Daria sighed, expelling all the air from her lungs as she plopped down perpendicular on the bed of the Morgendorffers' new house, legs dangling off, as she reflected how terrible the first week at Lawndale High School had been.

They had just moved from Lawndale into the house given them by Helen's mother, Grandma Barksdale. Her mother Helen was surprised (and not a little grateful) at the gift, as her sister Rita was typically the favored child. However, Helen had discovered that it used to belong to Grandma Barksdale's sister, who moved out after her daughter ran away. Remaining uninhabited for nearly 50 years, the house had needed serious renovations. Cue the Morgendorffers having to remain in Highland several months longer than anticipated; after all, they didn't have the money to both renovate the house AND afford months of hotel service, and Helen was too affixed on her mother actually giving her the second-hand house to turn it down.

On her very first day, Daria had been shunted off into some cockamamie self-esteem class by the overzealous incompetent excuse for a school psychiatrist. The teacher of the class (pulling double duty from his position as English teacher) was, from what Daria had seen, badly in need of a little self-esteem himself. Briefly, there had been a ray of hope in the girl who sat next to her, but when they had walked home and she saw the house Daria was living in she made some lame excuse and left. She had spent the entire rest of the week giving Daria the cold shoulder, casting the occasional fearful glance at her. "Whatever," Daria muttered, recalling the baffling actions. It wasn't the first time she had been inexplicably ditched.

The worst part was her sister's behavior. Out of the blue, the sneak had gotten up to her old tricks in regards to sabotaging her homework. She hadn't done it in years, so it came to a surprise to Daria when Mr. DeMartino handed back the homework assignment she had turned in marked up with enough red ink that she was convinced he had accidentally gotten blood all over it somehow. The block letters at the top of her page filled her with incredible shame: "NOT UP TO YOUR IN-CLASS STANDARDS. VERY DISAPPOINTING." She considered it a sign of how poorly the rest of her classmates must do in class if he held her to a high standard on the third day in.

She had yet to catch Quinn doing it, of course, and she had somehow managed to do it several more times behind Daria's back, no matter how well-hid or well-secured she had made her homework. Hiding it under a loose floorboard didn't work. Neither did slicing a small hole in her mattress and sticking it in there. She had even once left out decoy homework, burying the real stuff in a coffee can in one corner of the backyard after midnight (while Quinn was breaking curfew to go out on a date). The coffee-can homework had been sabotaged, while the decoy remained untouched. Sure, she could have just done her homework at school and left it in her locker, but it was the principle of the matter, damnit!

Tonight, she had a trap ready for her younger sister. She had completed her homework, but rigged it so that it connected to a string. Any messing with the homework would tug the string, which would in turn ring a bell, prompting Daria to leap up, shout "Aha!" and snap a picture of Quinn caught red-handed before she could react. From there, she could leverage it as being a serious piece of blackmail, or perhaps just hand the picture over to her parents and watch the fireworks that unfolded. She would have to remember to bring the popcorn beforehand, though...

All that was left to do at the moment was wait. She was breathing slowly and evenly, giving the illusion of sleep, and in fact she had almost fallen under more than once. She had managed to catch herself each time, though, giving herself a hearty bite to the lip or inner cheek to bring her back into focus. The waiting was starting to get to her; out of the corner of her eye, she could see her alarm clock, with it reading just a few minutes until 2 AM. She was starting to worry that Quinn had taken the night off, or worse, had concluded her campaign of sabotage, thus depriving Daria of a means of retaliation (at least, one that she didn't have to make an effort for).

Her worries were for naught. The bell rang.

Daria sprang up. She shouted, "Aha!" She took a picture with the instant camera she had been clutching for several hours now.

The translucent young woman who was decidedly NOT Quinn looked up in mild surprise, then shook her head and turned back to Daria's homework, a sly smirk on her face.

The translucent young woman looked eerily similar to Daria.

"Wh-who the hell are you?" Daria asked.

The translucent young woman jerked her head sharply in Daria's direction. "You can see me?" she said, mouth agape. Daria slowly nodded. "Nobody - NOBODY - has ever seen me before. And I've been here since 1958. My name is Maura..." Her face twisted into an ugly snarl. "And I am your DOOM!"

XXXXXXXXXX

This is something of a spiritual sequel to Anthony DeMartino Just Wants To Have Fun, in that there really is a ghost in the House of Bad Grades (just like how Metalmouth reallly existed in ADJWTHF).

More will be revealed in later chapters!

Special thanks to LadieT and InvisibleDan for coming up with names for Maura, as well as one character that hasn't shown up yet.

Also, I'm uber dissatisfied with the title, so if you can think of something better, do let me know! :)