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The ringing tone chimes once. Twice. By the third, Helga hovers her finger over the end call button.
Before she can convince herself this was a mistake, Arnold answers, interrupting the fourth ring.
"Helga," his tinny voice resounds over the line.
He sounds a bit out of breath, like he'd scrambled to the other end of his apartment to answer her call.
Which would have be cute—adorable even—had she not done this over a dozen times over a dozen years, and if she believed in it, a dozen lifetimes.
The smoke from her cigarette mingles and swirls with her breath in the frigid, bone-chilling Alaskan evening.
By this point, she can hardly feel her own cheeks, nose, her fingertips—even though she's buried under a mountain of gift shop clothes.
Why gift shop clothes?
Because she's stupid and makes poor last minute decisions about flying to Alaska, mere hours after her finals, so of course she has nothing suitable to fucking wear for this climate. And while her damn gloves made it almost impossible to enjoy the cigarette that was supposed to calm her nerves before—well—this, she definitely needed it.
Then she needed two. Then four.
"Are you going?" is all she asks.
They're far past greeting each other over these pathetic, longing phone calls.
They both know what this is.
There's a pause on the other end.
During it, Helga wonders what the hell she's even doing here.
She looks up, at the glimmering show of bright green and magenta gradients in the night sky—dancing much like waves in ocean waters.
"Yeah," Arnold finally answers. "I'll be there."
When they were in either eighth or ninth grade, Arnold had gotten really into space junk and all that.
Like always, whenever he found an interest in something, he got obsessively crazy about it. He could talk for hours, day after day, weeks after weeks, months after—
You get the point.
As expected, the lovable goof wanted to share everything he could with her.
On cloudless nights, he'd hold her hand as they lie on the roof of the boarding house and he'd point out the constellations they could see (thanks light pollution), talking about their formations.
But his obsessions never lasted too long. Two years exactly, for this in particular to end.
And she always expected herself to be next.
Did you know that Sirius—the brightest star in the sky—is actually a binary star system?
Yeah, it's made up of two stars.
Of course, what's seen with the naked eye is mostly, really, Sirius A. Sirius B is white dwarf, a remnant of a star, already long gone.
Other than the Aurora Borealis she's starting at right now, Sirius was probably the most prominent thing in her head that she'd taken from Arnold's long and—she'd never be caught dead admitting it—fascinating ramblings.
To her, they felt like that. Like Sirius.
There's Sirius A—Arnold—the bright one.
Growing up, he was naive, wrapped up in annoying positivity and admirable but tiring idealism.
Helga remembers being young and giving up a pair of very expensive boots she had wanted more than anything at the time, just so he'd hold onto his shiny hopeful ideals of the world.
Just for a little longer, she had prayed. He deserved it.
It was probably the only gift she'd received from her family that they actually put thought and effort into getting for her. Her mother claimed to have waited in line for eighteen hours.
Helga had glowed at the time—ecstatic—only to give them up as easily as breathing came.
There were a lot of things she'd do for Arnold's sake, whether he'd ever find out or not.
He still didn't know about that particular good deed, the one that reunited a father and daughter on a Christmas Eve night. Balancing herself atop a crate on her tip toes, as she swiped away snow to look through his living room window, Arnold had been joyfully stunned, that was for sure.
Helga had pranced back home, lit up from it all. Her tiny, bootless feet freezing in snow soaked socks.
But she didn't mind.
Without Arnold, she was dim, just like Sirius B is without its companion.
As Helga grew older, she eventually found her own way to shine, though it took years of tears, therapy, and patience, with Arnold helping guide the way on ink dark, starless nights.
"Are you going? Will I see you there?" he asks, the eagerness in his voice not lost on Helga.
She smiles up at the colorful sky.
He's still so damn cute.
One night, he was explaining the phenomenon that are the Northern and Southern Lights. He said the light show happens, not only here on Earth, but over other planets as well: Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus—they all have these dazzling spectacles due to their magnetic field.
Blue and purple glows are caused by nitrogen at lower altitudes because atomic oxygen is uncommon at those levels.
The pink above Helga? Also because of low concentrations of oxygen, but at very high altitudes.
The green floating, mixed and right beneath it? High concentrations of oxygen, but just a bit lower.
And well…
Helga's not sure why she's winding on and on about all this.
And again, she's not sure why she's here, in another state.
Other than running away for the umpteenth time.
She probably shouldn't have called.
She swore to herself she wouldn't.
But like she's broken many promises before, she's not entirely surprised to have done that to herself.
However, like he has his own magnetic pull, she can't stay away from Arnold. She's always drawn back in, one way or another.
"Yeah," she replies. "I'll be at their wedding."
Helga can practically feel his smile radiating from the phone in her hand.
"I'm glad," he simply says.
But they both know it means much more.
It's been sixteen long months since they last seen each other—pulled apart by different colleges—the longest they've been apart, the longest she's tried to convince herself they'd be better off without each other.
Or him, at least.
And, it's been sixteen days since he left the ball in her court.
"You're ridiculous," he had gently admonished her. "We didn't need to break up before college. I wanted you before, I wanted you then, and I still want you now."
So why had she even tried to fight it? Them being together, that is. Other than her being her own stubborn, stubborn self.
Other than telling herself that maybe she was holding him back. Or that he didn't need her.
That she was dim and he was the sun. She was no good and he was nothing but.
She was pretty angry when he said all that, and half swooning, but mostly angry.
The thing was, Arnold always managed to bring out this weird, strange type of defensiveness from her. For really no good fucking reason.
Had he said the sky was blue, she could see herself challenging him.
She'd at least consider it.
Before this "vacation" and during their years apart on different coasts—Arnold staying in Hillwood and Helga off in NYU—there were still instances of meeting, at least up until sixteen months ago.
She couldn't avoid him forever, she knew that. Not that deep down, she ever wanted to.
While she loathed holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas, she'd take it. To have an entire week losing herself in Arnold, their bodies writhing in his twisted sheets, oh yes. She'd definitely take that.
They'd enjoy each other and off again she went, three thousand safe miles away.
She flicks off the ashes of her cig, before taking it between her lips again for another drag.
It was a small graduation gift, she convinced herself, this impromptu trip to Alaska.
A reason to celebrate.
Another way to hide.
And Arnold had been pissed when he found out.
He knew exactly what she was doing: prolonging the inevitable.
At least that's what he yelled through her phone speakers during the middle of their fight, an hour after she turned in her last final.
Even Phoebe had parroted those same words to her, an hour after that fight.
Whose best friend even is she?!
Helga angrily cursed herself for already shipping near everything she owned back to Hillwood, leaving herself a week's rotation of useless clothing messily stuffed in a suitcase that rolled alongside her when she stormed off to Anchorage.
So, here she is now.
Alone, standing with a smoldering cigarette in her mouth, underneath the most beautiful shades of green and pink.
With the only thought: this would have been better with him.
With the only feeling: she missed him.
Terribly.
"I miss you too," he says softly over the line.
Helga immediately blushes, staring at the cig she's now realizing she'd subconsciously pulled out.
Was that said that out loud?
She sighs, heavily against her phone, and a cloud of her breath briefly lifts around her.
Looking upwards again, she can see his eyes in the emerald shades of the auroras.
Boy, she ran away, and now all she can see is him everywhere.
She'd never escape him, but really, did she ever want to?
Of course not. She just stupidly assume he'd discard her eventually.
"You miss me?" she asks with a pitiful laugh.
Without missing a beat, Arnold answers with, "Of course."
If Arnold was ever sure about anything, it was always her.
Yet, she'd always convinced herself otherwise. That she'd just be one of his other short lived obsessions he'd yap on about for hours, day after day, weeks after weeks, months after—
You get the point.
But it had been well over a long tumultuous decade of what if's, pushes and pulls.
And he'd never tire of her. Not yet.
"Helga," his voice stern now, "I'll always love you."
Oh, and she'll know how it'll go once she returns home.
He'll swoop her up in his strong arms at the airport, with sunflowers on hand and an even sunnier smile that would even melt this terrible, wicked Alaskan cold.
They'd probably return to his apartment first, because the distracting heavy petting on the car ride home would never be enough to offset other plans.
They'd attend Eugene's wedding with goofy smiles plastered on their faces and catch up with all their old friends, wondering how the jinx—out of all of them—is the first lucky one to tie the knot.
Then they'd sneak onto the boarding house roof, late at night, when everyone else is already asleep and just lie there on their backs, just like when they were younger.
The difference this time around, would be that in this starlit conversation, Helga would have a lot more to offer than her ninth grade self.
He'd probably beam at her, kiss at her until they were both breathless, then press another to her cheek, then temple.
She'd probably make another horrible joke one shouldn't make, something akin to, "Well, that was great. See you in another year or two," like she always does—because she's awful.
And well, since he's Arnold, he'll only smile. So smug and self assured.
Like he never tires of her, she never tires of the answer he gives when she asks, "Why do you let me get away with that shit? Why do you just… roll with the punches?"
He'll gesture to the sky above them and turn to her.
"Don't you see, Helga? I don't have to worry."
She remembers the first time she asked, "Why?"
"Because," a starry smile stuck on his face, "we're right there, among them, written in the stars."
Helga grins against her phone, stubbing out her cigarette butt against the metal railing.
"Me too, Arnold," she says. "Always."
She walks the steps up towards her cabin door, pausing before she enters. She looks, again, up at the dazzling spectacle of color.
One more thing about Sirius: they have a separation cycle. They are constantly moving towards and away from each other.
Another thing, that makes the system remind her of herself and Arnold.
But it's time to rethink that, because Helga does not want to do this for fifty years, like Sirius A and B.
She wants him by her side. Not only in week intervals or holiday weekends.
Not anymore.
"I'm coming home."