Disclaimer: I do not own "Hey Arnold". Duh.

Chapter 1

It was no great surprise to Helga when she and Arnold broke up for the third time in the same year. They were always fighting about something or another, always testing each other's limits. If anything, Helga tried to make him mad about 90 percentof the time. To this day, she still didn't know why.

They were 16 when they started their romance and 17 when it all ended. It began with a simple walk in the park and a vow to be kinder and ended with a few shouted obscenities and unseen mascara tears. The day that Arnold walked away, Helga began packing ice around her heart (again) and becoming more introverted than she had ever been before.

Arnold, on the other hand, bounced back so quickly he nearly gave himself whiplash. Hell, he gave Helga whiplash just watching him. He began dating the school's primetime slut, none other than Lila. That lasted a week. He got laid once, she got bored twice, and there he was, single again. He began to think back on the good times with Helga, but they were quickly overshadowed by the not-so-good times.

Helga didn't even bother looking back on anything. She didn't see the point. She shredded all her pictures of Arnold and burned all the letters he ever sent her, and thus, moved on. She determined within herself to never, ever, EVER look back at her relationship with Arnold, good times or bad, lest she turn into a sentimental dunderhead (that was her new favorite word, along with "asinine") or become angry enough to spontaneously combust. The point is, she was focused on neither the past nor the future, but strictly on the present. "Live for the moment", she always said, "otherwise, you become an old, asinine dunderhead." Did I mention those were her favorite words?

At the end of the senior year, the gang graduated Hillwood and split up, in search of different colleges, different jobs, different lives. Helga eventually became a freelance novelist, with two bestsellers to her name, each reaching #3 on the New York Times List. Her life's goal so far was to have at least one #1 best-selling book. She originally took up residence in Arizona and later moved up to Montana and somewhere between the two, found herself in Eastern Tennessee. "Lord knows I'm a traveling woman", she told Phoebe (who she still remained in touch with constantly) over the phone one night.

Arnold became a journalist for the Hillwood Chronicles, critiquing many new books that entered the market in his small but noticeable column. He also painted in his spare time, but sold very few paintings. Not because they were bad, just because he was somewhat attached to them, each new painting representing and meaning something new to him. He had reviewed Helga's books in past issues of his column and despite their history together, each book had received only shining praise from him. They were, after all, quite good. They had unusual depth, consistent and good-hearted humor, and yet had a small string of melancholy woven in them from beginning to end. He loved them.

Aside from her novels, Arnold knew nothing about what Helga was up to these days nor did she know anything of him. They were as distant as two earth plates, that had drifted as far away from each other as possible. He, although 29 years of age, continued to reside in the exact same neighborhood he grew up in, though he lived in a small apartment three buildings down from the boarding house. He'd heard that Helga was somewhere out West...or was she in the Southeast? He wasn't entirely sure. Well, is she was anywhere, she was somewhere and that's true of all us.

All Arnold knew was that he thought of her every passing day, especially when he was painting. He hoped that someday they would meet again, but the odds were that they wouldn't. Until the fateful the day that Helga decided to come back into town to collect her old books of poetry from her old house.

Maybe fate intended something remarkable to occur between them. Or maybe it didn't. One thing for certain, Arnold was determined to see Helga at least once before she left town again.