Heather's Club

It had been about a month or so since she had forged that note for Sandi and her little circle of friends, a month or so since she had found herself being drafted to be part of Sandi's cult of shallowness.

The Lawndale High branch of the Fashion Club.

Jane couldn't put her finger on it, but somewhere in middle school Sandi Griffin had found a new depth of viciousness that no one at Lincoln Middle School had known existed.

But Sandi had found it and by the end of the school year she completely dominated the social hierarchy, and somewhere below the bottom was Jane Lane, the artsy stand-offish girl with a messed up home life, being raised by the one elder sibling that still gave a damn while her parents and other brothers and sisters were scattered across the world.

Being bored during her summer months between Junior High and High School, Jane had studied calligraphy and quickly discovered she had a knack for forging other people's handwriting. In the digital age this didn't mean much... But neither the local middle school, or the high school as it turned out, had wanted to spend the money to give the teachers a digital means to give out passes for the bathroom, hallway passes, passed out of class, things like that.

They were still all handwritten on slips of pink paper, and Jane figured it wouldn't be too difficult to get her hands on some blank permission slips and forge her way out of some scrapes in the future.

That brings us to how she wound up in Sandi's posse, in the beginning of Freshman year Jane had put her talents to good use, having swiped some blank permission slips from Mr. O'Neill had been a golden ticket to do whatever she felt like doing.

And Jane had found she had a mischievous side and had used those slips to slip around the school and plan some pretty hysterical pranks if she did say so herself.

'The Joker of Lawndale High' as the students called the mystery bandito had put fake bugs and snakes in lockers, rigged the bathroom doors with buckets filled with soapy water, nothing too serious and nothing that would warrant Ms. Li to bother herself by finding out who was pranking the students.

Especially with the rumors that she was busy trying to cover her ass on some 'missing money' from the budget, Jane suspected that she'd get away with it, claiming it was just a terrible misunderstanding... While on her back with whoever was doing the investigating.

But rumors spread about Jane and her ability to forge passes out of class, she wasn't sure who spotted her, but someone did... And then Sandi found out just when she was about to be sent to some 'Self-Esteem Class' due to her latest bout of bitchiness.

"How was I to know that Ms. Bennett would be, like, insulted because I pointed out how her skirt showed off her varicose veiny legs?"

Jane hadn't dignified that with an answer, but instead found herself accepting Sandi's offer to forge a note from Ms. Manson get her out of the Self-Esteem Class in exchange for joining Sandi's Fashion Club.

The rest of the school year became a blur, she had gotten a massive makeover by Sandi and her two minions, Tiffany and Stacy, and they were pieces of work. Stacy had always been a fragile, doe-eyed girl... Until Sandi had gotten her claws into her mid-8th grade and made her join the cheerleading squad.

The reason was obvious now since with her more muscular frame, Stacy was the unofficial enforcer of the group, but Sandi knew every single psychological trigger that Stacy had. She could have Stacy go from hysterics to frothing rage and back to timid wallflower in minutes, Jane had seen her do it for amusement plenty of times.

Then there was Tiffany, in her green dresses, or green blouses with skin-tight jeans, or vintage 80's green powersuits, seemingly just a yes-woman, but Jane had seen the gleam in her eyes whenever she watched Sandi indulge in her power.

That gleam was pure, green-eyed envy.

Thankfully for Jane her elder siblings had gone to high school in the 80's and 90's, along with stuff her parents had bought in their youths that was scattered about the house, an unofficial museum to vintage fashions of eras gone-by.

And since vintage was 'in', she had a free wardrobe to raid at will, and stuff that didn't fit could easily be modified with some sewing.

But she couldn't wear her red lab coat anymore, she couldn't wear anything red, green, or yellow, those colors were already 'taken' by the other girls.

And she had learned NOT to cross Sandi on this little idiosyncrasy.

She Jane found herself favoring blues and blacks, and had even made some scratch at the vintage store when she found a trunk of clothes from the EARLY 20th century. It's not like her parents would miss it, since Trent was pretty sure they were somewhere in the Golden Triangle.

The new Jane Lane, member of the Fashion Club had stupidly revealed her role as 'The Joker' of Lawndale and that had given Sandi an idea, an awful, horrible, and yet exhilarating idea.

While the students had cellphones and texted each other like crazy, there were times when it was too risky to text, but less risky to write a handwritten note and pass it to a recipient.

The fake-note trick made it debut in Lawndale, and within a matter of weeks few students trusted the written word after semi-popular girl Kelly was utterly humiliated by Senior jock and football player Rex Tillerson when a fake note from him professing his love for her caused her to do something stupid, ask him out.

When his girlfriend Victoria had found out, first she had turned on Rex, but he managed to turn the blame onto Kelly and the fight between the senior head of the cheerleading squad and average girl Kelly was still spoken in hushed whispers in the halls of LHS.

Jane had quickly come to hate the Fashion Club, but she hated herself even more for being a part of it, a willing part of it since the only way out was to go down, to go so down the social food chain that it wasn't even remotely funny.

Summer had come with it's promise of vacation, but since the Club all lived in Lawndale it was no real escape, Jane made pilgrimages to the houses of her 'friends', and they avoided hers like the plague... Sandi making thinly veiled barbs about it the one time the subject had been broached.

Jane had been fuming inside, but swallowed it all up with a smile as fake as plastic surgery.

And now... Summer was over and everyone was back at LHS for Sophomore year.

It was the first week back, and they were getting a big influx of new students during the week, staggered on their entry days so they didn't overwhelm the school was Li's excuse.

If Jane hadn't been outside delaying entering hell, she'd have never have seen the new arrivals.

A very nice new Lexus had pulled up and out popped a pretty redhead in trendy preppy clothes, she had a sweet little smile and Jane knew that Sandi would cut her into sweet little pieces if she tried to knock Sandi out of her spot at Queen of the Sophomores and Freshman, and some of the Juniors and Seniors who found her terrifying.

Then come around the side came another girl, very nice brown hair, and her outfit reminded Jane of a Japanese school girl, what with the black blazer top and matching short black skirt, but that uniform wouldn't have had combat boots and a black overcoat that would have Li confiscating it at warp speed for fear of the many shotguns it could possibly hide.

Jane sat on the grass quietly, observing the two new girls, while the redhead (she said her name was Quinn) was chatting up a guy and Sandi was watching her from nearby stone-faced, and in Jane's experience furious, the other one was observing all of this with a very slight half-smile.

In the months and years to come Jane would always remember the tingle she felt when she first saw Daria Morgendorffer on that morning.

She knew that the girl was trouble, but she couldn't have resisted even she had wanted to.

Lawndale High would never be the same.

FIN

OOC: I've been thinking about this idea for the last week or so, how to do a crossover of Heathers and Daria, and I decided that the best way was to give Sandi and the Fashion Club girls a personality change, and I aged them up a bit to be in Jane's class to fit the story.