Part Four
Daria wandered through the Lawndale Art Museum, not actually hunting for Jane's painting, yet not consciously avoiding it, either. There were more artists in Lawndale than she'd thought. By mounting the works with fairly wide spacing, they'd apparently managed to fill the whole place.
The art museum had been built, or rather, rebuilt, with the help of a grant from the Save Historic Downtown Lawndale Foundation and a fund-raising drive. It had started out as a five-and-dime and adjacent yard goods shop long ago, and had sat empty and abandoned for many years before being reincarnated as a museum; and the old Orpheum Theater next door had been taken over by a coalition of performing-arts groups. A fight was still quietly raging to determine which nearby buildings to raze for much-needed parking, but the museum seemed to be a going concern.
The interior had been laid out as a series of oddly shaped rooms connected in strange ways by wide, room-like corridors. Potted palms and cacti and the odd chair and sofa were randomly scattered throughout. It seemed fairly well suited for displaying works of art, but it was easy to get lost in. Daria was not currently lost, but the entrance was. Daria pressed on regardless.
Watercolor seemed to be the most popular medium on display, followed closely by oils. What pencil drawings there were looked amateurish and lacked strong darks, and she hadn't seen a pastel yet.
The oils weren't uniformly good, either, Daria noted. Here was a cluster of several oils of flower arrangements and flowers growing in pots whose dreary sameness left no doubt they were the work of a single artist, and over there were a number of small landscapes distinctly reminiscent of a certain how-to-paint TV show, all appearing to have the same mountain in the background. Daria noted with amusement that in one of the paintings, the artist had actually depicted a happy little squirrel living in one of the happy little trees. Well, apparently the local art league weren't snobs, anyway.
Farther down the corridor were a couple of large-format, non- representational, gestural paintings. The artist was either attempting to express anger, or was too angry to express anything else. One seemed overworked, or perhaps beaten senseless, but the other one was somehow interesting. Daria would have liked to hear Jane's comments on these, but Jane had gone to lurk near her paintings. Daria now noticed several other people doing the same thing, most attempting to look like they weren't. She smiled a tiny bit and walked on.
It was with some relief that Daria spotted Jane walking toward her with a big silly grin on her face. She looked like she was restraining herself from dancing, and she gave no sign of having seen Daria. Smirking at the sight, Daria crossed her arms and moved to the side of the corridor to wait.
Jane would have walked right past if Daria hadn't called out to her: "Planet Earth to Jane Lane. Come in, Space Cadet Lane!"
Jane snapped back to reality. She whirled and grabbed Daria by both upper arms. Startled, Daria blurted "Kiss me and I'll deck you!"
"It sold!" Jane bounced up and down. "It sold for two large! I'm going!"
Daria dragged Jane into a nearby ladies' room, which turned out to be a mistake, because Jane immediately hugged her. "Thank you, Daria! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"
Daria feigned anger. "I'll thank you to turn me loose! What are you trying to do, start that damn rumor again?" Jane loosed her hold and Daria smiled at her friend. "Now go soak your head, and then we'll go to the lounge and get a soda, and you can tell me all about it."
The "lounge" was a small room with a few tables and chairs and two soda machines. Today it was unusually crowded. Daria and Jane stood in an unoccupied corner and sipped their sodas. "I really wish you'd seen it, Daria! I was standing sort of in the vicinity of the painting and this suit walks up and starts looking at it. Then another suit walks up, and they start talking about it. Then this third guy comes along, he's a suit too even though he wasn't wearing one at the time, and they all start discussing the painting like they're all collectors and connoisseurs, and I got the impression they'd been competing with each other for a long time. Anyway, one guy says he's thinking of buying it, and another guy says he's thinking about buying it too, and the third guy says something like the other two guys are incapable of truly appreciating it, and they should just go buy a Playboy. Then they're all saying they're definitely going to buy it, and one guy says he's going to find out who to talk to. That's when I said, "Talk to me, I'm the artist." God, it felt so good to say that! Anyway, then this bidding war breaks out, and I'm standing there trying to look cool and keep my mouth from hanging open, and the bidding gets up to fifteen hundred, and then the suit without a suit says "Two thousand!" The other two sort of snapped out of it, so I said "Sold!" and he wrote me out a check!" Jane pulled a check out of an inner pocket and held it out to Daria.
"That's great, Jane! Congratulations!" Daria looked at the amount of the check, then at the signature, which was illegible, then at the printed name, which she didn't recognize. "Well, I'm glad it's no one I know. And he lives in Richland, so we probably won't bump into each other."
"How come you haven't come by to see it yet?" Jane asked.
"I don't know where it is. I'll find it eventually. Besides, I've seen it before."
Jane smirked accusingly. "This is your first time in the art museum, isn't it? Come on, Philistine, I'll guide you."
"Let go of my hand. I'm not that kind of girl."
~*~
Jane led Daria into one of the rooms and toward a doorway that led to a corridor. Through the doorway, they could see that several members of the football team and some other guys from LHS were clustered around the picture. Daria hung back and listened.
"See? I told ya! Pay up!"
"Damn! That is Daria! I can't believe it!"
"Wow! She's a babe!"
"A major babe!"
"She's no Brittany, but she's definitely got hooters! I thought she was as flat as Kansas!"
"Hey, you know what they say- any more than a handful is a waste."
"That's mouthful, stupid."
"Is not. It's handful."
"Well, Daria's definitely a double handful, and some left over."
Somewhat to her surprise, Daria found this fascinating. All these boys who'd pretty much totallty ignored her all through high school, with her help and encouragement, were drawn to this painting like moths to a porchlight. Why? They couldn't see any more of her breasts than the average swimsuit would reveal, or even some prom gowns. They couldn't see any more of her front, not even her bellybutton. she was lying on it. They could see her arms, her back, an oblique view of her fanny, and her legs. And it wasn't even her, just a painting she'd posed for.
Admittedly, Jane had done an excellent job with line and form, light and shadow, proportion and composition, and all those other things a good artist took into account when painting a nude, but the painting clearly wasn't attracting nearly as much attention from the many female art afficionados here tonight as it was from testosterone-crazed former classmates.
Daria had thought she'd had a good read on female attractiveness to males from observing their reactions to Quinn, to Brittany and the other cheerleaders,to photos in girlie mags, and and male-female interactions in general. And she knew she wasn't ugly, that she had a trim, healthy body without any particularly unattractive features. She knew that she could make herself attractive if she wanted to, but she'd never thought of herself as having this degree, this wattage, of allure, even nude. These boys weren't looking at the painting for a minute, saying something like "Well, whodathunkit? But after all, it's just Daria," and walking on. They were arrested, fascinated, mesmerized, artistic ability, but by Daria's body, and apparently by the mere fact that she was nude, although this didn't allow them to see the bits they blew so much money on magazines to see. Just the fact that she was showing a lot of skin, and wasn't ugly was apparently enough. Somewhere in her mind an awareness of. power. began to grow. Daria felt an urge to share this insight with someone, but then that smartass little voice inside her head pointed out that every female older than Tricia Gupty probably knew it already. Certainly Quinn had known it since shortly after she'd noticed boys were different than girls, if it hadn't come in the package of instincts she was born with.
"I'd love to get my hands on those. Damn, I wish I'd'a known! Why'd she have to dress so... ugly?"
Charles Ruttheimer joined the group. "You just answered your own question. She didn't want you horndogs chasing her all the time trying to squeeze her melons, so she didn't let you know she had any."
"Aw, bullshit. As if the strikeout king would know."
"Oh, I know, all right. Not that I benefited thereby. It didn't take me long to penetrate her camouflage and see that it concealed a lovely figure. It took longer to penetrate her sarcasm and see that it concealed a really nice person. It took longest to figure out why."
"All right, Ruttheimer, why? Why hide a body like that? Quinn would look like a fourteen-year-old next to her, if she dressed normal. If you got it, flaunt it, I say."
"Well, that isn't what Daria says. Daria is a genius, you know. Probably the smartest person ever to honor Lawndale High with her presence. And she hates being judged by her looks. That's why she put so much effort into camouflaging them. She wouldn't give the time of day to anyone who was attracted by her body, her legs, or even her face."
"Well, hell, that would be just about every guy on earth, except queers."
"True, but there was a time, not so long ago, when men with couth managed to act like sex wasn't the first, second, and third things on their minds. Did you ever meet that guy she's been dating this year? He has couth. I tried. I tried to be cool, suave, and sophisticated, but I think I came off more smarmy and phony. And now, I guess it's too late. She's off to college in Boston in the fall, and I'm guessing Lawndale has seen just about its last of her. Daria Morgendorffer is headed for the big time."
A little farther along, the former Lawndale High Fashion Club had stopped to study the cluster of boys and the object of their attention.
Quinn said, "See, I told you. Pay up."
Sandi stared and blinked. "That's not her. That can't be her. That girl has a figure."
"A really good figure!" put in Stacy.
"Yeaahhh..." observed Tiffany.
And that herd of guys certainly seems to think so, too." Stacy pointed out.
"Yeaahhh..." Tiffany concurred sagely.
Sandi gave the two a cross look.
Quinn said "That's Daria, all right, on Daria's bed, in Daria's room. I watched Jane painting it. Go over there and take a closer look. And be sure to look at the title. 'Nude Reading Solzhenytsin.' That's got to be Daria."
They moved closer to the painting, careful to keep away from the herd of guys, who, strangely, seemed not to have noticed them yet. Stacy's big doe eyes were bigger than usual. Tiffany was gazing at Daria's face in the painting with a fuzzily puzzled expression. "Quinnn, thiss girlll's faace loooks kiind of liike yoour coussinn."
Quinn looked at her in disbelief. "Tiffaneee!"
Tiffany returned Quinn's look with a pixieish little smile. "Kidding, Quinnn."
As Quinn regarded Tiffany with surprised amusement, one of the boys turned and noticed them standing there. "Hey, Quinn!" he said.
"Well, finally!" thought Quinn, as she smiled slightly at him. His name was Rodney or Roger or something like that. She'd only dated him a couple of times. "Hi" she replied casually.
"Is that really your sister Daria?"
"Yes." Quinn replied shortly, a bit irritated to find herself not the subject of the conversation.
"Does she really look like that?"
"That's not a very polite question, Roderick."
"It's Roger. I was just, uh, wondering if the artist was painting realistically."
"Yeah, sure you were. Well, the artist was."
"But why'd she dress the way she did if she had a body like that?"
"It was one of the ways she avoided people she wanted to avoid, such as you guys. You know, Rudyard, if it takes you this long to look at one painting, you'll be here till tomorrow night." Quinn remarked pointedly, folding her arms. Roger looked away and fidgeted awkwardly.
"If that's true, then why did she pose for this painting?" asked another boy.
"Think of it as her way of saying 'Ha, Ha, I fooled you.' Now, you boys move along so they can mop up the drool," Quinn said in a faux motherly tone, making shooing motions at them. Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany laughed. The boys reluctantly moped off, throwing last looks back at the painting. Back beside the plant, Daria grinned. She and Quinn were a lot alike, after all. She wondered how long Quinn had been acting like this when she thought Daria wasn't around.
"Good one, Quinn!" Stacy giggled, watching the group slink away.
"Yeah, not bad." Jodie put in as she and Mack approached. "Uh, Quinn, Mack heard a strange rumor that there was a painting of Daria in this show. Do you know anything about that?"
"Well, there's that one." Quinn pointed.
Jodie and Mack both started when they saw the painting. Jodie put a hand on her chest. "I see it, but I don't believe it."
"Yeah, like really. I saw Jane painting it and I almost don't believe it."
"Jane painted that? She did a great job." A suspicion showed on Jodie's face. "Is this some joke she cooked up with Daria? Or maybe a joke she's playing on Daria?"
"I don't joke about my art." Jane said as she walked up to them. "Well, not very often, anyway."
With a knotting of her stomach, Daria realized that Jane had given away their lurking place. She could now either approach Jodie and Mack and Quinn and her friends and (oh, crap) Upchuck with Jane, and stand unabashed beside the painting, or she could run for it before someone looked through the doorway and saw her. But she had already made that decision, she knew, before she'd taken off that first boot, before she'd called Jane on the phone. Daria gritted her teeth, put on her poker face, and strode through the doorway.
"Hey, Jane. Excellent work." Mack said, before wisely shutting up.
"It sure is, Jane." Jodie acknowledged. "Hi, Daria. Did you really..."
"Come all the way down here just because Jane had one lousy painting in the show? Yeah, I guess I did." Daria deadpanned. Jane put on an indignant look.
"Okay, if you'd rather not talk about it, I..." Jodie began.
"Did I really pose nude? Yes." Daria interrupted her.
"Gee, you think you know someone." Jodie looked wonderingly at Daria, then at the painting again, and shook her head. "You're about the last person I would have expected to do that."
"Yeah, she was even voted "Least likely to model nekkid" in the yearbook." Jane quipped.
"So-o, if you don't mind my asking... why?"
Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany quietly edged closer, anxious to hear the answer to that question themselves.
Daria shrugged. "Just doing my bit to support the arts."
Jane gazed fondly at Daria. "She did it to help me put myself through Boston Fine Arts College."
"That is so cool!" sighed Stacy.
"Yeeaahhh..." Tiffany assented.
"Yeah, that is cool... and gutsy. What do your parents think about it?"
"Dad doesn't know yet. With luck, he won't find out till after this show is over. Mom wasn't happy, but I am eighteen now. She'd never admit it, but she may be a little relieved that I've finally done something a tad wild and crazy. I've been so quiet and bookish up to now, she's probably been worrying that I might climb to the top of the giant strawberry with a sniper rifle."
Jodie chuckled. "You may be right, Daria. Hey, I wonder if my parents ever worried that about me."
"Jodie, we've all worried that about you." Daria said. Jane nodded, grinning. Sandi said "Like, fer sure," the remaining FFC'ers made assenting noises. Mack added, "Except that we figured you'd choose the roof of Lawndale High, so you could take out Ms. Li first."
"Hey!" Jodie cried, putting on a wounded look. Then she smirked. "Actually, it has crossed my mind, but I just didn't have the guts. Speaking of which, coming down here to the art museum with that painting on exhibit is pretty brave, Daria. I don't think I could've done it."
"Sure you could. I just thought the whole thing through, decided it was the right thing to do, and did it. It would be silly, not to mention useless, to try to run away from it at this point. You stand by your decisions the same way."
Jodie sighed wistfully. "I wish that were true, Daria. If it weren't for Mack here, I'd have let my father pressure me into going to a college I don't want, even after being accepted by my first choice school." She leaned against Mack, who smiled and put a hand on her shoulder.
~*~
Kevin Thompson threaded his way through the art lovers. He felt uncomfortable in Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and sandals, but his mom wanted him to quit wearing his football uniform all the time. He hated to do it, but she had a point. Even without the pads, too many people were snickering and pointing and whispering when he wore it in public these days.
Kevin had been wandering aimlessly around town, rudderless without football and alone without Brittany, when he'd run into Alvin from the team. Alvin wouldn't stay and talk; he said he was going to the art museum, of all places, because he'd heard there was a nude painting of one of the senior girls on display there. Alvin's attempts to relay the description he'd gotten of the girl made her sound like Daria, but that was stupid. It couldn't be Daria. But Kevin's curiosity had been aroused, and, having nothing better to do, he had headed off the way Alvin had gone.
Wandering through the maze of weirdly shaped rooms with walls covered with weird yucky paintings, Kevin at length heard familiar sounding voices. Following his ear, he spotted a group of guys he knew from Lawndale High, looking at and discussing one particular painting. Then the guys started to move off, but Kevin saw Mack heading that way, so he headed that way too.
As he got closer, Kevin could see that Mack and Jodie were talking with Jane and Quinn and some other chicks from school, and they all seemed to be looking at that one painting. Kevin walked up and looked at the painting too. He couldn't believe what he saw.
"Damn! Daria!" he exclaimed.
"Damn. Kevin," said a familiar monotonal voice behind him.
Oops! Had he said that out loud? He turned, and, sure enough, there was Daria in the flesh. Flesh. Ha, ha. That was funny. "Hey, it's Daria in the flesh, huh huh. Uhh, lookin' good, Daria, ha, ha," he joked wittily.
She looked at him with that strange look she had, like she was looking right through him and saw a bug, or something. Someone should tell her not to look at people like that, he thought. But did that look mean she was interested in him? He had detected some interest there once, he was pretty sure. Of course, he'd been the QB then, he'd had Brittany, and he couldn't be seen with a brain like Daria. Oh, now he remembered. She'd tried to make a move on him once when Brit was being weird about something and had broken up with him. Wanted him to take her to a school dance. Even then, there had been lots of popular girls he could fall back on before he got as low as Daria, they'd just all had to wash their hair or read a newspaper that particular night. He'd tried to let her down easy, though, as he recalled.
But now... perhaps he could lower his standards a bit. He currently had an opening for a babe, and Daria was looking pretty good all of a sudden. She couldn't possibly say no to a trophy hunk like him. And she'd be so grateful to him she'd probably jump right out of her panties. She was probably even still cherry. Kevin dug cherry chicks. Maybe she could see him through the lean times until school started again and Coach or Ms. Li could figure a way to get his football eligibility back, and he could claim whatever cute, popular chick was head cheerleader next year. With a lot of luck, maybe she'd be cherry too.
But Kevin was smart. He knew not to just come right out and say that. Chicks couldn't be realistic about things like that; you had to flatter them, even when you were doing them a huge favor. He strained his intellect to pay her a compliment. "I ahh, just, um, wanted to say that I, uh, never knew you looked that good naked!"
Daria gave him a kind of angry, not-flattered look for a second. Then it changed to a look of earnest inquiry, with maybe the faintest hint of hero worship. She took a small step forward and looked up into his eyes. "Really, Kevin? And what did you think I looked like naked?"
Knowing that whatever was coming was bound to be good, Charles stood by quietly wearing his evil Upchuckian grin, and Jane struggled to maintain her sardonic smirk and not burst out laughing too soon. Jodie felt Mack's muscles tense up as he started forward, but her restraining hand on his arm caused him to stop and wait.
"Oh, cool, she likes it when I talk dirty," Kevin thought. "She wants to hear more." He put on what he thought of as his most charming, sexy leer, the one with the cocked eyebrow. "Uhh, well, you know, you didn't have any, ahhh, you know, potatoes before, and probably not enough butt to get a good grip on, you know, but, uhhh, it looks like you've, you know, filled out pretty good, so, uh, I was thinking me and you could, ahhh, you know..."
Daria continued to stare into his eyes. "That's very... interesting, Kevin. Now go over and tell Mack how you think he looks naked."
"Are you kidding? He'd kill me!"
"That's right, Kevin. And so will I."
Kevin looked into Daria's eyes, and saw death crouched there, preparing to strike. He tried to turn away, but Daria's gaze held him like a sparrow hypnotized by a serpent.
Jane started to chant. "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin."
Charles and Quinn took it up. "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin.
Daria took a step toward him; her gaze still locked on his.
Now Kevin began to remember other things he'd heard about Daria, scary things. Some said she had strange mental powers. Kevin remembered times when Daria had said things in class, and Mr. O had burst into tears or run out of the room, or Mr. D had nearly stroked out. In sophomore year she had almost killed Ratboy. Kevin had been a wreck for days over that. Mr. O had said that Daria was an atomic communist from Mars. Government agents had come looking for her, but she had used her mental powers and they had captured Mr. D by mistake. And she had something to do with Ms. Li's mysterious mental breakdown last winter. With a chill, Kevin remembered that strange snake-eyed look on her face as she stood by the door, with Jane and the Superintendent of Schools at either hand like henchmen, and watched as the men in white coats carried Ms Li away. That same strange snake-eyed look... she was looking right now... at him. Mack and Jodie took up the chant: "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin.
With all of his will power, Kevin took a small step backward. They were probably kidding him, he told himself. He never could tell when they were kidding him. He did his best to smile and laugh, to show that he got the joke, but that didn't seem to work. The terrible chant continued. "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin."
Kevin took another step back. Daria took another step forward. She didn't look like she was kidding. She looked like she was building up her mental power to strike him down. Suddenly something cold and unseen hit him from behind and he was falling... falling...
Delighted, Quinn and the former fashion club watched Kevin trip over the tall cylindrical ashtray and go down. They took up the chant: "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin."
Daria was looming over him now, but the blow to the head had freed him from her evil spell. Summoning all of his QB speed and agility, he scrambled to his feet and dashed away, running broken field through the artsy people.
As Kevin ran whimpering for his life amid a cloud of cigarette ashes, all those gathered in the vicinity of "Nude Reading Solzhenytsin" broke into peals of laughter.
Smirking, Daria watched him go. "That was just too easy. We should be ashamed."
Jane cocked an eyebrow at Daria. "Are you saying you're ashamed of headgaming Kevin?"
The corner of Daria's mouth turned up. "Well, no, but it seems like I should be. I'll try again later. Maybe." A more serious expression crossed her face. "Um, Jane, I'd like to get a picture of us standing on either side of the painting, okay?"
"Sure, fine with me, but we don't want to let the museum staff see us."
Daria pulled her little camera out of her pocket and looked around, thinking who to ask to take the picture. Charles Ruttheimer timidly raised a hand.
Daria hesitated a second, then handed him the camera. He was generally known to be a good photographer. "Frame it tightly," she said.
She took a position on one side of the painting, then glanced over at Jane.
"Jane, quit grinning like a possum in a persimmon tree. This photo is for my dad."
"For your Dad? Is it his birthday?"
Daria shot Jane an annoyed look. "I have to tell him before he finds out some other way, and he has a right to see the painting, but I don't think it's a good idea to bring him down here, at least not unprepared." She gave Charles a nod and he snapped a picture, then one more.
Daria wandered through the Lawndale Art Museum, not actually hunting for Jane's painting, yet not consciously avoiding it, either. There were more artists in Lawndale than she'd thought. By mounting the works with fairly wide spacing, they'd apparently managed to fill the whole place.
The art museum had been built, or rather, rebuilt, with the help of a grant from the Save Historic Downtown Lawndale Foundation and a fund-raising drive. It had started out as a five-and-dime and adjacent yard goods shop long ago, and had sat empty and abandoned for many years before being reincarnated as a museum; and the old Orpheum Theater next door had been taken over by a coalition of performing-arts groups. A fight was still quietly raging to determine which nearby buildings to raze for much-needed parking, but the museum seemed to be a going concern.
The interior had been laid out as a series of oddly shaped rooms connected in strange ways by wide, room-like corridors. Potted palms and cacti and the odd chair and sofa were randomly scattered throughout. It seemed fairly well suited for displaying works of art, but it was easy to get lost in. Daria was not currently lost, but the entrance was. Daria pressed on regardless.
Watercolor seemed to be the most popular medium on display, followed closely by oils. What pencil drawings there were looked amateurish and lacked strong darks, and she hadn't seen a pastel yet.
The oils weren't uniformly good, either, Daria noted. Here was a cluster of several oils of flower arrangements and flowers growing in pots whose dreary sameness left no doubt they were the work of a single artist, and over there were a number of small landscapes distinctly reminiscent of a certain how-to-paint TV show, all appearing to have the same mountain in the background. Daria noted with amusement that in one of the paintings, the artist had actually depicted a happy little squirrel living in one of the happy little trees. Well, apparently the local art league weren't snobs, anyway.
Farther down the corridor were a couple of large-format, non- representational, gestural paintings. The artist was either attempting to express anger, or was too angry to express anything else. One seemed overworked, or perhaps beaten senseless, but the other one was somehow interesting. Daria would have liked to hear Jane's comments on these, but Jane had gone to lurk near her paintings. Daria now noticed several other people doing the same thing, most attempting to look like they weren't. She smiled a tiny bit and walked on.
It was with some relief that Daria spotted Jane walking toward her with a big silly grin on her face. She looked like she was restraining herself from dancing, and she gave no sign of having seen Daria. Smirking at the sight, Daria crossed her arms and moved to the side of the corridor to wait.
Jane would have walked right past if Daria hadn't called out to her: "Planet Earth to Jane Lane. Come in, Space Cadet Lane!"
Jane snapped back to reality. She whirled and grabbed Daria by both upper arms. Startled, Daria blurted "Kiss me and I'll deck you!"
"It sold!" Jane bounced up and down. "It sold for two large! I'm going!"
Daria dragged Jane into a nearby ladies' room, which turned out to be a mistake, because Jane immediately hugged her. "Thank you, Daria! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"
Daria feigned anger. "I'll thank you to turn me loose! What are you trying to do, start that damn rumor again?" Jane loosed her hold and Daria smiled at her friend. "Now go soak your head, and then we'll go to the lounge and get a soda, and you can tell me all about it."
The "lounge" was a small room with a few tables and chairs and two soda machines. Today it was unusually crowded. Daria and Jane stood in an unoccupied corner and sipped their sodas. "I really wish you'd seen it, Daria! I was standing sort of in the vicinity of the painting and this suit walks up and starts looking at it. Then another suit walks up, and they start talking about it. Then this third guy comes along, he's a suit too even though he wasn't wearing one at the time, and they all start discussing the painting like they're all collectors and connoisseurs, and I got the impression they'd been competing with each other for a long time. Anyway, one guy says he's thinking of buying it, and another guy says he's thinking about buying it too, and the third guy says something like the other two guys are incapable of truly appreciating it, and they should just go buy a Playboy. Then they're all saying they're definitely going to buy it, and one guy says he's going to find out who to talk to. That's when I said, "Talk to me, I'm the artist." God, it felt so good to say that! Anyway, then this bidding war breaks out, and I'm standing there trying to look cool and keep my mouth from hanging open, and the bidding gets up to fifteen hundred, and then the suit without a suit says "Two thousand!" The other two sort of snapped out of it, so I said "Sold!" and he wrote me out a check!" Jane pulled a check out of an inner pocket and held it out to Daria.
"That's great, Jane! Congratulations!" Daria looked at the amount of the check, then at the signature, which was illegible, then at the printed name, which she didn't recognize. "Well, I'm glad it's no one I know. And he lives in Richland, so we probably won't bump into each other."
"How come you haven't come by to see it yet?" Jane asked.
"I don't know where it is. I'll find it eventually. Besides, I've seen it before."
Jane smirked accusingly. "This is your first time in the art museum, isn't it? Come on, Philistine, I'll guide you."
"Let go of my hand. I'm not that kind of girl."
~*~
Jane led Daria into one of the rooms and toward a doorway that led to a corridor. Through the doorway, they could see that several members of the football team and some other guys from LHS were clustered around the picture. Daria hung back and listened.
"See? I told ya! Pay up!"
"Damn! That is Daria! I can't believe it!"
"Wow! She's a babe!"
"A major babe!"
"She's no Brittany, but she's definitely got hooters! I thought she was as flat as Kansas!"
"Hey, you know what they say- any more than a handful is a waste."
"That's mouthful, stupid."
"Is not. It's handful."
"Well, Daria's definitely a double handful, and some left over."
Somewhat to her surprise, Daria found this fascinating. All these boys who'd pretty much totallty ignored her all through high school, with her help and encouragement, were drawn to this painting like moths to a porchlight. Why? They couldn't see any more of her breasts than the average swimsuit would reveal, or even some prom gowns. They couldn't see any more of her front, not even her bellybutton. she was lying on it. They could see her arms, her back, an oblique view of her fanny, and her legs. And it wasn't even her, just a painting she'd posed for.
Admittedly, Jane had done an excellent job with line and form, light and shadow, proportion and composition, and all those other things a good artist took into account when painting a nude, but the painting clearly wasn't attracting nearly as much attention from the many female art afficionados here tonight as it was from testosterone-crazed former classmates.
Daria had thought she'd had a good read on female attractiveness to males from observing their reactions to Quinn, to Brittany and the other cheerleaders,to photos in girlie mags, and and male-female interactions in general. And she knew she wasn't ugly, that she had a trim, healthy body without any particularly unattractive features. She knew that she could make herself attractive if she wanted to, but she'd never thought of herself as having this degree, this wattage, of allure, even nude. These boys weren't looking at the painting for a minute, saying something like "Well, whodathunkit? But after all, it's just Daria," and walking on. They were arrested, fascinated, mesmerized, artistic ability, but by Daria's body, and apparently by the mere fact that she was nude, although this didn't allow them to see the bits they blew so much money on magazines to see. Just the fact that she was showing a lot of skin, and wasn't ugly was apparently enough. Somewhere in her mind an awareness of. power. began to grow. Daria felt an urge to share this insight with someone, but then that smartass little voice inside her head pointed out that every female older than Tricia Gupty probably knew it already. Certainly Quinn had known it since shortly after she'd noticed boys were different than girls, if it hadn't come in the package of instincts she was born with.
"I'd love to get my hands on those. Damn, I wish I'd'a known! Why'd she have to dress so... ugly?"
Charles Ruttheimer joined the group. "You just answered your own question. She didn't want you horndogs chasing her all the time trying to squeeze her melons, so she didn't let you know she had any."
"Aw, bullshit. As if the strikeout king would know."
"Oh, I know, all right. Not that I benefited thereby. It didn't take me long to penetrate her camouflage and see that it concealed a lovely figure. It took longer to penetrate her sarcasm and see that it concealed a really nice person. It took longest to figure out why."
"All right, Ruttheimer, why? Why hide a body like that? Quinn would look like a fourteen-year-old next to her, if she dressed normal. If you got it, flaunt it, I say."
"Well, that isn't what Daria says. Daria is a genius, you know. Probably the smartest person ever to honor Lawndale High with her presence. And she hates being judged by her looks. That's why she put so much effort into camouflaging them. She wouldn't give the time of day to anyone who was attracted by her body, her legs, or even her face."
"Well, hell, that would be just about every guy on earth, except queers."
"True, but there was a time, not so long ago, when men with couth managed to act like sex wasn't the first, second, and third things on their minds. Did you ever meet that guy she's been dating this year? He has couth. I tried. I tried to be cool, suave, and sophisticated, but I think I came off more smarmy and phony. And now, I guess it's too late. She's off to college in Boston in the fall, and I'm guessing Lawndale has seen just about its last of her. Daria Morgendorffer is headed for the big time."
A little farther along, the former Lawndale High Fashion Club had stopped to study the cluster of boys and the object of their attention.
Quinn said, "See, I told you. Pay up."
Sandi stared and blinked. "That's not her. That can't be her. That girl has a figure."
"A really good figure!" put in Stacy.
"Yeaahhh..." observed Tiffany.
And that herd of guys certainly seems to think so, too." Stacy pointed out.
"Yeaahhh..." Tiffany concurred sagely.
Sandi gave the two a cross look.
Quinn said "That's Daria, all right, on Daria's bed, in Daria's room. I watched Jane painting it. Go over there and take a closer look. And be sure to look at the title. 'Nude Reading Solzhenytsin.' That's got to be Daria."
They moved closer to the painting, careful to keep away from the herd of guys, who, strangely, seemed not to have noticed them yet. Stacy's big doe eyes were bigger than usual. Tiffany was gazing at Daria's face in the painting with a fuzzily puzzled expression. "Quinnn, thiss girlll's faace loooks kiind of liike yoour coussinn."
Quinn looked at her in disbelief. "Tiffaneee!"
Tiffany returned Quinn's look with a pixieish little smile. "Kidding, Quinnn."
As Quinn regarded Tiffany with surprised amusement, one of the boys turned and noticed them standing there. "Hey, Quinn!" he said.
"Well, finally!" thought Quinn, as she smiled slightly at him. His name was Rodney or Roger or something like that. She'd only dated him a couple of times. "Hi" she replied casually.
"Is that really your sister Daria?"
"Yes." Quinn replied shortly, a bit irritated to find herself not the subject of the conversation.
"Does she really look like that?"
"That's not a very polite question, Roderick."
"It's Roger. I was just, uh, wondering if the artist was painting realistically."
"Yeah, sure you were. Well, the artist was."
"But why'd she dress the way she did if she had a body like that?"
"It was one of the ways she avoided people she wanted to avoid, such as you guys. You know, Rudyard, if it takes you this long to look at one painting, you'll be here till tomorrow night." Quinn remarked pointedly, folding her arms. Roger looked away and fidgeted awkwardly.
"If that's true, then why did she pose for this painting?" asked another boy.
"Think of it as her way of saying 'Ha, Ha, I fooled you.' Now, you boys move along so they can mop up the drool," Quinn said in a faux motherly tone, making shooing motions at them. Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany laughed. The boys reluctantly moped off, throwing last looks back at the painting. Back beside the plant, Daria grinned. She and Quinn were a lot alike, after all. She wondered how long Quinn had been acting like this when she thought Daria wasn't around.
"Good one, Quinn!" Stacy giggled, watching the group slink away.
"Yeah, not bad." Jodie put in as she and Mack approached. "Uh, Quinn, Mack heard a strange rumor that there was a painting of Daria in this show. Do you know anything about that?"
"Well, there's that one." Quinn pointed.
Jodie and Mack both started when they saw the painting. Jodie put a hand on her chest. "I see it, but I don't believe it."
"Yeah, like really. I saw Jane painting it and I almost don't believe it."
"Jane painted that? She did a great job." A suspicion showed on Jodie's face. "Is this some joke she cooked up with Daria? Or maybe a joke she's playing on Daria?"
"I don't joke about my art." Jane said as she walked up to them. "Well, not very often, anyway."
With a knotting of her stomach, Daria realized that Jane had given away their lurking place. She could now either approach Jodie and Mack and Quinn and her friends and (oh, crap) Upchuck with Jane, and stand unabashed beside the painting, or she could run for it before someone looked through the doorway and saw her. But she had already made that decision, she knew, before she'd taken off that first boot, before she'd called Jane on the phone. Daria gritted her teeth, put on her poker face, and strode through the doorway.
"Hey, Jane. Excellent work." Mack said, before wisely shutting up.
"It sure is, Jane." Jodie acknowledged. "Hi, Daria. Did you really..."
"Come all the way down here just because Jane had one lousy painting in the show? Yeah, I guess I did." Daria deadpanned. Jane put on an indignant look.
"Okay, if you'd rather not talk about it, I..." Jodie began.
"Did I really pose nude? Yes." Daria interrupted her.
"Gee, you think you know someone." Jodie looked wonderingly at Daria, then at the painting again, and shook her head. "You're about the last person I would have expected to do that."
"Yeah, she was even voted "Least likely to model nekkid" in the yearbook." Jane quipped.
"So-o, if you don't mind my asking... why?"
Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany quietly edged closer, anxious to hear the answer to that question themselves.
Daria shrugged. "Just doing my bit to support the arts."
Jane gazed fondly at Daria. "She did it to help me put myself through Boston Fine Arts College."
"That is so cool!" sighed Stacy.
"Yeeaahhh..." Tiffany assented.
"Yeah, that is cool... and gutsy. What do your parents think about it?"
"Dad doesn't know yet. With luck, he won't find out till after this show is over. Mom wasn't happy, but I am eighteen now. She'd never admit it, but she may be a little relieved that I've finally done something a tad wild and crazy. I've been so quiet and bookish up to now, she's probably been worrying that I might climb to the top of the giant strawberry with a sniper rifle."
Jodie chuckled. "You may be right, Daria. Hey, I wonder if my parents ever worried that about me."
"Jodie, we've all worried that about you." Daria said. Jane nodded, grinning. Sandi said "Like, fer sure," the remaining FFC'ers made assenting noises. Mack added, "Except that we figured you'd choose the roof of Lawndale High, so you could take out Ms. Li first."
"Hey!" Jodie cried, putting on a wounded look. Then she smirked. "Actually, it has crossed my mind, but I just didn't have the guts. Speaking of which, coming down here to the art museum with that painting on exhibit is pretty brave, Daria. I don't think I could've done it."
"Sure you could. I just thought the whole thing through, decided it was the right thing to do, and did it. It would be silly, not to mention useless, to try to run away from it at this point. You stand by your decisions the same way."
Jodie sighed wistfully. "I wish that were true, Daria. If it weren't for Mack here, I'd have let my father pressure me into going to a college I don't want, even after being accepted by my first choice school." She leaned against Mack, who smiled and put a hand on her shoulder.
~*~
Kevin Thompson threaded his way through the art lovers. He felt uncomfortable in Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and sandals, but his mom wanted him to quit wearing his football uniform all the time. He hated to do it, but she had a point. Even without the pads, too many people were snickering and pointing and whispering when he wore it in public these days.
Kevin had been wandering aimlessly around town, rudderless without football and alone without Brittany, when he'd run into Alvin from the team. Alvin wouldn't stay and talk; he said he was going to the art museum, of all places, because he'd heard there was a nude painting of one of the senior girls on display there. Alvin's attempts to relay the description he'd gotten of the girl made her sound like Daria, but that was stupid. It couldn't be Daria. But Kevin's curiosity had been aroused, and, having nothing better to do, he had headed off the way Alvin had gone.
Wandering through the maze of weirdly shaped rooms with walls covered with weird yucky paintings, Kevin at length heard familiar sounding voices. Following his ear, he spotted a group of guys he knew from Lawndale High, looking at and discussing one particular painting. Then the guys started to move off, but Kevin saw Mack heading that way, so he headed that way too.
As he got closer, Kevin could see that Mack and Jodie were talking with Jane and Quinn and some other chicks from school, and they all seemed to be looking at that one painting. Kevin walked up and looked at the painting too. He couldn't believe what he saw.
"Damn! Daria!" he exclaimed.
"Damn. Kevin," said a familiar monotonal voice behind him.
Oops! Had he said that out loud? He turned, and, sure enough, there was Daria in the flesh. Flesh. Ha, ha. That was funny. "Hey, it's Daria in the flesh, huh huh. Uhh, lookin' good, Daria, ha, ha," he joked wittily.
She looked at him with that strange look she had, like she was looking right through him and saw a bug, or something. Someone should tell her not to look at people like that, he thought. But did that look mean she was interested in him? He had detected some interest there once, he was pretty sure. Of course, he'd been the QB then, he'd had Brittany, and he couldn't be seen with a brain like Daria. Oh, now he remembered. She'd tried to make a move on him once when Brit was being weird about something and had broken up with him. Wanted him to take her to a school dance. Even then, there had been lots of popular girls he could fall back on before he got as low as Daria, they'd just all had to wash their hair or read a newspaper that particular night. He'd tried to let her down easy, though, as he recalled.
But now... perhaps he could lower his standards a bit. He currently had an opening for a babe, and Daria was looking pretty good all of a sudden. She couldn't possibly say no to a trophy hunk like him. And she'd be so grateful to him she'd probably jump right out of her panties. She was probably even still cherry. Kevin dug cherry chicks. Maybe she could see him through the lean times until school started again and Coach or Ms. Li could figure a way to get his football eligibility back, and he could claim whatever cute, popular chick was head cheerleader next year. With a lot of luck, maybe she'd be cherry too.
But Kevin was smart. He knew not to just come right out and say that. Chicks couldn't be realistic about things like that; you had to flatter them, even when you were doing them a huge favor. He strained his intellect to pay her a compliment. "I ahh, just, um, wanted to say that I, uh, never knew you looked that good naked!"
Daria gave him a kind of angry, not-flattered look for a second. Then it changed to a look of earnest inquiry, with maybe the faintest hint of hero worship. She took a small step forward and looked up into his eyes. "Really, Kevin? And what did you think I looked like naked?"
Knowing that whatever was coming was bound to be good, Charles stood by quietly wearing his evil Upchuckian grin, and Jane struggled to maintain her sardonic smirk and not burst out laughing too soon. Jodie felt Mack's muscles tense up as he started forward, but her restraining hand on his arm caused him to stop and wait.
"Oh, cool, she likes it when I talk dirty," Kevin thought. "She wants to hear more." He put on what he thought of as his most charming, sexy leer, the one with the cocked eyebrow. "Uhh, well, you know, you didn't have any, ahhh, you know, potatoes before, and probably not enough butt to get a good grip on, you know, but, uhhh, it looks like you've, you know, filled out pretty good, so, uh, I was thinking me and you could, ahhh, you know..."
Daria continued to stare into his eyes. "That's very... interesting, Kevin. Now go over and tell Mack how you think he looks naked."
"Are you kidding? He'd kill me!"
"That's right, Kevin. And so will I."
Kevin looked into Daria's eyes, and saw death crouched there, preparing to strike. He tried to turn away, but Daria's gaze held him like a sparrow hypnotized by a serpent.
Jane started to chant. "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin."
Charles and Quinn took it up. "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin.
Daria took a step toward him; her gaze still locked on his.
Now Kevin began to remember other things he'd heard about Daria, scary things. Some said she had strange mental powers. Kevin remembered times when Daria had said things in class, and Mr. O had burst into tears or run out of the room, or Mr. D had nearly stroked out. In sophomore year she had almost killed Ratboy. Kevin had been a wreck for days over that. Mr. O had said that Daria was an atomic communist from Mars. Government agents had come looking for her, but she had used her mental powers and they had captured Mr. D by mistake. And she had something to do with Ms. Li's mysterious mental breakdown last winter. With a chill, Kevin remembered that strange snake-eyed look on her face as she stood by the door, with Jane and the Superintendent of Schools at either hand like henchmen, and watched as the men in white coats carried Ms Li away. That same strange snake-eyed look... she was looking right now... at him. Mack and Jodie took up the chant: "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin.
With all of his will power, Kevin took a small step backward. They were probably kidding him, he told himself. He never could tell when they were kidding him. He did his best to smile and laugh, to show that he got the joke, but that didn't seem to work. The terrible chant continued. "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin."
Kevin took another step back. Daria took another step forward. She didn't look like she was kidding. She looked like she was building up her mental power to strike him down. Suddenly something cold and unseen hit him from behind and he was falling... falling...
Delighted, Quinn and the former fashion club watched Kevin trip over the tall cylindrical ashtray and go down. They took up the chant: "Kill...Kevin. Kill...Kevin."
Daria was looming over him now, but the blow to the head had freed him from her evil spell. Summoning all of his QB speed and agility, he scrambled to his feet and dashed away, running broken field through the artsy people.
As Kevin ran whimpering for his life amid a cloud of cigarette ashes, all those gathered in the vicinity of "Nude Reading Solzhenytsin" broke into peals of laughter.
Smirking, Daria watched him go. "That was just too easy. We should be ashamed."
Jane cocked an eyebrow at Daria. "Are you saying you're ashamed of headgaming Kevin?"
The corner of Daria's mouth turned up. "Well, no, but it seems like I should be. I'll try again later. Maybe." A more serious expression crossed her face. "Um, Jane, I'd like to get a picture of us standing on either side of the painting, okay?"
"Sure, fine with me, but we don't want to let the museum staff see us."
Daria pulled her little camera out of her pocket and looked around, thinking who to ask to take the picture. Charles Ruttheimer timidly raised a hand.
Daria hesitated a second, then handed him the camera. He was generally known to be a good photographer. "Frame it tightly," she said.
She took a position on one side of the painting, then glanced over at Jane.
"Jane, quit grinning like a possum in a persimmon tree. This photo is for my dad."
"For your Dad? Is it his birthday?"
Daria shot Jane an annoyed look. "I have to tell him before he finds out some other way, and he has a right to see the painting, but I don't think it's a good idea to bring him down here, at least not unprepared." She gave Charles a nod and he snapped a picture, then one more.