Daria 2007: The Girl from Hope

DARIA 2007:

The Girl from Hope

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

Synopsis: What might Daria have been like if the show had taken place in 2007, ten years later than it did? And what if Daria had gone to an alternate high school back in Highland? One answer to those questions lies in this response to two fanfic challenges.

Author’s Notes: This story is rated R for language and dramatic situations. It began with two challenges from PPMB. Roentgen, on 8/5/06 (“Highland’s Other High School,” in the Deep Thoughts forum), wrote:

“In the Beavis and Butt-Head episode “No Laughing” (June 2, 1993), the little dumb asses get into trouble in school when they can’t stop laughing at any remotely salacious remark. The principal has finally had it with them and Coach Bradley Buzzcut informs the rest of the class about the boys’ fate:

‘You see, class, Beavis and Butt-head here are not allowed to laugh for a whole week. That’s right, and if they do laugh they’ll be expelled, and they’ll have to go to Hope High School where they’ll get their asses kicked on a daily basis by all the other delinquents. . . .’

My question: how come there haven’t been any more fanfics about this infamous Hope High School, a school that’s even worse than Highland High?”

Prince Charon, on 7/30/06 (“Iron Chef: Retro Dariana” in the Creative Writing forum), wrote:

“The opening of IICY includes a series of historical ‘What Ifs’ set in earlier decades. Pick one, and show what Daria would have been like, if the show had been set in that era. . . . So, any takers?”

Here is the story, showing what Daria might have been if the show had taken place in 2007, ten years later than it did. This tale appeared on SFMB from August to October 2006. Background notes are appended at the end of the story (“Author’s Notes II”), but reading them is not necessary to enjoy or understand the story.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to both Roentgen and Prince Charon for the push. E. A. Smith, Sleepless, DigiSim, and Mr. Magnum found several errors in the story I had to fix, and B.T.L., Brother Grimace, and Scissors MacGillicutty suggested changes and clarifications I adopted. Roentgen, Custos Sophiae, Tildessmoo, Richard Lobinske, and Sleepless made astute and prescient guesses about the background and content of this tale that influenced my overall plotting. Thanks, all!

I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:
But whether this was false or honest dreaming
I beg death’s pardon now. And mourn the dead.

—Richard Purdy Wilbur, “The Pardon”

The future is an enormous question mark, and

I don’t know what lies ahead. I only know that

if it moves, I’m shooting it.

—Daria Morgendorffer, The Daria Diaries

The flame-red Lincoln Navigator rode through Lawndale’s morning traffic like a stallion passing through a mob of peasants and dogs. Daria Morgendorffer turned from the GPS mapper and glanced down from the front passenger window, peering into cars with an impassive face. If a driver or passenger looked up at her, she stared back through her rectangular-lens glasses without blinking until traffic separated the vehicles or the subject looked away. She then resumed chewing her gum and peered at the nav system until another victim came into view.

“Daria,” said the driver without looking her, “I know the move here was difficult, but I want you to look at this as a fresh start. You’ve got a clean slate, and not many people get that.”

The gum chewer offered no sign that she heard. She continued watching the streets scroll by on the dashboard nav system.

“Daria,” said the driver in a louder tone.

She tucked the gum in her cheek. “Transmission received,” she said in a monotone.

“You’ll have a chance to make real friends here. I want you to go the extra mile and get to know people. And let them get to know you. This isn’t like Highland.”

Daria inhaled, held her breath for a reflective moment, then let it out. “Unless I let it be,” she said softly.

The driver frowned. “What exactly did you mean by that?”

“Nothin’.”

“Look, I want you to drop—”

The wordless melody of a long-ago Joni Mitchell tune filled the air: Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? The driver sighed and punched the handless phone button. “Helen Morgendorffer here.”

“Eric Schrecter!” said a hearty male voice. “Helen, how’s our firm’s new partner this morning?”

“Eric, hi!” The brunette behind the steering wheel punched another button, activating the wireless headset hooked over her right ear. “I’m taking the girls to their first day of school. How are things at the office?”

Daria looked away. “Over and out,” she whispered. Walking teenagers crowded the sidewalks. The school had to be nearby. Daria pushed her glasses up from their usual perch on the end of her nose and peered ahead. At the base of a five-story flagpole with an oversized American flag snapping from it, an enormous massive block of stone was visible, the writing on the marker clear from a block away.

LAWNDALE MAGNET HIGH SCHOOL

High Security, Higher Standards, Highest Results!

GO, LIONS!

The logos of a dozen corporations decorated the lower border of the marker, signaling the companies’ financial support of higher education in exchange for shameless in-school advertising. Daria noted Ultra-Cola, two pizza restaurants, three radio or TV stations, a cyber-café, four clothing stores, and some place called The Zon were among the school’s sponsors. A man in a blue uniform stood near the marker, a holstered yellow stun pistol, plastic handcuffs, a nightstick, and a radio hanging on his belt. He was scratching his forehead, a blue duckbilled cap in hand. SECURITY, read the yellow letters on the cap.

“Just a minute, Eric,” said Daria’s mother to an invisible presence. “Can I call you back? I’m about to drop the girls off. Thanks.” Helen punched the hang-up button on the dash, then raised her right hand so it was visible to the back seat and snapped her fingers.

“What?” came another girl’s voice.

“Quinn, we’re here,” called Helen. “Turn off the TV and get your books.”

Daria heard a sigh and the sound of her sister taking off her earphones and tossing them in an unused seat. “Let us off on the street!” she called. “Don’t pull up to the doors!”

“All right,” called Helen. “Wouldn’t want to embarrass you.” The enormous SUV slowed and edged over to the sidewalk behind a line of parked cars. “I remember when I was your age, and my parents once drove my sisters and me to school, and I—”

The Navigator’s right rear door opened and slammed shut. Daria’s sister was already out and gone, her windblown Faith Hill hairstyle burning holes in the libidos of every male in sight. Students everywhere stared at Quinn’s flawless skin, orange-peel hair, and tube top with dropped jaws and wide eyes. Hardly anyone paid attention to the tiny cross on her gold necklace, hanging from the J of the necklace’s WWJD? charm.

Daria again tucked the gum in her cheek, then picked up her backpack from the car floor. A hand caught her arm before she could pop the door and escape.

“I know this is a difficult period of adjustment for you, Daria, and you don’t make friends easily,” said her mother, “but stick with it. Do the right thing this time. You know from what happened that you can’t say anything that comes into your head just to shock people.”

Daria regarded her mother with a blank expression. At last, she opened her mouth. “Is Eric available?” she asked.

Shock spread over her mother’s face. “Wha—what the hell did you mean by—”

Daria jerked on the door handle and jumped out of the high seat before that sentence was completed. She whirled when her boots hit the sidewalk and slammed the heavy door shut on her mother’s rage, then turned and walked toward the school, backpack dangling from the straps coiled around her left hand. That shot was for Daria’s father, left back in Highland in the pending divorce. Payback was a bitch, indeed.

It was warm for early autumn in the suburbs. Loose black jeans over black boots, a long-sleeved black jacket unbuttoned in front, and a burnt orange t-shirt filled the bill. Daria palmed her gum and dropped the wad into the street gutter, then felt in an inside jacket pocket for her smokes. She had already spotted a small group of teen smokers standing on the sidewalk just down from the school entrance. She shook the open cigarette pack, took one in her lips, and exchanged the pack for her lighter. She stopped well short of the group, dropped her backpack, and lit up with a hand cupped around the lighter. The first drag she took, she held in for five seconds to get the maximum nicotine punch. Smoke then roared from her nostrils like dragon fire. She was careful to look away from the group and make no eye contact, so no one would speak to her. Everyone was leaving her alone. Bliss.

A minute later, a bus came through traffic, slowing with a squeal of brakes to a spot uncomfortably close to Daria. She looked up in irritation over the top of her glasses, which had slid halfway down her nose again.

“Fuckups are here,” someone muttered in the cluster of smokers.

The bus was a standard orange-yellow school model, but with “LAWNDALE COUNTY DEPT. OF SOCIAL SERVICES” on the side over a blue-and white seal showing a small child holding an adult’s hand. LYRE, read the initials under the seal. The doors shrieked open, and a handful of students got off, heading for the school.

All but one.

Daria studied the tall girl in the hip-hugging black skirt and midriff-revealing red V-neck top with sleeves that reached her elbows. I KICK DAMN HARD read the words on the back of her top, over the complex blue tattoo just above her hips. She was crowned by jet-black hair in a long shag cut that did not hide her artsy dangly earrings. Her lips were the color of new-drawn blood; black eyeliner accented her bright blue irises.

Instinct said the tall girl was an outcast. She might even be interesting. She’s going to ask me for a cigarette, Daria thought.

The outcast spotted Daria, her gaze lingering a half-second too long. She sauntered over.

Daria took out her pack and held it out without being asked. She had never done that before.

“Thanks,” said the outcast, taking one. She put it between her blood-red lips and leaned close. The ends of their cigarettes touched as they inhaled and the virgin cigarette caught.

The new girl smelled of perfume—unlike Daria, who smelled of soap and a knock-off brand of dandruff shampoo. Maybe she’ll go away now that she’s got a smoke, Daria thought, but for some reason she hoped the outcast girl would stay. “What’s L-Y-R-E?” she asked.

“Lawndale Youth Residential Enterprise,” said the tall girl in a deep, gravely voice. She took the cigarette from her mouth and blew out a long cloud. “Everyone calls it Lyre.” She drew out the word so it sounded like liar. “County home for runaways, foster care, orphans, leftovers. I’m Jane, by the way.”

Daria knew the girl’s type; she just hadn’t met a friendly one before. “Daria,” she said, and she took out her cigarette and rubbed her nose to avoid shaking hands. She had never liked to touch or be touched, especially after leaving her last high school.

“First day here?” asked the tall girl, looking her right in the eyes.

Daria nodded. “Mom dropped me off,” she began, then instantly hated herself for saying it and sounding like a little kid.

“Where’re you from?” asked the tall girl—Jane, Daria reminded herself.

“Texas,” said Daria, getting nervous. She tried to moderate her voice. Goddamn hick accent.

“What part?”

“West Texas, Highland. Middle of nowhere.”

“You a Dubya fan?”

Daria looked up with a narrow, annoyed gaze.

“Guess not,” said Jane with a grin. She flicked ash from her cigarette, one arm crossed over her waist to hold the elbow of the other. “Had to be at least one.”

A bell rang in the distance. All the other students around began migrating for the doors to get into school.

“We have time,” said Jane. She studied Daria again. “You have any bad habits?”

Daria took a deep drag on her cigarette. “A few,” she said when she exhaled.

“They get you into any trouble?”

“Yeah.” Daria looked up into the taller girl’s blue eyes. Jane was smiling at her. Daria managed a slight smile in return.

“Welcome to the club. We get a lot of people like that, me included.” Jane looked at her speculatively. “Ever kill anybody?”

Daria’s smile faded. She looked away, drew on her cigarette until it burned down to the filter, then dropped it and crushed out the butt with the black toe of her right boot.

Jane watched, then took a last drag and flipped her cigarette away. “You gotten around town yet?” she asked, as Daria picked up her backpack.

Daria shook her head no, looking at the ground.

“What’s your homeroom?”

“Barch,” said Daria after a moment.

“Me, too. Tenth grade?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. I’ll fill you in on things.”

“Thank’ee.” Daria finally looked up at Jane and noticed something. “You got any books?” she asked, forgetting about her Texas twang and hick choice of words.

“Left ‘em at school for the weekend,” said Jane. “Too heavy.”

Daria glanced at Jane’s lean, wiry musculature. Too heavy, her ass. Her new friend was built like an athlete, maybe a runner. She probably could kick damn hard, at that. Part of an elaborate blue tattoo peeked from the end of one of her red sleeves. It looked like it had the same pattern as the one across her lower back. Jane was the living embodiment of the phrase, I don’t give a shit.

It was exactly how Daria felt about things, too.

“Better get in,” said Jane, starting for the doors. “I’d love to go somewhere else, but we’re on camera.”

Daria’s gaze flicked around as she followed. No camera was visible. That meant the local Big Brother was subtle, unlike the one at Daria’s old high school. She would have to be careful wherever she went.

Memories of her old high school provoked a particular concern. “They make people go to special psychological classes here?” asked Daria with a raised eyebrow. “Self-esteem classes?”

Jane shook her head and grinned as they walked into the school. “No one here gives a fuck about your self-esteem.”

“Thank God,” Daria breathed. Jane laughed aloud.

The second bell rang. They were both late for homeroom and got detention. Neither of them cared.

“. . . so the old bum tries to crawl into our basement through the broken window, the police get him, and then they find me alone in the house asleep upstairs. I didn’t care about the bum, actually. He left me alone and I left him alone, except to lock the basement door to make sure he left me alone. My parents let everyone break into the house. It was part of their leftist tradition. Long story short, the county got me.”

Jane banged her locker shut and spun the combination dial. “That was a year ago. No one’s picked me up for foster care, not even my parents, who’re afraid to come back to this state because of the abandonment charges pending against them. My next oldest brother Trent stayed in the house until my folks forgot to mail in the mortgage, so that’s gone, too. He stuck around for a while, living in his car and trying to earn enough money to give some to me, when he made the mistake of walking past an Army recruiter and now he’s in Iraq, driving a supply truck. At least he’s got a steady job. That’s a first for the whole family.”

“You hear from him much?” asked Daria.

“Nah.” The girls headed for their next class, dangerously close to the next bell. “He’s not the writing kind, doesn’t even do e-mail. He recorded a tape for me with some songs he played on it—he likes to write music—but mostly he just complains. He hates it there. Some guys in his unit got killed by an IED a few months ago and he’s worried about his friends buying it. He never worries about himself, always about other people.”

Jane reached into a pocket of her skirt and pulled out a small piece of paper, handing it over to Daria. It was a printout of a color digital picture showing a tall, thin young man in camo, leaning against a large dusty truck and smoking a cigarette. He had a face that hinted that he and Jane were closely related. He looked hot, tired, dirty, and—Daria was not sure how she knew this—gentle and kind. He gave the camera a mocking half-smile as if saying, Life sure is funny, isn’t it?

“He’s the only one in my family who stuck around to look after me,” said Jane. She stared without blinking at the picture Daria held. “We raised each other, I guess, with everyone else gone. He sends me part of his paycheck every two weeks. I’ve got a real bank account now, but I don’t use it much. Nothing to spend it on since I can’t wander around on my own.”

“When’s your brother get back?” Daria had stopped thinking about her Texas twang, and it was back with a vengeance. She was thinking about Trent, wondering how old he was and whether Jane would mention her to Trent when they next communicated and would he write to her and why was she, Daria, even bothering to think about stupid stuff like this. Nothing like that would ever happen . . . especially now.

“He’s supposed to return stateside next summer, but they’ve been messing with rotation dates so much, I don’t know when I’ll see him.” Jane took back the picture that Daria offered and put it away. “Anyway, I’ve got two more years in LYRE and then I’m on my own for good. I haven’t thought about what to do after that. I’d like to work on my drawings, but I have to be practical. No one else in my family has been practical, except Trent, and I still wonder about him. I mean, the Army, jeez.”

Daria gave Jane a critical look. She had not thought of Jane as the artsy type, but it made a certain kind of sense. “What’d you like to draw?”

“People, mostly. I’d like to paint, sculpt, all that, but the dorm leaves a lot to be desired in terms of storage space, so I stick with sketchpads, pencils, charcoal, stuff like that. Some of the others at LYRE model for me now and then, but the staff doesn’t like it for various reasons. I get by.” Jane ran a hand through her layered haircut as they approached the classroom door. “Next time, it’s your turn to answer my questions.”

“I don’t recall agreein’ to that,” Daria grumbled as she followed Jane into the room. The bell rang a moment later.

Jane turned before she sat down and gave Daria a knowing smile: You’ll talk. You’ll tell me everything. You don’t think you will, but you will. Count on it.

With a grim look, Daria prepared to take a vacant seat next to Jane at the back of the room.

“Uh, Miss Morbid . . . um, Mor-gen-dorffer, sorry,” said the teacher, a mushy-looking man who frowned at a class seating roster. “Mrs. Manson in Intervention Services called before you came in. She needs to see you in room one-thirteen. It’s down the hall and down the stairs, to your left as you go out the door, past the water fountain.”

“Yes, sir,” Daria groaned, then left the room with backpack in tow as Jane waved goodbye. The teacher’s directions proved inadequate, but Daria was able to figure out the room numbering system and was at room 113 before long.

“Come in,” said a gray-haired woman with glasses when Daria opened the door. “Are you—” She held a sheet of paper to her eyes “—Dar-ee-ah?”

“Dar-ee-ah, ma’am,” said Daria, pronouncing it correctly. She glanced at a second person in the room, a stocky Oriental woman in a business suit with square glasses, short black hair, and an intense, narrow gaze.

“Of course, Daria, my mistake.” The woman laid the page on an open chart on her desk, then rose to her feet and extended a hand. When Daria did not respond to the offer of a handshake, the lady shrugged, motioned to the empty chair across the desk from her, and sat down again. “Daria,” she said, “I’m Margaret Manson, the school psychologist, and this—” She indicated the other woman.

“Angela Li, your principal,” said the other woman. She did not offer to shake hands. “Welcome to Laaawndale High School, Daria.”

“We spoke with your mother last week about your coming here,” Mrs. Manson continued. “I’d like to welcome you to Lawndale, too. We’ll do everything we can to keep you and the other students safe and secure in this facility while you’re here. Have you heard about Lawndale High before now?”

After a moment, Daria stirred. “Only that you will do everything necessary to keep the other students safe and secure while I’m here, ma’am.”

Mrs. Manson shook her head. “I meant, Daria, that we want to keep everyone here safe, including you. This is a special magnet school, I’d even call it an atypical one, with a unique focus on security issues. We live in an uncertain world, and Lawndale High responds to the wants and needs of the community. We want to be ahead of the times, not behind them. Ms. Li had a major hand in redesigning this campus to offer the highest level of physical security to the students and faculty. You probably noticed the metal detectors when you came in this morning, and perhaps the fact that access in and out of the school is fairly restricted.” She waited to see if there was a response.

Daria filled the silence after another pause. “My last high school was surrounded by a twelve-foot chain-link fence with razor wire ‘long the top, ma’am,” she said. “The metal detectors were set to airport security levels, and only school buses were allowed through the gates. We weren’t allowed to use backpacks, we wore school uniforms, adult guards were in the restrooms and halls, we were under video surveillance, and students who misbehaved were sent home or to juvenile hall. I mean no offense, but you have a way to go before this school reaches that level.” After a beat, she added, “Ma’am.”

“Hmmm, so it seems,” said Ms. Li. She eyed Daria thoughtfully. “That was Hope High School in Highland, Texas, correct? That’s the ‘second-chance’ alternative school for the Lubbock region?”

Daria nodded slightly but did not answer.

When Mrs. Manson saw that the principal would make no further comment, she looked down at the folder on her desk. “By the terms of the placement agreement that allowed your transfer here from the Highland school district, your complete school records from both Highland and Hope were sent to us. I want to emphasize that you are under no restriction here for any event that occurred while you were in Texas. You are a full-time high-school student with all the rights and responsibilities of such. As far as we’re concerned, you have a clean slate.”

Raising an eyebrow, Daria opened her mouth as if to speak.

“A clean slate,” interrupted Ms. Li, “in so far as your actions before coming to Lawndale are concerned. Being tardy for homeroom this morning is your problem. Don’t let it happen again. Right now, you have a half hour of detention after school. Penalties get progressively worse with continued infractions. Any school would do this, and we’re no different.”

Daria subsided.

“What were you going to say?” asked Ms. Li.

“Nothin’, ma’am.” Daria frowned. “Nothing, I mean.”

“I like your manners.”

There was no response to the praise other than a slight nod.

Mrs. Manson spoke next. “Though you have a clean slate here, we do need to talk about the past for just a moment. It won’t take long. Do you know why you were sent to Hope High School, Daria?”

Daria’s face grew tight. Her chin lowered as she looked at the psychologist.

Mrs. Manson began again. “Do you know why you were—”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl interrupted, her voice tense.

“Why was that, then?”

The petite brunette looked down and mumbled something.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear—”

“Because I was involved in the deaths of a number of people,” Daria said in a barely audible voice. She shifted in her seat, then added, “Ma’am.”

Mrs. Manson nodded slowly. “How were you involved?”

“Isn’t it in my paperwork?” said Daria. Her throat was dry and she could tell her accent was back, but she was too nervous to do anything about it.

“I only want to hear your take on it.”

Daria drew in a deep breath and looked at the floor again, collecting her thoughts. “It started when I gave a speech to my English class at Highland High School,” she finally said. Her breathing grew more rapid. “It caused some of the students to . . . it caused two of the students to go crazy.” She swallowed. “They shot some people.”

Mrs. Manson nodded. “I remember that incident. In fact, I believe I saw the news as it was happening, last year. Those were special ed students, weren’t they?”

“Yes. They’d been mainstreamed, ma’am. They were—” Daria coughed and cleared her throat “—they were in my class. They sat—they sat behind me. I talked to them sometimes after school, but not often.”

“Were they friends of yours?”

“No! I mean, no, they weren’t, ma’am, not friends. I just knew ‘em. Not my friends.”

“This speech you gave, what was it about?”

Daria’s face was bloodless. “Had to give a speech about someone from history, ma’am,” she said softly. “I picked Lyudmila Pavlichenko. She was a soldier in the Soviet Union in World War Two.”

Mrs. Manson blinked, then looked at Ms. Li, who shrugged in return. “I’m sorry,” said the psychologist. “Lyudmila . . .?”

“Pavlichenko.” Daria roused herself. The tempo of her voice picked up. “She was a sniper in the Soviet army, killed over three hun’erd Germans in less than a year, using a bolt-action rifle with a four-power scope. Thirty-six of her kills were other snipers. After she was wounded by mortar fire, the Soviets sent her on a diplomatic mission to the United States and Canada. Pres’dent Roosevelt met her in the White House, making her the first Soviet citizen to have that happen. She made speeches all ‘cross the U.S., got postage stamps in her honor, got to be a Hero of the Soviet Union, and ever’thing, all ‘cause she was good at shootin’ people.” Her eyes looked skyward as she searched her memory. “She got some guns as presents while she was here, a Colt and a Winchester. The Americans liked her.”

In the silence afterward, only the faint tapping of Ms. Li’s finger against the arm of her chair was heard. “You know your subject very well,” she said.

Daria shrugged and nodded once, again avoiding eye contact.

“Why did you pick this particular person for your paper?”

After clearing her throat twice, Daria said, “Had to pick someone we admired.”

Mrs. Manson’s jaw dropped. She recovered after a moment with an effort.

“Did you admire this person for being a good killer?” asked Ms. Li crisply. She had not reacted to Daria’s words at all.

Daria shook her head immediately. “No,” she whispered. “That wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t like that, ma’am.”

Ms. Li frowned. “You didn’t admire her, or you did? I’m confused here.”

“I didn’t!” said Daria, looking anxious. “I know I said I did in class, but that was just—I just wanted to shock people, that’s all! I just—it wasn’t like ever’one said it was. She wasn’t really my hero or anythin’. It was—I just wanted to get a reaction, that was all. I was sick of school—I mean, I was bored with it, just tired and sick and bored and ever’thing, and—”

“You wanted to scare people?”

The diminutive student nodded rapidly. “That was all I wanted to do! I wrote the whole thing up just to drive ever’one in my class crazy and—” She broke off in shock, eyes wide “—wait, no! I didn’t mean that! I meant, I just—it was a joke! I didn’t want anyone to get killed or go crazy or nothin’, I really didn’t!”

“But the two boys, they took you seriously.”

Daria swallowed and nodded. Her hands trembled in her lap.

“They wanted to be famous, like Lyudmila . . . whatever her name was. Spencer.”

“Pavlichenko,” corrected Daria. “Brenda Ann Spencer was—” She flinched and looked from woman to woman, finishing in a rush “—somebody else! Lyudmila Pavlichenko was the one I was writin’ ‘bout!”

“Oh,” said Ms. Li. She shrugged and appeared to lose interest in the topic, glancing at Mrs. Manson. “I think that’s everything.”

“Um,” said Mrs. Manson, looking over a paper on her desk, “actually, I did have a few more—”

“We don’t need to bother,” Ms. Li said, cutting her off. She looked back at Daria with a kind expression. “None of this is going any further than this room, and we’re done with it. A clean slate, Miss Morgendorffer. We have plenty of people here who have more problems than you do, if you can possibly believe that. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, your name and photos were never publicly revealed, which made your transfer here infinitely easier. You really are starting over again, and that’s what we all need. I want you to focus on your schoolwork and graduation and nothing else, eyes on the prize. Are you with me?”

Daria nodded. Beads of sweat rolled down her white face.

“Good!” Ms. Li stood and motioned for Daria to follow her to the door. “You go on back to class. I’ll call ahead for you, but you can stop at the restroom on the way if you need to. Oh, get your backpack, you forgot it by your chair. There you go. Let’s make this a good year for all of us. Oh, and Daria?”

The little brunette’s knees were shaking. “What?” she said, holding the backpack in front of her like a shield.

“No smoking on or near school property.” Ms. Li held out her right hand, palm up. After a moment, Daria gave up her cigarette pack. “Good girl. Good time to quit. Stay healthy.”

When Daria was gone, Ms. Li stood at the door for several second, still looking off in the direction Daria had gone.

“What just happened, Angela?” asked the psychologist in irritation. “I had to find out—”

“She knows who Brenda Ann Spencer is,” said Ms. Li in a low voice. She turned from the door and walked back to her seat again, but she stopped before sitting down. “Do you have the results of her psych tests from Hope?”

“Here.” Mrs. Manson handed them over.

Ms. Li took the documents and sat down, flipping through them. She stopped to read a long paragraph. “They didn’t rule out conduct disorder,” she said, then flipped a page. “Elevated, elevated, scores are up all over. She’s depressed, very much so. That’s internalized anger. Scared, yes, and anxious and remorseful—I believe she didn’t mean for the shootings to happen—but she’s angry, too, very angry. Parents are getting divorced, she spent six months in an alternative school built like a prison after being secretly investigated for instigating the shootings . . . probably had a chip on her shoulder long before it all happened, too. She’s not antisocial, she won’t even try to get along with people the way a sociopath will, to throw everyone off. She just hates people, period.”

“Isn’t that a little strong, to say that she . . .” Mrs. Manson’s voice trailed off as Ms. Li eyed her over the top of the papers, then looked down and resumed reading. “Well,” Manson continued, “who’s Brenda Sue Spencer?”

“Brenda Ann Spencer,” said Ms. Li absently, still reading the paperwork. “School shooter in San Diego, January nineteen seventy-nine, killed two people, wounded a bunch of children. Said she did it because she didn’t like Mondays. Daria got her full name right. If she researched Lyudmila whatever, she’s probably researched them all, every sniper and shooter there is. Thank God we don’t have a gun club here.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Manson, taken aback. “Are they sure she didn’t mean for the shootings to happen? That was pretty bad—eleven people killed, including the two boys, and it happened the afternoon after school, the same day she gave that—”

“One of the boys is alive, but brain dead,” said the principal. “He’s one of the eight wounded.” She flipped another page in the paperwork and squinted to make out the words. “Did you see her WISC-Four?”

“I did. That was a surprise. She has the highest score of anyone here by a long shot, except maybe Jodie Landon. She’s a damn smart kid. A point in her favor, I’d say.”

Ms. Li merely grunted. “MMPI wasn’t so good. Her Beck was worse. We’re going to have to watch in case she tries to hurt herself. I wonder if she’s seeing a counselor on the side.” When she finished reading, she tossed the paperwork back to Mrs. Manson’s desk and got to her feet. “I need to get Mrs. Bennett to set up a permanent Internet search for me,” she said, stopping at the door. “If word gets out that Daria Morgendorffer was the one who sparked the Highland shootings, it’ll be on the ‘net first, probably in someone’s blog, then the whole world will know and we’ll be up to our asses in reporters and angry parents trying to get Daria kicked out before they pull their own kids out. It’s probably just a matter of time. I couldn’t very well refuse her, though. She didn’t pull the trigger.”

“So, you do think she planned what happened?”

“No, but it won’t matter to anyone else.”

“You know,” said the psychologist, “she’s got a sister, Quinn, who’s—”

“I know. I talked to her this morning. She’s already been taken in by the Little Angels.” Ms. Li rolled her eyes. “I’m not worried about her.”

“But Quinn might say something.”

The principal laughed briefly and shook her head. “No, she won’t. She won’t say a thing. She was covering up like mad when I saw her. She told me she was from Lubbock, not Highland. She won’t even admit her parents are divorcing, says her father’s working out of town.”

“Oh.”

“Do me a favor, would you, Margaret?”

“Name it.”

Ms. Li turned the handle of the doorknob, but did not yet open it. She lifted her chin as she looked at Mrs. Manson. “If you see or hear anything unusual about Daria from other students or Security, and I mean if you hear anything at all, tell me instantly. If she swears, if she sneaks a smoke, if she’s seen with a pill bottle, if she cuts herself, if she draws a map, if she starts a list of names, if she uses the library computer lab to look up weaponry or shooter statistics, if she blows her goddamn nose wrong, you find me instantly and you tell me. Don’t waste a second.” She raised an index finger and moved it in time with her words. “Whatever else she is, that child is very . . . very . . . angry.”

She opened the door, closed it behind her, and was gone.

III

“Are you okay?”

Daria heard the words and came back to reality. She was walking down a crowded school hallway done in purple, with orange lockers on the walls. The tall athletic girl walking beside her looked at her in concern.

“Oh,” Daria mumbled. “Sorry.”

“You’ve been kinda out of it for a while,” said Jane. “Did anything happen when you saw Charlotte Manson?”

“Uh, oh, no, nothing. That was okay. It’s just . . . I am kinda out of it today.”

“I gotta tell you something. I love your accent.”

“My acc . . .” Daria gave a mock frown. “I don’t have an accent.”

“Yes, you do. It’s great. It’s like having a foreigner for a friend. I should make a recording of you talking and send it to Trent.”

Daria mustered the best evil look she could and turned its focus on Jane.

“You’ll have to do better than that, pardner,” said Jane with a grin. “You ride horses a lot in Texas?”

“Uh . . . no. Some of us have pickup trucks now. Those of us who became fully evolved, however, stay at home in front of the TV and never get up.”

“I like that, but it wouldn’t have worked for me. If I’d had a pickup truck, I wouldn’t have been home when the police came by after the vagrant.”

Daria sighed. “What’s the next class like?”

“Oh, Current Events is pretty good. The teacher’s wacko, but he has great arguments with the football players. He gets everyone stirred up. Sometimes I even learn something, God knows why or how. Let’s try to get seats together again. I don’t have a phone to send text messages with.”

“Neither do I,” Daria confessed. “Didn’t think I’d need it.”

“Didn’t think you’d need it? Why? You didn’t think—oh, never mind. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way and pass notes. Crude, but effective.”

Daria could tell Jane had caught the unspoken message: I didn’t think I’d have any friends to talk to. She was grateful that Jane had not said it aloud.

Daria and Jane were in their seats before the bell rang, Jane sitting to Daria’s left. “Good morning!” barked the graying, hawk-faced teacher at the front of the room, whose left eye bulged out when he emphasized certain words. He had an Italian name, Daria remembered from her school intro packet. “We have a new student joining us today,” the teacher went on, “and that’s Daria Morgendorffer.” He gave a nod in her direction, then let his gaze wander over the rest of the room. “As the rest of you doubtless recall, we’ve been discussing the war in Iraq. I’m not taking partisan sides—that’s your job!—but we’ll examine the issues carefully so, in theory, you can make informed decisions, or at least half-baked ones!”

The teacher swung around to face Daria. “Miss Morgendorffer!” he fairly shouted, causing her to jump. “If you would, please, tell the class what moment in the current conflict stands out most in your memory! Any trivial event will do.”

Daria caught her breath and made herself think. “The bombing of Baghdad, televised live,” she finally said, her twang almost gone. I can’t afford to sound like a hick.

“Mmm,” said the teacher, starting to pace across the front of the classroom. He did not look at her. “Are you talking about the first Iraq War or the second?”

“The second, the ‘shock and awe’ attack.”

“Ah! Excellent!” The teacher turned to pace the other way. “Friday, March twenty-first, two thousand three. That was indeed something to remember—but we each remember it differently.” He stopped. “Who else remembers the ‘shock and awe’ bombardment?”

For a moment, no other hands went up. Then a broad-shouldered black student as tall as the teacher raised his hand. “I saw it on the news that night,” he said.

“I did, too, but not as it was happening,” said a black female student. “I was in school.” Two others raised their hands as well.

“Ah, my apologies,” said the teacher. “I had forgotten you would be in class that day. That would have been, um, fifth grade for you, I believe.” He turned to Daria with a quizzical look. “How did you get to see it?”

“One of the classrooms at . . . in elementary school had it on TV.” Daria’s voice fell after she stopped herself from naming her elementary school, Highland.

“It did?” The teacher looked surprised, but then moved on. “Some people have all the luck. Okay! What else do you remember about the current war in Iraq? Anyone?”

Daria felt something poke her left elbow. She looked down. A scrap of paper sat on her desk by her arm. She glanced at Jane, who sat with a politely bored expression, then looked up at the teacher—Mr. DeMartino, she remembered now—as she unfolded the scrap. The moment he turned his back on the class, she looked down and read:

THUMBS UP, YOU GOT ON MR. D’S GOOD SIDE

She folded up the scrap again. Around her, she was aware of other students staring at Mr. DeMartino with their hands hidden from view—pushing buttons on their cell phones to text each other. Two had wireless buds in one ear each, their heads turned to keep DeMartino from seeing that they were listening to low-volume music. Hardly anyone seemed to be interested in what the teacher was saying, even if they kept their gaze on him.

“Was the ‘shock and awe’ attack news?” Mr. DeMartino said in a loud voice, looking over the classroom, “or was it . . . entertainment? And how could we possibly tell the difference? What’s your opinion?” He noticed a hand up. “Kevin?”

“I didn’t see it,” said a dark-haired kid in a football jersey, “but that would’ve been cool!”

The teacher’s face twitched with annoyance. “Jodie!” he called, turning to the black girl with cornrows who had spoken earlier. “News or entertainment? Help us out!”

“Both,” said the girl. “I think a lot of people got off on the idea that we were bombing another city and you could watch it happen. I thought it was sick.”

“It was still news, though,” said the tall black student sitting near her. “That was the start of the war. It wasn’t like it was a WWE Smackdown. They didn’t stage it. It wasn’t fake or anything.”

“It was staged,” said Jodie. She sat up, her face tense. “That was the whole point of ‘shock and awe,’ to overwhelm everyone, including the spectators. It was like throwing people to the lions and watching them get eaten alive.”

“They had lions?” asked the dark-haired kid named Kevin.

“No!” snapped Jodie. She rolled her eyes in disgust.

“The whole point of ‘shock and awe’ was to get the Iraqis to surrender,” said the tall black student. “It was to scare ‘em badly enough to cut the war short.”

“Yeah,” muttered Jodie, “and that worked really well, didn’t it?”

“I don’t get why we were fighting the Rockies to begin with,” squeaked a curvy blonde in a blue sweater. “Did they attack us first?”

“Let’s see what the class says, Brittany.” Mr. DeMartino surveyed the room. “What do you think?”

“Yes!” said several students, raising their hands. “No!” said a dozen others, including Jodie and the tall black kid.

“No!” said Daria in a louder than usual voice—and then clamped her mouth shut.

Too late. Mr. DeMartino swung in her direction with a sharklike grin. “Daria!” he cried, pouncing on his prey. “Your opinion! Did Iraq attack America first?”

She swallowed. Once upon a time, she had looked forward to a good rousing classroom debate. Now she cursed the impulse that made her the focus of attention. “No,” she said in a low voice. “The administration decided to attack first. They knew Iraq had nothing to do with Nine-Eleven, despite their claims, and they—” She hesitated a beat, knowing she had already said too much “—had already discussed finishing up old business from the first Iraq War. They didn’t think all the weapons of mass destruction had been removed from the country, again despite reports otherwise, so they decided on a preemptive first strike and went for regime change.”

“And four years later, we’re still there getting the shit knocked out of us,” said Jodie, glaring at her desktop.

Daria blinked. Swearing in class in front of a teacher was an “actionable offense” at Hope High School. Mr. DeMartino didn’t seem to mind, however. He was smiling. “Who thinks the war was the right thing to do, for whatever reason? Raise your hands!”

About a third of the class put up their hands—including the tall black student. Jodie glared at him and shook her head. The black kid lowered his hand and rubbed his short haircut nervously. Numerous students began to talk at once. Daria noticed only brief interruptions in the text messaging going on. She could pick out two kids playing pocket videogames on silent mode at the same time they talked to those around them about Iraq.

“Mike!” said Mr. DeMartino with glee to the tall black kid. “Why do you believe this war was the right thing to do?”

Daria felt another poke at her elbow. She took the next scrap and read:

DID YOU SAY YOU WERE FROM HIGHLAND TEXAS?

She instantly crumpled the note, biting her lower lip. I did tell her that. Why did I tell her? What was I thinking? I wasn’t going to tell anyone. After a glance to her left, noting in the corner of her eye that Jane was watching her, she nodded once, then looked back at the discussion going on between Mr. DeMartino and the student named Mike.

“. . . and we’d been fighting him off and on since the first war, under Clinton, so why not just wrap it up? We knew Saddam was bad, but we didn’t really know he didn’t have poison gas and A-bombs and all that. He’d tried to kill the first Bush, and he was sending support to suicide bombers, so he was just another terrorist as well as a dictator.”

“What about Afghanistan?” asked DeMartino with a narrow gaze. “Didn’t attacking Iraq weaken our commitment elsewhere?”

“Well—” Mike spread his hands “—we’re a superpower, right? We can fight a two-front war, can’t we? We did it before, in World War II. At least now our targets are almost in the same place. We—”

“This is bullshit!” snapped Jodie, turning on Mike as other students gasped. “The whole thing with Iraq was all about oil! Afghanistan attacked us, not Iraq! The Taliban was letting Al-Qaeda work in the open there! They were the enemy, not Iraq! Do you know how many civilians we’ve killed in Iraq for the sake of our idiot president? Saddam was not the enemy! Osama was the enemy, and we let him go!”

“We didn’t let him go!” Mike protested, but he had to shout over the chaos in the class. Half the students were cheering Jodie’s words, clapping and stamping their feet, while the rest used the time to catch up on their messaging, music, and videogames.

Daria felt something touch her left elbow again. She snatched the note from Jane’s fingers and crumpled it in her fist, face tight, watching Mr. DeMartino wave his arms to restore order. She already knew what the note said. It would ask if Daria knew anything about the shootings in Highland late in the year before, if she had known anyone who had been involved or hurt. Well, duh. Highland was as tiny as a town could be and still have its own hospital. Everyone knew everyone. How could she not know?

Mr. DeMartino was getting a big-boned Goth girl to explain her views about the war. Few people were really listening, only glancing up now and then while their fingers worked under their desks, tapping out messages. Someone else had her head down on her desk, taking a whispered cell-phone call with a wireless earpiece. Daria could hear what the teacher and the Goth girl were saying, but none of it registered. She was leaving them behind and couldn’t help it.

How could she, of everyone in town that day, not know?

The present crumpled into a ball as the past unfolded and came to life.

* * *

She wore black that day except for her white blouse and red skirt, carrying a candy ordering list as she walked door to door on Highland’s west side, near the drive-in theater. She had walked there after school by herself rather than catch a ride with one of the teachers, thus risking a ride with her younger sister. She had no desire to share her bad mood with anyone during one of the school’s exercises in forced-labor fundraising. This late fall afternoon, however, Daria had one positive thing going for her, which was that she had a note in her jacket pocket from Mr. Van Driessen, her English teacher, asking her parents to come in for a conference. The note said nothing about why the parent-teacher conference was sought, but Daria knew, and she could not wait to see her parents’ faces when they found out.

She had done it again. She had said the unutterable, read it aloud in the latest in her series of class essays designed to shock, upset, annoy, harass, disturb, vex, and punish those around her—punishment being key. Having her parents insist she get involved in extracurriculars was a load of horse manure. Walking door-to-door selling candy for her school was for the birds. But knowing her sister Quinn would sell five times what Daria could merely by smiling and looking cute was too great a cross to bear. That she had to suffer through each school day in the company of fools was less a burden than being outdone by her sister once more. Payback was due again for denying Daria a lazy evening at home in her room in her bed with an open book, and that payback would be a real mother (mother, ha ha, payback for my own mother making me do all this garbage, let her choke on it).

Today, that payback had been a daring essay about a person Daria had claimed to admire more than anyone else: a female Soviet sniper with over three hundred kills. She had filled the essay with rich detail, much of it imagined, and read it aloud with relish. The downside was knowing that though her essays always upset people, no one ever heard what she was trying to say: Look at me. Pay attention to me. Value me. Keep me from thinking my intelligence is wasted and there is no hope for the future. No one heard.

To be honest, Daria admitted to herself that she really did admire Lyudmila Pavlichenko, though she would never say so aloud. A woman so bold that she could fight in a war, shoot down men with impunity, and win the heart of the world for it—well, who wouldn’t want to be like that? Daria remembered a passage in Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird (which she had checked out of the local library with her adult card) in which the lost boy of the tale was befriended by a Red Army sniper named Mitka. Who would not have wanted such a strong, intelligent, sensitive, lethal man as a companion? As Daria walked from house to house, getting names and orders (but no money, that would be collected when the candy was delivered), she daydreamed that she was like Lyudmila Pavlichenko, perhaps a secret agent or professional assassin. She would call herself Melody, maybe Melody Cool or Melody Hammer or—no, the Austin Powers movies had ruined that other option. She would be a loner assassin like she imagined the girl in The Professional later grew up to be: Melody McCool, who learned her trade from an older and wiser killer, and one day on a secret mission she would meet a man like Mitka, the man of her dreams, and together they would—

The sound of distant firecrackers distracted her. She shook her head and pushed it out of her mind (the idiots around here!) and kept walking and ringing doorbells and daydreaming when she wasn’t fuming about the unfairness of life. About a half-dozen houses later, she heard police sirens to the east, mingling with the continued sound of firecrackers. She turned in annoyance to hear the noise better, and—

The ground trembled under her boots. She felt the atmosphere thump like a piston as a pressure wave accompanied by a noise like thunder rolled over her. A dome of orange flame rose over the trees to the east, crowned by black smoke that swallowed the fireball and rolled up into the cloudless West Texas afternoon sky. She felt the fireball’s radiant heat on her face from a quarter-mile away.

She stopped dead and stared. What the fuck was that?

Her candy-selling list dangling from her right hand, fifteen-year-old Daria Morgendorffer stood on a corner sidewalk in a rundown subdivision. A cool breeze blew around her. As she watched the black cloud rise, she heard more sirens and a sound like distant screams. She frowned and started walking slowly toward the pillar of smoke and the screaming sounds. Something was definitely wrong. Should she investigate? Should she stay out of it?

She thought of Quinn.

Her pace picked up. After a block, she estimated that the pillar of smoke was in the vicinity of the hospital, perhaps north of it. The sirens had drowned out the screams. There were gas stations there east of the Mini-Mall, particularly one that the kids from Highland frequented for stale, half-price doughnuts and pastries after school. Did the firecrackers have something to do with this? She heard more firecrackers go off, but they weren’t firecrackers now, they were gunshots, she knew it for a fact.

Gunshots? A failed robbery? A nut case with a gun?

Sometimes Quinn hung out at that gas station, because that was where the boys often were. Sometimes Quinn—

Daria dropped the candy list and started running for the pillar of smoke. She threw herself into it, but she was physically small to begin with, never exercised if she could avoid it, and ate junk food whenever possible. Her burst of speed lasted barely a minute. Five minutes after that, she was staggering along the street-side dirt path behind the Starlite Drive-in’s big screen, still several blocks from the school and the pillar of smoke beyond. Huge pit stains showed through her blouse, and wet strands of hair hung over her steamed-up glasses. She could barely breathe, her lungs full of razors.

It was then that she spotted a silver Honda Accord coming through an intersection a block ahead. The car squealed to a stop, backed up, then sped down the street toward her on shrieking tires. The driver slammed on the brakes when he reached Daria, skidding over the centerline to block the empty oncoming lane. Her father jumped out of the car white faced, ran over, grabbed Daria around the waist and lifted her off the ground (Hey! Dad! What are you doing? she cried), then ran with her to the car, shoved her into the rear seat before slamming the door on her, jumped in the car himself, and peeled out of there to head west again, away from the pillar of smoke.

Thank God, he cried as he drove. He did not stop until he reached a motel five miles outside of town. Thank God, thank God, thank God.

Her sister had been safe at home watching TV, having filled her candy-ordering sheet a half-hour before. All she’d had to do was smile. She was unscathed.

Daria never saw the actual shootings. She never saw the exploded propane rack, the gas fires, the burned-out hulks of the minivan and two cars at the filling station, the rag-doll bodies and the blackened stick people, the police cars and ambulances and fire trucks and madness and chaos, actual screams issuing from the mouths of insane parents and horrified neighbors, dirty streams of red running over the pavement to the gutter.

She saw it later on videotape and in countless photos. The police and the prosecutors made sure she saw everything. They made sure she knew.

Mr. Van Driessen, who had driven a minivan for a group of candy-selling children, survived. The four students in the minivan, parked by the propane tanks, did not. Mr. Van Driessen walked with a cane when he came to the juvenile hearing and testified against Daria. He had her report on the sniper, complete with his note: Call parents ASAP.

Seven of the dead were from her English class. She had known them all. She had hung out with the two shooters on occasion and everyone knew it, even her parents. She found them amusing but nothing more. They were outcasts, like her, but intellectually and behaviorally challenged, to put it mildly. Acquaintances, nothing more.

No one had believed that. Not even her parents.

Daria could not be convicted of anything, as no one could prove her essay was the signal to start the rampage. No one could prove she had meant for the shootings to happen. However, she could be expelled from Highland High School, and she was. The worst they could do, the authorities thought, was to send her to Hope High School and be rid of her as the parade of funerals began. That parade went on for a week.

The worst they actually did, however, was to tell her everything. She never forgot a single photograph, a single scream on the collected videotapes. She saw and heard them in her sleep and while she was awake, twenty-four seven three hundred sixty-five. There was no escape from it.

She stopped writing except for the briefest possible answers. She picked up smoking and swearing from the other girls at Hope. She rarely read. She rarely spoke. She made no friends. Even the hard-case students at Hope were wary of her, fearing she might yet have a gun or knife concealed on her, or she might know one more shooter. She was completely alone at last, as she had so often wanted to be.

In time, she began to daydream of death.

* * *

She blinked and reached up to rub her eyes. Mr. DeMartino was writing something on the board. The girl named Jodie was giving the boy named Mike a look of smoldering rage, which he did his best to ignore. The Goth girl was chewing gum. The bubbly zaftig blonde was texting someone and trying not to giggle aloud. Kevin, the dark-haired boy in the football jersey, had nodded off.

Jane was watching her.

The bell rang. Students got to their feet and filed out of the room, laughing and talking and poking each other with pencils.

“Are you coming?” asked Jane, standing by her desk.

Daria got up, mechanically picking up her books and notebooks. She had not opened a one of them.

“I didn’t mean to bug you,” said Jane. “I was saying that the only way I can get out of LYRE is if someone invites me over someplace with a parent around, then drives me back before eight p.m. I don’t mean to be pushy, but it’s the only way I can see anyone after school. Otherwise I have to catch the bus or go back with a social worker.”

“Oh,” said Daria. She realized the tiny wad of Jane’s last note was still in her right hand. She dropped it on the floor. “Okay. I’ll ask my—” She grimaced. “I forgot my mom won’t get home till late. I can’t drive yet, either.” This is never going to work.

“Well, fuck, I tried.”

“Maybe we can work something out.” Why am I saying this? It won’t.

“That would be great if you could. You mind some company after school? Do homework together? Hang out? Watch TV?”

“Sure.” No. Yes. I don’t know.

They left for their next class.

The hardest part of living was facing herself in unprotected moments when a new and ugly truth would pop out. And the hardest part of that was remembering when her father told her what had happened back in town, and she realized that she might have had a part in making it happen because the shooters might have been her classmates and they might have been inspired by what she had said in class and how she said it.

As she walked with Jane, she recalled the moment she realized that someone had listened to her at last. She had made a difference in the world. Her voice had been heard. For the instant that had followed, but no longer, she had been wildly happy.

She remembered, and for the ten thousandth time she wished she was dead.

Above her, behind a ventilation grill in the ceiling, a miniature camera watched the two girls go.

Detention was held in the gymnasium at two-thirty sharp under the direction of a hard-faced, pigtailed P.E. teacher in blue sweats, assisted by four athletic-looking seniors, male and female. “All right!” the teacher shouted into a wireless microphone as she looked up at the bleachers and the twenty-odd students before her. “We don’t have any hour-long detentions today, so we’ve got thirty wonderful minutes together! We’re going to make that zero minutes tomorrow, is that clear? I said, is that clear? Good! If you have homework, start working on it now! If you don’t have homework, get your buns down here and run fifty laps for me! Everybody got work to do? Great! Now, get working!”

Daria, Jane, and most of the other students sat high on the bleachers near the rear wall. The P.E. teacher did not seem to mind. Jane propped herself up with an open sketchpad across her thighs. Daria carefully organized her algebra homework on her lap and pulled out a mechanical pencil. “She really knows how to grab the hearts and minds,” she whispered, glancing up at the teacher.

“Morris the Macho,” Jane whispered back. She began to rough out a picture of a cheerleader jumping into the air, pom-poms raised and feet kicked back. “She gets what she wants, for sure.”

“How long’ve you known her?”

“Just since last year. She and ‘Hulk’ Gibson are the main coaches. Morris takes care of track, soccer, and field hockey. Gibson handles football, softball, and basketball. We’ve got other coaches for archery and all that, but Morris and Gibson are the kings.”

“You mean queen and king?” said Daria, looking at her homework.

“Kings in every way,” said Jane with a smile.

“Oh.”

“Doesn’t matter to me. Her partner Dina has a PDA shop in town and runs time-management workshops. The school buys PDAs from her in bulk. All the seniors have them. I think next year everyone’s supposed to get one, but they’ll have school programming so you can’t mess around with them.”

Daria nodded over her homework. “Goodthink,” she muttered.

Jane paused in her sketching to look over at Daria. “As in Nineteen Eighty-four, you mean?”

Daria looked up and met her friend’s gaze, mildly impressed. “Yeah. You’re sayin’ the PDAs’re fixed so you can’t do bad things with ‘em.”

Jane grinned. “That’s what I thought you meant. I read that book ages ago. Nasty little thing.”

Daria felt a smile creep over her face. It was impossible not to think she’d finally found a soul mate. She glanced at Jane’s sketch, then did a classic double take. The cheerleader had Daria’s face. “Hey!”

Jane smirked and kept drawing.

“Any parents complain about Morris?”

Jane snorted. “Morris and her partner are locals. They even went to school here. No one cares. Plus, the school’s got something like a seventy percent win rate at almost everything in sports, which is outrageous, so they won’t replace her. For every parent who pulls their kid out to go somewhere else, five are fighting to get their kids in—and a lot of kids want to be here.”

“Long as they don’t mind Big Brother lookin’ over their shoulders.” Daria shrugged. “No accountin’ for tastes, said the man as he kissed his horse.”

“People love security, Daria. Freedom, they don’t need. It causes trouble.” Jane glanced around the gym. “Did you get your mom when you called from the office?”

Daria sighed and wiggled her pencil back and forth over her homework paper. “No. Left a message with her sec’tary, Marianne something. I’ll just walk home. Funny. Used to be a lot of lawyers where she works, then half of ‘em up and left for New York City. Must be better lawsuits there. Mom got on as a junior partner at the firm. Think it’s called Vitale, Schrecter, Schrecter & Morgendorffer, now.”

“Is she making big money?”

“I guess. Haven’t seen her enough to know.”

“Sounds a little like my absentee parents. So, when you go home, no one’s there?”

“Mom said I don’t need to be on a leash. I just . . . have to keep my nose clean, whatever.”

“Stay out of trouble.”

“Yeah.” Daria stared at her blank homework paper and sighed.

“She can call my social worker anytime for me to come over.”

“You must want out of that LYRE place pretty bad.”

“You have no idea how badly. Tell your mom I’ll be a good influence on you. I won’t smoke or drink or take drugs in the house. Boys, though . . . hmmm”

Daria peered at Jane over the top of her glasses, then rolled her eyes and looked down at her not-yet-started algebra homework again. “You’re not helpin’. Mom’s mad enough ‘bout me smokin’ as is. She sees you do it, she’ll—”

“She won’t. I needed a good excuse to quit.” Jane hesitated, then said, “So, you’re really from Highland? Where those shootings were last November?”

The world came to a halt. Daria stopped wiggling her pencil. I knew it wouldn’t work. Damn it.

“Bad topic?” asked Jane in a lower tone.

“I was there,” said Daria. Hearing Jane’s gasp, she added, “Not right where it happened. A few blocks away. I heard it. Saw part of it.” The propane fireball. That counts.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Daria put down the pencil, all interest in homework lost. “Doesn’t matter.”

“I won’t talk about it again, I promise.”

Daria raised her gaze to look out over the gymnasium. Depression settled in and pulled her shoulders down. “Doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “They’ll all figger it out soon enough.”

“Figure what out?”

“That I was there.”

Jane looked confused. She put down her sketching pencil. “Is that why you moved here?” she said.

Daria nodded, still looking across the gym at nothing.

“I’m sorry. Can I do anything?” asked Jane.

“No,” Daria whispered. After a moment, she closed her algebra book and tucked it in her open backpack. “I gotta go to the restroom.”

“Want me to go with you?”

“No.” Daria shouldered her backpack and got up, then stepped down to the next foot plank and left. She did not look back. When she reached the bottom of the bleachers, she walked over to the teacher in the blue sweats. “May I go to the restroom, ma’am?”

Ms. Morris pointed toward a hall door with the pencil she had held over her clipboard. “Make it fast.”

“Yes, ma’am.” A minute later, the restroom door thumped shut behind her as she walked over to the sinks. The stalls were empty; she was alone. The floor was clean enough, so she put her backpack down and took off her glasses, folding them up and setting them on the shelf below the mirror. She then washed her hands and face, then stood with her head bowed and both hands covering her eyes.

I knew this would never work. I knew it wouldn’t, I knew it. Her face burned. She knew she was crying and someone would walk in at any moment and see her like that, but she couldn’t help it. She sniffed, ran water over her hands, and rubbed her face again.

The door squeaked open behind her, then thumped shut. She opened her eyes enough to look in the mirror and see, despite her blurry vision, that it was Jane. She covered her eyes again and rubbed them.

“God, Daria, I swear I am so sorry. Me and my big fucking mouth.”

“It’s okay.” She sniffed again and wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Don’t worry ‘bout it. I’ll be all right.”

“Can I get you anything?”

Daria pulled a paper towel and blew her nose in it. “Nah. Comes and goes. Don’t pay no ‘tention to it.”

“That is just the most amazing drawl you have.”

A short laugh burst from Daria’s lips, ending in a cough. She pulled more paper towels and wiped off her face. “You are so full of shit,” she said as she reached for her glasses, but she smiled when she said it.

“You sound just like my social worker,” Jane said with a nervous smile. She looked around at the stalls. “Uh, as long as I’m in here . . .”

“Yeah, well, when in Rome . . .”

“Christ,” said Morris when they returned to the gym, “did the two of you have your nails done while you were out? Keep it to three minutes next time, or I’ll add a half hour to your detention!”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Daria with a solemn look.

“Ditto, ma’am,” said Jane with a smirk.

“I still want to talk to you later,” Morris said, looking at Jane.

“Later, okay.”

The two girls made small talk at the back of the bleachers until detention ended. Daria walked with Jane to the bus loading dock, where a battered blue Pinto hatchback awaited with an older woman at the wheel. She beeped the horn when she saw Jane.

“Mrs. Sullivan, my social worker,” said Jane, waving back. “For God’s sake, don’t ask her about her colon.”

“‘Preciate the warnin’,” Daria muttered.

“See you tomorrow?”

Daria sighed, but a faint smile appeared on her face. “If I must.”

Jane grinned and waved goodbye, then got into the hatchback and shut the door. Daria waved as they drove away, then went home. The walk was only six blocks but crossed two busy thoroughfares. Rush hour must start early around here, she mused. She wondered why she was not as depressed as before. She wondered where Jane had lived before the Lanes lost their house. She wondered if Jane was serious about sending a recording of her voice to her brother in Iraq. He looked like such a cool guy.

“Get over it, girl,” she grumbled, rolling her eyes again. “Nothin’ll happen. Nothin’ ever does.”

She reached home mildly depressed, having started to think about her father back in Highland, and was fumbling in her pocket for her house keys when the front door opened. Red-haired Quinn stood in the doorway with a cell phone to her ear. She was eighteen months younger and two inches taller than her sister.

“Nev’ mind, Marianne,” said Quinn to the phone. “She’s here. Don’t say nothin’ ‘bout this to Mom. Thank’ee.” She shut the cell phone and put her fists on her hips. “Where you been?” she snapped, her twang as bad as Daria’s.

“Out,” said Daria, pushing past her. “M’ back now.”

Quinn shut the door and followed her sister to the kitchen. “I was worried sick ‘bout you! Anything happen?”

“No.” Daria dropped her backpack on the floor by the counter, then went to the refrigerator and opened it, looking inside for a snack.

“We’re havin’ beef lasagna tonight, so watch what you eat. Why didn’ you come right home when school was out?”

“I had detention.” Daria pulled out a Tupperware container filled with barbecued chicken wings.

“You what?” yelled Quinn. “Daria!”

“Oh, fuck, would you let it go?” Daria set the container of wings on the kitchen counter and popped it open.

“Watch your mouth! What’d you get detention for?”

“I was late to class. Jane and—” She grimaced and cursed herself.

“Jane and you? Who’s Jane?”

“Nobody. Let it alone.”

Quinn walked around the counter to face her sister. “She your friend?”

“Mebbe,” Daria mumbled, chewing on a wing.

“Is she good people?”

Daria swallowed her bite, not making eye contact. “If she’s hangin’ ‘round me, prob’ly not.”

Quinn stared into her sister’s face, then nodded. “She’s prob’ly all right, least for you. I was worried ‘bout you.”

“Don’t be.”

“I love you.”

Daria looked down at the chicken wings and picked up another one in silence.

“I don’t want—” Quinn stopped and tried again. “I just want things to go okay here. I want you to be all right.”

With a sigh, Daria dropped the uneaten wing back into the container, recapped it, and put it back in the fridge. “That’s nice,” she said on her way out, leaving her backpack behind. “I’ll be in my room.”

“God loves you, too, Daria.”

Daria stopped dead in the doorway leading out of the kitchen to the family room. She turned and looked with narrow eyes at her sister, taking in the tiny gold cross at her neck. “Don’t say that,” she growled. “I told you not to ever tell me that.”

“It’s true, though,” said her sister, looking defensive.

“God loves me like that thief that was crucified with Jesus, right?”

Quinn straightened. “That’s right,” she said softly. “He does.”

The words came out of Daria’s mouth in a rush, faster than she could think about them or stop them. “That thief still died, right? They came and broke both his legs while he was nailed up there and he died there, didn’t he? He died in pain, didn’t he? What fuckin’ good did that do ‘im? Tell me! And all he did was steal somethin’! He died in pain on a fuckin’ cross, and what fuckin’ good did God do for ‘im? You tell me! God didn’t do ‘im any fuckin’ good at all!”

She turned on her heel and stamped upstairs and slammed her bedroom door and locked it with the knob lock as well as the deadbolt and chain she had added right after she had moved into her room a week earlier. She started toward her bed, but then spun and kicked the side of her desk as hard as she could. The computer keyboard bounced and two books fell off the shelves. Ignoring the pain, she kicked her desk again, then again and again with her hard-toed boots until she had knocked most of the books and CDs down and the keyboard was on the floor. She was aware she had been cursing aloud but she did not remember what she had said. A red haze covered the world. As she walked across the room, she stamped on a CD case, smashing both it and its contents, then snatched up a book from the floor and threw it against a padded wall. She then snatched off her glasses, threw them as hard as she could, then fell to her knees and slammed both fists into the mattress of her bed, swinging her arms over her head and hammering down over and over until the bed jumped with each blow. God damn it! she screamed as she hit the mattress. God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God damn it!

A long time later, she opened her eyes. Her head was cradled in her arms. She lay full-length on the bed. She did not remember getting on it. Her boots were still on. She wasn’t sure where her glasses were. She hoped they were intact. She’d broken two pairs this year already.

No sound could be heard except for cars passing outside. She knew without checking that her sister was praying for her. She hated thinking about that, but she knew it was true. Ever since that day, Quinn had been praying for her, and Daria could hardly stand it.

Damn her anyway, she thought, hiding her face in the covers. Damn her anyway for doing that shit. I wish she’d fucking stop. But she did not get up to go make Quinn stop. She bunched the covers around her head and thought about how life would go if she were dead, how good that would feel to have no more pain, and eventually she went back to sleep.

* * *

Someone was knocking on her door. She awoke in darkness, her thinking muddled, and felt around for her glasses for several seconds before she realized they were gone.

“Daria?” It was her mother. “Daria, take off your earphones! Daria?” Louder knocking followed. “Dinner’s ready! Come on downstairs!”

“Comin’,” she grumbled, getting up. The lights were off, and it was almost dark outside. She felt her way to the wall switch, turned the lights on, and began hunting for her glasses.

They were under her bureau. The left earpiece had broken off.

“Shit.” She looked in the drawer where she kept spare parts for her glasses, but she had no extra earpieces and no spare glasses.

“What’s that?” asked her mother over dinner. She had not mentioned Daria’s crack about Eric Schrecter from that morning.

“What’s what?”

“On your glasses.” Helen leaned close to squint at Daria’s face. “Is that tape?”

“Oh. Dropped ‘em.”

“Again? Daria, that’s the third time this—”

“Did I tell you what Angie wants the Little Angels to do for Homecomin’?” Quinn interrupted, looking from sister to mother and back. “She wants us to have a prayer circle before the game with Oakwood. We’re gonna do it in the parkin’ lot an’ try to get the cheerleaders from both teams an’ maybe the football players to join in. Kelly’s gonna talk to her cheerleader cousin at Oakwood ‘bout it. One of the cheerleaders here is Jewish, but we’ll work it out somehow.”

“That’s . . . uh, wonderful, dear.” Helen peered again at Daria, then shook her head and lifted a forkful of lasagna. At that moment, an electronic disco version of Total Eclipse of the Heart rang through the air. Helen dropped her fork and was out of her chair in a second. “Be right back!” she said as she ran for the cell phone by the sink.

Quinn looked across the table at her sister. Daria glanced at her, then kept her eyes on her plate and toyed with her lasagna. In the background, they could hear their mother talking gaily to someone named Eric. Helen laughed, glanced at the girls, then walked out of the kitchen with the phone to her ear.

“Dad called,” Quinn whispered when their mother was out of earshot.

Daria looked up, then made herself look down again. “What’d he say?”

“He’s doin’ all right, mostly. He said he misses us.”

Daria swallowed but kept her composure. “That’s nice.”

“I said we missed him, too. I told him we’d started school today an’ were doin’ okay.”

“Don’t lie on my account.” Her appetite gone, Daria put down her fork and pushed her plate away. She eyed her milk and decided she could choke it down. She reached for it, turned the glass around once, then let it go. It was no use. She was done.

“Well, thank you!” said their mother in the family room. She laughed again. “That’s very sweet of you, Eric!”

Quinn put a hand to her forehead and winced, eyes closed, then lowered her hand, pushed back her chair, and stood. Her dinner was only half finished. “I’ll clean up,” she said.

“My turn,” said Daria, also getting up. Ninety percent of her food was still there.

They put everything away except for their mother’s dinner, then left and went upstairs. Daria went in her room and knelt to pick up the remains of the CD she had crushed. She heard Quinn come to the doorway, stand for a minute looking around at the destruction, then walk off to her own room.

Probably to pray. I wish she wouldn’t do that.

When the shattered CD and its case were disposed of, Daria took a moment to look at her room in a broad sweep. She was feeling jumpy. Fitting, she thought, that a crazy woman lived here before I did. Very fitting. She reached out and picked at a piece of lint on a gray padded wall, dropped it on the maroon carpet—then lashed out and punched the wall as hard as she could. She felt and heard a snap simultaneous with a stab of agony in her right hand, near the base of her middle finger. Hissing, she doubled over and held her hand in her left armpit, waiting for the intense pain to subside.

She heard footsteps in the hallway too late. “Daria?” called her sister.

“Go away!” she said through her teeth, turning her back to the doorway. “Just get out of here! Fuck!”

“Don’t hit me,” said Quinn. She was coming into the room.

Daria grimaced and went for her bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress doubled over. She knew for sure she had broken a finger. It wasn’t the first time in the last year that she’d done it.

Quinn came around in front of her and crouched on the maroon carpet. She kept her arms out toward Daria, hands up to ward her away if she attacked. “Let me see it,” she said.

“Go to fuckin’ hell!”

“Daria.” Quinn’s face was pasty white. “Please. Be careful. Please.”

“Go away.” Daria’s face was down to her knees. A dull throbbing radiated out from the middle of her hand. She’d broken something, all right. It hurt like blazes.

“Don’t hit me, Daria. Be careful. Don’t hit me.”

Fingers touched Daria’s shoulder. “Careful,” whispered Quinn. “Be careful. Be gentle.” She began to pull on Daria’s right arm, soft and slow, talking all the while. She did not say I love you because that would almost certainly trigger an attack.

The injured hand came free. Quinn held Daria’s right arm by the wrist and turned the hand over one way, then the other. She still kept her other hand up, shielding herself from Daria’s left hand, just in case. “It’s swelled up pretty bad,” she said. “Wait for me, okay? Just wait for me. I’ll be right back.” She let go of the hand, rocked backward on her heels, then got to her feet and left the room at a run for the hall bathroom they shared.

She returned with a small, well-used hand split and a cloth bandage roll, only to find Daria face down on the bed, lying on her hands. It took another few minutes of coaxing to get Daria to sit up again and let Quinn put the bandage on. Quinn did not try to shield herself this time, as she could read Daria’s body language and saw her shoulders were slumped and her muscle tone was slack. No energy left to fight.

When the hand was splinted and wrapped, Quinn sat by her sister, elbows on her knees, hands clasped before her, and talked about her day. Daria sat and listened, head down, but said nothing.

“Can you tell me ‘bout Jane?” Quinn finally asked.

Daria stirred and looked at her wrapped right hand. “She’s in some kind of county home. Her parents abandoned her, and her brother’s in the army in Iraq. She’s okay.”

“Is she gonna come over sometime?”

“Oh. Mom needs to call her social worker to get permission.” Daria made a face. “And Mom has to be home, too, so forget it.”

“You got the number?” Quinn took the scrap of paper Daria pulled from her pants pocket, memorized the number, then handed it back. “I think I can fix it,” she said.

“Mom has to call.”

“I’ll take care of it. I know what to do.”

Daria exhaled heavily. Quinn probably did know what to do. That was what was so frustrating about it. “Thank’ee,” Daria whispered. She felt exhausted.

Quinn started to reach for her sister, stopped, then pulled her hand back. “You okay now?”

Daria nodded, her head down. Her long auburn hair hid her face.

“I want to see your hand in the morning, before we go to school. Mom said we gotta walk from now on.”

“Figgers. I don’t care.”

“I’m sorry I ran off this morning when she dropped us at school. I just had to get out of there.”

“I know. Whatever.”

“Daria? Can . . . can I hug you?”

Daria shook her head no, her defenses up again.

“Okay, then. Get some rest.” Quinn watched her for a moment more, then gently closed the door. Daria heard her footsteps go down the hall and then downstairs.

There was nothing to do. Daria picked at the long bandage wrapped over her right hand, but Quinn knew her stuff. The bandage was well set. She gave up and just sat. She had no will to clean up the mess in the room just yet.

Quinn’s footsteps came back upstairs and down the hall to Daria’s room. The door squeaked open, then Quinn reached in and sat Daria’s backpack by her desk. “In case you gotta do homework,” she said, then gave Daria a weak smile and promptly left again.

That’s right, Daria thought dully. Algebra. Totally forgot it.

She did not move further except to take off her taped-together glasses, lay them on the floor under the edge of her bed, and lie down again. Though she was restless, she was asleep again within ten minutes and dreamed of nothing for the rest of the night.

“I could get used to this,” said Daria two days later, as she followed Jane to an unoccupied table in the school cafeteria.

“So could I, if my tray were being carried by a naked gladiator who looked like Brad Pitt,” said Jane. She put down the tray holding lunch items for both her and Daria. “To each her own, I suppose.”

They sat on opposite sides of the table, and Jane began distributing plates and silverware. Daria took her soft drink with her left hand, her splinted right hand kept motionless in her lap.

“How long till that thing comes off, again?” asked Jane, nodding at the hidden hand.

“Week.” Daria looked glum. “Really hard to smoke with my left hand. Makin’ me crabby.”

“I thought you were trying to quit.”

“You were the one tryin’ to quit,” corrected Daria. “And I could get right used to this, too.” She finished arranging her menu items on one plate: two slices of pepperoni pizza, a pile of cheese-covered French fries, and a crumbly square of chocolate cake, with a tall plastic glass of Ultra-Cola to boot.

“Get used to what?”

“Buffet-style comfort food from my fav’rit rest’rants. We didn’t have anythin’ like this back at—” Block it, block it, block it “—back in Texas. You took what the cafeteria ladies threw on your tray, and you said, ‘Thank you.’”

“I might have said the ‘you’ part, but I don’t think I would have said ‘thank.’”

“Politeness, the curse of civilization.” Daria reached for her cheese fries.

“Speaking of which, what’d you think of Current Events this morning?”

Daria pointed to her overstuffed mouth. “Mmmph.”

“You think that’s what Brittany says when she goes on a date?”

The urge to laugh aloud was terrific. Daria slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from spitting out her food. Jane gave her a merry smile. “Was it something I said?

“I fuckin’ hate you,” Daria said after she swallowed.

Jane blew Daria a red-lipstick kiss. “If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that . . .”

“Current Events,” said Daria after wiping her mouth on her napkin. “It was okay.”

“I thought you were going to say something after Kevin said torture in wartime was okay because God said it was.”

“Thought about it, let it go. Wasn’t worth it.”

“What were you gonna say?”

“That he was an asshole. Seemed self-evident.”

“I expected something a little more witty.”

“Wasn’t feelin’ witty. I was feelin’ like bein’ truthful. Shouldn’t do that, causes too much trouble.”

“Your self-control’s pretty good.”

“Most days. Be thankful I don’t drink.”

“I used to,” said Jane, putting down her Ultra-Cola. “My big sisters used to leave wine coolers and beers all over the house when I was little. I started drinking ‘em because nobody would get me a drink from the kitchen. Then Trent found out and started pouring ‘em out or throwing ‘em away. Spoiled all my fun. Whew! I had some good times!”

“Where were your folks?”

Jane shrugged. “Away doing their respective art things. They sent money back to a checking account, but Penny, Ron, and Summer drained it all before they moved on. Mom and Dad kept planning to start a new account for Trent and me, but it never happened. At least Trent came through.”

“My mom and dad are getting’ a divorce,” said Daria. She took a small bite of her pizza as if she had said something about the weather.

Jane raised an eyebrow as she chewed on a bite from a hot dog. “Oh?”

Daria shrugged. It came across as forced. “No big. Mom wanted to leave Texas, Dad didn’t wanna pull up stakes right away, bunch of other stuff got thrown in, Dad up an’ left, and that was it.” She shrugged again. “Nothin’ to tell.”

Jane’s eyebrow went up even higher. “When did they split up?”

Daria took a long time running her tongue around the inside of her mouth, chasing errant food particles. “End of July,” she finally said. “‘Bout . . . six weeks ago now.”

“My parents will never get divorced,” Jane said after a pause. “They’re almost never home at the same time, so I don’t know who they’re going out with when they’re gone—probably everyone in the phone book, from what my siblings have said—but they’ll keep up the fiction, even with the house and kids gone. It was a common-law marriage anyway. They didn’t like the paperwork.” Jane finished her hot dog in one swallow. “I’ll never get married. It’s not worth it.”

“Hmmm.” Daria used her fingers to scoop up more pizza and fries.

“So,” said Jane, “what was your old school like, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Daria realized she didn’t mind. She had the urge to be more open, test the waters. She swallowed her food, then tilted her head back and considered how to answer the question. “Mark Twain said, ‘When in doubt, tell the truth,’ That was so you didn’t have to ‘member so much.”

“I thought you said the truth causes trouble.”

“My whole life is trouble. Won’t matter.”

Jane eyed the diminutive brunette. “Should this wait for a better time with fewer people around?”

“Nah, don’t matter.” Daria swallowed a last bite and wiped her mouth. “I’m better ‘bout talkin’ ‘bout it, not a problem.” She paused to recall details. “That was Hope High School, in Highland. It was built kinda like a prison, big open square with a courtyard in the middle. There was a big fence ‘round the grounds, chain link, with wire mesh over it so you couldn’t climb in or out. They had cameras, but they were out in the open, not hidden. Hmmm.” She scratched her nose, then rested her chin on her hand. “We had school uniforms. Couldn’t use anythin’ to carry books in. Roll call in ever’ class, monitors in the halls, bathrooms, and courtyard. No locks on the lockers.”

“Why not?”

“Easier for the staff to get into ‘em.”

Jane frowned. “To steal things?”

“Nah, to look for contraband.” Daria took her hand off the table and picked up another bunch of cheese fries. “Not much privacy. I like it here a lot better’n there, even with Big Brother spyin’ on me.”

Jane stared at Daria for a long moment. “Sounds like it was a prison.”

Daria took a deep breath and let it out. “Alternative school.”

“Oh. Thus the name Hope?”

“Yeah. Ironic.”

“How long did you go there?”

Daria cleared her throat and put both her hands in her lap. She kept her gaze on Jane’s food. “Maybe best not to go into it too much yet. Not as ready for it as I thought.”

“I wasn’t going to ask anything else.” Jane looked discomfited. “Well, I was, but I won’t now.”

“Okay.”

“You know,” said Jane conversationally, “you don’t have to tell me all this, even if I am being nosy. I like you fine as you are. If you don’t want to go into it, then . . . don’t. Let it go. It’s the past. You can’t do anything about it. Just let it go.”

Daria’s face was blank. “Okay,” she whispered.

Jane pointed her left little finger at her companion. “You’re pretty cool.”

Daria ate the last of her cheese fries. “I was thinkin’ the same ‘bout you.”

“One or both of us has brain problems.”

“From where I’m sittin,’” said Daria, almost smiling, “that’d have to be you.”

“Well,” Jane began, then she looked to her left. “Oh, there’s that other new girl.”

Daria looked in the direction Jane was looking. Quinn was sitting down with a group of girls two tables over. She had not yet seen Daria. As soon as they were seated and had their trays placed before them, they took a signal from a tall girl with platinum blonde hair and bowed their heads. A few students looked on, then went back to their lunches. A few seconds later, there was a general chorus of “Amen!” and they opened their eyes and began eating.

“Which new girl?” Daria asked, keeping a straight face.

“The redhead,” Jane whispered.

A boy in a duckbill cap, football jersey, and baggy shorts stopped by the group, standing behind Quinn. “Hey,” he said. “Are you Quinn?”

“What?” Quinn turned and looked up with a bright smile. “Oh! Yeah, that’s me!”

“Um, I, uh . . . are you doing anything this weekend?”

“Well,” Quinn began, “lessee, I’m goin’ to church Sunday mornin’, an’ I’m goin’ with some friends to a Bible study youth group Sunday night, but I think that’s it, ‘cept for homework. Depends on what God wants. I might have to be home, I never know.”

“Oh.” The boy looked nonplussed and tried another topic. “Um, you, like, got any brothers or sisters?”

“I gotta big sister,” said Quinn. “She’s real smart. Did you want anythin’ else?”

“Uh . . . nah. ‘S okay.” The boy sauntered off, trying hard to look casual. The girls waited until he was halfway across the room before they broke into fits of giggles and laughter.

“Those are the Little Angels,” said Jane. “They’re the local Jesus Freaks. That redhead would make a great magazine cover model.” She picked up the remains of her hamburger. “I wonder if she was being real about what she does.”

“That she goes to church and all?” asked Daria.

“Yeah. I think some of them don’t practice everything they preach.”

“She’s real.”

Jane looked up just as she bit into her hamburger. She held that pose, staring at Daria, waiting.

“She’s my sister,” said Daria.

A look of incredulity crossed Jane’s face as she looked from Daria to Quinn and back. She took the hamburger out of her mouth. “I am very glad,” she said, “that I did not stick my foot entirely down my throat just now. You’re serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

“That’s your sister, the Christian supermodel?”

Daria nodded and looked over at Quinn, who was talking with the platinum blonde between giggles.

“So, is that a good thing or a bad thing?” said Jane.

“Uh . . . she’s okay, I guess.” Daria looked back at her plate, picking her teeth with a fingernail. “We have our moments, but mostly we get along. Depends on the day.”

“Okay,” said Jane, “so you have a sister, you went to an alternative high school, you smoke, you’ve had some ups and downs, you know Orwell and Twain, and what I want to know is, what else is there about you that I ought to know before I say or do something stupid? Other than asking why you went to the alternative school. You’re not terribly forthcoming. Maybe this is a Texas thing, I dunno.”

“Oh.” Daria looked reflective. “Nah, just a me thing. Don’t talk as much as I used to.” She picked up her napkin and became interested in folding and refolding it. “I used to talk more,” she said. “Kinda told ever’one what was on my mind whenever I wanted, didn’t care ‘bout the consequences. Little free with my mouth.”

“Uh-huh.” Jane waited, but nothing else came. She cleared her throat. “Okay, listen up, here it is. If I happen to say something that totally bugs you, I want you to tell me. Don’t blow me off, don’t cover it up, just tell me. That’s real important to me.”

Daria looked up. “Okay.”

“I can be pretty emotional about things, in case you haven’t noticed, and what I don’t like most is to have people run off on me. Everyone I’ve ever known has done that, except maybe Trent, but he’s in Iraq so he sorta ran off on me, too. My parents, my sibs, all thirty-eight of my boyfriends, everyone, they all ran off. I’m sorta tired of it, and I’m not kidding about how pissed I am about it. If you get mad at me, you come and talk to me, or believe me, I’ll come and talk to you.”

“I will.”

“Promise me that.”

“I promise.”

Jane held out her right little finger. Daria lifted her right hand to respond, but both girls wound up staring at the bandage-wrapped brace.

“I forgot,” said Jane, exchanging hands. She and Daria solemnly shook their left-hand pinkies. “Okay,” said Jane when they were done, “tell me something else.”

“Okay.”

“How’d you do that?” Jane pointed to Daria’s bandaged hand.

“I . . . I punched a wall.”

“You hit a wall and broke your hand.”

“Middle finger.”

“You punched a wall and broke your middle finger. On purpose?”

Daria nodded.

Jane considered. “I can understand that,” she said at last. “Okay, that’s all I wanted to know.”

“Can I ask you a question?” said Daria.

“I’m not gay. That doesn’t mean I don’t think about it now and then, but I’m not really gay, I think. Maybe bi. I think you’re supposed to find out about that in college, anyway. Maybe if I was gay, I could get into the movies. Was that what you wanted to know?”

Daria managed to look irked. “No, that wasn’t it.”

“Oh. Forget all that, then. What?”

Daria opened her mouth and for a moment looked as though she were about to ask her question, but the words never came out. After a few seconds of motionlessness, she settled back in her seat and stared at Jane’s lunch again. “Never mind. Forget it.”

“Hypothetically speaking,” said Jane slowly, “if you did just now have a question to ask me, what would it have been?”

Daria raised her head and met Jane’s gaze. After a long moment, her mouth opened. “What was the—”

“Oh, hi!” cried a voice. Quinn walked up on Daria’s side of the table. She was looking over at Jane. “Is this Jane?” she asked.

“I am she,” said Jane. “Or her. Something like that.”

“Hi, Quinn,” said Daria, looking relieved despite her deadpan tone. “Wassup?”

“Nothin’. I just came over to see how you were. You okay?”

“More or less. You?”

“Right as rain!” Quinn extended a hand to Jane. “Any friend of Daria’s is okay by me,” she said.

Jane reached up and shook, a bemused smile on her face. “We were just talking about you.”

“Oh, my gosh! Well, I don’t wanna interrupt anythin’ important like that, so you two go back to talkin’! Good to meet ya, Jane!” Quinn waved and headed back to the table with the other Little Angels, who also waved at Daria and Jane.

“I don’t understand how it’s possible the two of you are related,” said Jane.

“Darwin works in mysterious ways,” said Daria.

“I thought that was Mendel’s fault.”

“Could’ve been Satan’s, for all I—”

“Oh, hey!” cried Quinn, hurrying back. “I forgot! It’s okay for Jane to come on over after school from now on. I got it all straightened out. Jane, you gotta ring Eleanor, though. She’s already talked to Mom an’ she’s got all the information.”

“Eleanor?” asked Jane, looking puzzled.

“Your social worker, Mrs. Sullivan. Gotta run! Bye!”

Daria and Jane exchanged looks as Quinn hurried off. “What just happened here?” said Jane.

Daria tossed her napkin on her plate and got to her feet, pushing back her chair. “That was my sister,” she said, “one of the great forces of nature.”

Jane got up, too. “Why was she calling my social worker Eleanor? I’ve never called her Eleanor, not ever. She said I should always call her Mrs. Sullivan. I didn’t even know she had a first name.”

“Don’t try to understand it,” said Daria, following Jane to the tray drop-off. “Just go with the flow.”

“I thought you were going to say, ‘Just rope and throw and brand it.’”

“I don’t wanna talk ‘bout your datin’ habits.”

“Why not? You might learn something.”

“Kiss my butt.”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about my dating habits. I gotta go by the office, won’t take long. See you in class.”

Jane was late getting to computer lab, but she wore a broad grin when she entered. She handed the teacher a note, then took a seat at the computer beside Daria’s while humming a few bars from Pink’s “Get the Party Started.”

“Good news?” whispered Daria. “Or’d the heroin kick in?”

“We’re walkin’ home together today,” Jane whispered back. “And you’re not getting any of my heroin, nyah nyah nyah.”

“Bitch,” Daria said with a smile. “What happened? Did you call—”

“Okay, class!” called the teacher, a plump middle-aged lady named Bennett. “Today we were going to talk about the joys of JavaScript, but the tutorial is down until tomorrow, so we’re going to the backup plan and review what we’ve learned about e-mail etiquette.” She ignored the chorus of groans from the students. “Is there anyone here who does not know how to create and send an e-mail?”

No hands went up. “Duh,” muttered one student.

“Okay, great! Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to send an e-mail to someone, per school guidelines, but—quiet, please! Okay, your e-mail has to be at least two hundred words long. The system will check your e-mail before it goes out to make sure it’s within guidelines and is at least two hundred words long! Kevin, that doesn’t mean you can repeat words over and over again, you won’t get credit for that. Jodie, please don’t write to the White House any more. I’d appreciate it. Andrea—you know what not to do. Daria, do the best you can with one hand. Kevin, stop laughing! That wasn’t funny! Yes, everyone can get started—oh! Wait! You can’t write to yourselves! The system has your e-mail addresses in it, so it knows if you try that. Don’t! And you can’t write to your parents or your siblings, either. It has to be to someone outside your immediate family. Grandparents are okay, Jennifer. Just not you and not your immediate family! Okay, let’s get started. Two hundred words! Kevin, don’t lean back in your chair. Yes, Brittany, what is it?”

Daria groaned as she eyed her monitor. Other than her father, there was absolutely no one that she knew that she could—

“You’re writing to my brother,” said Jane, scribbling out an e-mail address on a scrap of paper. She finished and slapped it on Daria’s keyboard. “That’s his unit address. He’ll get it tomorrow when he wakes up.”

“What?”

“Write to him. Say anything. And ask him if he knows when he’s coming stateside.”

“Jane,” called Mrs. Bennett, “no talking please. Yes, Brittany, I’m coming, just a minute!”

Left to her own devices, Daria brought up the e-mail page for the school as she had been taught in the last two classes, entered her password, and carefully typed in Trent’s e-mail address. She tabbed down to the title line and pecked out:

Letter from a friend of your sister Jane

She tabbed down to the body of the letter . . . and stared at the screen. What am I doing, writing to him? I can’t do this. He doesn’t even know me. What am I going to say? This is completely—

“Get going,” said Jane out of the side of her mouth as she typed away.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Yes, you do.”

Daria sighed and chewed her lower lip. She wasn’t ambidextrous, but she had done this before, other times after she had hurt herself. She usually hurt her hands. Her left-hand fingers hesitantly went to the keys.

Hi, Trent:

She made a face and erased that, typing instead:

Dear Trent:

That looked too forward, but it was proper style, so she left it with reluctance. She spaced down.

Your sister Jane, who is sitting an arm’s length away from me as I write this, told me I should write to you. We are at Lawndale High School in Computer Lab. I came to Lawndale High on Monday of this week and met Jane before I got into the building. She has been very decent to me and she has had many good things to say about you. I have no idea what else there is to say to

She made another face and erased the last line. Her typing was going more quickly.

She showed me a picture of you, printed out from somewhere. Jane misses you a lot. She asked me to ask you when you were coming home. I guess you have her own e-mail address, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know if she has a computer.

Daria paused. What else was there to tell?

I have a little sister, too. Her name is Quinn, and she’s a grade behind me. She’s okay most days. We came here from Texas. The less said about my old hometown, the better. Lawndale doesn’t seem like too bad a place, but I’ve been here less than a week so what do I know. At least Jane is here, and

She hesitated again, then continued.

that has made my staying here quite tolerable. Jane says I have an accent, but I don’t. I do notice, however, that the locals here have a funny way of speaking.

I used to have e-mail addresses all over the place, but I haven’t used them in so long now, I think they’ve expired. You can write to me here at my school address, but I think it would be better for you to write to Jane. You are very lucky to have her as your sister, and she looks up to you maybe more than you know. I do not

She stopped again, took a deep breath, and pecked away.

think I have been as good to Quinn as you have been to Jane, and I would like to change that, though it is very hard to do. I am set in my ways even if I am not yet sixteen (born on November 11, which is funny because that is Veterans Day), but maybe for Quinn’s sake I should do better.

Anyway, there is not much else to tell. We were supposed to write 200 words and

She quickly deleted the last two lines.

Anyway, the important thing is for you to take good care of yourself and come home as soon as you can. If you want to write to me, that’s okay, but be sure to write to Jane first, because she loves you.

Daria reached up and wiped her eyes under her glasses with her fingertips.

I wish you the best.

Your sister’s friend, and hopefully yours,

Daria Morgendorffer

She blew her nose on a used tissue she fished out of her jacket pocket.

“You okay?” asked Jane, glancing over.

“Allergies,” said Daria, putting the tissue away again.

“What’d you write to him?”

“Buzz off.” Daria turned her monitor screen so it was harder for Jane to see it.

P.S. When is Jane’s birthday? And when is yours?

Daria clicked the e-mail on its way and sighed with relief. Then she began to worry that perhaps it was a mistake to say to Trent, “and hopefully yours” at the end, because that looked too much like she was mooning over him. Too late to worry about it, now. Damn it!

“I didn’t know you had allergies,” said Jane, peering at her. “Your eyes are red.”

“Lot you don’t know about me,” Daria muttered.

“You have dandruff, too?” Jane guessed. “Psoriasis? Bird flu? Rabies?”

“Jane, please, no talking,” called Mrs. Bennett in a tired voice. “Yesssss, Brittany, I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you,” Jane whispered.

“For what?”

“Writing to Trent.”

Daria shrugged. “S’okay.”

“I have some other pictures of him, ones he sent from Iraq. Wanna see ‘em?”

“Okay.”

Jane was silent then. Daria glanced over and saw Jane swallow and stare at her monitor without typing anything. In that moment, Daria saw another Jane who lived in fear that one day she would be visited by several men in Army uniforms who would give her a message, and then she would have to stand alone in front of a black coffin as it was lowered into the earth, alone because no one else in her family would be there for the funeral, and she would be given an American flag folded into a triangle and that would be all she would have left of her big brother when she went back to the county shelter that night, a folded-up flag and a few little pictures of him from computer printers.

Daria started to reach for Jane’s right hand with her left hand, but her hand stopped halfway there. She had never tried to comfort someone before and literally did not know what to do next.

Jane noticed out of the corner of her eye and reached over to take Daria’s hand, and they sat together like that, Jane staring at her blank computer screen and Daria staring at Jane, hand in hand, until Jane let go to wipe the tears off her face.

It was the first time in a year that Daria had thought of a funeral that was not a funeral she felt she had caused.

“Yes, Brittany,” called Mrs. Bennett in exhaustion. “I see you. I’ll be there in just a second. Thank God the day’s almost over with.”

When they got to their final class of the day, the thirty-something art teacher with a perm handed Jane a folded letter before class started. Jane read through it, then stuck it in a pocket with an annoyed look.

“Drafted?” asked Daria.

“Sort of,” Jane grumbled. “Morris wants me to run track again.”

Daria raised an eyebrow. “You said, again?”

“I ran track in middle school until the county got me. The high school and the county haven’t been able to get it together for me to do it again, because I’d have to stay after school a lot and run on weekends, too, and I don’t have a guardian to hang around with me. Morris wanted to know if I was up for it this year, but I don’t see how it would work. Plus, three of my ex-boyfriends are on the track team. Actually, that last part wouldn’t be so bad. The guardian thing is the hurdle I can’t get over.”

“No other sibs around to help? You said somethin’ yesterday ‘bout bein’ the youngest of five.”

Jane frowned as she took several sheets of paper from the art teacher, who was walking from table to table passing them out. “Well, there’s Ron, my oldest brother, but I’d have to listen to him blab on forever about how rotten Mom and Dad were and what a bitch his current—”

“Jane, no talking,” said the art teacher.

“Sorry, Ms. Defoe.” When she thought the teacher was out of earshot, Jane whispered, “—what a bitch his wife and/or girlfriend is. And he’s the stable one. Summer’s in meth rehab again, and Penny’s fighting globalization with the Zapatistas, last I heard, so that’s—”

The teacher turned and cleared her throat with a meaningful look in Jane’s direction. The girls were forced to wait until school ended to continue their talk. Daria had time to sneak in a fast cigarette before Mrs. Sullivan met them at the back of the school by the parking lot with further particulars of Jane’s newfound freedom.

“You’ll have to wear a GPS anklet,” Mrs. Sullivan said in a businesslike manner, holding up what looked like a short, thin cable lock for a bicycle. A knob like the antenna on a cell phone stuck out of the locking part. “I’ll put it on you and make the adjustments. It’ll tell us where you are in case there’s an emergency and we need to come pick you up. If you remove it before you get back to LYRE, the deal’s off. If it falls off your foot—though it shouldn’t—just call LYRE and they’ll fix it.”

“You’re kidding,” said Jane, staring at the anklet.

“It’s this or come back to LYRE with me, right now,” said Mrs. Sullivan.

“Can’t you at least get me one in red?”

Mrs. Sullivan gave a slight smile. “I’ll look into it, but for now you’ll have to manage with Day-Glo orange.”

It took less than a minute to snap the anklet on. “See,” Mrs. Sullivan said, standing up, “the antenna goes right over the back of your sneaker and ankle sock. Perfect.”

“I can’t believe this!” Jane moaned. “I have to be tracked by satellite?”

“Jane,” said her social worker, “the only reason you get a privilege like this is because, number one, you’re passing all your classes, though I’d like to see you earn something better than a D plus in anything, and, two, you’ve never tried to run away.”

“Oh, right. Where the hell would I go?”

“It’s the thought that counts. You’re only the third person this year we’re trying this with, so stop having a hissy-fit over it and get with the program.”

Jane gave her a resigned look. “I just wanted to complain. It’s my nature.”

“Do tell,” Mrs. Sullivan sniffed. “Come on, both of you girls get in the car and I’ll drive you to your friend’s house. Just throw the paperwork in the back seats on the floor.”

“Hate to say this,” said Daria, looking anxious, “but I’m not sure if my mom’s—”

“She’s there waiting for us, so hurry. I don’t know how long her temper will hold out.”

“Right.” Daria nodded as she got into the battered Pinto. “That’s my mom.”

“How come you’re driving us there?” asked Jane, slamming the door after she got in. “I thought we could walk over.”

“I have to call LYRE and have your friend’s house benchmarked in the GPS system, so we know where it is.”

Jane let her head fall back against the seat in exasperation. “I am such a criminal.”

Mrs. Sullivan smiled and started the car. “Only the best for you, kid.”

“Did my sister work this out with you?” asked Daria.

“Quinn? She got it started. Your mother took it from there, though it was an uphill struggle.” Mrs. Sullivan put the car in gear and pulled onto the street. “I’d say you owe your sister big time.”

Daria rolled her eyes. After a moment, she reached down in her boot for a hidden cigarette and stuck it in her mouth, then fished for her lighter.

“Don’t you dare smoke in my car,” said Mrs. Sullivan, peering in the rear view mirror.

Daria groaned and put the cigarette away. “Sorry.”

Helen Morgendorffer, in a magenta business suit-dress with sunglasses pushed up on her forehead, was indeed waiting at the house when the girls and the social worker arrived. She shook hands with Mrs. Sullivan and Jane, though she seemed quite distracted, then gave Jane a brief tour of the upscale home (family room, kitchen, bathrooms, Daria’s room, everything else off limits).

Her pleasant if distant mood lasted until Mrs. Sullivan’s car disappeared down the street. “Listen to me,” she said, addressing both girls with no trace of humor. “I have to go back to the office to finish a brief for a very important case. I expect you two to behave yourselves while I’m gone, or else. Am I understood?”

“Got it,” said Jane. “I’m going to teach Daria about lipstick, maybe try some blushes on her. I thought a peach would go well with her complexion. What do you think?”

Daria looked at Jane as if she had grown two new heads.

“Fine, whatever,” said Helen. She started to leave for the garage when she looked down at Jane’s feet. “What’s that orange thing on your ankle?”

“Art you can wear,” said Jane guilelessly. “Made it myself. Like it?”

Helen shook her head and left.

“Good one,” growled Daria, “but if you so much as touch me with a lipstick, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“Promises, promises,” said Jane. She spread her arms and twirled slowly in place, head back, looking up, smiling in bliss. “Ohmigod, I can’t believe this. It’s after school, I’m not back at LYRE, and I’m actually free until eight o’clock to do whatever I want, anything at all, with no one spying or ratting on me. This is incredible. You have no idea.”

Daria had started to smile at her friend’s joy, but the smile flickered. I do know what that is like. I felt it every night I came home from Hope High School. “So, what’d you wanna do?”

Jane lowered her head to peer at Daria. “I dunno. What do you wanna do?”

“Don’t rightly know.” Daria considered. “Homework?”

“Right. Fuck that shit.”

They took a smoke in the backyard, hid all the evidence, then made half a grocery bag full of popcorn and sat in front of the giant-screen plasma TV in the living room. “He married an alien—from halfway across the galaxy!” cried the announcer. “And now she wants a divorce and half his money! But were they really married to begin with? It’s the old extraterrestrial ex post facto, next on the Judge Hangim Hye Show!”

“Can’t believe you never saw this show before,” said Daria, propping up her sock feet on an ottoman.

“We don’t get cable at LYRE.” Jane scooped out a handful of popcorn. “My parents never got it, either. Do you think these cases are real?”

“Who cares?” said Daria. “This show’s wilder’n Hogzilla on crack.”

Jane laughed so hard she choked on her popcorn.

A half-hour later, in the middle of the case in which an undead zombie was suing a cemetery groundskeeper for crypt neglect, the front door opened and Quinn came in. “Howdy!” she cried. Several other girls came in behind her and looked around.

“Hey,” Daria called in a deadpan voice, turning from the TV.

“Thanks, Quinn, for setting this up!” called Jane, waving from the couch. “You’re the best!”

“Yeah, what she said, I guess,” Daria added.

“No problem!” Quinn called. “We’re just headin’ up to my room for a prayer meetin’! Where’s Mom?”

“She went back to work,” said Daria, her eyes again glued to the TV.

“What?” cried Quinn. “But she has to drive Jane home! And she’s supposed to be here while—ohhh! Lord, don’t let me break the fifth commandment!”

The herd of teenage girls stampeded up the stairs in moments. Five minutes later, just as the TV judge was about to rule on the zombie’s lawsuit, Quinn came downstairs again. “Daria, can I see you in the kitchen, please?”

“In a sec,” said Daria. The zombie won the right to eat the groundskeeper’s brains, but the groundskeeper won the right to die of natural causes first. Daria then got off the couch as the commercials started and headed for the kitchen. “If I’m not back in one minute, come and drag me outta there,” she told Jane.

“Mrmrgh mffl,” Jane replied through a mouthful of popcorn.

Quinn’s nails clicked loudly on the kitchen counter as she drummed her fingers. “Mom’s s’posed to be here while Jane’s here,” she said. “I can’t believe she ran off like that. What was she thinkin’?”

Daria had the sense that a major difficulty was in the offing. “We’re not doin’ anythin’ wrong,” she said, trying not to feel defensive. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, if her social worker comes back an’ sees you two here unsupervised,” said Quinn in a low voice, pointing into the family room in Jane’s direction. “The whole point of Jane gettin’ to come here was that there’d be an adult around to watch out for things.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Daria, I don’t know if you know this or not, but Jane’s had charges, big ones. They got dropped on account of her age an’ plea bargainin’ an’ ev’thing, but she’s gotta be supervised, ‘specially here. Didn’t Mrs. Sullivan say anythin’ to you on that?”

Daria frowned and pulled back. “No, and how come you know so much ‘bout this?”

“Don’t you mind how I know, I just know. Oh, I could just—I can’t say it, it’d make God mad, but I can’t believe Mom just up an’ left. She knew what was s’posed to happen. I’m gonna call her up right now. You go on back in there and stay with Jane. I’ll fix this. Maybe that sec’tary of hers, Marianne, can drive Jane back.”

“I can call Mom,” said Daria with a tight face. “I know what to say.”

“No, you go on. Lemme handle this. Now, shoo.”

Daria felt her temper rise. Her fists balled up. “I’m not a little kid, Quinn,” she growled. “Don’t you dare treat me like that.”

Quinn started to say something but thought better of it. “I apologize ‘bout that, then,” she said, holding up her hands in surrender and taking a step back. “I’m just angry ‘bout Mom leavin’, that’s all. Calm y’self. Anyways, I’d rather it was me than you chewin’ out Mom this time. You got company in the other room, so go be with your friend. Don’t let her sit in there alone.”

Lacking any viable argument to that, and feeling rather useless anyway, Daria went back into the family room. The courtroom show was back on, but she found it impossible to focus on it. Jane, too, was unusually quiet. They did not eat as much popcorn as before, and talk was at a minimum.

When the show was over, Jane stood up and stretched. “I could use another smoke break, if you don’t mind,” she said.

“Sure.” Daria put on her boots, then they went outside again through the sliding kitchen door, around to the backyard’s red-plastic-and-silver-pipe picnic table that Helen had found at a local Wal-Mart. Around them was the high wooden privacy fence that shut out everything but the tallest trees and the sky. Daria pulled out a pack of cigarettes she kept hidden under the gas grill, then they sat on the top of the table facing away from the house, their feet resting on one of the plastic seat planks.

“Well,” said Jane, blowing out a long stream of smoke, “I guess you’re a little curious about what my charges were.”

Shit! Daria shook her head no, pissed that Quinn had not been as discrete as she could have been.

“I kinda thought you already knew,” Jane said. She scratched her head with her thumb, then took another drag on her cigarette.

“No one said anythin’ ‘bout it till she did,” grumbled Daria. “You said the past was gone, so let’s forget it.”

“I want to talk about it.”

Daria gave up. “Then talk.”

“I wanted a computer,” said Jane, looking at a treetop beyond the fence. “My folks kept promising they’d get me one, but they never did, they were gone so much. They used to leave travelers’ checks for Trent to use for paying the bills, after my older sibs sucked the main bank account dry and left town, but Trent, bless his heart, wasn’t very reliable, so I started paying the bills. I’d long ago figured out how to forge Mom and Dad’s names on my report cards, so things went okay for a while, as long as I could get Trent to cash the checks and get money orders. Then I got tired of nagging him, so I had Trent set up a local checking account in his name, and I dumped all the rest of the money my folks left us in there and forged Trent’s name on the checks instead. He didn’t care.

“Then, about three years ago, I decided it was time to get that computer, and I got Mom’s credit-card number from the papers she left lying around the house and I ordered my own computer using the public library’s computer. After that, I was in business. I was teaching myself graphic design and HTML with the extra software I ordered, but we had more bills and the mortgage was coming due. Then I got another kid in middle school to teach me identity theft, and I started using other people’s credit cards from websites I found online so I wouldn’t completely drain out my own account. It was tricky juggling around the money so the stolen card numbers couldn’t be traced back to me, but I did it. I’d say there was a year’s time before the police found me that I had the house fixed up pretty well. I even had a maid service and a mowing company come by now and then. Didn’t cost me a thing except a few hours a month surfing for stolen cards and stuff. Trent was my front man. Even if he was asleep in bed, even if he wasn’t even home, everyone thought it was him doing it, not me.

“What bugged me most, though, was that Mom and Dad never said anything about it. They came home three times while I was doing all of this, and they never once mentioned it. Not once! It was like they were oblivious to everything I did. That so fucking pissed me off!”

Jane stopped for a long moment to finish her cigarette. She snapped the butt away into the long green grass, then leaned back, propped up on her long arms. “There’s more.”

Daria sat motionless, her head cocked slightly toward Jane. A column of smoke drifted from her cigarette.

“I had my own pages on MySpace and Xanga and places like it, full of stuff about my life alone, though I didn’t say exactly where I was or who I was. I think it was obvious I was a kid, though. All sorts of people were writing to me, and after a while some of them talked me into getting my own hosted website, trying out my HTML and layout skills, and then they talked me into posting pictures of myself there and charging people to see them. I took all major credit cards and sent the money to my bank account—Trent’s account, I guess, but it was really mine.”

Jane coughed. “Then everyone talked me into posting pictures of myself naked. I bet you saw that coming from a mile away. Pretty soon I was doing anything and everything you could imagine, all by myself, and man, I raked in some real dough. Fourteen years old and a porn star. I had guys writing to me from every continent but Antarctica. I think I was actually famous for a while. I had so much money, I didn’t know what to do. I even thought about moving out, getting my own place through some front, but I didn’t want to leave Trent behind. He never knew a thing.”

She rubbed her nose. “Then that damn homeless guy came along the summer before I started high school, and everything fell apart. The cops got my computer, my studio, my bank account, everything. They charged me with several kinds of fraud, mostly that forgery and identity-theft stuff, but there was some wire fraud stuff, too, that almost got the feds involved. It never came to trial, though. The district attorney couldn’t see prosecuting a fifteen-year-old, especially because of the porn thing. They were going to charge Trent, but they dropped that, too, on account of no evidence. He really didn’t have a clue. We lost the house then, and finally the city cut a deal where I’d go to the county and get enrolled in Lawndale High because of the high security, but my parents would get charged with felony child abandonment and anything else the DA could hit ‘em with. That’s the real reason Mom and Dad never came back. I don’t know where the fuck they are now. Then Trent joined the Army, and here I am. I don’t think I left out much. All the charges against me were dropped, though I’m on probation until eighteen. I can’t fuck up, or else they send me off to someplace hardcore, maybe like that alternative school you went to, only maybe not as nice as yours.”

Jane looked down and pulled another cigarette from the pack. “You mind?” she asked.

Daria shook her head no, pushed over the lighter, then looked at her boots.

“So,” said Jane, lighting up, “whaddya think?”

Daria looked at the toes of her boots. “What kinda camera’d you use?” she said.

“For what, the porn shots? Oh. My dad’s a freelance photographer. He had a couple of digital cameras he didn’t need, older models, and I just set ‘em up on tripods in his studio in the basement. I ordered some books on digital shooting and nude photography from online bookstores, fixed up the floodlights, threw some pillows and blankets around, then went from there.”

“How much d’you clear?”

“What, how much money’d I make?”

“Yeah.”

Jane laughed once, but it turned into a cough. “Wow, I’m not that good at math stuff. I know I took in at least four thousand the last month before the cops got me. It was really going up. My expenses weren’t anything. I was worried I’d have to pay taxes or something if I got caught, I was making so much, but I hadn’t figured out how to hide it. I was going to get some books on setting up offshore accounts when I got busted.” She sighed. “‘Lack of money is the root of all evil.’”

“George Bernard Shaw,” said Daria without inflection. “Man and Superman. I like that one.”

“Jeez, you’re a smartass. So, you’re not gonna call me a slut? Throw stuff at me? Try to get into my pants? Probably not the last one, but I know a couple girls who tried. I couldn’t count the guys.”

Daria shook her head. “You figure out what shots in your galleries people were clickin’ on most, so you could tailor the site to get more hits?”

Jane frowned in puzzlement. “How could I do that?”

“There’re ways to track hits, get stats on who’s going where how often, ‘cetera. Depends on your software and host system.”

“Well, shit, I didn’t know everything about setting up a website.”

Daria faced Jane directly. “Your site still up?”

“Nah, it’s gone. They had it shut down with all my other websites, everything, all gone. I heard there was a website you could go to and look up webpages from years past, but I haven’t found it.”

“I know where it is. The WayBack Machine, they call it. I’ve used it before.”

“Oh.” Jane considered this. “You got a computer?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t have Internet access. Not allowed to have it.”

“You can’t? Well, that sucks. Oh, wait—do you mean by court order?”

Daria nodded.

“Hey, me too. What the fuck is up with that?” Catching Daria’s expression, Jane saw the light. “Oh, I get it. It’s how you got into Hope High. Never mind, then.”

“That wasn’t how.” Daria looked at her boots again, wiggled them back and forth. “My turn, I guess.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Sure, like I could refuse after what you told me.”

“Now, wait, I didn’t mean you had to—”

“I killed some people.”

Jane’s voice shut off. She did not move.

“I killed eleven people,” Daria went on in a monotone. “I caused ‘em to be killed. Eight were wounded. One of the eight is brain dead, one of the shooters the police took down, so I guess that’s twelve dead, really. I started what happened in Highland, the shootings. It was my fault. I made it happen.”

Jane still said nothing. She still did not move.

“That’s how I got put in Hope High School,” said Daria. Her tone began to relax. “I wrote this essay for English class . . .”

She talked for twenty minutes without stopping. She left out nothing.

When she did stop, she kicked her feet in the air for a few seconds. “Quinn found Jesus right after that. Says her guardian angel saved her, but she won’t say that to my face anymore. She’s like my second mom now, after me all the time. I guess she’s makin’ up for me. Maybe she’s makin’ up for Mom, too, not bein’ ‘round and all. Bad sister, good sister; bad mom, good mom. Quinn’s got it covered.” She shook her head. “I used to be responsible. Now I don’t do anything, and Quinn does ever’thing. I’m the bum in the family. I can’t be trusted to do squat. Ms. Li knows, the principal. Mom knows, and Quinn does. I don’t think anyone else ‘round here knows, other’n those three. ‘Cept you, now. Unless someone back in Highland lets the horse out of the barn, I’m just here.”

Jane had gotten a fifth cigarette out and was trying to light it. When she succeeded, she tossed the lighter aside and drew in a deep breath, held it, then let it slowly out. Her fingers trembled.

“That’s my story,” said Daria. “Think that’s all of it.”

“You know,” said Jane, keeping calm, “all you did was write something. You didn’t really shoot anyone.”

“That’s not how ever’one else saw it,” said Daria, an edge in her voice. “They showed me what those two boys did. I had to look at ever’one’s body, ever’ single one of ‘em. They had ‘bout five, six hun’erd pictures. Some people had videos of it, and I had to see all them, too.” She rubbed her hands together and stared into space. “There was a girl in my class, kinda smart like me, named Cassandra. She was in the minivan where the propane blew up. She caught fire and burned to death there in the car, her seat belt still on. Windshield melted over what was left of her. You ever see one of those mummies they find up in the Andes, all shriveled up? That was her, all black and gray, shriveled up. They said she fell apart when they took her out of the van.” Daria stopped rubbing her hands together and stared at nothing. “She’s in my dreams now, when I sleep. She talks to me sometimes, still all burnt up, but her mouth moves. She looks at m—”

Daria flinched and shook all over, then wrapped her arms around herself. “I can’t stand it when she does that,” she said, still talking in a monotone. “I can’t stand it. She won’t quit.”

They sat together without speaking until Daria let go of herself and got off the picnic table. “Better go in and do homework,” she said. “You can copy my stuff. I had almost ever’thing finished ‘fore we left.”

“What was it you were going to ask me?” said Jane, looking Daria in the eyes.

“What?”

“You were going to ask me something at lunch, I forgot what the question was. You started to say it before Quinn—”

“Oh, that. I was gonna ask what the worst thing you ever did was.”

“Oh.” Jane dropped her cigarette, only half finished, then got up and stamped it out. “I don’t know what the worst thing I ever did was,” she said, “but the worst thing that ever happened to me was when Trent found out what I’d been doing. The cops told him. He started screaming at me, just screaming and cursing at me, and then he broke down and cried.” She swallowed. “I felt like the lowest thing on earth when he did that. I was so ashamed, I wanted to kill myself. I thought for a long time he went into the Army just to get away from me. I guess he didn’t, but I still sometimes think he did.”

“He wouldn’t have sent you any money, then.”

Jane shrugged, looking at the ground. “I dunno. I still feel like shit about it. He didn’t deserve that.”

Another long pause. Daria rubbed her face with her left hand. “Not much in the mood for homework.”

“Me, either. Hey, can I ask a favor? Hope it won’t make you mad if I do.”

“Fuck, just ask.”

“Can I read that paper you wrote, the one you did for that class?”

Daria blinked and looked up, considering it. “I guess. I don’t mind. Why?”

“Just curious. Do you have a copy?”

“No. It’s online, though.”

“It is? You’re kidding.”

“No. Had it posted to one of my old websites, part of a blog I was doin’. I look at it now and then with the WayBack Machine.”

“Oh. But you don’t have Internet access, so—”

“Library computer.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, like me. I do that, too, use library computers. Not supposed to, though.”

Daria cleared her throat. “Now I got a question for you.”

“Shoot.” Jane flinched and looked upset. “Sorry. Jeez.”

It only brought a smile to Daria’s face. “You got any pictures of you from your porno site?”

Jane’s expression turned to one of surprise, then she wiggled her eyebrows and gave Daria a leer. “Curious, are we?”

“Yeah, a little.” Daria smiled back. “Just a little, that’s all.”

“Well, now,” said Jane, “I used to charge for that, but maybe for you I’ll make an exception—except that my website’s gone.”

“WayBack Machine.”

“Oh!” Jane laughed. “Right, I forgot! Yeah! I still remember the address, too.”

“We’ll have to be careful at the library,” said Daria, smiling faintly. “Can’t afford to get caught, either of us.”

“Sure! Man, this is so funny. WayBack Machine. Wow, those were the days.” She looked down until her gaze stopped at Daria’s bandaged hand. “That why you broke your finger?”

Daria held up her right hand and inspected the wrapping. “Yeah, ‘cause it’s what I killed ever’one with.”

“Huh?”

“My hands. By writin’.” Daria lowered her arm and shrugged. “I don’t write anymore. Nothin’. Done with it.”

“You don’t mind if I read that essay?”

“If you don’t mind me lookin’ at your pictures.”

“Nah, that’s cool with me. Look all you want, if you can find anything in that WayBack thing.” As if on cue, she and Daria started through the yard for the kitchen’s sliding door.

“I loved Judge Hangim Hye,” said Jane in admiration. “That show was funnier than hell, assuming the afterlife’s got a humorous side.”

“Come over and watch some more of it tomorrow, or whenever.”

“If I can. You know what?”

Daria turned her head and looked up over the tops of her glasses. “What?”

“This beats the hell out of talking about Jesus.”

Daria nodded solemnly as she looked away. Her face was at peace. “It does at that. It surely does at that.”

VII

Quinn put down her grapefruit spoon that Friday morning and gave her sister a troubled look across the kitchen table. “Daria?”

“Mmm?” It was difficult for Daria to say more with her mouth full of Pop-Tart.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

I guess I owe her that much, at least. Daria swallowed but kept her head down, as if the tabletop were more interesting than anything else. “Sure,” she said when she could.

“How’re things goin’? With Jane, I mean.”

Daria thought, then shrugged. She shrugged a lot lately. It was easier than giving a real opinion, and it invited less comment from others. Plus, no one died if she did. At least, they hadn’t yet.

“She seems like a nice person,” said Quinn. “I mean, I know she’s had problems an’ ev’thing, but . . . well, she is a lively one an’ all, looks to be fun to be ‘round, an’—”

Daria raised a finger on her left hand as she looked up. Quinn stopped and watched her carefully. Though Daria wondered how Quinn always seemed to know so much about things that didn’t concern her, that was not the issue at hand. “What’re you gettin’ at?” Daria asked.

“Ah, nothin’, really, I was jus’ . . .” Quinn looked down and poked at her spoon. “I jus’ want you to be happy, that’s all.”

Daria snorted lightly and reached for another Pop-Tart.

“I mean it,” said Quinn. “I really do.” She stopped poking at the spoon and sat with her hands in her lap, staring at the grapefruit half in her plate.

The urge to tell Quinn to go to hell was strong, but not overwhelming as it had once been. Daria forced it back with some effort. “She’s okay,” she said at last. “She’s not up to some people’s standards, mebbe, but she’s okay to me. She . . .” Daria stopped. It would not do to say, She understands me. That would be saying too much.

“Okay,” said Quinn. Several times after that, she seemed to be on the verge of saying something else, but no words came out. Daria waited, then finished her second Pop-Tart.

“I wish Mom was home more,” Quinn finally said, apropos of nothing. “Wish she didn’ leave for the office ‘fore we even get up. Makes the house seem too empty.”

Daria shrugged. In a way, she was glad her mother wasn’t home more often. The neglect was easier to deal with than the inevitable arguing.

“This isn’ fair,” Quinn said a few seconds later without looking up. “None of this is fair. Ev’thing sucks. I don’ want to swear, but some days I can hardly keep it in me. None of this is fair!” Her voice rose to a shout. “I hate those two boys!”

Daria stared at Quinn in shock. Quinn shut her eyes and covered her mouth, then put her hand down again. “I mean it!” she cried at the tabletop between her and Daria. “I hate them! They didn’ have no right to take ev’body’s lives away! They didn’ have no right to take away our lives, neither! I’m so . . . so fuckin’ mad at them! They took away from you, an’ they took away from me, an’ I’m glad they got killed! I’m glad the police shot ‘em! I wish I had—oh!”

Quinn shoved her chair back, jumped to her feet, and ran from the kitchen. Her footsteps echoed through the family room, then thumped up the stairs and down the second-floor hall. The slamming of Quinn’s bedroom door came a second later.

Daria sat with her mouth open, looking at the empty doorway between the kitchen and family room. After a few moments, she closed her mouth and hesitantly stood up. What do I do now? she wondered. What brought that on?

She stood in uncertainty for almost a minute. Then she cleaned up the table, got her backpack, and stood at the bottom of the staircase for another two minutes, looking up and listening to the silence. Then she left the house for school.

In homeroom, she laboriously wrote out a note with her left hand and passed it to Jane. Jane read it, then wadded it up and stuck it in her pocket. “I’ll see what I can do,” she whispered back. Because Daria and Jane did not have the same math class before lunch, Jane could hang around after the second-period English class she and Daria shared in order to catch Quinn before the latter’s third-period Language Arts class began.

The two girls made it through Current Events in good order, staying out of the shouting match that evolved over the current administration’s war record, and were fifteen minutes from the end of English (a.k.a. “Great Literary Voyages”) when the intercom clicked on. “Mr. O’Neill,” said a voice that was undeniably Ms. Li. “Is Daria Morgendorffer in your room?”

“Yes, she is!” said the teacher, peering upward as if searching for the speaker. “What do you—”

“Send her over to Intervention Services, if you would. She’s needed there for just a minute. Thank you.” The intercom shut off.

“Ah . . . okay! I will!” Mr. O’Neill looked nervously in Daria’s direction. “Um, Miss Morgenhoffer, if you would, it sounds like—”

“On the way,” Daria interrupted, getting her books together.

“See you at lunch, Brain,” Jane whispered.

“Narf,” said Daria on her way out.

“What?” said Mr. O’Neill, looking nervously after her. “Were you saying something to me?”

The closing door cut off his words. Daria walked down the hall with her books cradled in her arms, wondering what was coming next. She paused once to peer at a display case that held various school trophies and awards, including a letter Ms. Li had written years ago to the then-governor of Texas, George W. Bush, with W’s brief but chummy reply. Shaking her head, she made it to Mrs. Manson’s office and opened the door with a minor sense of dread.

Only Mrs. Manson was present. “Hi, Daria,” she said, without getting up from her desk. “Please, have a seat. This won’t take long. I wanted to see how things were going with you after your first week here.”

“Um, fine, I guess, ma’am.” Daria shifted uncomfortably in the chair across from Mrs. Manson. She glanced at the items on the counselor’s desk. One was a fresh newspaper clipping. She wondered if it was from the morning paper. Daria had not read a newspaper in depth in a year. Nothing in them interested her these days.

“Good, good,” said Mrs. Manson. “Glad to hear it. You like your classes?”

“They’re all right . . . um, ma’am.” She turned her head slightly to see the clipping better. It was about a local soldier who had just been killed in Afghanistan. Sherman, his name was: Corporal Thomas Sherman, U.S. Army.

“What’s your favorite class?” Mrs. Manson glanced over some notes on her desk.

Daria looked up and pushed her glasses higher on her nose. “They’re all okay.” No point in trying to start a real conversation here. Certainly no point in being too honest, either.

“Teachers okay, too?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Definitely not going there.

“And have you made any friends?” Mrs. Manson looked up and waited.

Oh, I get it. Jane. This is about Jane. “I guess.”

“Not sure if she’s really a friend, you mean?”

Yup, it’s about Jane. She knows I have only one friend. “No, ma’am. I do have a friend, just one so far.” Don’t need any others. One is just fine.

“Oh.” Mrs. Manson seemed uncertain of what to do next. “What’s she like?”

“My friend?” A shrug. “Fine.”

“Uh-huh.” Mrs. Manson waited for more, but nothing came. “Okay, well, we just wanted to be sure things were going well for you. All our students are important to us.”

She said “we.” Ms. Li’s in on this, too, of course. Wonder if they’ve been spying on us. What do they think is going on?

Mrs. Manson cleared her throat in the silence. “So, what kinds of things are you doing for fun?”

Where’s this going? “Um . . . watchin’ TV, mostly.”

Manson smiled. “Of course. Every teenager’s dream job. Well, Daria, have you thought about trying some after-school activities?”

Daria looked puzzled. “Like what, ma’am?”

“Oh, we have lots of things going on here,” said the school psychologist. “We’ve got a tennis team, drama society, chess club, debate team, quick recall, Beta Club, marching band, compu—” she coughed “—I mean, all kinds of sports and recreations, even some language clubs. What languages do you speak?”

“Some Spanish, tiny bit of French, but that’s ‘bout it. They didn’t have French or anythin’ like that at Hope, like you do here.”

“You and Jane have the same Spanish class, right?”

At that moment, something flickered across Mrs. Manson’s face, as if she suddenly wished she had not said what she had. Her expression returned to near-normal less than a second later. She waited for Daria’s reply.

Got it. Daria thought carefully about what she would say next. She sensed a bigger issue at hand. “Jane and I have homeroom, Current Events, English, Spanish, computers, and art together,” she said in an even tone. “We’re ‘part for math and science.”

“Have you tried making any other friends?” Mrs. Manson pressed. “Talked to anyone about common interests, asked questions, reached out, anything like that?”

“No, ma’am. I mostly keep to myself.” This is such a fucking game. If you don’t want Jane and I to hang out, just say it. Bring it on. “There a problem?” she asked with more of an edge in her voice than she had intended.

“No, there’s no problem!” Mrs. Manson forced a momentary chuckle. “We just want to make sure . . . ah, you know, that everything’s going okay for you! So, uh, no extracurriculars. Um, okay, then . . .” She rifled through a stack of papers on her desk.

She’s scared to death of me, Daria realized. She recognized the syndrome common to many of her peers and teachers at Hope High. She thinks I might kill her if she pushes me too hard. Li must’ve put her up to this against her will. Figures.

“Where is that . . . here.” Mrs. Manson pulled out a stapled batch of papers. “Here’s a list of things we have going during and after school. We’ve got yearbook, the school paper—you’re a writer, right?”

Daria rubbed her lips. “Not any more.”

“No? Why n—” The psychologist jerked, eyes wide, realizing what she had said.

“‘Cause,” said Daria evenly, “last time I wrote somethin’, lotta people died.”

Her face turning pale, Mrs. Manson became interested in scratching her scalp and looking at the paperwork before her. “Well, then,” she finally said, pushing the stapled papers across the desk, “take these with you and see if there’s anything you want to try. We’d like to hear back from you by Monday afternoon at the latest. It’s good to stay busy, and we like to see our students involved in things that, you know, help . . . well, you know. Uh, that’s all. Thank you for dropping in, Daria. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. We love having you around!”

Daria stared at the increasingly nervous psychologist, then nodded and got her books and got up. She went to the door but turned around at the last moment. “Can Jane and I do somethin’ together?” she asked.

“Uh . . . I’ll check,” said Mrs. Manson, looking everywhere in the room except at Daria. “I’ll find out and let you know.”

“‘Cause Jane’s my best friend, and I like bein’ with her.” Daria said with a deadpan expression. She waited a beat, then added on impulse, “She’s the only one ‘round here who makes me happy.”

“Oh! Right! Yes, I’m sure that should be . . . all right somehow. That should be fine, as long as the two of you . . . I’ll check on it! Don’t worry!”

Daria gave Manson a final blank stare, then left the room. She was down the hall when the bell rang for the next period. So preoccupied was she that she did not remember much of anything that happened between then and the moment she saw Jane later at lunch.

“Morris still buggin’ you ‘bout runnin’ track?” Daria asked without preamble as they headed for the lunch line.

Jane gave her a strange look. “How’d you know? She asked me in the hall on my way over here.”

“They know we’re hangin’ out together,” said Daria. “Li, Manson, mebbe some of the teachers. They don’t like it.”

“What?”

“No so loud.” Daria took a damp tray and handed it to her friend. “Relax. Think I fixed it.”

“Boy, that just—” Jane angrily bit off her next words. “Was that why they called you out of class?”

Daria noticed the students in front of her were trying not to make it obvious that they were listening in. “Eat now. Talk later.”

Jane contained herself with visible effort until she dropped their shared tray on the table with a clatter. “That really bites!” she hissed before she sat down.

“It does,” Daria agreed calmly. “Think I fixed it, though.”

“How?”

Daria grimaced, but said it anyway. “I told Manson you keep me happy.”

Jane choked off a laugh. “Wow, that’s good! I hope it works.”

“That you’ll keep me happy?”

“No, that it keeps them from breaking us up! Stay with the program, Pinky.”

“Narf.” Daria opened her milk carton and reflected. “I also asked if you and I could do somethin’ together. She was pressin’ me for somethin’, some extercurric’lar.”

“You mean,” said Jane, “you and I, doing an activity together, after school?” She gave Daria a sultry look and wiggled her eyebrows again. “Like photography, perhaps?”

“Ha, right. Not likely they’d let us do that. Writin’ essays is out, too. Lot of stuff’s out, computers for sure.”

“Hmmm. My guess is, you don’t run or anything athletic like that.”

“You guessed right.”

“Thought so. You know, maybe Morris could use your help with track. You could carry the water cooler. Hmmm, no, skip that. Has to be something smaller. A lot smaller.”

“Like your brain?”

“Not that small. Lemme think. Oh, wait!” Jane put down her hamburger. “About Quinn, I talked to her for a couple minutes. She didn’t tell me everything about what was going on, but she’s doing better, whatever it was. I said you were worried about her, and she said she appreciated that. Cheered her up a lot, in fact.”

Daria quietly groaned. “Don’t overdo it.”

“I wasn’t overdoing anything.” Jane began eating a chicken wing. “You get along better with her than I do anyone else in my family, except Trent. You just have trouble saying what you want to with her, and I have trouble saying what I want to with Trent. I don’t know how to talk to him anymore, after all the bullshit I’ve put him through.” She dropped the meatless wing bone on her plate. “You wrote more in your e-mail to him the other day than I’ve been able to write in weeks. I’m still having problems with just telling him ‘hi.’” Jane looked over at her friend, who was studying the pizza slices on her plate. “Make a deal with you. You help me out with Trent, I’ll help you out with Quinn. Deal?”

Daria bit her lower lip, then nodded. “Sure.”

“Great! Oh, before I forget, I asked Quinn to find out if I could come over this weekend for a sleepover, assuming that’s okay with you and your mom and so on.”

Daria looked up, a strange expression on her face. “Sleepover?”

“Yeah, you know, I come over with my toothbrush and crash on your sofa or something. LYRE allows it, but you have to ask a day in advance, so it couldn’t be tonight. Need a parent around, too, of course. Maybe we could get in some library time, too, if you get my drift.” She leaned closer, an eyebrow raised. “Is that okay with you, that I asked?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine,” said Daria, coming out of her trance. “It’s just that . . . I haven’t had anyone sleep over since . . . since I forget when. Sixth grade, I think. That didn’t go so well. No one’s ever . . .” She broke off and started eating her pizza.

“Hope I’m not pushing things,” Jane said, trying to sound casual.

Daria shook her head no. “I’m—” She stopped eating and swallowed “—not used to havin’ friends. Kinda new to me. I . . . I just don’t know what to do all the time. I don’t mean anythin’ bad by it. I just . . .” She shrugged. “Just not used to it.”

“Me, too,” said Jane in relief. “Funny, isn’t it? Getting hit on by guys is no problem. Sometimes I take ‘em up on it. Having someone I can talk to, though, that’s different. Speaking of which—” She pointed at Daria. “Did you have a boyfriend back in Texas?”

Another headshake—and a blush. Daria became more preoccupied with her food than before.

“If you ever want one,” said Jane, “you can have a few of mine. I don’t mind sharing.”

Daria looked up from her pizza with a glare.

“No kidding,” said Jane. “I have a ton. Take your pick. You can even have Trent when he comes back, if you don’t mind being underage. Ow!”

“Sorry,” said Daria with her mouth full. “Thought you said, ‘Take your kick.’”

“Be-yotch!” exclaimed Jane as she rubbed her leg. She gave Daria a wicked grin.

“That’s my middle name,” said Daria in contentment. “Ask anyone.”

“Wait till we get outside, girl,” Jane promised, picking up a cookie and waving it at Daria. “I’ll show you who’s the reigning Queen of Ass Kicking.”

“Reigning Queen of Ass, you mean,” muttered Daria with a smirk.

“Oooo,” Jane began, her eyes narrowing in mock anger. “You are so—”

“Knock it off here,” said a shrill voice like fingernails going down a blackboard. “What’s going on between you two?”

Startled, the girls looked up. It was Ms. Barch, the hatchet-faced, chip-on-her-shoulder science teacher. Usually she was friendly to girls. She seemed less so, now.

“Nothin’, ma’am,” said Daria, all innocence. “Just talkin’.” She could tell everyone around them had fallen silent. Uh-oh. Now what’d I do?

“Same here,” said Jane, looking at the teacher with a smile. “How’re you?”

“It doesn’t sound like you’re having fun,” said Ms. Barch sourly. “It sounds like you two were arguing.” She looked at Daria. “Did you kick her?” she asked, pointing to Jane.

Jane’s smile faded. “No, she didn’t!” she said in near panic. “She didn’t do anything!”

“I didn’t ask you,” said Ms. Barch, who had not turned away from Daria for an instant.

There was silence for the space of one breath.

“Ma’am,” said Daria in a conversational tone, “if I did somethin’ wrong, I am rightly sorry for it. I don’t ever want to cause a problem here. I admire you and would not want to get on your bad side.”

Another space for a breath.

Ms. Barch’s harsh expression melted. “All right,” she said, not unkindly. “We have a zero-tolerance policy on violence here. I want you to understand that even playing around isn’t allowed. We come down like a ton of bricks on anything like that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Daria in a low voice.

“I didn’t see what happened, but if it happens again, you—”

“Yes, ma’am,” Daria said in a whisper. She had not moved except to speak.

Ms. Barch gave the girls a last look, then left. Conversation at the tables around began to pick up again. Everyone glanced at them before returning to their meals.

Daria looked down at her food but made no move to eat it.

Jane exhaled angrily. “What the hell was she all—?”

“Shhh,” Daria whispered. “Don’t.”

Jane fidgeted for a few moments longer, then subsided. She picked up another chicken wing and turned it over in her fingers, frowning at it.

“My bad,” said Daria, her face devoid of emotion. “Wasn’t thinkin’.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t apologize to me.” Jane looked across the table and noticed Daria was noticeably pale. “You okay?”

Daria shook her head slightly. Her jaw tightened.

“You want to leave?”

“No. Just sit for a little, like nothin’ happened. It’ll go away.”

“What’ll go away?”

“Bad attention.” Daria took a deep breath. “I don’t wanna get thrown outta here.”

Jane made a face but said nothing in response. She finished her chicken wing, wiped her hands, and looked at the downcast Daria for a moment. On impulse, she reached across the table with her right hand, palm up.

Daria looked up. After a moment, she took Jane’s hand with her left hand. Jane squeezed her fingers once, then let go.

“Got a little too free,” said Daria, looking restless. “Can’t do that. Can’t mess up.”

“We need to go somewhere so we can be a little free,” Jane said. “Can your mom have Marianne come over and baby-sit us again today after school?”

Daria didn’t reply. She became increasingly depressed.

Jane waited until Daria stirred, then got up and dropped off their tray on the conveyor belt leading back to the school kitchen. They walked to computer lab, then meandered through the rest of the day until the end of art class. Daria did not speak at all during that time.

Ten minutes before the final bell, the intercom clicked on. “Good afternoon, students,” said Ms. Li in a solemn voice. “Before we get to the other announcements, I have something sad to share with you. One of our former students, Tommy Sherman from the class of oh-four, left school and joined the Army before graduating. Some of you might remember Tommy as the quarterback who led the Lawndale Lions to victory in the state championships three years ago. He became an Army Ranger and was assigned to Afghanistan in two thousand five.”

The class was silent as the principal continued: “We received word last night, and some of you might have heard it on the news this morning, that Corporal Tommy Sherman was killed in action in the renewed fighting around Kandahar. He was twenty-one years old.” Several students gasped. “The school is looking into the possibility of having up a memorial service for him next Friday during fifth and sixth period, in the auditorium. Details will be announced next week. We are very sorry to have lost him.”

As Ms. Li continued with other announcements, Jane shook her head. “Trent knew ‘im,” she whispered grimly. “They were in the same grade.”

“You know him, too?” whispered Daria, out of her shell for the moment. The rest of the class was talking, covering their conversation from the teacher’s ears.

Jane shook her head. “Only by reputation. He got into trouble all the time. Trent said Tommy quit school and joined the Army to keep from going to jail here, get him out of the area. I don’t know what he did, but it was pretty bad.” She blew out her breath. “Guess it didn’t work out like he thought it would.”

Daria had fallen silent again. They left when the bell rang and went outside, preparing to walk to Daria’s house.

Mrs. Sullivan was waiting for them on their way out. “No visit today,” she said briskly, looking right at Jane. “Get on the bus and head back. You didn’t clean your area last night like you were supposed to. You’re going back to clean it now.”

Jane’s eyes got huge and she sucked in her breath. “Mrs. Sullivan, please!” she cried. “I’ll clean it up when—”

“You know the rules, Jane.”

Lips pressed together, a red-faced Jane stared at Mrs. Sullivan for several long seconds before she lowered her head in rage and shame.

“Can Jane come to my house tomorrow for a sleepover?” Daria asked suddenly.

“That depends on her,” said Mrs. Sullivan, still looking at Jane. “And it depends your mother, too, I might add.”

“If you could work out,” Daria went on, “that’d be great. We . . . we’ve been helpin’ each other.”

Mrs. Sullivan gave Daria a curious look. “That’s good to know,” she said at last, looking back at Jane. “I’ve checked her teachers’ reports online and noticed her grades are going up. No detentions this week, either, except for Monday.”

“I’ll get everything cleaned up when I get there,” Jane mumbled. “I’ll do my chores tomorrow morning, too.”

“I don’t mean to be cruel, dear,” said Mrs. Sullivan. “We have to—”

“—stick to the rules, I know.” Jane turned to Daria and flashed a smile she didn’t feel. “See you tomorrow, Pinky.”

“You’re Pinky,” Daria said. “Don’t get confused about that.”

“Yeah, you wish.” Jane looked at the buses. “I’d better run.” She took off at a quick jog and did not look back.

Mrs. Sullivan’s car keys rattled in her hand. “I’d better be off, too,” she said, but she eyed Daria before she went. “Jane’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

Daria could think of no good response to that. She walked home alone after Mrs. Sullivan left. It seemed to take forever without Jane.

Blonde-haired Marianne was getting out of her white Neon as Daria walked up. “Don’t unpack your telecommutin’ laptop,” she told her mother’s legal secretary. “Jane couldn’t come over.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that.” Marianne jumped back in her car. “Gotta get back! We have a big case tomorrow and your mom needs her brief!” She took off in a heartbeat, engine buzzing away.

Daria dropped her books by the staircase up and listlessly wandered into the kitchen. There was nothing in the refrigerator worth snacking on. She wondered what time her mother would get home. Daria planned to be in her room with the door locked when she did. She sat down at the table and looked at dust floating in the air, illuminated by the setting sun.

She thought about Trent and wondered if he’d gotten her e-mail. She wondered if he was safe where he was in Iraq. The war there was going badly of late. Troops were being pulled out and brought home, but many had to stay no matter what. Transportation troops were in the middle. Some were coming back, some weren’t yet.

She wondered what Trent really thought of his little sister.

Or what he’d think of her, if he knew what she had done.

A half hour later, the front door opened and a number of girls came in. Most went upstairs. One walked around to the kitchen.

“What’re you doin’ here?” Quinn exclaimed, stopping in her tracks. “Where’s Jane?”

Daria shrugged. “Couldn’t come over today.”

“Oh.” Quinn pulled on the bottom of her pink blouse. “She all right?”

Daria nodded absently.

“You all right?”

Daria started to shrug, then looked at her sister. “Quinn?”

Quinn paused and stared at her, nervous and alert.

“M’ sorry,” said Daria. She looked down at the tabletop. “M’ sorry for . . . for not bein’ . . . any good at bein’ a sister.”

Quinn’s mouth fell open. “Why’d you say that?” she asked. “You’re a fine sister.”

Daria shook her head. “M’ not,” she said. She looked around the room below eye level. “Messed up a lot. Can’t seem to fix it. Can’t fix anythin’ anymore.” She took off her glasses, laid them on the table, and rubbed her face with her left hand. Her right hand still throbbed under the bandage, but the pain was tolerable. She heard Quinn walk closer.

“I’m not sorry you’re my sister,” Quinn said, her arms crossed in front of her.

“I would be,” said Daria, hiding her eyes.

“I love you.”

“I don’t know why.”

“‘Cause you’re my sister.”

Daria shook her head. “That’s a terrible excuse.”

“Can I hold your hand?”

“No,” said Daria after a pause. She swallowed. “Could use a little hug, though.”

“Oh. Okay.” Quinn came in carefully, but she put her arms around Daria and gently pulled her close. After a moment, Daria’s left hand came up and pressed Quinn closer. They stayed like that for perhaps a minute, hardly daring to breathe, keeping the moment.

Daria finally pulled away. Her face was wet and red. “Don’t leave your friends upstairs all alone,” she said, her voice breaking.

Quinn kissed her on the forehead, then left. She knew when it was time to go.

Alone again, Daria crossed her arms on the kitchen table and rested her head on them, face down. She stayed that way for a long, long time.

VIII

Saturday morning did not begin on a promising note.

“Daria,” said her mother, her arms crossed against her crisp ivory blouse, “as you recall, we had a family meeting about this before we moved here. My job is keeping all three of us afloat. If you want to continue having a roof over your head and food on the table, you’ll understand how important it is that I come and go from work as often as required to get the job done. Your sister has had friends over, and she doesn’t need anyone to supervise them!”

“My situation isn’t hers, though,” Daria repeated, fighting for calm: Steady, keep it together, don’t blow up. “Can’t you telecommute from home for the weekend? We aren’t using the dining room, and you could set up—”

“No, I can’t, and I think it would be better if you found yourself a friend who didn’t need to be supervised. I don’t even know why she needs to be supervised. What is the deal with that, anyway?”

“I thought her social worker ‘splained it to you, Mom.” But perhaps it’s for the best that either she didn’t or you weren’t listening when she did. Here’s my version, then. “Jane’s homeless. She lives in a county-run ad’lescent shelter, and they want to make sure she’s cared for wherever she goes. That’s all.” Unless by some horrible accident you discover the rest of the story. I can tell now you won’t be receptive to it.

“I did talk with that lady, Ellen or Scully or whatever her name was, but I was watching a teleconference at the same time. Does it have to be me here, and not another adult? Maybe I could call your aunt Amy and have her come over. She hasn’t seen you and Quinn in ages. I wish she’d get that stick out of her butt. Can’t you talk to one of the neighbors and see if—God, look at the time. I have to go. You handle it and call me in an hour. I should be back about five this evening if everything goes well. Maybe your friend can come over then. I’m sorry it has to be like this, but that’s life. Goodbye, sweetie.”

Daria bit her lip as her mother left. She had been hoping to get Jane over much earlier than five p.m., but she knew she would have to take what she could get. She did have Mrs. Sullivan’s cell-phone number, thanks to Jane. Maybe there was a way out.

“Let me think,” said Mrs. Sullivan, who answered the phone after five rings. Daria heard her yawn. “I don’t see why your mother can’t stay at home,” the social worker grumbled. “Single parent working on a weekend. Damn disgrace. That’s why kids today are . . . oh, sorry, don’t mind me. My mouth runs over sometimes.”

“I know the problem,” said Daria blandly.

“Hmmm, maybe Heather can do it. Call your mother and see if she minds if a college student comes over to sit with you and Jane, then call me back. Heather’s a sophomore at Middleton College. She’s assigned as a temp to LYRE on weekends for one of her classes. She didn’t flunk out in her freshman year like a lot of them did, so she’s got something going for her upstairs. I don’t have much for her to do around here today. The problem kids are in juvie for a little vandalism party they had, so things are quiet. Jane’s one of our better kids. For God’s sake, don’t tell her I said so. It’ll go to her head.”

“Scout’s honor,” said Daria, who had never been a Girl Scout.

“Good girl. Tell your mother Heather’s doing this for college credit, so she’s not to be paid, not even a tip, no matter what she says. Give her an inch, swear to God. You get back to me soon as you can, so I can get back to sleep. Back to work, I mean. I was up half the night with the Mongol Horde.”

“Will do. And thank’ee.”

“You’re the one that deserves the thanks.”

Daria made a noncommittal noise, then hung up and keyed in the speed-dial number for her mother’s cell phone. The phone rang once before she heard a sigh, followed by: “What is it, Daria?” A Bee Gees disco CD played in the background on nine speakers with THX sound. Her mother was still in the Navigator on the way to work.

“Solved the problem,” said Daria, raising her voice to be heard over “Stayin’ Alive.” “Don’t worry ‘bout it no more.”

“Don’t use double negatives, Daria. You know how I hate that. Anyway, that’s great. I wish you could have done this before I left this morning so I wouldn’t have had to—”

Daria hung up and rang Mrs. Sullivan back. “Mom’s jiggy with it,” she said. “Can Heather drive Jane here?”

“How early do you want her?”

Daria glanced at her watch. It was ten till nine in the morning. She was glad she had showered and dressed early. “Now.”

“I need to do paperwork, so thirty minutes, max.”

“Done.”

“See you later.”

“Bye.”

Daria went upstairs to her mother’s master bedroom and went through her nylons-and-socks drawer until she pulled out an envelope at the bottom marked “Emergencies Only!” She pulled out four twenties from the thick pile of bills, stuck those in her pants pocket, then put the envelope away. She checked herself in the bathroom mirror—hair wasn’t too bad, forest-green tee, black jeans, boots, glasses cleaned on a towel, good to go—then went down the hall to Quinn’s bedroom and knocked.

Quinn came to the door barefoot in a knee-length white T-shirt. Green paste (perhaps it was cold cream) was smeared over her face. Upward Bound! read the shirt, with a smiling angel in flight pointing the way heavenward. “Wuzzup?” she said blearily.

“Mom’s gone,” said Daria. “College student named Heather’s comin’ with Jane in thirty. She’ll stay till Mom gets back.”

Quinn yawned. “‘Kay, great,” she mumbled. “M’ goin’ over t’nother girl’s house to study an’ stuff. Got the ‘dress an’ num’er here somewheres.”

“No prob. Good luck with the beauty sleep.” Daria went back downstairs and looked for breakfast in the fridge. It was hard carrying things around with her right hand bandaged and splinted, so she took all of that off and gingerly flexed her hand. Her middle finger ached, but she figured it would heal on its own. If it didn’t . . . well, then, life sucked, as usual. It wasn’t as if she planned to write many essays these days.

When her Pop-Tarts and reheated bacon were finished, Daria sat in the family room, channel surfing and fidgeting until she heard the doorbell ring. She dropped the remote and went to open the front door.

On the walk immediately outside stood Jane, a lit cigarette in hand, in her usual tight skirt, tee, sneakers, orange anklet, and jacket with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Today’s clothing color was blue, except for the black tee. Standing beside her was a young woman with long wavy chestnut hair, two long braids on either side framing a face dominated by Ray-Bans, light freckles, and a Virginia Slim dangling from full, Angelina Jolie lips. The young woman wore black bellbottoms, goddess boots, a fringed buckskin jacket, and a wary look.

“Daria Morgendorffer?” said the woman in buckskin, cigarette still in her mouth.

“Prob’ly,” said Daria.

“Hold still.” The young woman raised a video phone in her right hand and aimed the unit at Daria, then moved it back and forth once to get a full view. Daria glanced at Jane, who shrugged in response.

“I’m Heather,” said the girl, snapping the phone shut and dropping it in a jacket pocket. “I’m a psych major from Middleton. Child Protective Services made me the temporary guardian for Lucrezia Borgia here, just for today. I e-mailed your photo and hers and a picture of your house back to LYRE, in case anything happens that’s not supposed to happen. You two can do what you want, but don’t leave the house without me and forget about doing anything illegal. Don’t even try it. No boys, no booze, and no drugs except caffeine and nicotine. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Daria.

“On the up side, I’m not a damn babysitter, so I don’t need to be in your business all day. I got stuff to do. Just stay within shouting distance so I can tell if you’re alive.”

“Got it.”

“Cool. Lemme get my stuff from the car, then. Don’t lock me out, or I’ll hit 9-1-1 and you can explain it to the police.” She turned and walked back to a red Sunbird parked on the curb.

“Lucrezia Borgia?” said Daria, raising an eyebrow at Jane.

Jane rolled her eyes. “It was an accident. I handed her a dirty coffee cup this morning when I was working in the cafeteria, and she said I was trying to poison her.”

“Looks like her java fix didn’t take.”

“We had to leave before her second cup. She’s not a morning person. Neither am I, for that matter.”

“Seem pretty awake to me.”

Jane grinned. “I’m out of LYRE for two whole days. I haven’t felt this good since I discovered orgasms.”

Daria gave her friend a pained look. “Right. I’ll get a pot goin’ in case. You want coffee, too?”

Jane’s grin widened. “So, when did you discover orgasms?”

“We got cinnamon, hazelnut, butter rum, mocha, kahlua, and regular,” said Daria flatly. “And mebbe decaf.”

“I’d guess fourteen,” said Jane. “You probably read about it at the library first, checked out a few books on it, then wrote a term paper.”

“Mom also has a machine that makes espresso, latte, mocha, and cappuccino. And I won’t hawk a loogie in your cup if you shut up now.”

“Black with lots of sugar for me.” Jane flipped her cigarette away. “Three cups to start with.”

“You got TiVo?” asked Heather, walking back carrying a black commuter bag with a Gunslinger Girl anime figure on the side. Her sunglasses hung an earpiece from the front of her buckskin jacket.

“Yep,” said Daria, eyeing the bag’s emblem. “You want coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks. Espresso, if you got it, all I can drink.” Heather marched into the family room and deposited her bag on the sofa in front of the plasma TV. “Mind if I park here? I gotta lotta calls to make, and I have to do something about a paper for class.”

“Fine with me,” said Daria. “Be right back.” She went into the kitchen and started the coffeemaker and espresso machines. When she returned, Heather was working the TiVo remote, looking up recent episodes of Lost. Jane was lying sideways on the love seat, reading a news magazine upside down.

“Can I smoke in the house?” asked Heather, scrolling down the programs lists on the TV.

“No,” said Daria. “Mom’s number-one rule. We can go out back, though.”

“You’ll have to show me around,” said Heather. She tossed the remote aside and leaned back, looking up at Daria. “I know her story,” she said, nodding at Jane. “What’s yours?”

“I have a story?” asked Daria.

“Everyone’s got a story,” said Heather. “What’s your thing?”

“I’m a mass murderer,” Daria said after a moment of thought.

“Well, least you have a hobby to fall back on when things get dull,” said Heather, missing the look Jane was giving Daria. “You from Texas, Oklahoma, or what?”

“West Texas. What’s your story?”

“Mine?” Heather exhaled as she thought. “Drink too much, smoke too much, broke all the time. Credit card’s down about two thou, still going down. Boyfriend’s being an asshole. The usual.”

“Why’d you get in psychology?”

“Felt like it. My brother’s retarded. He’s okay, just needs help with things. Got interested in doing stuff for others as a result, and here I am. Stupid me.”

“Got any life advice for us?”

“For who? You and Jane?”

“Yep.”

“General advice, or advice about today?”

“General.”

Heather looked at the ceiling and scratched her upper lip with her thumb. “If you’re gonna drink,” she said, “then lock the door and drink alone. You won’t get date-raped that way.”

“That’s enough advice for me,” said Jane, swinging her long legs off the love seat and leaving the magazine behind. “Anyone up for a smoke?”

Daria walked Heather through the kitchen, stopped at the refrigerator to confirm the existence of large quantities of soft drinks and junk food, then headed outside to the picnic table. As they sat and smoked, Heather talked about Middleton College, which Daria recalled was the place where, by coincidence, her parents had met in the late 1970s. Heather’s stories were markedly unlike those Daria’s parents used to tell.

“Everyone says it’s all about studying and getting grades,” said Heather, knocking ash from her cigarette. “But it’s really about money. That’s the bottom line. My ‘rents are on me twenty-four seven to cut up my credit card and get a better job, and then get a really big job after grad school to pay off my student loans. This shit really gets me down. It’s not about helping people at all. It’s about the paycheck and the bills and lots of little stuff. Sometimes I feel like dumping it and working as a cashier at K-Mart for the rest of my life. If I get a Ph.D., I can get a starting salary in the mid-thirties, maybe forty. They say fifty and up, but I’ve been checking and I haven’t found anything like that. My mom got laid off at work two months ago, and my dad’s got two jobs, so I can’t ask them for money. It’s fucked up.”

“What’s the academic life like at Middleton?” asked Daria.

“The what?”

“Academics. Seminars, lectures, classes . . .”

Heather looked blank.

“The parties,” amended Jane.

“Oh. Stay away from the open punch. Bring a Coke or something and pretend you’ve got a little extra in it, maybe splash a little bourbon around the rim. Tell people you’ve got a cold sore so you don’t have to share it. Bring a spare in case your first one runs out. Always make sure your cell phone’s fully charged. And never go into any room with a bunch of drunk guys in it, especially frat guys. They are the worst.”

“And always drink alone,” finished Daria.

“You’ll never regret it,” said Heather. “Trust me. You wouldn’t believe the shit that goes on.” Then she told them what really went on.

“I like your idea about working for K-Mart,” said Jane, when Heather was done.

“Wonder how Mom and Dad made it through,” said Daria. “Or mebbe I don’t wanna know.”

“You don’t.”

“So,” said Daria, dropping her cigarette butt and crushing it out, “nobody goes to college to learn anythin’ anymore?”

“They do,” said Heather, “but you gotta be cold and practical about it. If the binge drinking or drugs or getting pregnant or STDs or killing yourself or anything like that doesn’t get you, the debt definitely will. Never forget the money. I wish I’d known what it would be like before I got there. I might’ve saved myself some angst. Too late, now.”

“What’re y’all doin’ back here?” called Quinn, peering around the side of the house. “Better air y’selves out ‘fore you come back inside, or Mom’ll have herself a fit.”

They went back in. Quinn took off for her friend’s house while Heather unpacked her laptop, PDA, and other wireless paraphernalia on the sofa. Daria led Jane upstairs to her room. “S’ not much, but it’s home,” said Daria, letting Jane in.

“A crazy lady lived here?” said Jane, admiring the gray padded walls and thick maroon carpeting.

“That’s what they tell me.” She watched Jane explore the room, then walked over to her bed and fiddled with a remote, aiming it at a TV set mounted near the ceiling on a metal platform. “See if anything’s on.”

“Nickelback,” said Jane, peering at Daria’s CD collection. “Pearl Jam, Evanescence, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters . . .” Jane turned, giving Daria a significant look. “Hole?” She turned back to the collection. “Goo Goo Dolls, Nirvana . . . you are the one true alternative girl, aincha?”

“What you got ‘gainst Courtney Love?” asked Daria, frowning at the TV, clicking through satellite channels.

“Nothing,” said Jane, looking through Daria’s meager paperback collection now. “She’s just darker and harder-core than most people out there.”

“What’d you like listenin’ to?”

“Oh . . . anything. I mean it. Trent’s pretty much hard rock and alternative, too, so you two would fit together great, but me, I could listen to anything. Mom was always into ethereal kind of New Age stuff, Celtic and ambient and all that, and Dad was into jazz and Brazilian stuff. Ron liked top-40 and easy listening and old rock. Penny was into Cuban, revolutionary Latin music, and Summer played nothing but rap. Country takes me a while to get into, but I can do that, even. Disco kind of gives me a headache, though.”

“Thank God for little blessin’s.”

“You know,” said Jane, turning from the bookshelves, “I sort of expected you to have more books. You struck me as the reading type.”

“Don’t read much anymore.” Daria stopped and stared at the station on the TV screen. “Like the Conspiracy Channel?”

“Never heard of it.” Jane wandered over and stood behind her smaller friend. “Why don’t you read anymore?”

“Makes me think too much.” Daria handed the remote to Jane over her shoulder, then walked over to her bed and propped herself up against the wall with a pillow. She tossed a second pillow over beside her for Jane’s use.

Jane studied the TV, which showed a view of the World Trade Center in New York, pre-9/11. The volume was very low. She then walked over and flopped down on the bed beside Daria, lower legs dangling over the side, her upper body supported on her elbows. She dropped the remote between her and Daria. “What is it you don’t want to think about? Or can I guess?”

“Ever’thing.”

“What did you used to like reading about?”

“Ever’thing.” Daria shifted on the bed. “Poetry. Short stories. Novels. History. Science fiction. Fantasy. Thrillers. Politics. Philosophy. Anythin’ I’d get my hands on.”

Jane was silent, watching as the TV showed an amateur video of the second jet hitting the South Tower of the WTC. A second amateur video followed, then a third.

“After ever’thing happened,” Daria went on in a monotone, “it wasn’t worth it. Wasn’t interested in anythin’. If I thought too much, I got to carin’ too much, and then I got mad that nobody was doin’ anythin’ to fix the mess we were in, only makin’ it worse, and then I’d realize nothin’ good was gonna happen anyway, no matter what I did, and then I’d do somethin’ stupid, like try to piss people off to punish ‘em for bein’ stupid, or write a paper for a class that makes people go crazy. Wasn’t worth it. Wasn’t worth carin’ ‘bout anythin’. Only made it all worse.”

The TV showed an extreme close-up of the second plane’s collision with the South Tower, with small arrows highlighting different blurry and indefinite spots of light below the plane. “You care about your sister,” said Jane.

“That’s different,” said Daria slowly.

“How is that different?”

“It just is.”

“Lemme see your hand.”

Daria held up her left hand, still watching the TV.

“No.” Jane rolled over and reached across Daria, ignoring the latter’s cry of “Hey!” to pick up her right hand. “Is it healed yet?”

“Damn it!” Daria tried to get her hand away, but Jane was strong and had a good grip. “It’s fine! Get up off me!”

Jane let go and rolled back with a smirk. “Not very friendly for someone who wants to look at my naughty bits.”

“That was online, not in real life,” growled Daria, examining her right hand. Her middle finger still hurt, but not very much. “Careful of my hand.”

“I thought you said it was better.”

“It’s not perfect.”

“You need to do something besides punch a wall when you get mad at yourself. Me, I go get laid when I feel bad. Fixes me right up.”

“That’s great, but I’m not you.”

“When’d you take the bandage off?”

“This mornin’, ‘fore you got here.”

“Which doctor put it on you?”

“Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman.”

“Quinn? Really? She’s got a great future in surgery. Has she been fixing you up like this before?”

“S’ talk about something else.” Daria frowned and focused on the TV. Diagrams of the interiors of the two WTC towers were being shown, with places marked “EXPLOSIVES” every few floors.

“So, ask me something,” said Jane.

“What?”

“I dunno.” Jane leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. “That’s an interesting crack up there. What does it look like to you?”

“What?”

“On the ceiling. What’s that look like?”

Daria glanced up. “A herd of beautiful wild ponies running free across the plains,” she said, then looked back at the TV.

Jane squinted. “Nah.”

“What’d you see, then?”

“Hmmm. Looks to me like lightning . . . a bright bolt of lightning shooting down from a cloud, from the hammer of Thor as he rides across the heavens at the front of a great line of storms. I see war and rumors of war. I see flashes of light from the mouths of guns in the darkness, children running and screaming, shadows and rocks, and the lightning curls above.”

She sat further up on her elbows, still looking up. “I see rain falling from the faces of the dead. The lightning twists among them. I see angels with swords falling upon the earth to do battle, but they battle with us, the mad and the damned. There is war in heaven, war on earth. Hurricanes and fire, smoke and flame, damnation and ruin, darkness over all.”

In the silence thereafter, Jane stole a glance at Daria. She was staring up at the ceiling with a look of dull surprise, her mouth open.

“What do you see?” whispered Jane.

For a long minute, Daria continued to stare upward.

At last, she lowered her head, looking in the direction of the TV without seeing it.

“Nothin’,” she said. “I see nothin’.”

“Nothing at all?” asked Jane.

“Nothin’.”

Jane looked at the TV. Blueprints of a Boeing 757 were being examined by someone with a pointer, showing locations of passengers. “Does Quinn ever talk to you about religion?”

“Used to. Doesn’t so much anymore.”

“We had a guy come by LYRE now and then on Sunday mornings and hold services. It wasn’t like real church, more like little get-togethers—read the Bible, say prayers, talk a little. They told me to go once when I was in a bad mood, and just for the hell of it, I went. Trent had just left for the Army, I think. Anyway, I was there in the audience, or congregation, whatever, wasn’t but a couple dozen people there, and the sort-of preacher guy asked me to pick something from the Bible for him to read. I told him, ‘Psalms Sixty-Nine!’ to get his goat. That really got the staff steamed up, but the guy said sure, he was okay with it, and he read it.” She hesitated. “It wasn’t what I thought it’d be.”

Jane was quiet for a few moments more. “I really hate it when people try to shove Jesus down your throat, especially when you can tell they haven’t been following anything Jesus said since day one, it’s just their way of feeling better about themselves without having to look at what they’re really doing. They can just blame everything on you. I wanted to shove it down their throats for a change. Psalms Sixty-Nine, I thought that would work. It’d be some off-the-wall thing about who begot who and so on, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t like that at all. It turned out it was about some guy who was in real trouble and asking God for help. He’d screwed up big and everyone was piling in on him and cursing him, tearing him down more than he deserved, and he couldn’t take it anymore. This guy knew that God knew all about him, everything he’d done that was bad, but he still thought God would help him out. I was so surprised when he read that.”

Daria lay motionless for a time. “So, what happened?” she finally said.

Jane shrugged. “I thought a lot about it. The semi-preacher guy didn’t come back; he was reassigned over to Carter County. I didn’t go back to Sunday prayer after that. I just thought about it.”

“The Psalm say if God helped that guy out?”

“No. It was just his prayer for help, nothing else.”

“Bible’s funny,” said Daria, watching red circles appear around the photographed heads of some but not all of the 9/11 hijackers. “Mom and Dad used to take us to church in Highland till I started to arguin’ with the Sunday school teacher. Lady was tellin’ us ‘bout the widow’s mite one time, ‘bout the old lady who gives ever’thing she has to the church, two cents worth, while rich people give lots more than she does, and the teacher said, who did the most good, the widow or the rich people? ‘Course I said the rich people did ‘cause they gave more, and the church’d do lots more good works with the money.

“The teacher, she didn’t like that, and we had ourselves quite an argument about it right there in class, and I think I finally said somethin’ like, maybe the rich people should stop goin’ to church and just let old widows go, so the church’d have ‘bout fifty cents in its collection plate and ever’one’d go home happy. The teacher yelled at me then and said I didn’t get the point, and I said I got the point loud and clear, which was that the church wants people to dump ever’thing they’ve got into the collection plate and go ‘round poor all the time, and that was when I was sent out of the room to sit with Mom and Dad in the sanctuary. We didn’t go back very often after that.”

Jane tried to rub the smile from her face without success. “What else did you learn in Sunday school?”

Daria chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Stuff that made ever’one mad. I was workin’ my way up to my little essay, I guess. Thing that made everyone maddest was when we stayed after services one day for a picnic behind the church, and I asked the minister if the Bible was all true, and he said yes, and then I asked what the most ‘portant part of the Bible was, and he said the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and then I asked him why the Gospels didn’t agree on what happened. If all four Gospels were true, then why didn’t they say the same thing ‘bout the most ‘portant thing in the Bible? I had a Bible with me and I was tryin’ to show him where all the contradictions were, and he said I was too young to understand, and I said I’m old enough to know when I’m bein’ lied to, and ‘bout that time Mom showed up and dragged me out of there. I shoulda taken the hint and shut up. Wasted my time and ever’one else’s time tryin’ to make sense of it all, and made ever’one mad, too. I was pretty mad myself, ‘specially after Mom whacked my butt.”

Her gaze lowered. She was not looking at the TV on the ceiling. “Wish I’d learned my lesson back then, ‘stead of now, with ever’one dead. Wasn’t worth it. Nothin’ was worth that. Wish I’d learned to just shut up and let ‘em do whatever they wanted. Didn’t matter if they lied and acted like hypocrites and ignored Jesus. What mattered in the end was what I did, and that made the real difference.” She reached down and scratched her thigh. “That was when I quit readin’.”

“Least you listen to music, still.”

“I guess.”

“Did one of your CDs break?”

Daria looked over. “What?”

“There’s a piece of what looks like a CD on the floor over there. I saw it earlier.”

“Oh.” Daria looked at the TV again. “Broke it. Dumb thing to do.”

“You get mad a lot.”

“I guess.”

“You need to get laid.”

Daria coughed and laughed at the same time. “Fuck you,” she said at last.

“No,” said Jane, wagging a finger. “Fuck you.”

“Knew this was a mistake,” said Daria, trying very hard to look angry. “Knew as soon as you got off the bus you were gonna screw up my life.”

“We got a ways to go on that, kiddo,” said Jane, sitting up on the bed. She turned to smile at Daria, then noticed an odd look on her face. “What?”

“Oh, nothin’.”

“Tell me.”

“My dad always called me ‘kiddo.’” Daria looked away, her fingers playing with the blanket. “I miss him. He has a bad temper like me, lets it out wrong sometimes, but I still miss him. He was on my side, most of the time. He was the one who came and got me when the craziness started. Mom found Quinn at home, but he found me.”

Jane looked at the floor and let a few long seconds pass. “I could use an Ultra-Cola.”

“Me, too.” They got off the bed, straightened their clothing, and headed out the door to go downstairs.

Heather came around the corner at the bottom of the stairs from the family room and started to come up, but stopped when she saw them. She had a sheet of printer paper in her hand.

“For you, Jane,” Heather said. “It’s from your brother in Iraq.”

Jane hurried down the steps to snatch the page from Heather’s fingers. “Hey, thanks!” she said, then kept walking until she stood by the windows in a corner of the family room, reading the message to herself.

“She asked me to check her e-mail,” Heather told Daria by way of explanation. “She’s allowed one account through the county’s computer system, but everything that goes in and out has to be reviewed by her guardian because of stalkers, predators, spam, porn, etcetera. Mrs. Sullivan just released this one.” Heather turned to Jane and called, “I didn’t read it when I saw it was from Trent, by the way.”

Jane did not answer. She turned her back to Daria and Heather, still reading.

Daria looked over at the TV set and Heather’s informal command post on the sofa. “How’s the war goin’?” she asked.

“Pretty good so far. I haven’t spilled espresso on anything, at least.” Heather crossed her arms and eyed the TV, which was paused in the middle of an episode of Lost. “I was about to write to my cousin in Indiana to see if he’d do a term paper for me. He’s a grad student in social work at IU. I’m hoping he’ll write it if I send him one of my baby pictures, framed and everything. He’s a sucker for sentimental stuff like that.”

“Baby pictures?”

“Yeah, well, he’s one of those really emotional kinds of gay guys who get all weepy over family stuff. He’s so easy to bribe, and he never asks for money. Lucky me.”

“Don’t have any cousins worth bribin’,” said Daria. “Got one on my mom’s side I heard was datin’ a guy in Washington and bein’ real secretive ‘bout it, and the other on my dad’s side is playin’ Happy Homemaker in Ohio somewheres, poppin’ out kids like biscuits.” She cleared her throat. “Wouldn’t it mebbe be easier in the long run to write your own paper? I mean, so all the mistakes in it aren’t someone else’s?”

“It’s like this,” said Heather, not in the least offended. “I’ve only got so much time to do what I have to do. Tests, finals, face-to-face stuff, I have to do that myself. Homework, most of that I have to do, too. But papers, researching stuff—that takes time I don’t have. I’m like a middle manager. You have to be, to get through. I get my assignments from the teachers, then delegate work-for-hire to the freelancers. I review their work when it comes in, pay them with my credit card through PayPal, then download their files and fiddle with them to give them my voice and fix anything that needs to be fixed. Plus, if I have to turn over electronic copy, I have to reset the file’s properties or cut-and-paste everything to a new file so a teacher won’t find out the paper started on someone else’s computer, unless the hired guy can do that himself. Some can.”

Daria looked skeptical. “Don’t a file’s advanced properties show things like how often you’ve worked on a file and when you started it?”

“I’m all over it. If I have to, I start a junk file when I get a paper assignment, mess with it a few times a day, then fill it with the final paper when I get it and delete the trash. No one’s figured it out yet. I was sure someone would.”

“Hmmm. You seem to have the bases covered . . .” Daria broke off, following the startled look she saw Heather give Jane.

Jane was leaning against the back of the love seat. Wet streaks ran down from her eyes to her chin. She was still reading, though the letter trembled in her hands and she was taking short, ragged breaths.

“You okay?” said Heather. She uncrossed her arms, ready to move in.

Jane reached the bottom of the letter, sniffed, glanced over it once more, then folded the paper up and stuffed it in a pocket of her blue jacket. “Man,” she said, wiping her eyes with her fingers, “that was a long one. Longest one he ever sent me.”

“Is Trent all right?” Daria felt herself caught between wanting to comfort her friend and worrying she would do the wrong thing.

Jane nodded. Her voice was rough. “He’s fine. I warned you I get emotional, didn’t I?”

“What’d he say?” asked Daria.

“Oh . . .” Jane pulled a handkerchief from another jacket pocket and blew her nose. “He said he got your e-mail. And he wants to meet you and find out what kind of accent you really have.”

“Yeah, right.” Daria felt her face get hot. Trent wants to see me? ME? Why?

“Oh, he did. I don’t know what you wrote to him, but it really hit him hard. Trent’s never written that much to me in his whole life. That was a hell of a letter.” She blew her nose once more, then wadded the handkerchief and put it away. She looked at Daria with joyful blue eyes. “Thanks, amiga. I owe you for that.”

“What’s amiga mean?” asked Heather. “You don’t mean that old dinosaur computer, I assume.”

“It’s Spanish for ‘girlfriend.’” Jane ran her hands through her hair, then dropped her arms to her sides. “Whew! Time for some coffee.”

Heather stayed in the family room to watch the rest of her Lost episode and compose an e-mail to her sucker cousin in Indiana. Jane got an oversized mug full of black coffee with about a quarter of a bowl of sugar in it, then nodded toward the back door again. Daria followed her outside to the picnic table again, pulling out a cigarette.

When Jane got to the table, however, she put down her mug. “Gimme that,” she said quietly, snatching Daria’s cigarette from her mouth before Daria could react. Jane dropped it on the table by her coffee.

“What are you—” Daria began. Her words turned into a muffled cry as Jane advanced on her without warning and enveloped her in a full-body hug. Daria struggled at first, though not as hard as she could have. She had never been a hugger—physical closeness was too unnerving—and she was intensely aware of unfamiliar sensations: the warmth and pressure of Jane’s body, soft and strong from her face down to her hips; the scent of Jane’s perfume and the freshly laundered smell of her jacket; the sound of Jane’s breathing. It was an invasion of Daria’s cherished personal space . . . but, oddly enough, it wasn’t all that bad.

Then Daria realized Jane was crying again.

“Hold still,” whispered Jane. “I won’t do anything funny. Stay still just for a moment.”

Daria stopped struggling and tried to relax, but the closest she could manage was to close her eyes and hunch herself up. Jane’s hug wasn’t like the hug Daria had gotten from Quinn, but it had a reassuring quality of its own. It was the first time in memory that someone other than her parents had hugged her with such abandon.

It was the kind of hug that implied she was worthy of being loved.

But that was something Daria was neither ready for, nor truly believed.

“Thank you for what you did,” Jane whispered when she could speak. “That was the best letter I ever got from him. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. Thanks, amiga. Thank you so much.”

“Okay, you’re welcome!” said Daria, her eyes still shut. “Don’t break my glasses!”

Jane gave her a last squeeze and let her go. She stepped back to get her coffee and gave Daria a bright smile. “I warned you I get emotional,” she said.

“Never said I didn’t believe you, did I?” Daria retrieved her cigarette and took on the opposite side of the table, as far from Jane as possible without leaving the area. “It wasn’t like I asked you to prove it.”

Jane unfolded the letter she had taken from her pocket, then held it out to Daria, easily spanning the picnic table with her arm. “Here, read what he said. Take it.”

“That’s personal,” said Daria with a frown, the unlit cigarette in her fingers—but she was already looking down at the page and scanning the words.

“I want you to see it,” said Jane.

Daria gave up and took the paper in the hand holding the cigarette, but in moments she completely forgot about it.

Dear Janey,

I hope you are doing good. I am sorry it took so long for me to write. I think it was too long. I started this letter to you yesterday but have had a lot of trouble saying what I want to say. I don’t know why. Writing songs was way easier. I have to send this letter now, even if it has mistakes, because I am leaving soon on another road trip, a long one.

I got a note from a girl who says she is a friend of yours at school, named Daria. She said a lot of good things about you. She sounds like a cool person to hang out with. But she also said some things that made me think a lot about how I treated you. I don’t think she meant to do it, but I’m glad in a way she did. The more I think about it, and I have had a lot of time to think as I am still in Ramadi (we did not move to Baghdad last month like we thought we would), the more I need to talk to you about what I am thinking (write to you about it, I mean). I don’t know if it will make anything better for you when you read this. You can tell me if it does, or not, whatever. So here it is.

What I think is that I owe you an apology, maybe a lot of apologies, maybe a ton of them, for how I acted over everything. I am ashamed of what I said to you that time I got mad and lost it. It wasn’t your fault, what you did. It was my fault. I should have taken care of things at home like the bills and stuff, but it was easier let you do it. I don’t have a good excuse for what I did, or why. It was my responsibility, but I slept instead and I blew it.

You won’t believe it, but I’ve changed a lot since I’ve been over here. I take care of a lot of stuff for my unit, day and night. If I don’t do my job right, bad things happen, and I don’t mean being yelled at by my company commander, which he does sometimes. You depended on me, too, and I should have been there when you needed me. That sits on my mind a lot after what Daria said about me being your big brother. I think about it even when I should be sleeping. None of this would have happened if I had done what I was supposed to do. None of it.

Daria said you look up to me, but if I had been a good big brother, the kind I should have been, you would not have gotten into so much trouble. You did what you did because no one looked out for you, and the person who let you down most was me. Not Mom or Dad, not anyone else, just me, because I was there and they weren’t.

We are going north in a few hours to deliver fuel. I wanted to send this before I leave. I am sorry I let you down and hope maybe you will forgive me. I want to be different from now on, a better big brother, the big brother I should have been. I would like to see you again if you could stand to see me. If not I will understand. I will still send money to you either way. You deserve a better start. You were always the smart one in the family. I think you were the only realistic one, too. I wish I had learned more from you than I did.

Take care of yourself. I don’t know when I will come home again. Daria asked about that. They’re changing our departure dates again because of the fighting (not allowed to write about it). I would like to see Daria when I get back. I know a few guys here from Texas and they have a strange way of talking, like they were from a TV show, but don’t tell Daria that. Maybe you can send a picture of you two by mail (they still cut off attachments, so e-mail pictures won’t work). My unit address is the same as before, but I will be hard to reach for a while except by e-mail, if we have time. I promise to write back faster than I have until now.

I love you, Janey. You are all that I am living for.

Trent

Daria lowered the letter. She was speechless. After a moment, she numbly handed the letter back.

“What’d you think of it?” asked Jane, putting the letter away again.

Daria shook her head, unable to sort out her feelings. She was glad that Trent had said so many good things to Jane—the apologies were especially welcome—but had Daria’s note to Trent truly caused that? It was too good to be believe, which in Daria’s experience meant it probably wasn’t true. It was hard to know what to think. Perhaps it was true, though, that she had finally caused some good to occur—a small amount of good, compared with the evil she had wrought, but still . . . it was a nice thought if so.

If so.

As Daria was lost in thought, Jane wandered over to the back fence in the silence, looking at one of the small shrubs there. “You have to understand how I feel about Trent,” she said. “He’s been my hero since forever. He graduated high school when I was in middle school, and he wanted to do something special to celebrate, so he went to a tattoo parlor and had Maori tattoos done across his shoulders and down his arms to his elbows. He told me he almost got tattoos on his face, too, like a real Maori, but he chickened out at the last minute. He got the idea from a tattoo magazine. I mean, that was so very Trent to do that.”

Jane walked back to the table and put down her large mug, then took off her jacket and dropped it on the bench. “I couldn’t be left out,” she said, reaching down to peel off her T-shirt.

Daria’s heart caught in her throat. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching. “Jane? What’re you doin’?”

Jane stripped off her shirt, dropped it on the table, then stretched her arms upward and turned in place on her toes, still wearing her white jogging bra. Across her lower back and hips, rising on either side over her ribs to her shoulder blades, then over to the base of her neck, was a stunning panorama in blue, black, and maroon. Arcs and whorls, spirals and pinwheels, diamonds and hearts, and trees filled with long-tailed monkeys and coiled serpents ran riot, crowned with a red sunburst spanning her shoulder blades. The blazing star’s face bared long fangs at the viewer with a fierce expression.

Eyes huge, Daria looked Jane up and down. Mazelike patterns ran down Jane’s upper arms to her elbows, and further designs reached down into her skirt from her lower back. How far down the tattoos went, Daria hardly dared imagine.

“Isn’t it something?” said Jane. “I always wanted to be like him somehow. I always wanted that connection.” She dropped her arms and picked up her shirt, put it on again, then pulled on her jacket as well. “Trent’s looked out for me since I was in diapers. Even when he was just a bum, I loved him. He was the only one in the family who acted like I mattered, like I was really there.” She picked up her coffee and took a sip. “And that’s the end of my dysfunctional family story. And that’s why I was so happy to hear him say what he did.”

“I see,” said Daria, dazed. “How’d you have all that done, again?”

“Guy in Swedesville did it. Trent went with me, in loco parentis. He must have been loco to let me do it. I paid for it with my checking account, having Trent sign the check, just a few months before the cops got it.” Jane studied Daria for a moment. “I can’t tell if you’re underwhelmed or what. You’re a little hard to read sometimes.”

“Overwhelmed,” Daria admitted. “I just . . . I’m glad that ever’thing turned out okay with your brother and all. I don’t know what else to say.”

“People tell me I’m a handful.” Jane sat on the table across from Daria, holding her mug in her lap. “You said something about your dad when we were upstairs. What’s he like?”

“What’s my dad like?” Daria finally remembered to light her cigarette. She put the lighter away as she took a long drag and exhaled. “What’s he like realistically, you mean?”

“If you must.”

“Well . . .” A look of intense concentration came over Daria’s face. “My dad and I kinda get along. It’s funny, but we get along best when we aren’t doing anythin’, but we’re doin’ it together. I mean, we’d sit together, like at the table readin’ the paper or in the livin’ room watchin’ TV, but we didn’t really talk a lot. We didn’t need to. Dad’s sort of . . . I dunno, sort of messed up. He had a lot of trouble with his own dad when he was growin’ up and never got over it. My grandpa was in Vietnam. He was Special Forces, one of the ones who went over early. Said he was called ‘Mad Dog’ by the other guys when he was over there. That’s all my dad ever calls him, Mad Dog. I don’t know if Grandpa made him call him that or what. Grandpa’s dead—he died when my dad was a teenager, ‘bout my age—but sometimes it’s like he’s still ‘round, the way my dad goes on about him. The past makes Dad a little crazy.” She shook her head. “I wish he’d forget it and let it go. He always claims Grandpa said he’d be a failure, and he can’t ever get over it. I just wish he’d quit.”

“Was your grandfather abusive to your dad, do you think?”

“Prob’ly. Makes sense. I don’t know all what happened, ‘cept Dad got yelled at a lot and sometimes he got hit. Grandpa wasn’t ‘round that often. He was overseas most of Dad’s childhood, and he drank a lot when he was home. Dad drinks sometimes, but he never hit me and never hit Quinn, that I know of. He does yell, though. He will do that. He doesn’t tell me I’m stupid or anythin’, he just yells, like, oh . . . will you and your sister stop that damn arguin’, it’s gettin’ on my nerves, how can I get any peace ‘round here gah damn it, and so on and so forth. Then he starts yellin’ ‘bout his job, how he hates workin’ for the man he does, but he keeps on workin’ for him so we have a house to live in, etcetera. He and Mom had all the same lines: they’re puttin’ food on the table, why aren’t we all grateful for it, stop arguin’, all that crap.”

“Your mom ever spank you?”

“Nah. Just the once, when I was pissin’ off the minister. That fired her up pretty bad. Dad sometimes hit walls and stuff when he’s mad, beat on tables, but he never hit us. Not ever.”

“What’s he do? I mean, for work.”

“Oh. He’s in marketin’ for Howie Zowie’s, big retail company in Lubbock, kind of like Wal-Mart or K-Mart or Target but not as successful. It’s local only. Howie Zowie’s going under, I think. Can’t compete. I’m worried Dad’s gonna be out of a job soon. He talked ‘bout doin’ consultin’ work freelance, but I think makin’ the jump scares him. It would me. Jobs are real scarce there. If his business didn’t work out, he’d be worse off than before, so I think he’s hangin’ on, tryin’ to make it work long as he can.” She scratched her nose. “Plus, I don’t think Dad’s all that . . . I dunno, all that easy to get along with. It’s not like people’d come runnin’ to see him, I guess.” Daria looked mildly embarrassed. “I mean, he’s my dad and all, but you wanted realistic, so there it is.”

“Did he and your mom fight a lot?”

Daria exhaled, blowing long clouds of smoke from her nose. “Yeah,” she said, and left it at that.

“Your grandfather couldn’t have been that old when he died,” said Jane. “You said your dad was still a teenager.”

“He died of leukemia when he was in his thirties, ‘bout thirty-five,” said Daria. “Think it might’ve been from Agent Orange or somethin’, but I never heard anythin’ else ‘bout it. I just left it alone. Dad doesn’t talk ‘bout what happened when Grandpa died. He just went on to college later and met my mom and that was it.”

“Are you going to see him anytime soon?”

“I dunno. Not likely. Maybe Christmas, somethin’, I dunno.” Daria knocked ash from her cigarette. “Now I got a few questions for you again.”

“Um, okay.”

Daria turned her head to look at Jane directly, sitting back with her arms for support on the tabletop. “What was that like, takin’ pictures of yourself?”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “You mean the nudie pictures?”

Daria nodded. Her blank expression was impossible to read.

“Oh. Well . . .” Jane scratched the back of her neck and smiled, looking at the fence. “It was exciting, to tell the truth. It was something new. I liked it that guys wanted to see me like that. It was . . . it was a turn-on. No one knew about it but me, and it turned into this kind of secret fantasy thing I had, just me and the camera and the computer and all these guys sending me mail on how much they loved me, how good I looked, how great I was, all that. I mean, I knew I wasn’t supposed to do it, that there was something wrong with it, but that made it all the more exciting. It just blew me away. You should have seen the stuff they sent when I got the tattoos and started posing then. Man, they went wild. It was such a feeling of power, that I could do all that and have these guys begging me to do things, like I was famous.” She sighed. “I mean, yeah, they were using me, they really were, but in a way I was using them, too. None of them ever showed up at my door or anything. I mean, some asked about it, but I always said no, so I didn’t feel threatened over it. It was my little secret.”

Her smile became mocking. “Of course, it didn’t stay a secret long. A lot of people here now know it was me, which is a big reason I have to live at LYRE and have people supervise me—” Jane jabbed a thumb behind her at the house “—until I’m eighteen. They can’t watch me all the time, though. I’ve found ways around it.” She looked upward at the sky, then down at the orange band on her right ankle. “Hope no one was listening to that by satellite.”

“So, you kinda knew what was goin’ on was illegal,” said Daria. “Or mebbe not illegal, but wrong, say.”

“Yeah, sort of, but I didn’t really care. It just made it more fun. Me, Jane from middle school, the renegade, wild thing. Aside from all the trouble it got me into, it was all right. I wonder if I’ll keep thinking that when I’m older, or if I’ll regret it. I hope not. I’m not one for regrets, that’s for sure.”

“You knew it was wrong, but you liked it,” said Daria evenly.

“Yeah, exactly.” Jane sensed something else in Daria’s voice, and she turned her head to watch her.

Daria nodded and looked at the fence. After a long moment, holding the smoldering cigarette in her lap, she nodded again, slowly. “You know a thing is wrong, but you do it anyway. It’s like somethin’ inside you makes you do it, like it’s not you, but it really is you. You wanna do it, and you don’t care ‘bout the consequences. You wanna stick it in their faces one more time, give ‘em one more good one to think about, watch ‘em squirm when they see a little of the real . . .”

She broke off and put the cigarette between her lips.

“We’re not talking about my nudie pictures anymore, are we?” said Jane, worried where this was going. She had the odd sensation that Daria had in the last few moments aged greatly, so that her face looked weathered and old, beaten and tired. The sensation passed when Daria knocked ash from her cigarette again and brushed off her pants.

“It’s funny,” Daria said, looking down at nothing. “Here we are, you and me, and there’s that guy, Tommy whatever—Sherman, I think—”

“That’s it.”

“—Tommy Sherman, then, and you say he did somethin’ so bad he had to run away from it, but we don’t know what it was, so he goes off in the Army and gets killed and now he’s a hero, no matter what it was he did, but you and me, we’re sittin’ here and no one thinks we’re heroes. Well, okay, so you’re a hero to your fans, but not me. Definitely not me. I wonder if I got killed doin’ somethin’ big, people’d see me different. Prob’ly not.”

Jane gave Daria a disapproving look. “I wouldn’t like for you to get killed.”

A shrug. “Gotta go sometime.”

“Not right at the moment, no, we don’t.”

“Well, I’m not plannin’ on it, so don’t worry ‘bout it. It wouldn’t be worth dyin’ just to look good to ever’one, anyway. Big waste of time. Dyin’s not worth the effort.”

Jane nodded. “Living is worth the effort.”

Daria snorted. “Don’t know if I agree with that, either.”

“Interesting discussion. So, not to change the subject or anything, but is there anyone you look up to? I mean, like I do with Trent?”

Daria shrugged at first, then thought about it. “My dad,” she finally said. “Not the same, but I guess that’s it.”

Jane finished her coffee and set the mug aside. “How so?”

Her companion took a deep breath. “I guess ‘cause my dad stuck by me the whole time, through the whole fuckin’ mess, even in the worst of it. I think he wasn’t so much stickin’ by me ‘cause he thought I was innocent—I mean, he did at first, but as ever’thing started comin’ out, he still came to see me, but he stopped sayin’ it wasn’t my fault. He’d just come and stay with me in the evenin’s and talk a little, bring me somethin’ to read when I was bein’ held in juvenile, ‘fore they transferred me to Hope and let me go home again.”

Daria leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, hands clasped together before her with the cigarette smoking in her fingers. “It was weird,” she said. “I felt like he accepted that it was me that did it all, that I’d caused what happened, and he’d decided to face it and deal with it. He never said that, but I could feel it. I’d never expected that in him, that he’d stick by me. It’s funny ‘cause I never thought anythin’ like how disappointed I was that he didn’t think I was innocent anymore. I was thinkin’ instead that I was glad he was there for me when I needed him, and I really did need him. I’d never thought that’d ever happen with him, as he was so hard to reach all the time, but when he stayed with me, it helped. I kinda accepted after a time that I was responsible, that I had their blood on my hands, all those dead people, and I had to deal with it, too.”

She finished the cigarette, then dropped the butt in the grass. “I never talked ‘bout this with anyone in my life,” she said, staring at her clasped hands.

Jane fished for a reply, found none, and said nothing.

“You know,” Daria continued, “I kinda wanted to see your pictures not ‘cause I’m gettin’ into you or anythin’, it’s not that, but I all the time think too much on what happened, and I think I really need to see someone else’s life instead and get my mind on some other topic. I could really use a break. That’s why I like that judge show on cable so much. It’s crazy, but I don’t have to think when I watch it. I can sit on my ass and get a little peace.”

Daria turned her brown eyes on Jane, a smile growing. “Love your tattoos, by the way. Those’re great. Are Trent’s anythin’ like those?”

Jane smiled back and shook her head. “I overdid it,” she said. “Trent’s are nice, but I blew a wad on mine.”

“It shows.”

“Thanks. So, you didn’t answer my earlier question.”

“What . . .” Daria rolled her eyes, then looked at the grass again. “Forget it. I’m not talkin’.”

“You ever get laid? Fucked? Do it?”

“Let it go.”

“Nah, I wanna know. Have you done it?”

Daria bit her lips together and lowered her head. Her face was a wall.

“You can tell me.”

Daria shook her head. Something in her manner had changed.

Suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. Jane sensed it and, like that, she knew. Oh, shit. I can’t believe this. God, I can’t believe it.

“I’m sorry,” she said when she could find her voice. “I was . . . never mind.”

Daria shrugged, eyes closed. “Nothin’ happened,” she said in a distant voice.

Jane started to scoot closer but stopped when she saw Daria tense up and withdraw. A small silence reigned.

“You want to go back inside?” Jane asked.

A headshake no.

“You want me to go away for a while, and you be by yourself?”

Another no, more empathetic.

Jane tried once more. “Then, can I sit a little closer to you? I won’t try to hug you. I just want to sit next to you, if that’s okay.”

After a long pause came a soft, “Okay.”

Jane moved over until she was a foot from her friend, then sat in a posture very much like Daria’s: leaning forward with her head down, elbows on knees, hands clasped. They did not touch.

“If you need me, I’m here,” Jane whispered.

“I’m okay,” Daria said, her voice barely audible. “Nothin’s wrong.”

“I’m still here,” Jane whispered back.

Daria nodded. Her eyes opened, glistening and full. She looked at the grass and said nothing more.

They sat like that for fifteen minutes, listening to distant traffic and the birds and the wind. When they were done, they picked up after themselves and went back inside.

“How late are you girls going to be up?” asked Helen Morgendorffer that night, after pushing the power-off button on her ultra-slim phone and noticing it was 10:26.

“Be a while yet,” Daria called from the family-room couch in a deadpan tone.

Helen dropped her phone into a pocket of her suit-dress and came out of the kitchen. “Homework done?”

“Done,” said both girls in near chorus, watching the plasma television.

“Your Aunt Rita said hello. Nice that she found the time to call between going to spas and tanning parlors.” Helen peered at the widescreen set. “You’re watching courtroom TV?”

“Chalk it up to your good influence,” said Daria without looking away from the set. “Like mother, like dau—”

“Here it comes,” Jane interrupted, pointing at the TV. “Slow it down.”

Daria raised the remote and held her thumb over a button.

On the TiVo-replayed “Judge Hangim Hye Show,” the judge was speaking to a disheveled, wild-eyed defendant in chains, asking who would represent him at his trial. The man jumped to his feet and shouted, “My lord and master! SATAN, DEFEND ME!”

Daria’s thumb hit the button. The scene slowed down as red smoke roared from the floor of the courtroom in a huge jet, then ceased. When it cleared, a tall man with tousled gray hair, a boyish face, and an infectious grin stood where the smoke had appeared, speaking into a cell phone. He wore a dark suit and black wingtip shoes of unusual size.

“Turn up the volume!” cried Jane.

Daria did, then thumbed off the slo-mo button.

“Gotta go, Hillary,” said the man with a warm Southern accent. “Right. You, too.” He snapped the phone shut and beamed at the judge. “My wife was unable to be here, Your Honor,” said the man as Daria quickly turned the volume down again. “She sends her regrets. I’ll take over Mister Bloodbather’s case, if you don’t mind.”

“Told you!” said Jane, slapping her thigh. “Told you that was him!”

“Not really him,” muttered Daria. “Good synthetic, though.”

“What kind of courtroom TV is this?” asked Helen, making a face.

“My kind,” said Daria. She reached across Jane’s lap for the popcorn bowl.

“Well, don’t stay up too late.” Helen cast a disapproving eye at the elaborate tattoos visible down Jane’s arms, then shook her head and headed for the staircase. “I need to finish a couple of briefs before I turn in. Big case starting Monday.”

“Knock ‘em dead, Mom,” said Daria blandly.

Helen stopped and looked back. “Daria!”

“G’night, then,” Daria added, raising a hand to wave for a half-second before returning to her normal posture.

Glaring at her eldest daughter, Helen Morgendorffer stomped up the stairs.

“How much did you give Heather?” asked Jane, watching the defendant’s attorney charm all the women in the jury box.

“Eighty,” said Daria, but with her mouth full of popcorn it came out as “A-E.”

“Eighty dollars?”

Daria nodded and took a moment to swallow. “Not so loud.”

“Why? I thought she was supposed to work for free.”

“Wanted to make sure she was prop’ly motivated to come back again and babysit us when we needed her. I was bein’ a good middle manager, like she suggested. Liked her advice, too.”

“Where’d you get the money? Was that your allowance?”

“Nah. It was ‘mergency money. Seemed like a ‘mergency to me, so . . .” She shrugged.

“Huh.” Jane turned back to the TV and scratched under her T-shirt. She had taken off her jacket hours earlier. “For eighty bucks, she’d probably cut classes to babysit us on a weekday.”

“I’d pay more for a weekday. What time d’you have to be back tomorrow?”

“Four o’clock, no later. Will your mom be here to drive?”

“Hope so. Prob’ly should nail her door shut to make sure she’s here.”

“I love this house. You got lots of room. Wish your mom was into foster care. You want another sister?”

“Not if I have to share the bathroom with her, no.”

“That was so funny, the way Quinn looked when she saw my tattoos. I thought her eyes would fall out. She recovers fast, though, I’ll give her that.”

“She’s okay.” Daria pointed. “There, in the audience. Look at that lady.”

“Where?”

“Blue dress. Oh!” She covered her mouth, delighted and horrified at once.

Jane howled with laughter. “Damn!” she gasped when it was over, “they think of everything on this show!”

“Gotta love it.”

The episode ended. Daria put the show on pause in the middle of the credits.

“That was great,” said Jane, grinning. “You know, the Monica thing happened when I was in grade school, and this boy in my class asked the teacher, ‘What’s a blowjob?’ God, I thought I would die, that was so funny.”

“Mmm.”

“You sleepy?”

Daria roused herself and looked away from the TV. “You kiddin’?”

“Me, neither. Was that the last episode that TiVo had? Damn. What else is on?”

Daria clicked through the menu, then highlighted an item. “Conspiracy Channel. How ‘bout that one?”

“Sure. Anything’s fine as long as it isn’t church stuff.”

Daria clicked the remote. A male voice-over was describing a vast array of cross-shaped antenna towers seen over a snowfield. He kept saying the word harp.

“Think they’re going to destroy the world before we graduate high school?” asked Jane, a foot in her lap so she could pick her toes.

“Might, but kinda doubt it.”

“That make you happy or sad?”

“Neither.”

“Your mom or your sister have any nail polish? I want to do my toenails.”

They went upstairs. Quinn had a half-empty bottle of Blazing Fireball Red nail polish in the bathroom she shared with Daria. Through the closed door to the master bedroom, they heard fingers hitting keys on a keyboard in a long, steady rain.

They went back downstairs and picked up where they left off. There was tornado footage on TV, intercut with scenes of scientists calmly sitting at long rows of computer monitors, then more pictures of the big antenna towers rising from the snow.

“Heather drove me by our old house on the way over,” said Jane, bending over to paint her right toenails first. She moved the orange anklet’s antenna out of the way. “A family named Johnson lives there now, according to the mailbox. I saw some kids’ toys in the yard. Bet they remodeled the whole interior. I wonder if Penny came back and got a little surprise when she rang the doorbell.”

“She the one in Mexico?” MEH hee koe was how Daria pronounced it.

“Yeah, Chiapas. She’s got red hair, kind of a jerk. I haven’t heard from her in two, three years. Could be dead, I guess.”

“Hope not.”

Jane blew a bubble with her gum, snapped it, finished her big toe. “Haven’t heard from Summer, either, in a few months, but that’s no surprise. Probably still in rehab. I don’t know who has her kids. Once she found out I couldn’t babysit for her anymore, she stopped coming by.”

“Quinn keeps tryin’ to convert me. Tells me God loves me, so on. She doesn’t try so much as she used to, right after she found Jesus. Guess she got tired.”

“Ron tried to get Trent to buy into this Internet thing he had going. I think it was one of those pyramid schemes, but I’m not sure. Trent said he’d think about it, then didn’t do anything. It drove Ron crazy. That was great to watch.”

The TV showed an Air Force hurricane hunter flying over cloud tops, then more intercutting with the same group of calm scientists fiddling with their control panels. One scientist flipped a switch, and the next scene showed hurricane winds tearing the roof off a hotel and hurling it away in pieces.

“Who’d you say that girl was Quinn’s spending the night at?” asked Daria.

“Stacy Rowe,” said Jane, working on another toenail. “She’s one of those high-anxiety freakazoid types. I saw her pass out a couple of times in the hall when she got real worried about something.”

“Quinn’ll prob’ly try to convert her, too.”

“I think Stacy’s already a Christian.”

“Prob’ly not Christian enough,” said Daria, watching as sea waves pounded a shoreline in a storm. “Quinn’ll fix that.”

“She’s pretty nice, really, for an evangelist.”

“We used to fight a lot, though.” Daria raised her arms and interlocked her fingers on the back of her head. “Hit each other. Mostly me hittin’ her.” Her face reddened. “That was stupid. I quit it. Mostly it was right after ever’thing happened, when I was goin’ through changes and havin’ a bad time. I was crazy. Finally got over it.”

“That’s good.”

“Wish I hadn’t done it. My temper’s not too good. Better now, though.”

“I can understand that. Glad it’s better.”

Daria took out her gum and wrapped it up in its old wrapper, then put it on the coffee table. Jane did her middle toe. The TV showed the antenna towers in the snow again, this time with arrows pointing upward from their tops.

“I wasn’t raped,” said Daria. Her voice choked off on the last word, and she cleared her throat several times. “I didn’t—” cough “—mean for it to sound like I was, outside. It was—” cough “—what happened was, I—” cough “—sorry, I was going to class and I used to take this shortcut through—” cough.

By the fourth cough, Jane had recapped the nail polish and was sitting beside Daria on the sofa. Daria paused to rub her eyes under her glasses. Jane put her hand on the sofa cushion near Daria but did not touch her. Not yet.

“Sorry,” said Daria, straightening her glasses and looking at the TV again with a red face. Words poured out between interruptions. “This guy caught me in the maintenance ha—” cough “—sorry, hallway near the loading docks. No cameras there. This was back at Hope. He was a senior in for drugs, big guy. He didn’t really rape me, he—” cough “—made me do stuff, that was all. It w—” cough “—’cuse me, it wasn’t anythin’. I was okay. It didn’t happen again. I didn’t go that way no more. He got sent to another facil—” cough “—damn it, another facility for fightin’ with staff. That’s all.”

“Who else knows about this?” asked Jane, watching Daria’s face.

“Uh—” cough “—no one, I think. I mean, he does, I guess, but no one else.” Cough.

“Did you tell anyone?”

Daria shook her head rapidly. “Wasn’t worth it. Wasn’t important.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Jane reached for Daria’s shoulder.

“No, it really—AH, NO!” Daria jerked away from Jane’s hand and shuddered violently, her arms covering her face. “Don’t touch me!” she yelled. “Don’t touch me!”

Jane reared back but kept her arms out, ready to block or grab. She thought Daria’s mother would hear and would come downstairs to find out what was going on, but that didn’t happen.

“I’m okay!” Daria said, not shouting as loudly now. “It’s okay!” She shuddered again and took a deep breath, then took off her glasses to wipe her face. “It’s all right! I’m fine. I’m okay now.” Her voice was almost normal. “Sorry. I’m fine. Forget it. I’m okay. Nothin’ happened.” She put her glasses back on, then took them off immediately and began wiping the smudged lenses on her T-shirt. “Sorry. I’m okay now. You didn’t do anythin’ wrong. I’m all right.”

“Okay,” said Jane, watching her.

“I just didn’t want—” cough “—want you to think, you know, it was anythin’. It wasn’t. I don’t do that a lot. It was okay to hug me, by the way, earlier. That was okay. Kind of surprised me, but that was o—” cough “—okay. Just be careful, but don’t worry ‘bout it. I don’t like to be touched a lot, but I’m okay. See?” She put her glasses back on and gave Jane a semi-normal Daria-esque look. “All done. See?”

“Okay.”

“I’m not a freak.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Okay, then. Paint your toes or . . . whatever. Sorry.”

Jane held out her hand. Daria stared at it, then took it with one of hers and squeezed hard. “Sorry,” she said, her voice quiet and low. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

Jane nodded.

“Okay,” said Daria. She let go of Jane’s hand and looked back at the TV again. “I’m okay now.”

“Want me to paint your toes?” asked Jane. She was serious.

“Uh, um, I, uh . . . uh, sure. Whatever.”

Five minutes later, Jane sat on the floor with one of Daria’s feet in her lap, painting her toes.

“Never did this before,” said Daria, still watching the TV but occasionally looking down to see what Jane was doing.

“First time for everything,” sa