Daria wondered how many more times she'd walk up the familiar stairs to Jane's room. Only a month remained before college and all of its myriad disappointments it was sure to bring. A needless anxiety, she reflected, the uneven wooden steps creaking under her thick boots. It's not as if we won't both be coming back.
Then again, Jane might not. A lot of probably depended on whether or not Trent stayed, and who could really say when it came to him?
Daria paused at the head of the stairs and wiped her brow, the old house torrid in the summer heat. No question that the damn place needed some new insulation. Thoughts of the greasy, spice-scented air of the Pizza King—and more importantly, its air conditioning—made a welcome intrusion.
Seeing Jane's door closed, Daria knocked.
"Hey."
Not getting a response, she tried again. Leaning closer to the door, she listened for any signs of movement. Sleeping, maybe?
"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
Still nothing. An odd sense of worry began gnawing at her, exacerbated by the sweltering air.
She probably has heat stroke, at this rate.
She opened the door just a crack. Relief washed over her when she saw a pajama-clad Jane busy at work, her paintbrush cutting frenetic strokes across the canvas. A little abashed at her earlier concern, Daria stepped in, not quite prepared for the staggering miasma: a mix of sweat, trapped summer heat, and paint fumes.
Daria blinked; she'd long ago ceased to notice the smell of paint in the Lane house but it never before hit her with so much strength, almost like getting doused with a bucket of the stuff. Already woozy, she found the source of the problem in the closed window.
"Hey," she said.
"Oh, hey, Daria," Jane replied, her tone distracted.
"Um, are you okay?"
She made no reply, lowering her brush to make furious dabs into a palette of bruised and muddy colors. Daria narrowed her eyes and took matters into her own hands. With swift steps she marched across the room, unlatched the window, and threw it open to humid summer air that still felt a relief in the dank little room.
Daria stuck her head outside for a moment and took in some deep breaths. Going back inside, she turned to see Jane blinking, as if not quite sure what had happened.
"Oh! Thanks. I guess I got kind of distracted," Jane said.
"You probably shouldn't have both the door and the window closed when you do this. Paint fumes can do some very strange things to the mind."
"Hey, plenty of great artists had psychoactive inspiration."
"Said psychoactive inspiration usually wasn't the medium."
"It's more efficient this way," Jane chirped. "Wow, what time is it? I really did get pretty wrapped up in what I was doing."
"I'll say."
Daria took a closer look at the canvas. An expressionistic hellscape already consumed most of the surface. Distorted figures—equal parts Dix and late-period Goya—twisted in the shadows of looming monoliths done in a slightly more realistic style. The dizziness from the fumes only enhanced the otherworldly visuals and Daria actually had to look away after a short while.
"So it's Disneyland, right?" The joke fell flat on Daria's tongue, but something about the painting demanded that she lighten the mood with some snark.
"If Disneyland looked like that I'd be interested in going. Actually, I dreamt this up all on my own. Literally, I've been seeing it in my sleep!" Jane said, her voice carrying an almost exultant tone.
"How long have you been shut in here with these paint fumes, again?"
"I usually don't remember my dreams, but these stuck with me. I woke up and just started."
Only then did Daria notice the weariness in Jane's eyes. Crookedness distorted her bobbed hair, and her posture looked just a bit less contorted than the luckless figures she painted. Energy seemed to pour out from her, more akin to the last feverish burst before a collapse than a sign of any real vitality.
"There's also this local artist showcase next week. What you're seeing here is my entry. It's like my dreams just perfectly lined up with reality," Jane said.
"If those are what your dreams look like, I can't wait."
Daria glanced at the nearly finished painting, still feeling a bit lightheaded. The characters were unmistakably Jane's though the style seemed different in ways she couldn't quite decipher.
"Are you mixing styles?" Daria asked, searching for some rhyme or reason to the painting.
"Sure, that's how you make new styles."
"I'd say it's a shoo-in for winner, though considering the competition that's probably not saying much."
"Hey, I'll take what I can get," Jane said. "Give me a minute to freshen up and we'll go out. I can't remember the last time I had something to eat."
Jane grabbed some clothes and trudged out of her room to the bathroom farther down the hall. The sound of the shutting door was followed by the splashing of a faucet, and with it, some degree of normalcy.
A much-needed breeze from outside stirred the stagnant room, not quite strong enough to dispel the lingering sense of oppression. Daria took yet another look at the painting. Something about it still troubled her, a quality made all the more frustrating for its elusiveness.
Glancing past the closet door, she saw a bunch of other canvases in varying states of completion, all piled together without much thought. Frowning, Daria got on her knees to examine them in greater detail. Numbering five in total, they displayed contents almost identical to the piece on the easel, though they had the hasty look of rough drafts.
Way more careless than rough drafts, she mused, quite astonished by the crudity, the images made by an uncertain hand. Then again, Jane had said she'd been trying a new style. Had she done so much in just one night? It didn't seem possible.
How long has Jane been doing this?
Jane finally returned in her street clothes, some of her exhaustion washed away and her hair back in its severe order, though drooping shoulders betrayed her lack of sleep. Her lips turned up in a wry smile when she saw Daria examining the rough drafts.
"I really should throw those out. For an artist, rough drafts are kind of like baby pictures. Not things you'd want anyone to see," Jane said.
"Until you're famous, in which case someone makes a coffee table book out of them."
"I'll give you an autographed copy as soon as it's released."
"That'll probably raise its eBay price by a few bucks. You didn't do this all last night, did you?"
"Huh? Oh, no, over the past few days. I really haven't been sleeping much. Figure it's good training for my crazy recluse stage."
"I never should've let you read We Have Always Lived in the Castle," Daria said, shaking her head.
Jane laughed, the sound not quite concealing the tiredness in her voice.
"Come on, let's get some pizza."
Even in the reassuring environment of white ceramic tables and red vinyl seats, Jane didn't look quite herself, her expression weighted like a traveler's after a long and difficult journey. Taking a table opposite the window where the painted Italian chef still smiled to passerby, Daria acknowledged that the Pizza King would be one aspect of town she'd miss up in Boston.
Standing on the precipice of a new and lonely world, it was becoming tougher each day to hate her surroundings. Lawndale's hard edges softened as if to spite her, reminding her that for all its ills, she'd been happier there than anywhere else—a thought only slightly ameliorated by Highland being the only real point of comparison. Quinn, of all people, was starting to become interesting!
She supposed that pepperoni pizza would be her equivalent of the madeleine dipped in tea.
"Wow, I really needed to leave the house. I just hope I can stay awake." Jane's words turned into a yawn at the end.
"You weren't kidding about an irregular sleeping schedule."
"Who can sleep when there's inspiration? I'll admit the dreams haven't been much fun."
"I don't think I've ever heard you talk about your dreams before."
"That's because I've never had them like this. They feel real, you know? Experienced with all five senses? I usually don't remember these things when waking up, but here I'm not totally sure that I did wake up—wow, I can't believe I just said that."
"If it makes you feel any better, we're still in suburban waking nightmare that is Lawndale."
"I guess it breaks even," Jane said, yawning again.
"So tell me more about this showing."
"It's being held by this group called the Foundation for the Promotion of Local Talent," Jane explained. "They're mostly sponsored by private donors, and they go around looking to see what people have to offer. Its home office is in Lawndale, but they do work all over the East Coast. All you really get for winning is a pat on the back and a bullet point on your resume, but hey, I'll take it."
"Keep reaching for the stars. That is cool, though. Who else is competing?"
"Probably some of the people who presented in Art at the Park. Heh, maybe a Jane Lane original will be hanging on Mr. Taylor's wall this time."
"What you're working on will probably give Brittany nightmares." Daria imagined Brittany screwing up her face in empty-headed confusion at the sight of Jane's work.
"If she can handle all those creepy dead animal heads," Jane said, "I'm sure she can take the artistic manifestation of my tortured psyche."
Their conversation turned back to high school, as it so often did, even as the seemingly eternal figures already started slipping back into the past. Jane's attention kept wandering, eyelids settling shut at random moments, her sentences trailing off into silence.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Daria asked.
"Yeah. Maybe I'll go for a run—actually, scratch that, it's too hot. I think I just need to finish that painting. Maybe come up with a title for it other than 'that painting'," Jane said.
"Your obsessive drive is an inspiration to us all."
"Hey, there are studies showing that creative types are more prone to madness. Though I think writers have it worse than visual artists, so you're still crazier."
"Then I hope my madness provides a suitable role model."
They said little on the way back home. Daria shot worried glances at her nearly somnambulist friend. Jane waved goodbye as she stepped into the threshold of her decaying house. Daria's mind turned back to the discarded rough drafts. Thinking on them, it was hard to believe that they'd been made by Jane at all.