"Should I eat all this?" Stacy gave Quinn a pleading look, then cast her eyes down on her tray of french fries and hamburger sliders. "Ohmigod, I shouldn't eat all of it, I'm such a fatass-!"
"You're not fat," Quinn assured her firmly, although, mentally, she was bellowing at her to shut the hell up about the food. Little Stacy Rowe could kvetch like no one's business.
Stacy pouted. "I know. I just hate shopping for clothes with a bloated stomach."
"We're not really here to shop for clothes," Quinn reminded her.
Stacy was about to comment on the general vileness of rompers when they heard the familiar deep voice boom behind them.
"OhmyGOD, Quinn, I texted you, like, five times, and you didn't reply." Sandi gave her a suitably cross look and plopped herself down in a chair at their table.
Quinn couldn't help noticing the dark bags under Sandi's eyes, or her worryingly disheveled appearance, and Stacy seemed to be struggling to make sense of the loss of Sandi's confident exterior.
Quinn cleared her throat. "So…er, we were gonna talk about Tiffany?"
"Oh, right! You said she was in with a bad crowd or something?" Sandi was making an effort to be involved, but her eyelids were slowly drooping.
"We don't know exactly," Quinn admitted. "But you know how it's been, she keeps not showing up when we make plans, and acts all secretive when we ask her about it. Plus, she started painting her nails grey."
Stacy cringed and Sandi sighed, "I noticed that." She leaned in closer to Quinn. "The last time I was at her house, she had three bottles of Juicy perfume, and she hadn't opened any of them. They were just lying around like…like garbage!"
"Those poor Juicy bottles!" Stacy grieved.
Looking at Stacy, and back to Sandi, Quinn felt the need to call for action.
"We should confront her," she proposed. "We can sit here and speculat—I mean guess—all we want, but that won't go very far."
She half expected Sandi to make a snide "Gee, Quinn" comment, but the former president had grown beyond that—or more, likely, had grown too tired to argue—and gave Quinn an acquiescent shrug.
"Oh, Quinn, you're so assertive!" Stacy beamed.
Quinn smiled in appreciation and took one of Stacy's French fries, chewing slowly and trying to think.
Sandi noticed Stacy's smorgasbord for the first time, and mumbled, "That's a lot of food," before grabbing a handful of fries.
Stacy sat there, stunned that the other two had started stealing her food, but eventually came around and started eating a slider.
They were happily wallowing in the greasiness, but this, sadly, ended when they heard another familiar voice.
"Oh, uhhhhh—I didn't know you'd be here."
Sandi, Stacy, and Quinn froze, their hands holding fries in mid air. Turning around, they spotted Tiffany, who'd just entered the food court from another corridor.
"Right back at ya," Stacy squeaked.
Tiffany stood there uncomfortably, uncertain whether to approach them or leave.
Sandi spied a suspicious looking shopping bag, and whispered to Quinn, "Where's that bag she has from?"
Quinn squinted. "I think it says… 'Desiree's Dungeon'?"
Stacy looked scandalized.
"GOTH?" she mouthed, receiving a corroborative nod from Quinn.
Sandi sucked in her breath in shock. Almost involuntarily, she ordered, "Tiffany! Get over here now!"
Reluctantly, Tiffany strode over to them and made some small effort to look friendly.
"Hiiii."
"What's in that bag?" Sandi demanded, not wasting any time.
Tiffany tried to hide it behind her back. "Nothinnnng."
"Tiffany! Gimme that bag!"
"I'm…holding it for a friend!" Tiffany swung it to her other side when Sandi stood up and approached her.
"You have friends besides us?" Stacy asked in genuine surprise.
Realizing Tiffany would soon flee, Quinn shouted, "Sandi! Give her some space!"
Sandi stood her ground, appearing to tower over Tiffany—even though they were close in height—and glared openly at Quinn. However, much to the amazement of the other girls, she soon composed herself, and calmly smoothed out her blouse and sat back down in her seat.
Tiffany placed her hands on her hips and made a petulant face, although she only looked vaguely surprised, as she always did when trying to express complex emotions.
"I can shop where I want," she told them flatly, waving the Dungeon bag at them, the end of a studded belt hanging out.
"Why don't you take a seat?" Quinn asked graciously. She gave Sandi a warning look before adding, "Nobody will jump at you."
"It's always nice when people don't jump you," Tiffany conceded, taking a seat opposite Stacy.
"Your…eyeliner's nice," Stacy commented uncertainly.
"It's too thick," muttered Sandi.
"What have you been doing with your hair?" Quinn asked gently.
"Not taking care of it," Sandi grumbled.
Quinn felt she'd be toeing the line by telling Sandi to more or less shut her trap, and, resigned, she sank into her seat.
"I'm still the fashionista I was before," Tiffany glared at Sandi, although no one could take her seriously when she wore that strange surprised expression and using the word "fashionista".
Sandi sat up, and even though she looked none too pleased, she appeared to be a bit more at ease with Tiffany. "Well, you need to carry yourself with a little more grace."
"What's grace got to do with it?" Quinn sighed.
"We are the debutantes of Lawndale!" Sandi declared, apparently mortified that Quinn hadn't acknowledged their social standing. "We are the best this town has to offer!"
Several people at the peripheral tables had turned around in their seats to watch them by now, either in annoyance, or in consternation.
"Sandi, we go to a public school," Tiffany stated frankly.
"Yeah, I think the debutantes go to Fielding," admitted Stacy. "Or, probably, there aren't any debutantes in Lawndale."
Sandi's face sank and she crossed her arms. "Maybe. But it's not like we should let the rest of the school know that. What do we have there if we do?"
Quinn made a sour face at this, but the others didn't—or pretended not to—notice.
"Well, I think we can all agree it's pretty good to be where we are," Stacy tried to cool the tension. "I mean, like, in the social pyramid thing."
"Yeah." Sandi's expression began to brighten. "We could be like Quinn's sister or something."
Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany began laughing, much to Quinn's resentment.
"Hey!" she cut into their merriment. They were startled by her harsh tone, and she nervously quieted down. "I mean, Daria's a cooler person than you think."
The other three sat and stared at her in dumb silence.
Sandi and Stacy traded uncertain looks, and Tiffany felt compelled to tell her, "Quinn…that's mean."
"I'm not being mean!" Quinn protested, but she knew already her arguments would have no effect.
She forced a smile and grabbed her purse from the floor.
"Guys, you should, like, hit that sale at Aéroposeur, right? I think it's three-for-one on cami's!" She stretched her smile to nearly maniacal proportions. "I don't have much money, so I'm just gonna head home. My mom's already on her way here, you know how she is about curfew!" She laughed hollowly.
"Oookay." Stacy gave her a worried look, but Quinn only turned away and left the table hastily.
"I didn't mean 'mean-mean'!" Tiffany called out to her uselessly.
Sandi dropped her head to the tabletop, shaking the napkin dispenser.
"I thought this crap was over with the Fashion Club," she groaned. A brighter thought occurred to her. "At least it's Tiffany's boyfriend's fault this time and not mine."
Tiffany attempted to scowl.
"I don't haaaaaaaave a boyfriend!" she insisted.
"Who called you at Quinn's house, then?" Stacy asked, feeling little joy in possibly coming to the end of the mystery.
Tiffany squirmed. Softly, so that she could barely be heard, she replied, "A friend."
Sandi sucked in her teeth in exasperation. "A boyfriend?"
Shaking her head, Tiffany continued, "We're really jussssst friends. Like, he knows a lot about life, and I have lots of good ideas, so we comprehend each other.
"I think you mean comple—" Stacy realized trying to correct Tiffany was pointless, so she sighed and asked, "Are you sure this isn't going to lead to anything?"
Tiffany scrunched her nose. "NO. He has the worst car ever." It was clear that that settled that.
"You could have just told us," Stacy pointed out.
Tiffany's eyebrows drooped. "I don't think so."
Sandi looked up and demanded, "Why not?"
"I don't know, you guys." Tiffany shifted about in her seat. "I'm, like, buying freeeeak clothes, and I've met people you'd think were weird, and I didn't want to get kicked out of the Faaaashion Club."
"There isn't a Fashion Club anymore," Sandi cut in.
Tiffany's eyes widened considerably. "Ohhhhh yeah."
Stacy leaned gently toward her.
"Would it possible—I mean, could we, maybe, possibly, meet this guy?"
Tiffany and Sandi looked upon Stacy with surprise, then back to each other.
"It…would be really reassuring," Sandi admitted.
Tiffany cupped her chin her hand, contemplating this.
"Hmmm," she murmured several times. Sandi and Stacy weren't feeling rude enough to tell her to stop.
She finally turned to Sandi and rather sternly told her, "I dooooon't want you butting in on anything, though. I reeeeeally don't like how controlling you get about other people's social liiiiiiiiives."
Stacy, evidently remembering Quinn's party, gulped, but said nothing. A look of embarrassment crossed Sandi's face and she nodded at Tiffany's request.
"You can see him, then," Tiffany consented. "We're meeting tonight, but it's going to be reeeeeeeally late."
Sandi waved off any time-related concerns. "My mother will be too busy with my brothers to notice I'm out."
"And my parents just don't care!" Stacy chirped up brightly.
"Ooookay, then." Tiffany took out her cellphone to check the time. "We don't have to leave for a couple more hourrrrrs…"
"Oh my gosh!" Stacy clasped her shoulders. "We can use the time to let you show us your new outfit!"
Tiffany reached into the shopping bag and removed a garish purple bustier.
"Like thiiiiiis?" she asked, practically oblivious.
Horrified as they were, Sandi and Stacy smiled politely and nodded their heads.
Daria was lying backside-down in the grassy front of some store, her glasses missing along with her senses. Jane was lying somewhere to her left, giggling uncontrollably at a sign for a restaurant called "Bonur's Subs and Salads."
Daria forced herself to sit up, and felt as if her head would fly off clear into space. Obnoxiously lit up storefronts spun like so many gnats around her head, and a few co-eds who hadn't gotten as smashed as her or Jane were pointing at them from across the street.
"Be assholes, and take a picture!" she yelled at them, although the words came out in a garbled mess. "It'll last and you'll be assholes longer!"
This only made the onlookers laugh harder, and they refused to budge. Jane was laughing along with them, in spite of her not knowing what was going on.
"Let's go!" Daria stood up on treacherously unstable legs. "Those…those assholes are mocking me…I don't know! I'm always the one doing…doing the mocking!"
"Daria! Just go with it!" Jane gasped between cackles. Daria more or less accepted this suggestion, and the pair more or less stumbled down the sidewalk until they grabbed onto a modest statue of some unknown rich, white man for support.
Regaining some balance, Daria stood independently, albeit swaying somewhat.
"Jane…do you know where your car is?"
Her query was lost in a vortex of happy ramblings and titters on Jane's part, followed by hoots from the bystanders upstreet.
Daria let a sigh escape her. Something similar to selfawareness had returned with the balance, but not enough to cause any great alarm about her inability to get back to Raft. There were only the horrible students, and Jane's stealthily grating laugh, and the light emanating from the used bookstore up ahead…
The used bookstore. Something strange in it caught her eye. It was the person coming out of it. She scrambled through the pockets of her grey blazer, and her glasses fell into her hand. She mumbled some thanks to god for not allowing her to lose them, and slipped her specs on her face. It took only a moment to recognize the man exiting the bookstore.
"Ted?" she called out in disbelief.
He turned around, clumsily holding onto the weathered textbook copies he'd just purchased. He did a double take, then smiled broadly.
"Daria!" he exclaimed exuberantly, then added, "Morgendorffer!"
She mustered a smile. "DeWitt-Clinton."
She glanced behind her back, and saw that the cluster of students had moved onto greener pastures, and Jane was staying put. She walked briskly up to Ted, laboriously trying to stay steady on her feet.
He looked strangely at her unusual gait. "Are you okay?" he asked innocently.
"What?..Oh, yeah." Daria smiled again, and had to wonder if Ted wasn't growing suspicious in her newfound contentment. "You know, I've been…you know, cramming for tests."
Ted nodded, and seemed to accept this at face value. "Yeah, I'm probably going to have to cram pretty soon," he continued. "I needed to get these books-" he stopped to gesture at the bag in his hand, "-about a month ago, but I put it off until now, so…"
Daria's ability to listen and interpret was falling in and out, so she just nodded back placidly. He wasn't saying anything that warranted a response, evidently, since he didn't stop talking or try to prompt her to start talking.
"Oh yeah. Books. You know books and me. Can't keep my nose out of books."
Ted laughed. "I haven't gotten much pleasure reading, lately. I guess it's harder to enjoy Moby-Dick when it's being forced down your throat."
Daria tried to keep a straight face at Ted's unusual choice of words.
"Oh, Moby-Dick," she yawned. "Too long, too much technical know-how; I never actually finished it. Same for anything by Ayn Rand. God knows why they wrote such bloated books."
It was now Ted's turn to nod dumbly and pretend to follow the conversation. Daria peeked behind her again, and saw Jane slumped on the ground. This added to her unease, and she cut Ted off. "I'm sorry, I think my friend needs my help," she began, but before, she turned around, an idea struck her. "Do you have your phone?"
"It's in my room," Ted replied regretfully.
"Nevermind, I have some paper." Daria pulled a napkin out of her blazer pocket. Being the sober one, Ted caught on and handed her a pen.
"Okay…there." Daria handed him back the napkin, now complete with her number, which was nearly illegible.
"Um, thank you," Ted smiled courteously, and realizing that any future communication might be cut short by his inability to decipher Daria's number, gave her his own.
"I'll see you," Daria waved dreamily, walking back to the statue. The delightful delirium, and impairment of all senses, was washing over her again, and it was with some good luck that she didn't fall flat on her face on the way back down the sidewalk.
Jane looked up from the ground. "Daria!" She gave her a puzzled look. "Why are you…up…there?"
"I saw someone I knew."
Jane was clearly still a little cloudy, but her face lit up. "Where?" Jane strained to look beyond her, catching a glimpse of Ted walking away.
"He's wearing khakis," she observed. "What a dipshit."
She attempted to stand up, but ended up hanging across the torso of the effigy.
"What was that…that square doing out so late?"
Daria rolled her eyes at Jane's slang, but decided to humor her friend. "He was at that bookstore up there."
Jane regained lucidity for a moment and asked, "What type of bookstore is open at-" she checked her watch—"two in the morning." She paused, then answered her own question. "I bet it was a porno shop!"
Daria flared up at this accusation. "He wasn't shopping at a sex shop!" she contended.
Jane tried to raise an eyebrow, but found the maneuver too tricky and gave up.
"You suuuure care a lot about this guy's reputation," she smirked.
Daria put her hands on her hips, and, even though she wanted to stand tall against such allegations, her knees were nearly giving out, and she was forced to collapse onto the ground.
As much as she hated admitting her own limitations, Daria was forced to admit she was at the end of her rope. Physically, at least.
"We really need to find a bus," she nudged Jane.
"But we have my car…" Jane caught herself before going on. "Oh. I guess a bus would be useful."
Daria nodded, feeling an unexpected pang of sadness at the thought of the night drawing to a close. "It's been a fun night, but you know…"
Her voice trailed off as Jane looked behind, spotting a sparkling stretch of water.
Daria pulled herself up, and tried to tug Jane off of the statue, to no avail.
"I'll follow behind you," Jane promised her, and Daria had gotten too tired to argue with her.
Daria walked out on for a couple blocks, mesmerized by the ever changing pattern of mulch lining the sidewalk, and adamant on not taking a tumble.
Eventually, she remembered she had a friend, and turned around to check on her. There was no one to be seen.
"Jane?" she called out. She wasn't horribly worried, but, considering her, or both of their states, Jane's disappearance was not auspicious. "Where aaaare you?"
No response. Unhappily, and fearing she would miss the last bus out, Daria began walking back to where she last saw her companion.
She continued calling out her name, but no one answered. When she came to the statue, the entire block was deserted. She allowed herself to collapse again, and began flipping through her contacts. When she tried to call Jane, she was informed her number was unavailable.
Short of finding a police officer—which would probably lead to a discovery of underage drinking—Daria had found herself out of options. She leaned against the statue and bitterly regretted that Jane had all the booze.
She heard strange noises beyond the stone parapet at the edge of the street. Squinting, she noticed a sizable pond and something causing rather severe ripples.
At this point, she was desperate for anybody could tell her anything, so, with surprising nimbleness, she climbed over the barricade and strode to the edge of the pond. Indeed, it was a person flopping about, and Daria tried to get their attention.
They were laughing hysterically, but apparently heard Daria, and swam over to her.
"Jane?" Daria stooped to the ground and gaped at her. "What in the fuck are you doing?"
Jane tried to stifle her laughs and mumbled something about how they never went swimming anymore, and Daria snapped that they never swam period. Jane was no less giddy, however, and began floating on her back.
"Water's fiiiiiine!"
"There's no way we're making that bus now!" Daria was throwing her arms about in an uncharacteristically emotional fashion, and Jane gave up on suppressing her laughter.
Against her better judgment, Daria waded knee deep into the water and guided Jane out.
"Isn't it cool and wonderful?" Jane chattered cheerfully.
Daria simply gritted her teeth and resisted the temptation to dunk her friend's head underwater.
"Hey, guys, look at this."
Max pulled up the grubby rug, upon which the instruments had previously sat. Lo and behold, there was a small, handwritten note, which had likely gotten wedged underneath the rug while the members of Mystik Spiral ran amok in the basement.
"Lemme see," Nick replied, but before Max could hand it to him, he snatched it up.
His eyes opened wide in shock.
Jesse chose this moment to descend the stairs, and was left in wonderment as to why Nick and Max were standing in silence. "What's going on?"
Nick walked up to him and handed him the paper.
"It's from Trent," he answered, surprisingly solemn. "I don't know why, but he says he got back from Australia earlier today-"
"And packed up our equipment," Max finished for him. "It's at the convention center, apparently."
"Uh-huh," Jesse nodded his head. "So, we're gonna call the cops and let them know we found the thief, right?"
"No!" Nick seemed ready to smack Jesse. "We're hauling ass out to the convention center to meet him and, assuming he's still there, see what the big deal's about."
Jesse checked his watch. "Is it even open at eleven?"
"I-don't-know. That's why we have to get there quickly."
Jesse shrugged off Nick's growing antagonism. "You could have just said so."
At this, the three of them took off running—or, at least, walked at what was for them a brisk pace—up the stairs and to the Tank.
Author's Note: I just wanted to quickly thank everybody who's written a review or alerted/favorited this fic so far. It's a nice ego boost, but, more importantly, it makes writing so much more rewarding.
And Ted's line about Moby-Dick wasn't meant to sound so strange, I swear!
