Lila woke up at her home and pressed on her comfortable back, expecting today to be another really good day. But with a jolt she realized that something was plain, just... off. Her hair did not droop down to her shoulders as she sat up. Lila lifted up her hands to discover where her hair had gone. Somehow, her hair was clustered at the top of her head in a static, knotted frizz. A fork and a lollipop stuck out of it at odd angles. Lila got up, ran to the bathroom down the hall and stared at herself in the mirror in silent and horrified awe. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes.

"D...d... DADDY!" Lila cried out loud as she flew down the staircase to where her portly father was crisping bacon. She pointed to her hair. Lila planted her eyes in her palms and stood about in misery as her father tried to process what was going on.

"You've got a perm?" He wondered.

"No!" Lila wailed. She ran to the bathroom again and locked herself in.

A good long while later, her father knocked on the bathroom door. "Lila, honey?" he inquired. "Are you okay? You need to eat breakfast and go to school."

"I'm not going to school, Daddy!" Lila said from beyond the door with a sniff. "Not with hair like this!"

"Hm. Well, I'd better call the principal, then," her father said strolling toward the phone. He dialed, spoke, then hung it up to return to the door. "Come on, Lila. Let's go buy you some product to fix you hair." Lila propped open the door just wide enough to peek out with leaky eyes. Her father gave her an affectionate pat on the head.

Later that same day, Sid looked at Lila's vacant school desk. "Hm, where's Lila?" Sid wondered out loud to himself. But Helga huffed.

"Who cares about that?! Didn't you hear? The school nurse pulled Nadine out of the classroom for something."

Mr. Simmons reentered the class. There was a hushed room all around as him as he stated, "Okay, class dismissed but everyone has speak to the nurse first for some very special... shampoo."

"Arrrh! Nadine!" Rhonda Lloyd raged with frustration and embarrassment as she fervently shampooed her hair in the school locker room. "Why'd you have to go and infect me with your bugs?!"

"It wasn't me who caught them first!" Nadine defended. "Maybe it was YOU, Rhonda!" The two girls glared at one another.

At his home in the boarding house, Arnold turned off his shower, his hair white with foam. It even looked like he had a little foam goatee. The phone rang, so Arnold rinsed off the soap and followed after the phone even as his Grandma Gertie was answering it. He walked down the hallway to take the phone from her hand.

Arnold held a towel up around his waist as he rolled his eyes upwards and asked, "Hello?" Sid panted in terror on the other end of the line.

"Arnold? It's me!" gasped Sid. "I tried to go home, but then a black cat crossed my path. And then I walked under a ladder. And then Wolfgang came and turned my ballcap inside out and collected the fifty cents I owe him. Then, after I got home, I went into a shop next door because my mother had run out of sugar. When I was there I bumped into a shelf full of coffee mugs and they spilled all over the floor and it occurred to me. It's the curse Arnold! Mr. Pinkman's curse! He's come to haunt us for being P.S. 118 students! We should never have touched that cursed coffee can!" Arnold narrowed his eyes in disbelief.

"Sid, calm down. Please. Your imagination is running away with you or something. It's just a coffee can. But if you don't believe me, we can try to get rid of it tomorrow. We can... recycle it or something. It's almost empty of crayons anyway. Look, I've gotta go towel off. Bye." Arnold stalked off to go back up the creaky stairs to his room. The phone beside his couch began to ring as he finished tying his shoelaces back on. Arnold swept some of the damp hair back from his head with one hand, his other clutching the corded phone. "Hello?" He asked. But just when the person on the other end tried to speak, the phone cord jack sprung out of the phone on both ends. Arnold hastily plugged it back in, but the person on the other end of the line had already hung up by the time he had fixed the cord. Arnold gave out an exasperated sigh. Done with his shower, he decided to walk over to Gerald's house. Gerald was blow drying off his hair, while Timberly was enjoying having her hair toweled off by her mother. Gerald's mother wore a grim frown.

"That's it! I think you're you're good to go, Gerald!" Mrs. Johanssen got up from the place she had been knelt near Timberly. Gerald waved his hand with disgust through the air.

"Peuyoou! That shampoo they made us all use smells terrible! But what can you do? Say, do you wanna watch a film? Jaime-O just rented a whole stack of them! They're not due for another two days."

"Ah, sure!" Arnold mumbled out with a small smile. They sat down on the couch. Gerald popped in a comedy film and began to laugh loudly. He took a sip of Yahoo soda, then laughed again so hard his voice broke and grew thin and shrill. Gerald pointed to his throat and tried to speak. But no words came out. Arnold stared with horror at his stricken friend. Gerald's mother appeared at the door to room. She put down a large hamper full of laundry.

"Ooh! Gerald, did you come down with a case of laryngitis? Let's get you a big 'ol glass of salt-water to gargle with and see if that helps! It always works for your father."

Elsewhere in town, Lila Sawyer was seated in salon chair. She hummed with joy as the salonist did her best. She applied lotions and oils to her hair and gave her a shampoo and styling. Lila looked into the mirror and beamed. Her hair looked good!

"Don't overuse the shampoo, darling, and remember to use conditioner!" the salonist advised her. Lila and her father left the salon with several bottles of hair products and Lila was overjoyed.

But when Lila woke up the morning following, it was discover her hair was a mess... again. This time it stuck out on either side of her head instead of at its top.

Lila arrived at school wearing a Victorian-style tweed cap with her braids tucking out either side instead of drooping down, much like Helga's. She slunk in to sit at the rear of the room, her head down on her arms to hide. Rhonda appeared by her side.

"Oh, you poor dear! Come to the girl's bathroom with me and we'll fix you right up!"

"There, now!" Rhonda spoke as she made a few adjustments to her hair. "Your hair is SO MUCH more tolerable now!"

"I can't imagine what happened to it," Lila fretted.

"Oh, don't worry!" Rhonda soothed with her voice a touch too arrogant for her to be entirely sympathetic. "Everyone has a bad hair day sometimes! Except myself, of course."

"Um, ha!" said Lila as she shot a look Rhonda's way. "Rhonda? I hate to bother you, but there's a bit of mascara under your eye. Sorry!"

Rhonda looked in the bathroom to mirror to touch her face. "Oh my, gosh! My mascara is running?! How could this be! I'm switching back to my old brand! Quick, quick, I have some in my locker!" Rhonda jogged off so quickly she left a gale behind to billow about Lila. Back in the classroom, the boys were having serious discussion.

"I'm just sayin' Arnold. We might have a real surefire curse on our hand, Arnold!" Stinky boldly stated.

"I already told Sid I'm for getting rid of the old coffee can, same as you. Whether or not it's a curse, there's no real reason not to!" Arnold spoke with a touch of sharpness that rarely appeared. Gerald jumped into the conversation to tone it down before Arnold could get more cranky, like the time he had yelled at Eugene before his surprise birthday party.

"Arnoldo here still doesn't think it's a curse?" Helga chortled, butting into their conversation. "Ha, ha, ha! That's hysterical!" the girl laughed. "Didn't you hear? Phoebe just flunked a spelling test."

"I studied for the wrong test!" Phoebe moaned, covering her eyes as she shrunk at her desk.

"Humph!" Helga sniffed. "If that isn't a sign there's a curse I don't know what is! I'll tell you what we'll do! Gimme those crayons!" Helga collected all the crayons from the cursed crayon jar. She zipped them up into a pencil case. "Just wait until tomorrow! Then I'll have made us all something to appease the 'ol occult object! But for now, offer it your best marbles or something."

What Helga had said all had sounded a little crazy. But when she came into school the next morning, she brought with her a little statue made of all the wax crayons melted together into the shape of a little multicolored pig with wings.

"Wow. That does look pretty good, I'll admit," said Arnold, scratching his fingertip against one of the wings.

"Yeah, well let's just hope it works!" Helga snapped. She set the old, rusted coffee can up high on a wreath with the statue of a pig in front of it and accepted some coffee grounds from Sid. "With these coffee grounds of expensive designer coffee, may we be free of Mr. Pinkman's curse! There! We've done what we can do!" Helga spoke, brushing her hands together in a dismissive gesture.

"If this doesn't work," voiced Sid with terrified speculation. "We can always move to a new school or something."

"You two!" Arnold voiced his disapproval. "Even if there was a curse, it wouldn't be THAT bad."

"Hm, except look what happened to Curly! He got chased by a peacock at the zoo yesterday. Then he fell into the prairie dog exhibit."

"Are you sure he didn't jump in there on purpose?" Gerald asked, propping up his brow.

Prior to class on the next school day, Arnold hopped off the bus, a small grin on his face. He was feeling enthusiastic for the school day to begin. Behind him, he heard a startled yell, and the sound of cloth ripping. Sheena had been making her last step out of the school bus when her extra-large, draping T-shirt had gotten caught in the bus door. Eugene and Rhonda tugged her away from the schoolbus door to help her examine the newly torn threads. One side of her shirt had been cropped off to make it short enough to reveal her waist and the jeans she kept usually kept half-covered in shirt.

"I'm so sorry, miss!" The bus driver grumbled. "We'll fix the door, I promise!"

"That does it!" Sid complained. "After school," he explained to Stinky, "we're going this handle this ourselves!" the boy said, a thumb pointed backwards at himself. Stinky nodded.

After the school day, Sid "borrowed" the can he wished to get rid of. He lobbed into far into the bay, then turned around back to face Hillwood. "There!" Sid said with satisfaction. "There's no more traditional place for cursed objects than than the sea!" But seconds after he had thrown it, and before the can could fill with water and sink, Seaman Earl sped by in his little motorboat. The choppy waves left by the boat washed the coffee can all the way back between Sid's feet.

"Ack!" Sid cried, leaping up onto Stinky with fear.

The next school day, the cursed coffee can sat at the rear of the backroom, a threatening presence to them all. Sid kept his sweaty palms curled.

Sometime during the school day, the school janitor, Varkas, bumped into a few of the students nearby the door to the school cafeteria. He spilt some large cans of glue onto Stinky, Lorenzo, Peapod Kid so that they all sat glued together on the floor. Their other classmates, such as Arnold, Gerald, Phoebe, and Rhonda, stared at them. "Was the curse continuing?" was what all of them must have thought.

After school Stinky and Sid tried to get rid of the can. This time they went to the graveyard.

"Now this here is a good plan!" Stinky said as they entered the city graveyard. They dug tiny hole under a tree and buried it. Stinky and Sid walked toward the exit of the cemetary. As soon as they moved, a woman came by with a dog being leash-walked. The dog dug through the loose dirt with joy and the coffee can bounced and rolled all the way back between Stinky's feet.

"Eeiiya!" Stinky hollered. "I think I done near wet myself."

"That's it!" Sid complained savagely. "We're going to do something to get rid of this thing the modern way! I'm leaving this sucker on the bus!"

"Good plan!" Stinky uttered. They set the old coffee jar on the bus seat and left without it. But at school the next day, Mr. Simmons greeted the class with mysterious package on his desk.

"Look, class!" Mr. Simmons beamed. "The people of this good city really are considerate! Look at this nice, hand-written note! Someone even bothered to mail us back something one of our students misplaced!" Mr. Simmons pulled the jar out of a small cardboard box.

"Ah, shoot! How come someone would do that?" Stinky complained, frowning below his over-sized nose.

"I think it's because it has, 'Property of P.S. 118' printed on it. See?" Arnold noted. Sid growled with frustration.

"Ah, man we'll never be rid of this thing!"

"Hm. I might have a suggestion!" Phoebe lifted her hand into the air.

After school, Sid and Stinky were joined by the other boys, Rhonda, plus Helga. They all stood outside Madam Blanche's Shop, "Madam Blanche's Love Potions." She was woman with a mole on her cheek, a violet blouse, a long leather skirt, flashy rings on all her fingers, and giant, triangle earrings in her ears that looked like they might be used for musical instruments.

Outside the shop, all the children pooled their money together. They slapped dollar bills into Phoebe's palm and she entered the shop carrying the ancient coffee can under her arm. Then she spoke to Madam Blanche for a few minutes and left the shop without the money, but also without the coffee can.

"She will take care of it!" Phoebe grinned. "Oh! And she gave me this sprig to hang in our classroom to remove the curse!"

"Finally!" Stinky breathed a sigh of relief. "It might have cost us twenty bucks, with all of us pitching in. But it was a real bargain!" Stinky declared, his arms lifted high. "Dang. Maybe someday I can train to be professional fortuneteller and breaker of curses, too!"

"If there really was a curse at all!" Gerald spoke up, since both he and Arnold retained some doubt. Then all the students from P.S. 118 dispersed to go to their individual homes and their story had ALMOST come to an end. I say almost because the very next day, Gerald asked of Eugene, "Say, have you got a ruler? I need to draw a straight line. Thanks!" Gerald accepted a plain brown ruler with pictographs and letters painted onto it. He held it up in front of his nose and gasped.

"Ack!" Gerald lamented. "Do you know what this is?!" He narrowed his eyes with disgust as the held the loathsome ruler away from himself by one hand. "It is the Ruler of Mackel the Mad-Mathematician, formerly the scourge of the sixth grade! It is said that whomsoever touches the ruler is punished by having the most abhorrent of melodies stuck in one's head so that one is stuck humming and humming them ceaselessly, for all time!" Gerald grimaced. In the center of the class, Eugene started to hum.

"Eugene, you're not helping," Arnold admonished.

"But it's such a catchy tune!" Eugene spoke back. And so, they had a new 'curse' to deal with. The end.

To my readers, thank you all so much for your time, patience, and dedicated following. To someone who helped me brainstorm for this chapter, you have my especial thanks. The last important message I can think of to impart is this: If any one from Nickelodeon ever wishes to use some of my fanfics, whether in whole or in part, then they may do so provided they make a generous contribution to children's charities. Saying all this is a lot vain, but there is a little part of me that wishes that the series will continue some day. Thank you all for reading. [Takes a bow.]