"It's really cool that you're doing this, Daria. Janie needs all the help she can get right now."
"Mm."
Trent drove the Tank past trees dying in bursts of autumn glory, the reds and yellows sharp against the blue sky. Anxiety prompted her to concentrate on the scenery, but nature's palette offered only a weak distraction from her fears.
Daria got out of the Tank before Trent. She maintained a façade of outward calm as security waved them through the imposing iron doors and into the hospital's sterile hallways. A quick right took them to the waiting room where they sat in stiff vinyl seats. Daria gripped her knees, not completely sure that she didn't belong in a cell herself.
A nurse walked Jane onto the waiting room's linoleum floor. Daria stood up from her chair as Trent hugged his sister. Jane looked mostly the same, a bit pudgier from bad hospital food. She offered a wan smile.
"Hey," Daria greeted.
"Well, aren't you enthusiastic!"
"Sorry. Are you feeling okay?"
"Okay? I'm great! Do you have any idea how much artist's cred you get by spending some time in an institution? Now I'm up there with Richard Dadd and Van Gogh."
Daria smiled for what felt like the first time in years.
The nurse explained the rules regarding the medications to Jane and Trent, the two of them making noncommittal nods. With that, they signed her out and went back on the road home.
"So what was it like in there?" Daria asked, not really sure what approach to take.
"Disappointing. I was hoping for a lobotomy—electroshock at the very least. Instead they just gave me a lot of pills and greasy food."
"Joking aside, did they treat you all right?"
"Yeah, I guess." She lowered her voice: "I basically just told them what they wanted to hear."
"I'm sorry, Jane."
"Don't be. There's no way you could have explained it to them. Hell, I can't even explain it to myself."
Daria had kept talking to Jane in the days after that horrible night, trying to tie together some semblance of a narrative. Each attempt made things worse. Jane's scrambled memories had filtered into the waking world as she tried to recreate the pattern in her own blood. She talked of how Pat described the sacrifices of Darren Lansky and Joanna Porter, and feared she'd played some part.
"If they made me do something like that, Daria, I don't think I'd remember," she'd sobbed. "I might've done it, I just don't know!"
Daria started her studies at Raft soon after. Her parents had dismissed her weak protests as pre-college angst, and she was too confused to offer any real resistance when they drove her up to campus. She called Jane every day. Her outbursts at last became too much and the authorities took her to the hospital despite Trent's protests.
Safe with Jane in the back of the Tank, Daria could almost forget the whole nightmare.
"The important thing is that it's over," Jane said. "We're alive, more or less. Right, Daria?"
"Right."
Daria drove back to Raft the next day, her hours on the road blurring together. She'd staggered her schedule to have Fridays free, giving her more time for the long trip to Lawndale.
At college, Daria let the days wash over her. Her courses posed little in the way of difficulty; she'd read pretty much everything on the curriculum back in high school. She spent the daylight hours in class or typing up routine essays, and the nights drifting off into her thoughts. The dorm's jovial chaos flowed around her.
"Daria, we're going out. You wanna join us?" Rochelle, her roommate, once asked.
"Thanks, but it's been a long day. I think I'll stay in."
After three months of living there, she still couldn't remember Rochelle's last name.
Her parents sometimes wondered why their daughter's customary A's had started to slip into B's. She first threw them off by talking of a busy social life, but that fiction proved impossible to maintain. Daria soon had to contend with worried calls about her mental well-being.
She knew she wasn't fine, but no longer especially cared. College made it easy to be a ghost, and that was what she chose.
Most days she kept the fear at the back of her mind. But some days she spent prone and shaking as the dread boiled up to consume every sense. Her breaths would turn quick and shallow as she relived the terror almost loosed on the world.
Daria coped by mentally recreating events from her high school days. She'd build them up piece by piece during the worst episodes until she found some measure of reassurance. For all of their dreariness, such memories came from a world not yet touched by what she'd seen, and were comforting for that fact alone.
She only really felt alive when she returned home, which generally translated to spending as much time with Jane as possible. Jane wore a mask of high spirits, belied only by the half-finished paintings in her room. Even so, they both found sanctuary in the same places, reliving better times in idle speculation of classmates long gone.
Jane and Trent got by despite the inconstant Lane finances. His sister's difficult state inspired a long-buried sense of responsibility in Trent and he ended up getting a job at Payday where he showed off surprising ability and dedication. It didn't bring in much, but it was something.
"You're okay with Mystik Spiral not being a thing any longer?" she said to Trent on a blustery afternoon.
"I'm still going to write music, and I have a lot of ideas. This is a good way to recharge my creativity while I help Jane get back on her feet. I think the Spiral was about done anyway."
The rest of Lawndale changed little. The Foundation for the Promotion of Local Talent had closed its doors without fanfare early in September, and Pat's Easel followed suit a week later. Daria initially feared that Pat might try to take revenge, but stopped caring as the months wore on.
If he wanted to get back at you, considering the tools at his disposal, he'd have done it by now, she reasoned.
Pat's patience only demonstrated his confidence in eventual victory.
Trent encouraged Jane to resume her jogging routine. In February, she finally did. Jane described the first few attempts as agony over IM, but kept at it, regaining her old speed by inches. Daria joined her one weekend, able to keep up thanks only to her friend's diminished capacity.
Daria dodged the festivities of spring break, predictably opting for a quiet week in the old neighborhood. She walked over to Jane's house early one morning as sheets of rain crashed down from steel-colored clouds. Jane welcomed her in, and Daria saw some of the old creative spark in her eyes.
"So it's been a long time since I've painted anything. I'm thinking it's time I did some new work. Not just start it, but finish it," she said, handing Daria a cup of coffee.
"I agree."
"It's just that, whenever I start, all of that… I dunno, bad stuff starts coming back up and I have to stop. I still don't know what Pat showed me. Part of me wants to create it again, but I'm scared to death of it at the same time."
Daria still only had a vague idea as to what Jane had experienced.
"I wish I could be of more help."
"I think I can do it again—my stuff, that is, not Pat's. Daria, would you mind looking over my shoulder when I work? It's driving me crazy that I can't make anything."
"Sure. I've watched you work before."
"Thanks."
They went up to Jane's room, free of the smell of paint for the first time in Daria's memory. Jane soon set up her workplace, and paused as she stared at the blank canvas. Her brush hovered over the palette.
"I know what I want to paint. It's just that I still see it in front of me," she whispered, her voice quavering.
Daria leaned in close, hearing the percussion of the rain hitting the roof.
"Well, you always knew how to ignore what you saw, right? When you painted scenes or people, you saw what was really there."
"But what we saw—that's what's really there."
"Okay, but maybe only in a material sense." Daria took a deep breath, hoping she didn't sound too New Age-y. "You have something more."
"Something more. Okay."
Slowly, she dipped her brush in the green ink, swirling it around in the pigment before making a few exploratory strokes, like a child painting for the first time.
"This feels ridiculous," she muttered.
"You're doing fine. If it looks too messy, just say you were going for Pollock's style."
"There's an idea."
She worked with care, like a craftsman watching out for a basic but easy-to-make error. Daria sat on the bed and offered silent encouragement. A harsh landscape—jagged lines and bold colors—came to life on the canvas. The work was influenced by what Jane had seen, perhaps, but still distinct, still her own.
As the rain intensified, the artist returned to work.
