Chapter One

Quinn sat at her desk, trying to finish her math assignment so that she could get to the more important matter of getting ready for her date. She couldn't understand why it made any difference what the cosine of something was. She absently turned on the radio. Her usual station was on commercial, so she spun the dial to find a better station. She sorted through a country station, some hip-hop junk, one of those oldies stations where anything after she was born was forbidden, and settled on what seemed to be a talk radio station. "If I'm going to listen to people talk, they might as well not be selling something." She listened as the person talked about filming something, so she figured it was about a movie.

"She's probably the most difficult to film, because there are so many tempting options. All the others look best in a certain light, but she's so special, she looks good from practically any angle. I mean, you could film Quinn's knee and it would be adorable."

At the mention of her first name, Quinn spun to look at the radio. Another voice came on quickly after a mess of static. "Um, yes, Adrian Quinn will certainly look amazing in her new movie. Now back to another half-hour boy band sweep on WTQS!"

Quinn was puzzled. Wasn't she listening to WTQS before she started scanning? She looked at the dial. No, it's at 103.9, where WTQS usually was. She could have sworn she was on 94 or so. "That's weird." Quinn said to nobody in particular. It really sounded like they were talking about her. "Ah well, I'll have to get used to that when I get famous." She got up and headed down to the kitchen for a glass of water and some celery sticks.

As she stepped down the stairs, she noticed a fresh bunch of flowers in a vase next to the stairs. "Ah, at least Mom knows to get fresh flowers from time to time. They smell so nice." She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes, then, upon opening them, wrinkled her nose a bit. "But that's a weird looking stem…" She trailed off as she realized she had found a microphone in the bouquet. She thought for a moment, and then her eyes went wide. She stumbled over her next words. "Oh, never, um, mind, that's just a bud that didn't open. Well, off to get that water and celery." The wheels in Quinn's head were turning, but she felt it best to try to look normal. Her nerves were steady enough by the time that she got to the refrigerator that she barely flinched when she noticed the camera behind Daria's TV dinners in the freezer.

Quinn took her ice water and a plate of celery sticks up to her room, took a drink of the water, and lay down on her bed, gnawing on one of the sticks. She started piecing together a few of the things that hadn't made sense, both today and before. Both Daria and she had been asleep for most of the move up from Highland, and when they woke up, they were pulling into their new home. Back then Daria had mentioned to her, when she thought nobody else would hear, that she saw cameras at school and whenever she ran into those two idiots around town. She said she felt like she was a walk-on for some TV show. Quinn had laughed and told her she was being silly, but respected her wish not to tell Mom and Dad. Later, Quinn could have sworn her house was covered in spider webs, and she could smell cookies baking, but she chalked it up to exhaustion from keeping her parents from having another kid. She even thought she saw Santa Claus, if Santa was a blonde teenage hunk. Maybe that was just some guy wearing a hat.

Quinn heard the door slam. Quinn sat up, jotted some words down on a piece of paper, folded it, and stuck it into her pocket. As Daria walked up the stairs to her room, Quinn approached her in the hallway between their rooms. "Hi Daria. Gee, thank you for your notes in history. They really helped me get a good grade on that test," she said, thrusting the paper into Daria's hand.

"But, I didn't…"

"You really don't know how important these notes were. Well, I'm off to get ready for my date. Bye!"

Daria watched Quinn as she went into her room. Daria looked at the folded note in her hands, then, as if struck by a bolt of realization, hurried into her room with a worried look on her face. She opened the note partially, so that only she could see what was written. "There's a camera in the freezer; what do I do now?" Daria smirked as she went over to the window where she had a crude ashtray, ostensibly for burning incense cones, and burned the part of the paper with writing on it. She then walked over to her desk and wrote down a note the way she had practiced, making sure no camera angle would get a good shot of it. She worried that Quinn would open it wrong and let them see it, but she had to take the risk. She folded the paper and walked over to Quinn's door. "Hey, did you want next chapter's notes?"

"Well, okay. I guess it's better than asking you for them next month."

Quinn nonchalantly took Daria's note, and went back to her primping. When she went into her closet to try a new outfit, she unfolded the paper and read.

"Football bleachers, after school, bring this note. Trust nobody."