Written By Shaun Blankenship

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"Helga, I have to have a word with you."

She sat down in the chair in front of the counselor's desk. "Yes, Mister Howell?"

The fat, middle-aged man took off his glasses, diverting more attention to his humongous bald spot on the top of his head. It wasn't even a bald spot in a sense; more like a "U" of hair that circled his head. "How are you doing in night school?"

"Night school? What?" Helga was indeed confused.

"Well, you're missing a credit. Didn't we speak about this at the beginning of the year?"

She then remembered. "Oh, yeah. I said I was going to do some community service to make that up."

"And how is that going?"

She looked down at her shoes. "Well, it's not doing that good. I haven't applied anywhere yet."

"Helga." The man rubbed at his brow heavily. "You need to make up one-hundred eighty hours of community service to be able to graduate. It's February 13. I mean, how long are you going to put this off for?"

"I did apply at a bunch of places but they never called me back, Mister Howell." She crossed her legs together. "I've been trying hard. I also moved a few months ago…"

"Helga, a few months is long enough. That's more than enough time."

"After school today, I will leave and go to the community center and work this all out." Helga placed her hands on the desk. "As soon as that bell rings."

"Okay, Helga, but this is your last chance." The counselor grabbed a stack of papers and hit them on the desk to make them all uniform. "One more screw up, and you won't be graduating this year. Now I looked at your first semester grades and they're not terrible. You have to pass every class this semester in order to graduate and you have to make that credit up. Have you ever thought about zero hour?"

Helga rolled her eyes at the very thought of it. "No, I can't. It's just not possible. I can't wake up that early."

"Well, you get that extra academic credit in or you'll have to take another semester. You could also take summer school."

"Nah, I can't afford that either." She stood up from her chair. "I have to go back to class. I'll get right on that, Mister Howell."

"You better, Helga." The man took the papers he had been messing with and stashed them in a nearby filing cabinet. "Don't forget."

***

Helga sat at her desk in math class and spoke to an ear that didn't exist, "Man, that was a waste of my time."

Arnold looked up from his class work. "What'd they want you down there for?"

Helga looked at the paper placed on her desk left by the teacher in her absence and then over to Arnold. "What do you care?"

Arnold sighed and put his pencil down. "I just want to know, Helga."

"Well, if it's any of your business which it's not, I'm a credit short of graduating." Helga cracked her knuckles. "No big deal."

"How long have you known this?"

"Since the beginning of the year." She made a 'pshhh' noise with her mouth. "I don't tell you everything, you know. I don't have to."

"Helga, this is a serious problem." Arnold turned his body in the desk and laid his feet over the support bar running from the back of his chair to the front of his desk. "You do realize that if you don't make up that credit, you'll be here for another year."

"Another semester, actually." She looked at her nails bent into the palm of her hand as if trying to act classy. "So what? It's just another semester?"

"Helga, don't you want to go to college?"

"Yeah, I want to go to college, but you have to take in account the probability of me actually going to college. Without Bob paying for it, there's no way I can get in; and for somebody a credit short of graduating, I think that alone says my GPA won't be high enough to meet college standards."

"Haven't you ever heard of community college?" Arnold shifted in his seat. "They'll take anybody."

"I'd rather shove my feet in a blender and hit puree and live life as a footless cripple than go to a community college." She raised half of her eyebrow at Arnold's sitting position. "Is that even comfortable? That looks really painful."

"It could be better." Arnold moved his legs and sat normally. "An education is an education, and if you stay at a community college long enough, you can be transferred to a normal one."

"Where are you going?"

Arnold sat silently, beaten by the girl with the one eyebrow. "I'm graduating. I've applied to places. Where have you applied to?"

"I've applied to places! I've applied to a million colleges!" Helga crossed her arms and turned her head back. "I've applied to so many, I don't think I have anymore to apply to."

"Name one."

Helga sat in her chair, trying to think of a college to name to spite Arnold. "Harvard."

"What state is Harvard in?"

"How should I know?" Helga pounded a fist on her desk. "I just filled out the application!"

"No, you didn't."

"Well, I did apply to one college."

"Where?"

Helga sighed and looked at the football-headed kid. "Alright, I haven’t applied anywhere. Are you happy? Do you feel happy being right for the fifty millionth time in your life?"

Arnold tried to react to the injustice. "Helga, I-"

"You know what? Forget it. I don't care. Everything'll be alright." Helga reached into her purse that she kept beside her and pulled out a plastic twenty-ounce bottle of Yahoo soda. "I'm on it."

Arnold watched as she took a sip of the cola. "Do you need some help?"

She nearly gagged on the dark liquid. She cleared her throat and glared at Arnold. "No, I'll be fine."

"Okay, Helga." Arnold picked his pen back up and went back to work. Fifteen more minutes left in the day and he'd be home free.

***

Arnold shut the door behind him, flipping through the mail as soon as he was in the house. "Grandpa?" He started walking up the stairs, calling the name again. "Grandpa?"

He opened the door to where his grandparents now stayed. The room was vacant. He stepped inside and looked around, still finding no one. "Grandpa? Grandma?"

Arnold rushed out of the room and to the door a few spaces down where he knew someone would be. He pounded on the door. "Mister Kokoshka! Oskar!"

The bearded man opened the door in a wife beater and khakis, rubbing his eyes. "Arnold, where's the fire? It's two in the afternoon. You're cutting in on my sleepy time."

"Mister Kokoshka, have you seen my grandparents?" Arnold peaked to the corner of the door, still keeping an eye on the hall. "I can't find them."

"I thought they would have told you." Oskar stepped inside of his room. "Come in, Arnold. Make yourself comfortable."

Arnold followed the man into his room and took a seat in his recliner. "Would you like some soda?"

"Um, sure." Arnold looked at the floor and all the garbage on it: old newspapers, pieces of popcorn, and multi-colored patches of floor from drink spills that were never tended to. The entire room smelled like an old shoe after a ten-mile hike. "Can't you just tell me where they are?"

"No, you'll want to be cozy when you hear." Oskar cracked the can of Yahoo open. "This is gonna run you a dollar fifty."

It's the same old Oskar. Arnold gripped the arms of the chair. "What? What happened to them?"

Oskar handed him the open can of cola and took a seat on a nearby chair. "Oh, nothing big. Don't worry, I'll tell you. First, I want the dollar fifty."

"Oskar! Just tell me!"

The bearded man sighed. "Okay, I'll tell you but then you pay me the dollar fifty." He looked down at some of the garbage on his own floor. "Right around noon, Grandpa started having some chest pains. Apparently he suffered a stroke or heart attack. One of the two, I can't remember."

Arnold spit the soda he had been drinking across the room and managed to get some on Oskar. "What?"

"Hey, you're gonna have to pay for this." Oskar wiped at his shirt. "Now I am all sticky."

"My grandpa getting sent to the hospital is 'nothing big'? Is he all right?" Arnold tried to breathe but it was more challenging than it seemed. "What hospital was he sent to?"

"How should I know? Probably the one down on forty-seventh street." Oskar stopped wiping at his shirt with his hands and held out his right to accept payment. "I'll need two dollars now. Fifty cents to clean up this mess."

"I gotta go, Oskar." Arnold set his pop can on the floor and rushed out the door. "I'll be right back."

Oskar rushed to the end of his door but didn't step foot into the hallway. He yelled out from the entrance to his room, "Hey, Arnold! What about the two bucks?"

***

"Yeah, let me see." The receptionist typed at her computer for a few seconds, making odd facial expressions at the computer screen hidden from Arnold's view. "Yes, Phil would be on the third floor."

"Thanks." Arnold quickly took off from the desk and to the elevator.

"Wait!" cried the receptionist. "Don't you want to know the room number?"

It was too late. The football-headed teen had already stepped on the elevator.

***

Arnold searched door after door until he found his grandparents. Grandpa was in a hospital bed under a blanket with Gertrude close by his side holding his hand. "Grandma, is he alright?"

She looked up at her grandchild. She answered in a mellow voice, "Yes, he'll be fine and be able to go home tonight. The doctors want to run a few more tests on him before they let him go."

Phil lifted his head up with his eyes almost shut. "Who is that? Jimmy?"

Arnold walked over to the bed. "It's Arnold."

The old man opened his eyes. "Oh, yes, Arnold. How ya doin', short man?"

"Good. What happened?"

"Ah, I was hungry and decided to eat some pop-tarts." His grandfather shrugged. "Supposedly, I had a diabetic attack. I guess I didn't see it coming. I didn't even know that there were any diabetics in the boarding house, let alone ones who would attack an old man like me."

"Grandpa…"

"I know." The withered old man laughed in his bed and grabbed at his stomach. "I'm gonna be fine, Arnold. Don't worry."

"How can I not worry?" Arnold pulled up a seat next to his grandmother. "I come home and you two are gone with no note or explanation. Then I have to hear from Kokoshka what he thinks happened."

"You mean he didn't call your school?" Phil turned his head over to Gertie. "You said you told Oskar to call his school!"

His grandmother stood up. "I shall not be bound by the chains of society!"

Phil waved a hand, pushing her off. "You know, you just can't marry good help these days."

Arnold bent in closer. "How long have you been here?"

"Since seven thirty this morning." He shifted in his bed as a loud rumbling filled the room from his stomach. "Ooh, you two may wanna leave."

"Why?"

"They gave me a sugar-free raspberry cobbler today with lunch." The grumbling continued. "Pretty soon, this bedpan under me is going to be filled. You might want to do yourself a favor. You too, Pookie."

His grandmother shook her fist in the air. "I shall not be told where to go! I shall not be told where to move."

"Fine, suit yourself." He moved his head to Arnold. "Run, Arnold! Run for your life!"

***

"That's pretty messed up, Arnold." Gerald walked along the street with his friend. "I mean, Oskar offering you a drink. It's no surprise he tried charging it to you, but still… I've never heard him offer anything to anyone."

"Gerald, my grandpa is in the hospital right now." He kicked an empty can into the middle of the street as he walked along. "Isn't that just a little more important than Mister Kokoshka's hospitality?"

"Yeah, that's important, but that could happen at anytime. Oskar asking you inside his house to have a pop is like Sally's Comet: you won't see it again for a long time." They continued walking down Thirty-fourth Street. "Unless he was doing to cut back some money from his rent. Has he paid this month yet?"

"No, but I can't throw him out. I'm such a pushover." They stopped at the intersection crosswalk and waited for the white sign of the stick figure crossing the street to show. "The thing is that what if his health stays like this? What if he doesn't fully heal or eats something he shouldn't be eating again? What if this goes on when I have to go away for college?"

"Que sara sara, my brother." Gerald put a hand on Arnold's shoulder. "If it'll make you feel better, take him with you. If he's going to jeopardize his health, he'll do it with you or without you. The only difference in leaving with you is that you're gonna have to be the one to find him."

"Gerald!" The light finally shone and they started to cross the street. "I just feel like I need to be there for him. Even high school now is taking me away from caring for his condition."

"Does anybody else in the boarding house know about your grandpa's condition?"

Arnold nodded. "Oh, yeah. He's never been one to keep anything private. He'll usually tell anybody and everybody his problems."

"Do any of the other boarders eat breakfast there?"

Arnold thought about it. "Sometimes. There's a few that don't."

"Think about this, Arnold. Why couldn't someone have stopped him?" Gerald stood in front of Arnold to stop him from moving forward. "Your grandpa had to have snuck whatever it was that he ate while nobody was looking. Otherwise, someone would have surely stopped him."

"It was pop-tarts."

"Huh." Gerald and Arnold started to walk forward again. "I don't think pop-tarts would send him to the hospital."

"I checked in on it. He ate the whole box."

Gerald leaned back a little in shock. "Man!"

"It was a sixteen-pouch value pack. The doctor says he's lucky to be alive."

"That right there is why I don't eat that stuff." Gerald leaned forward and whistled. "I don't think I'd have the stomach to eat one of the eight pack boxes, let alone a sixteen pack."

"I don't understand what you're getting at."

"Arnold, even if you were to quit your job and drop-out of school, your grandpa would still try to sneak in that sort of junk while you're not looking. You can't keep tabs on him all the time."

"I know that, but I can't just sit and do nothing about it." Arnold placed his hands at his temples. "I can't just say 'whatever will be will be' or whatever you said earlier."

"I'm not even sure what I said, it's some old white girl song."

They had finally reached Chez Paris and stopped outside of it. "Well, I have to go. It's time for me to work."

"Wait, you're just going to go in there with street clothes?" Gerald was confused. "I thought this place had a dress code for the waiters and what not."

"They do. I asked Sid if I could borrow one of his suits because I need to get all of mine dry cleaned." Arnold opened the door to the restaurant. "He's letting me borrow it until tomorrow. I'm gonna change in the men's room."

"Okay then." Gerald started to walk away. "See ya, Arnold," he shouted as he walked away.

"See ya, Gerald."