll be okay."

"You sound like Eugene."

"And you did last night. What happened?"

"I realized that after waiting my entire life to get you to see me the way I see you, I'm losing it all in the same instant. I realized that maybe the world doesn't want us to be together."

I looked at her then with the most sincere look I could muster.

"And maybe it does. But who said the world is just going to hand it to us?"

"Why DO you always have to look on the bright side?"

I smiled, remembering when Gerald had asked me the exact same thing so many years ago.

"Somebody has to."

The airport, as usual, was crowded with every kind of person.

But all the people seemed to have one thing in common: they were all in a hurry.

In a hurry to pick people up.

In a hurry to get on their planes.

In a hurry to get home.

In a hurry to buy food.

In a hurry to check baggage.

Everywhere you went there were hurried people trying desperately to get to wherever their destination may be. And in the middle of the bustling world that swam around us lay Helga and I. As we stood in the middle of the hurry, we found that the only thing we were in a hurry for, was for spring break to come.

As we checked in our baggage and wandered aimlessly around the airport, I found myself anxiously checking my phone for the time.

6:15

6:27

6:30

6:33

6-

"Would you stop already? Criminy! You're making me nervous."

"Sorry." I said while shoving my phone in my pocket.

"It's fine." She turned her head to look at the small shop that was beside a coffee shop and nodded her head towards it. "Wanna look around? We have a half hour."

"So you were checking too?"

"There's clocks everywhere. I don't need my phone to tell me how soon you gotta leave-" she cut herself short and grabbed my hand. "C'mon. We don't have all day."

She was right.

We didn't.

The shop had the usual for any plane rider to hope for. Magazines for every kind of reader; even the weird reader... There were key-chains that had the name of our state plastered all over them. Sweaters and sweatshirts of every size were littered all around the store next to teddy bears and neck pillows and candies of every sort. I picked up a magazine focusing on new music and shrugged when Helga glanced my way.

"Gotta have something to read."

"They have that sky mall bullshit in the seat pockets."

"If it's that bad, why would I want to read it?"

"What else have you got to do?"

"I could watch a movie."

She dropped the magazine she had been flipping through to her side and rested her other hand on her hip.

"Really?"

"Or music."

"And I repeat: Really?"

I rolled my eyes and took the magazine she had been looking at to investigate it myself.

"And what's this?"

"A magazine. Doi."

Shooting her a look, I opened it up and flipped through the pages quickly.

"Food?"

"What? You got a problem with food?"

"It's just... an interesting choice."

"So what's your magazine about, hmm?"

"Music."

"Don't you have an MP3 player or something for that stuff?"

I set the magazine down beside the other copies and shrugged.

"Who said I was going to buy it anyway?"

I wandered around the store glancing at the overpriced items they had to offer. Helga ventured off in a different direction to either buy the magazine she had been looking at, or to pick up some candy or something else to occupy her time while the plane took her off to Chicago.

It was weird, where we had chosen to let the world take us.

A year and a half ago I wouldn't have guessed that I would be here with Helga looking at things to keep our minds off of each other as we went in complete opposite directions of the country. I wouldn't have imagined that the passed five days would have taught me more about myself than I had ever known in my 20 years, all because of Helga.

Helga G. Pataki I heard Gerald say in my head and I laughed.

It was her alright. Helga G. Pataki. The girl who had thrown dirt at me in Kindergarten. The girl who had called me names since she could form sentences. The girl who had pushed and kicked and tripped and spat at since we could both remember.

But she was also the girl who had smiled at me every now and again. She was also the girl who had been there for me when I most needed someone. She was the girl who had listened, and laughed and taken my crackers all the way back in Urban Tots. She was the girl who had been THE girl, good or bad. Helga beat the rest in that department.

In fact, in every department.

Helga had-

"OOF!"

"UGH!"

The floor was hard beneath me and I rubbed my head, and picked up my hat as it lay on the ground.

"Sorry-"

"No it's my fault."

She stood up and offered her hand.

"Funny. Usually you're the one doing this, aren't you Arnoldo?"

I took her hand and stood up, brushing off my pants and smiling.

"It's a nice change in pace."

"Yeah, well don't get used to it bucko. I ain't some happy hands helper or some bull like that."

"Whatever you say, Helga."

"I do say."

"Know what I say?"

She leaned in a little closer and rested her arms around my neck.

"And what's that?"

"I say-" the buzz in my pocket stopped my train of thought and as Helga dropped her arms from me, I dug my phone out of my pocket.

ALARM, it read, 6:50 am PLANE

My smile dropped and Helga new what was happening.

She knew the time.

After all, you didn't need a phone to tell you what time it was.

It was time to go. And that was all that needed to be said.

Gate 37. That was where my plane was waiting for me and the rest of it's passengers.

Helga stood beside me, her hand tightly woven with mine as I watched the passengers load the plane.

"This is it."

"You said that at the bus stop."

"But this is... REALLY it."

"I guess so."

She pulled me to face her and reached out to touch my cheeks.

"I'll miss you."

"You know I'll miss you too."

She smiled then and kissed me hard, her lips crushing mine for an instant before pulling back with tears in her eyes.

"I'm such a sap. Look at me," she said while wiping her tears with her sleeve, "crying because I won't see you for a few months."

"You're not a sap." I said, my eyes welling up as well.

"Now..." she started, "Now that we're standing here, we have minutes, how is this going to work?"

"What?"

"Us. How will it work."

"Remember how last night you were telling me it would? It will. We just have to believe that."

"But if it doesn't," she said quietly while gently taking each side of my open flannel in her hands, "what then? How will we see each other? What if you find somebody prettier, somebody more perfect, somebody-"

"Helga..." I said while brushing a loose strand of her hair away from her face and resting it on her neck and resting on her shoulder. "Remember how we ran into each other by complete chance at the College Cabin in Salfry?"

She nodded her head while searching my eyes.

"Yeah. What about it?"

"A random event, complete fate or SOMETHING for that matter brought us together after growing so apart. If we're meant to be together, we'll find each other again when we least expect it. Until then, we have to just work at what we have and be positive."

The lady checking tickets eyed us as we quietly talked between ourselves and cleared her throat rather loudly.

"How can I believe that?"

"You have to, Helga. What kept you going when I didn't notice you before?" I asked quickly, knowing that the lady was soon growing impatient.

"I just... I don't KNOW," her tone was becoming hard, and I could tell that she was shutting down the way she always had when I had found in her something that she tried to hide from me. "I just DID, okay?"

"Helga..." I said while resting my forehead against hers, "We found each other once... if it's meant to be, we'll find each other again."

"Spring break?"

"Of course, we'll see each other then. And we aren't completely primitive, remember? You told me that. We can use video chat. We can text. We can call."

She was nodding her head, taking in my every word and storing it for future reference.

It would be okay. It was just a few months.

After everything fell together... we had to hold on for just a few months until it could fall together again.

"Excuse me, are you going to board the plane, or not? We have a schedule to keep."

I nodded my head and offered Helga a smile.

"I'll see you." I said while turning around to hand the lady waiting my ticket.

"Arnold!" Helga called out to me and ran to me to wrap her arms around me tightly.

"I love you, Arnold." she whispered to me after so many years of hiding as I held her tightly against me.

"I... I know." I finally ended with, feeling as though it wasn't what I really had wanted to say.

Probably thinking that I wasn't ready, she nodded her head almost happy that for once, I DID know. I knew her secret.

She pulled back from me and kissed me once again- longer than normal, but short enough to not agitate the lady waiting any further.

"Bye, Helga." I called out and made my way to the lady to finally hand her my ticket.

"I love you." I heard her quietly say once more as she watched me disappear into the gate entirely and onto the plane.

It was crowded, and the aisle was as usual a pain to get through. I was lucky to have a window seat- or so I had thought at the time I bought my ticket as I liked to look out at the world below me. Not today. Not now.

I took my seat and waited as the flight attendant went over the usual speech of what to do if something catastrophic happened while on the plane, and I took in the procedures as she went through them.

In front of me peeking up from the chair pocket was the Sky Mall magazine, and I reached out to push it further in and look absentmindedly out the window to the airport.

"Fasten your seat belts as we are about to take off." the flight attendant stated before taking her seat and buckling herself in.

Slowly, the plane began to move down the runway and I watched as the airport grew smaller and smaller. It was only a few moments before we picked up speed and made our way into the air to fly high above the world living on below us.

I looked down at the airport that became a tiny ant on the earth that I was just minutes before standing on.

I pulled out my MP3 player and popped the earbuds in my ears to fill my mind with gentle music. Closing the window beside me that I had once stared out in wonder, I closed my eyes and leaned back while mumbling, quietly enough so nobody else could hear, "I love you too, Helga."

Here we are! The end! What did you guys think?

As I said before, do not fret- a fun companion is on the way, and I just KNOW it will be barrels of laugh :)

As promised, I shall give you a fun hint as to what it will be about! Let's just say, it is Arnold coming back for spring break... with Ray in tow and while Helga isn't bothered by this... Gerald, who is ALSO in town for spring break, is. While Helga isn't bothered, she does have to fight off some confusing feelings that Ray brings about in his week-long visit in Hillwood.

Sound fun?

YAY. :)

Anyways, Hope you enjoyed this little story. R&R and lemme know your thoughts and predictions for the upcoming companion!