Written By Shaun Blankenship

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Arnold and Gerald walked down Main Street in the snow. "So, Gerald, what's your family doing for Christmas?"

Gerald shrugged. "Nothing much. How about you?"

"I don't know. We're not going to be going anywhere. I'll just end up having them unwrap their presents and they'll just go back to bed."

"Wow, you've become the caretaker and Santa. How do ya feel?"

"Like Tim Allen."

Gerald laughed. "Yeah, okay. Good thing school's out. I can't think of what we'd do without this break."

"Man, I remember being a kid and wanting to just run out here with a sled in my hand, aching to just go down the street with it. Now, I just want to do something. I can't do that stuff anymore. It'd be too… weird. Just playing outside while kids in elementary school rush past me. It just doesn't feel right anymore." He turned to Gerald. "You know, it's like being a high-schooler means we can't have classic fun anymore. All we can do is throw parties. We can't play in the snow, we can't trick-or-treat…"

"Yeah, but soon school's gonna be out. It's either college or the real world. Which do you choose?"

Arnold kicked a heap of snow by his feet. "I'm trying to get into college. I sent my information to a couple of different ones. Nothing big though, but they'd be far away."

"How far away?" Gerald asked.

"Like Michigan far away."

"Man!"

"I know." Arnold continued to kick the snow. "I don't want to leave Hillwood behind. I can't expect Grandma and Grandpa to move to Michigan. I may never see any of you people again. Where will you be going?"

"Me? I'm sticking with the real world. My parents can't afford to put me in college… and my grades the past three years haven't been really good either. They really wish there was a way for me to get in college, some sort of scholarship or something, but the chances of that happening are slim to slimmer."

Arnold thought about Gerald's last words for a moment. "Slim to slimmer?"

"The fact is that I'm not gonna be able to go to college, whether I want to or not. Looks like I'm stuck here in this town, old buddy, and I'll miss you."

"Gerald!" Arnold raised his hands. "Dude, that's not cool."

"Hey, but it's honest."

"See, that's one of my reasons of why I don't want to go. I'll be leaving you, the boarding house, all the other kids… I'll be leaving all I've ever known. What if something tragic happens while I'm gone? What if one of my friends gets killed while I'm gone? What if my parents finally reappear and can't find me when they come back? All these odd possibilities could happen."

"Well, whatever happens, it's going to happen anyway, so why fight the inevitable?"

"You believe in fate?"

"Yeah, I do!" Gerald was filled with seriousness, a rare site to Arnold. "I believe that everything that's going to happen has already been mapped out by somebody. No matter how hard we fight to change, in the end it won't matter. We'll just end up with the job and the life that was determined from the day we were born. It's all destiny, man."

Arnold looked at his friend in disbelief. "Nah, I can't agree with you there."

"You gotta think about it, man. What's the purpose of life?"

"Don't ask me these kinds of questions, Gerald."

"I think that life is a play written by God. We run around according to script and at the end, we get to chill in the green room of heaven."

"My religion's been kind of shaky ever since… well, I can't remember."

"Well, Arnold, that's your thing, and I'm respecting that. As for me, I believe in God and fate. If you don't agree, I can't hold that against you." Gerald then came up with a brilliant example. "What about Eugene?"

"What about Eugene?"

"He's been unlucky all of his life. Do you really think that's been all accidental?"

"No, I think he's been jinxed. I don't think every little mishap he gets into has been predetermined."

Gerald sighed. "Well, maybe that's why we've been friends for so long. All this debating can be entertaining for a while."

Arnold looked at his feet. "Yeah." They walked on for a few more steps. "So what do you wanna do?"

"I don't know. What do you wanna do?"

"Hockey?"

Gerald thought. "I don't know about that… I mean sports never die with age. But then again, I think that there's only one brother in the NHL. That might tell something about me. Maybe I wasn't born to play like all you white kids."

Arnold laughed at Gerald's comment. It may have been a tad bit cruel, but it was true. "Do you wanna play or not?"

"Yeah." Gerald and Arnold both stopped walking. "Street or ice?"

"Street."

"Do you want to get the others or should I?"

"I can do it."

"I'll meet you in the alley across from the field in an hour. We'll find a place after that."

"Okay. See ya Gerald."

They both walked their separate ways down the opposite ends of the street.

***

Arnold knocked on the door and patiently waited for a response. He looked around at his neighborhood and started thinking; This place is friggin' beautiful in the winter. Something about snow made everything look purer and fresh. It made it look unharmed by the real world. It made everything look innocent. Even if his city were a dirty, broken-down ghetto; the snow would mask all of its ugliness in any condition.

After ten seconds, his knock was finally reciprocated. "Hey, Arnold."

"Hey, Robert. You wanna play hockey?"

Robert clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. "Right now?"

"Not now, in a about an hour or so. Interested?"

Robert looked inside of his house as if for spying eyes, and looked back at Arnold. "In an hour would be good. I have some things I have to attend to. Roller or Ice?"

Arnold tried looking over Robert's shoulder to see inside his house. "Roller hockey. Hey, what's going on right now?"

Robert looked down at his shoelaces. Wow, I need to clean these dingy things. "I don't know if I should say. It's kind of personal with her."

"With who?"

A familiar voice shouted from inside of Robert's living room. "Ah, go ahead and tell him. Everyone's bound to find out anyway."

Robert cleared his throat. "Helga got into a fight with her dad last night and was kicked out. She's going to be staying at my house until she finds another place."

Helga walked over beside Robert. Her hair was uncombed and frizzled down her back. "I still have some stuff I need to get from my house. I'll be back in about ten minutes." She walked by, merely passing Arnold off as if he wasn't there.

Arnold stared at her until she was almost a blur of color and back to Robert. "Wow, that's kind of hard to… wow. I can't believe Bob would kick her out."

Robert smirked. "Well, she is Helga and he is Bob. I'm just glad my parents said she could stay. I don't know who else she'd turn to."

"What about Phoebe?"

"She said that she tried something like this with Phoebe but she won't go into detail why she won't do it again."

Arnold sighed, watching his breath fade away into the cold air. "Well, when she comes back, invite her too. The more, the merrier."

Robert nodded in agreement. Sure, he had no idea what he was agreeing to, but in his mind it seemed like a reasonable gesture. "Yeah. Who else is coming?"

"I haven't really talked to anyone else yet." Arnold looked back down the street. "You were the first house I stopped by. But by all means, phone some people, see if the want to play. Make my job a little bit easier."

"Yeah, okay." Robert kept looking back into his house for some reason and it was really starting to irritate Arnold. Helga wasn't even inside his house now, yet he still kept checking in there as if to assure everything was okay. "I should go arrange some of the Helga's stuff. She's bringing over everything of hers. It's all in boxes. I should start putting the boxes in her room or something."

Arnold started to walk off of the stoop. "Well, I hope everything works out with her. We'll meet at the baseball field and then we'll find out where were gonna play. See you at the field?"

"Yeah. See ya, Arnold."

"See ya." Robert walked inside of the doorway and shut his door slowly and silently. Arnold treaded on through the snow-covered sidewalks, still pondering the idea of Bob kicking Helga out. It was like the most obvious act you'd ever suspect to see but never expect it to actually happen.

Robert walked to the middle of his living room where three large 'Folward Facial Tissues' boxes in the center of the room. "Well, shoot, Helga. How much stuff do you own?"

He picked up the highest box of the stack and started to carry it to the guestroom. This thing must way at least fifteen pounds. What is she packing? Cinder blocks? He walked down the hall to the room. If only he had been more attentive to floor beneath him, he would have seen Helga's duffel bag, the only thing she had actually placed in the room. If only he was watching the floor, he wouldn't have tripped over them.

***

Helga slammed the door of her former home with two large cardboard boxes between her arms. It was the last of her luggage. Wow, I'll never have to go to this rat hole ever again. I'm free! She waked down the stairs, struggling to see the next step, and struggled even harder trying to see in front of her once she reached the bottom. The feeling of leaving was like the feeling of escaping prison. You've finally made you're break, and you'll avoid anyway of being sent back, but yet inside it seems as if you're running away from your problems instead of solving them.

But something seemed wrong. Maybe it was that out of all the people in the world, she was staying at Robert's house. Sure, back in the day they were almost brother and sister, but now it was rare if they even remembered to say hi to each other. Now, his family and him were willing to open the doors to her house for her. His parents didn't even really ask exactly why she had to move; they just greeted her with a smile and a handshake. If she were smart, she would stop questioning it and just accept their generosity.

Helga might be a genius, but she also likes knowing the full story and not just the Readers' Digest edit.

***

Robert stood up from his fall. Aw, what was that? He looked down at the ground to find the box he was carrying to still be intact, but pushed in at the top slightly to where he fell. Ooh, I hope nothing fragile was in there. It was when he turned around that he was speechless.

The bag he had tripped on had ripped a large hole in the side, spilling out its contents on the rug. Five small books fell out of the slit. "Oh, crap," he panicked. "Helga is gonna kill me!"

He grabbed one of the books in his hands and held it for a moment. Why would she have so many books like this? Should I? It was as if he was a kid who had been left at home with a million presents under the Christmas tree. If you only remove the tape from one side of the package, you could slide the box out of the package to reveal what it was. All you have to do is tape it back up so your parents won't notice. As in the words of Velvet Jones, 'It's a simple as that!'

Robert slowly opened the book's cover, expecting some horrible fume to arise of some kind of Egyptian booby-trap. He turned past one blank page and discovered a slew of scribbling. "Oh my God, its Helga's poetry about Arnold. She never usually openly shares this sort of stuff with me. Sure, she told me about it."

Robert ran his finger over the first sentence on the page and read it aloud at the same time. "Arnold, my darling, my heart does beat for thee. / Through the heat from the sun, I find shade under your tree. / Even if you never will see me here, adoring your heart and soul / then I shall die of loneliness, shivering in your cold."

He looked up from the book and to the doorway. "I really shouldn't be reading this."

***

Helga kicked Robert's front door with her foot. Needless to say, knocking with her hands was out of the question. The boxes in her hands kept her at least a foot and a half away from the door. "Robert! Open up!"

Robert immediately opened the front door before Helga could finish her last syllable. "Hi, Helga! Is this it?"

Helga leaned back, backing away from the weirdness of Robert's friendly welcome. "Um… yeah. A little help please."

"Oh! Sure!" Robert grabbed the two boxes out of her hands. Both of them combined weren't as heavy as the one he had carried earlier. This confirms it; the other box is full of cinder blocks. He carried them into the guestroom. "I've taken the liberty of moving your other boxes into your room, you don't mind?"

Helga still stood at the doorway, kind of irked by Robert's chipper attitude. "Yeah. Are you okay? You're acting a little… odd…"

Robert reappeared from the spare room. "Oh, I've just finally had the time to wake up. I also had a Yahoo so that caffeine is kicking in. While I was moving your stuff, I tripped on your duffel back and ripped it open." Helga's jaw dripped three feet from her nose. "Don't worry," he assured. Nothing was ruined and nothing fell out. I don't know what you packed in there, but it bruised my ankles pretty bad."

Helga's shocked look disappeared and her uneasiness faded slightly. "Well, that's good to know. It has a whole bunch of my books and stuff, nothing interesting. Sorry about your ankles, chief."

Robert paused. "What did you just call me?"

"Chief. You know. It's like buddy, guy, man, et cetera. Chief."

Something was odd about that name, but there was no singling it out. "Alright. Hey, Arnold invited us to play hockey in about a half-hour now. You're invited if you want to play."

Helga walked over to the spare room and opened a box up. "I really should only need about a half-hour to put all this stuff away and get it out of these boxes. Yeah, sure. I'll play."

Robert clapped his hands loudly. "Great! Well, I have some stuff to do. You don't mind if I leave for a little while, do you?"

Helga waved a hand calmly. "Nah, I'll be fine. You do whatever you have to. It's not like I'm gonna steal anything if I'm going to be living here."

Robert finished slipping on his tennis shoes and searched for his winter jacket. Once he found it, and put it on, he called to Helga; "I'll be back in a little bit." He then left the house, leaving Helga alone with her luggage.

***

Robert sat down at a stool in Slausen's, stirring his root beer float back in forth. The waitress (Do ice cream shops have waitresses?) rested her elbows on the counter next to him. "Hey, Robert," said Rhonda.

Rhonda almost gagged, but he hadn't been drinking anything to gag on so it came out as a cough. "When did you start working here?"

"Last month. What's on your mind?"

Robert was still frightened by the fact that this girl had been following him all of November and now was serving him in the ice cream parlor. It was like she had already known where he was going to end up and plotted herself here in advance. "I was actually wondering why an ice cream place would be open in the middle of winter. You'd think they'd shut down this place."

She shook her head. "Believe it or not, we still get pretty busy now. All the franchises like Dairy Queen may not be open, so everyone turns to us. You've hardly touched your float, now what's wrong Robert?"

Nothing's wrong, just the fact that my escape from Helga's problems has brought me to you in some odd way. Rhonda rolled her eyes back. "Look, I'm sorry about all the crap I've given you. I was a little… over-reactive and I just wanna say… I'm sorry. Can we call it even and just be friends?"

Rhonda held out a hand to which Robert glared at. He eventually caved in and shook it. "Yeah, we're friends."

Rhonda drummed her hands on the counter rapidly. "Great, then. Well, it's good to get that out of the way. Now what's eatin' ya, Robbie?"

What's with all these nicknames? "Eh, nothing really. I just have some problems back at home. Somebody moved in today in our guestroom and… I don't know; there's just this weirdness between us. And we used to be such great friends. I mean we're not enemies, but we're almost strangers."

"Ah…" agreed Rhonda. "I know what you're saying."

"You do?"

Rhonda hesitated. "No, personally I don't. But I can see what it would be like."

Robert buried his face in his arms on the countertop. Just perfect...