Written By Shaun Blankenship

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"This is pointless, I'll never be able to do this."

Helga sat at a school library table with Phoebe. Miss Apollyon walked around in circles as she surveyed her class. She then stood in the middle of all the tables and raised her hand. "Excuse me, can I have everyone's attention?"

Heads all over the library turned to look at her. She then proceeded, "Thank you. Now, this first assignment is to write a historical fiction. You will pick a period of history before the seventies and write a story based on historical facts. Now, this is a tough first assignment, which is why we will be spending a week in the library researching. This will be our only factual story this class will be writing. Now, you can chose any period in time before the seventies except for biblical events and cro-magnum times. This means you can write about the Revolutionary War, World War I, the Great Depression, and so on. You can write about a flapper in the twenties or a witch in Salem Village. I just want to remind you that it has to be accurate; Abraham Lincoln will not be driving an Impala and Chubby Checker will no be releasing 'The Twist' on CD. Does everyone understand?"

The whole class nodded in understanding. The staff of the library and other students researching their own projects just looked at her crossly for being so obnoxious. You know; they don't hang up 'Quiet please' signs up to accent the wallpaper. Wanna pipe it down?

Miss Apollyon clapped her hands together and rubbed them vigorously. "Perfect. I will have my student assistant hand all of you a paper with all the rules of this piece and exceptions. Just remember that this is not a report. It's a story, hence the name of the class: 'Creative Writing.' If you hand in a report, I will give it right back to you. If I find one run-on sentence, I'll stop reading it. Since everyone understands, I'll let all of you get to work now. Hop to it." She walked to the upper balcony, the seven thousand dollar gift the school had received from the local Campfire Lass troops two years ago. See what selling cookies and chocolate turtles gets you? An upper level in your school library so your teacher can watch you like a prison warden.

Phoebe turned back to Helga. "You were saying?"

"Phoebe, I've been here before in this same, exact position. I can't just try to apologize to Arnold because I can't. It's not me and I can't help it. This tip-toeing and bending backwards to explain what happened won't do anything but make things worse like it always does! Think about it; anytime I've tried to be nice to him, it backfires."

Phoebe adjusted her glasses. "Well, that may be true in a sense, but there's no other way…"

Helga stopped her in her tracks. "Yes, there is. Look, I can just accept this and live my life. Maybe soon this tension between us will lessen and everything will be alright. You never know."

Helga then reached her hand in her purse, took a double take of the teacher and if anyone was watching her at the moment, a pulled a Yahoo soda out and held it under the table out of view. Once she was sure again that no one was watching, she slowly cracked the seal on the plastic bottle so that any hissing noise could not be heard from a three-foot radius. The pressure under the cap released slowly in a hissing sound until she finally had the entire cap removed from the bottle. Once again, she recapped. If anyone saw her with a drink in the library, it was automatic detention again. Then her permanent record or whatever the high school has on her would be complete. She knew in twenty years she'd return for the school reunion and be awarded for having the most detentions during the first week of school. Once she was absolutely sure again, she took a quick swig of the refreshing cola and placed it under the table as quick as she could. Then the cap was screwed back on and placed in her purse as if the incident never happened.

Phoebe argued with Helga's previous statement. "That's not a very good attitude to have about all of this. You and…"

"Look, Feebs. I know where you're going with this. I've been there and I have the snow globe to prove it. Being positive never solves any problems; it just makes it hurt more when it all comes crashing down around you. It's one of those sad facts in life, Phoebe. One of those things you wish you could change but can't even start to understand it fully enough to find out how to fix it."

Phoebe glared at her doubtingly. "Helga, that's not true. There's a nice person in you that's trying to come out but you just keep shoving her back in. I know this, I've seen it."

"Have you gone deaf or just ignorant? I'm saying I'm going to ride this thing out and find where it takes me. I can't bring myself to apology."

"Helga, you're not letting yourself apologize."

"He's not going to remember all of this in five weeks anyway. What's it matter?"

"Iggy."

Helga dropped her eyebrow between her two eyes. "That's one person."

"And now you're the second. You better find some way to make up or you're going to live to regret it."

"Hey, I don't think I've ever heard you talk with an attitude before."

"Could you stay focused?"

"Is this even worth arguing about?"

Phoebe grabbed her books and binder off of the library table and walked away. "Good-bye, Helga." She stormed away and sat next to Gerald and Arnold. She placed her books down and placed her head on Gerald's shoulder. Helga gritted her teeth in anger and scowled. I guess now you and me are even, Phoebe. We're both number two on someone's list.

***

Arnold answered his door to find Gerald standing on his stood. "Hey, buddy, what's goin' on?"

Arnold opened his door wider and Gerald walked in. "Not much. So, are we playing baseball today?"

Gerald looked around the walls of the boarding house as if he had never seen it before. "Nah, the other kids all have stuff to do. It's hard to organize that kind of stuff now. Pretty soon, we'll have nothing to our lives but jobs or college. Then if we go to college, we're stuck with jobs. I think we better realize that the days of the frequent baseball games are over, Arnold. I'm probably lucky I'm standin' here in your house."

Arnold finally shut the door. "Okay… then why did you come over?"

Gerald spun around. "Eh, I was bored. Thought maybe you were too. I knew you didn't work today."

"So, I could've had a date or something."

"Yeah, right." Gerald started leading Arnold to his own room. "Who would be going out with you? Through out your whole life, you've only had maybe one professional scale girlfriend."

"'Professional scale'?"

"Yeah, you know. A professional scale girlfriend is a girl who you date, not just talking to all the time. Also, a girlfriend who you were also going out with by choice and not being paid or bribed to."

Arnold pulled on the string that hung from his ceiling to reveal a flight of stairs to his room. "Seems like you got me figured out." He started to walk up. "And who do you think the only professional scale girlfriend I've ever had is?"

"Tracy."

"Tracy Donaldson? From Freshman year?"

They entered the actual room where Arnold slept and took a seat. Gerald sat on Arnold's couch and Arnold placed himself in his computer desk chair. Instead of the cheap one he had so many years ago, he now had a heavily padded leather chair that sat in front of his glowing screen. Gerald replied to Arnold's questioning statement. "Yeah, Tracy! Remember? You took that girl to homecoming. After that, you two dated for about a month. Then you two just lost touch for some reason. There was really no brake-up, more of just you two pulling away from each other."

Arnold looked at Gerald in discontent. "Gerald, the girl had leukemia. She went under intensive therapy and wasn't in school for a few moths. When she did return, she only stayed around for three days before disappearing again. She never returned back to school."

Gerald's eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped. "Aw, man… I'm sorry, I didn't know that."

"Well! Now you do. I'd like to also tell you that you're wrong."

"Wrong about what?"

"She was not the only serious girlfriend I ever had."

"Really? Who else then, hot shot?"

Arnold reclined back and let the words roll out of his mouth like he was calling out the winning number on his own Bingo card: "Autumn Swanwick."

Gerald shifted his face as if he had been punched in the side of the face, and then understood what Arnold was talking about. "Oh, her. I remember her now. Long hair, kind of short, claimed to be a wicken?"

"That was her." Arnold got up to place new CD's in his disc changer to put on random. "Sophomore year, I went out with her for five months. I bought her Christmas gifts, took her to the movies. I bought her Christmas gifts even though she didn't believe in Christ. I couldn't ever stop talking about her. How could you forget that?"

"I do not know, my brother. Hey, what're you putting in?"

"I don't know, I can't decide. I'm torn between… Ill Finger or Beat the Elderly."

"'Beat the Elderly'? What kind of cracker music are you listening to, Arnold?"

"Well, I can throw somethin' in of yours if you got it. Have anything?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." Gerald reached in his pocket and pulled out a slim line case with a white CD in it. "Put this in."

Arnold took the case from Gerald's hand. "What is it? Rap? Rock? What?"

"Trust me, it's good. That's all I'm about to say."

Arnold looked at Gerald as if he was trying to force a confession of the disc's content with his eyes, yet eventually he turned around and stuck in his entertainment system. Arnold didn't even hit the random button, but instead just decided to play Gerald's disc.

The first track blared out with the sound of a guitar or a horn. The noise was so odd and distorted, it could've been either and it wouldn't have made a difference. The song kept on and a rap drumbeat started playing with a dirty vinyl sample playing in the background. The intro played on filled with the basics of an average rap song. "Yo! Ayyo! Yo! Yeah! Ayyo!" Then the actual lyrics started:

Arnold turned to Gerald. "Hey, who is this?"

"You don't know who this is? This is Meth-tical! Iron Lung! Ticallion Stallion! Mr. Mef!"

Arnold just blinked showing exactly how much he absorbed from Gerald's rambling. "Yeah, you just gave me a bunch of nicknames. Who is this?"

"It's Method Man, man!"

Arnold thought about it for a minute. "Hmm. I like this. I don't like much rap, but I like this. I might have to download some of his other stuff tonight."

Gerald pointed a finger at Arnold's face. "Have some respect. If you're gonna listen to Meth, you better go and buy his album instead of pirating it. He needs the money."

"Can we not get off subject here?"

"Okay, where were we? Oh, yeah; Autumn. Whatever happened to her? You two seemed so happy together."

Arnold looked at his shoes and back at Gerald. "Do you really want to know?"

"Oh, I gotta know now. If you're doin' all this secrecy talking to me now, I have to know."

"Okay, but it's a long story."

"I got time. I don't have anywhere else I need to be.

Arnold took a deep breath and started to talk.

***

Now, Autumn and me, we were inseparable. I had told her everything: embarrassing childhood moments, deep secrets. Some secrets I told her I've never even told you. I would've trusted her with my life.

One day, we were at the ice cream shop together. That was when she told me that she had a bad home life. Her parents never really physically abused her; it was all mentally. They had always told her that she was going to end up having a job that involved a nametag and memorizing phrases like "Do you want fries with that?" Any time something happened at her house that affected her family or her sister, she was blamed. When her older sister received a failing grade in English, Autumn was blamed. Whenever someone even had a headache, she was blamed. She was the scapegoat of her household.

I was sympathetic for her and tried to comfort her with it. I mean, she started to get hysterical about her family. I offered her to stay at my house for a week or so to maybe clear her head. She slept on that couch for a month.

During that whole time, I never touched her or anything. We had a strictly plutonic dating thing. There was no intimacy, no kissing; it was almost like she was just my friend and I liked that. But we did date. During that time, I had gotten to love her more than anyone else I knew. More than Lila, more than Summer, more than Lydia…

Wait a minute, I just realized… Summer and Autumn. That's strange.

Back to my point. She stayed at my house for a month. Her family never seemed to care. They knew where she was, they knew why, only they twisted it around in their minds to make themselves feel better. Whenever she brought it up to them when she did talk to them, they just conned themselves into thinking that she was staying here to give me some sort of 'payback' for spending money on her or something like that. I don't know; her family needs some serious psychiatric help.

One day, I had left to go up to the store for my grandparents and left her at the house. I was only going to be gone for two minutes and she didn't want to go anyway. When I come back, she's on the phone. When she put it down, she was crying and screaming at me. She started throwing all of my stuff around and punching me saying, "It's all your fault! It's all your fault!"

She packed her things, left my room and went back to her home. After that, she never spoke to me again. I tried talking to her to find out what was going on and why she had left but I might as well been invisible. She could've walked right through me and hardly noticed.

A week after she left, I was deleting some of the numbers off of the Caller ID. Suddenly, I came across the line that had called her the day I went to the store. I called it and realized it was her mother's work phone. I talked with her for a while to try and see what it was that had caused her to act like this now. That was when I found out what caused her to storm away from me.

While she was gone, her father had sunk into depression. She may have not been appreciated, but she was missed. The day of the call, her father had gotten sick of being part of the reason that his daughter was not there at home anymore and tried to commit suicide by jumping off of a staircase and landing inside of a piano. He was in the hospital for three weeks healing from it. She had been so shocked of the news when she heard it that she blamed me for the incident. She thought it was my fault: that I had dragged her away from her home and because of it, her father tried to kill himself.

Even then, I tried to still talk to her, saying I knew how she felt. She still wouldn't even look at me. In fact, to this day I have still not talked to Autumn Swanwick nor have I even made eye contact with her. I wrote her letters to her house and still showed up with apology presents. No matter what I did, it wasn't good enough. She didn't reply to any of my letters and sent back all of my presents. I was devastated for months, Gerald. How could you not have remembered that?

***

"Man, I don't know. Hey, wait a minute. Wouldn't your grandpa have a problem with a girl living at you house for a month?"

Arnold raised an eyebrow to Gerald's question. "C'mon, you know better than that. Do you really think grandpa wouldn't be able to trust me with her? He knows me; he's grandpa! I'm a good kid."

Gerald thought a little while. "Yeah, but you were a young kid."

"Gerald, it was only two years ago… or something like that. Hey, would that have been two years ago or one and a half?"

"Ah, it's not important. Whatever happened to Autumn?"

"Well, she dropped out the next year. She was having more family troubles and ran away to Canada."

Gerald put his hands at his knees and laughed softly. "You know… you take your eyes of your kid for three seconds and, boom, they flee to Canada. Man, that's just too funny!"

Arnold didn't laugh at all. "So, why did you come over again?"

Gerald clasped his hands together. "Hey, you have cable Internet, right?"

"Right."

"Can I use it?"

"Why?"

"I just need to check my e-mails."

Arnold folded his arms together. "And?"

Gerald produced a computer disk from his pocket. "I need to make a few revisions to my web site."

Arnold sighed. "One of these days, you're gonna have to put a modem in that computer of yours."

Arnold stood up away from his computer and stood beside it as Gerald sat down. "Times is hard, money is low, I would have bought one but couldn't find the dough. You know how that is."

Arnold smiled slightly. "Yeah, yeah. Just do what you need to. I'm gonna go grab a soda. Do you want one?"

Gerald clicked on Arnold's mouse twice and entered into his browser. "Yeah, get me one. Just as long as it's cold, don't grab one of those warm ones from your basement."

Arnold started down the stairs of his room. "Don't worry, I won't. Do you want a Yahoo or creme soda?"

Gerald spun Arnold's chair around. "Aw, creme soda all the way!"

***

Helga lay on her bed in her room with the lights turned out and the shades pulled shut. There was no music, no conversations; just silence. She stared at the ceiling and longed for the days of the past. The good times when she was younger. Sure, she had her whole life ahead of her at the moment, but not like she did a few years ago. Now she had nothing to look forward to. All of this happened in not even a week.

Memories of the old beckoning her to come back floated around the sides of her vacant walls. All of the old days: when she conformed to look like a normal girl at Rhonda's make-over party, when Phoebe had been hospitalized while doing tasks for her, when she dressed up like Lila to win Arnold over at the Halloween party…

The digital clock beside her bed flashed that it was seven o'clock at night, but to her it seemed later. Phoebe was right, she needed to make up and she needs to do it as quick as she could. It was one of those opportunities that you'll wait your whole life to tell and the day you come up with the courage, it's too late. Time was running out slowly, and ample time is to no use to a procrastinator. What is to become of all of this? she thought to herself.

For a moment, she froze on her bed as if an answer would magically appear. Maybe some psychic could have picked up her brain frequency and decided to talk back through telepathy. You never know what happens next, that's just how life works. An answer never comes cheap and advice is never easy to follow.

Another rhetorical question popped in her head: How is this going to turn out? What will happen when all is said in done? What will happen tomorrow? What will happen a month from now?

The lights stayed off and she lied in bed for the rest of the night. She didn't come down for dinner; she didn't even get up to get out of the clothes that she had been wearing all day before falling asleep.

The sun set to a pitch-black night, which made her room so dark that she could not see her hand in front of her face.