Written By Shaun Blankenship

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"…And the finals will be on the thirtieth," grumbled the disorientated Algebra teacher as she sat at her desk, leaning over the mug of coffee. "Hey, how many seniors are in this class?"

Five people raised their hands: Arnold, Park, and three other kids who had grown up in another part of the city. The teacher smiled, pretending to be happy, and motioned for the students to but their arms down. "Yeah, you'll be gone before all these other losers."

A small sophomore in the front row lifted his head out of a notebook. "Hey!"

"Anyway," the teacher continued, "seniors, you get off on Thursday making you just one day short of missing my final."

Helga batted her pencil against the spiral binding of her notebook. "Friggin' community service." She then took the pencil and flung it at the ceiling, making it stand straight up into the pegboard surface.

"Because of this, all seniors are excused from taking the test." She groggily sipped at the mug of coffee that, for some odd and mysterious reason, smelled somewhat like bourbon. "So what you guys do all week, I don't care about. Who will actually be attending school for the next few days?"

Nobody raised his or her hands except for Arnold. "Um, Misses Brown?"

"Yes," she hesitated as she looked up the chair on the seating chart. "Arnold?"

He put his hand down and answered back, "I thought it was required for all of the seniors to show up for the last week of school or else they can't graduate. I know it's something along the lines of that."

The teacher cocked her head back and cackled heartily. "Ha! As if they ever check! Do you really think this school is gonna tell a senior that they can't graduate for missing school too late?"

Arnold slowly nodded his head. "Yeah… actually, I thought that was what happens."

She sipped from the coffee mug again. "I thought teens would lose gullibility in puberty. That rule is a scare tactic and is about as real as Big Caesar."

"What?"

***

Gerald walked with Arnold, holding a clipboard in front of him. "Okay, I've got everything scheduled for tomorrow night: the Limo is paid for, the tux is at my house, and I may have a connections all in order. What do you think, man?"

"That sounds good."

"Cool." Gerald brought his hands in front of him and cracked his knuckles. "Hey, you find a date yet?"

Arnold bit down on his lower lip and shook his head gently. "Nope. It's gonna be a lonesome prom."

"I need to get you going with a woman, my man," he said as they stopped at a crosswalk. "You have to go with somebody. I think they check at the door."

***

She opened the door to find Robert with his hands behind his back. "Find a date?"

Helga rolled her eyes and slammed the door in the young man's face. After she walked away, he opened it again and followed her into her room. "I thought we talked about this. You never found a date?"

Helga reached onto her bed and jumped her way onto it. "For your information, I did find somebody."

"Really?" Robert cocked his head in surprise. "Who?"

"Ah, you wouldn't know him." Helga twiddled her thumbs as she talked to him. "He doesn't go to our school."

"Huh," he said, scratching his head while still looking at her. "Where'd you meet him?"

"At work, where I have to be in a half hour." She lifted her hand and dusted him away. "Now in case you want to watch me change, I suggest you leave. I still have to get showered and into uniform."

"Oh." Robert moved backwards to the door and quickly went behind it. "Well, do you need anything?"

"Nope, everything's good here." She flashed thumbs up at him with both hands. "I'll be picking my dress up after work today."

"Do you have a ride for the whole thing?"

"Yeah." She propped herself up on the bed with her arms. "Jim's got it all set up."

"Jim?"

"Yeah; Jim." She motioned for him to leave once again, losing her arm balance and falling to the bed. "His name is Jim. Now leave."

He nodded and closed the door. "Alright, Helga."

***

It was five-thirty in the morning when the boy with the red-framed glasses appeared at her steps. In his hands was a large bouquet of roses, discounted at Miss Vitello's. Still kicking and alive, Curly knew she wouldn't be there for long. He knocked on Gloria's door and waited for a response. After waiting almost thirty seconds, he balled his fist up and pounded the door almost hard enough to knick the wood.

A man in his late thirties, wrapped in a robe groggily answered the door. "What? What do you want?"

Curly produced the biggest grin he could muster; a cold smile that brought chills, like watching rats feed. "Hello, sir. Is your daughter about?"

"Huh?" The man scratched himself with one hand and rubbed the tired out of his eye with the other. "What are you talking about?"

The smile quickly vanished. "Are you Gloria's father?"

"Yeah," he said as he placed both hands in his robe pockets, "I am. She's still sleeping, kid. She probably won't be awake until a few more hours. You wanna leave a message or something?"

"Nah," dismissed Curly lightly. "That's alright. Would you mind if I waited on your steps for her to wake?"

The old man glared at the boy's eagerness. "Yes; yes, I would mind. Get out of here."

With that, he slammed the door in his face and turned to Gloria. "Next time he comes around, you're dealing with him."

Gloria looked at the carpet as she fiddled with her hair. "Hey, dad. How much do you think a P.P.O. costs?"

"Too much trouble and money than you can afford." He scratched his faced groggily and sighed. "If it were that easy, that little creep would've been long gone. Now go to sleep." The man walked away from the front door and disappeared into a bedroom behind Gloria.

***

"Uh…" Brainy opened the door to its full extent after having coward behind it for the past five minutes. "Yeah?"

"Brainy, please?" She crossed her legs together. "Please go to prom with me?" She slid out a large ticket from her pocket, covered in a plastic case by the school like a gigantic key chain. "I've paid for it, all you have to do is go with me."

"Um…" He bit down on his bottom lip and thought for a few seconds. Getting a woman to pay for anything is a rare and unappreciated practice in today's world. It's not like he would've actually had the gall to turn her down without her paying anyway. "Um… sure."

"Please, Br…" The girl trailed off in the middle of her sentence. "What?"

"Uh… yeah, I'll go."

"Oh." She slapped her hands at her sides and rolled back and forth on her feet. "Well… thanks, I guess…"

Brainy gripped his hand at the doorknob. "Your welcome."

"Yeah." She crossed her feet and stared at them. "Wow, I guess I don't know where to go from here. When will you pick me up?"

"Uh…" Brainy started closing the door slowly but sticking his body through the opening. "How about seven?"

"Seven's good." She clapped her hands together and reached to hug Brainy through the opening left in the door. "Thank you so much, Brainy."

He took the affection on the receiving end and stood lifeless as she wrapped her arms around him. "Okay."

She kissed him on the cheek and stepped back from the door. "You don't know how much this means to me."

Paralyzed by her kiss, Brainy fainted backwards from the door. The look of confusion never left his face. As he lay on the floor, he managed to utter out, "Ow…"

The girl then pushed the door open and rushed to him. "Oh, are you hurt?"

***

The door opened and Phoebe slipped her head through. "Hi, Helga."

She shifted her face away from the small television in the corner. "Phoebe! Hey, what a freakin' surprise! What are you doing here?"

"I came here to see how you were doing," she replied. "Partly on my behalf and partly on your dad's. He's really worried about you, you know."

"Yeah, I bet he is," she snapped. "What do you want to know?"

"Well, I just wanted to know what's new." She sighed and took a seat on the floor. "We don't talk much anymore. Prom plans?"

"None," she yawned. "I'm not going to that stupid dance."

"That's not what Robert says. He's talking about some guy named Jim."

"Yeah," she said with a chuckle. "I made that up to humor him. Don't tell him otherwise. I told him I was going out with my online male alias: Jimmothy."

She cocked her head in confusion. "Jimmothy?"

"Yeah, it's a mix between James and Timothy. If I ever have a kid," she explained, "I don't care what my husband says; one of those kids is gonna be named Jimmothy."

Phoebe scratched at the back of her head. "Well, that'd be rather… unique, I guess."

"You bet it is! Why give him some boring name that fifty million other people in the world have? Think about it!" She stood up from her bed, flaring her arms about. "How are you gonna make fun of a kid with that name? All usual insults would be too simple and stupid to actually take in to offense. With a name like that, everybody's gonna want to meet him and know who he is. He'll be the most popular kid in school! Haven't you always wanted to know somebody with one of those rare, unique, one-of-a-kind names? Like Seven, or Ponyboy, or…"

Phoebe interrupted her train of thought, "You know, I don't hear the name 'Helga' too much in society."

Helga paused for only a second. "Huh? Anyway, my point is that he'll be somebody to remember. Even if you didn't like him much, you'd always recall 'Jimmothy? I remember that kid. That guy had one of the coolest names I've ever heard of.' Do you follow me, Feebs?"

She shrugged and smiled falsely. "I guess I do."

Helga blinked in disbelief, knowing her friend did not share the same views as her. She then took her place back at the bed. "Back to your question, I'm not going to prom. I thought that maybe I'd just catch a movie instead. What's playing, do you know?"

"A movie?"

"Yeah, it's cheaper than the prom." Helga cracked her knuckles and stretched her arms in the air. "You going with Gerald?"

She snickered and looked up at Helga. "Sure am."

"You sound distraught." She straightened her back out and stuck her hands out in front of her. "Is something wrong?"

She slammed her fist down on the soft carpet. "Helga, you're not going to prom! This is almost mandatory as being in High Sch…"

"Blah, blah, blah, I've heard it ten times around or so." She clapped her hands in front of her friend's face. "Wake up! This is a new day. We aren't bound by the traditions set in the past. Screw what's expected; I'm not going and nobody can force me to go."

"What about Arnold?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Phoebe folded her arms and closed her eyes snobbishly. "I guarantee that if that football-headed oaf were to walk in here and ask you to prom, you abandon all of this high and mighty trail blazing and rush yourself to the prom!"

She smiled. "You need to be assertive more often, you take quite a shine to it."

"Am I right?"

"You've got me there, I admit it." She rested down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. "The only problem is that I don't see that happening anytime soon."

Phoebe glared at her friend and then stared at the carpet. With a faint breath, she uttered, "What if that's not as impossible as you think?"

Helga sprung up from her bed alarmed. "What?"

Her friend snapped to attention and shook her head. "What? Nothing! Nothing at all."

She waved a finger and shook her head. "No, no, no. You said that I might be wrong about not having a chance with Arnold. How am I wrong?"

Phoebe backed up from the wall and glanced at her wrist. "You know what? I have to go. It's past my curfew."

"Phoebe, it's four o'clock in the afternoon." She threw a hand out, palm open to the ceiling, at her friend rising off of the floor. "Besides, you're not even wearing a watch!"

"Helga, I must be going…"

She leaped from the bed, lunged to her friend, and pinned her shoulders to the wall. She grumbled in a menacing voice, "What were you talking about, Phoebe?"

She swallowed the lump in her throat and opened her mouth. "Well…"