Chapter Ten

Daria sat in her date's Ford Focus in front of her dorm building and idly toyed with a loose thread on her coat. 'When will it end!?' she thought desperately.

"I had a really nice time tonight, Daria," said her date.

"Um… yeah, me too, Roger," she lied.

"Great!" Roger grinned. "What about you, Mr. Smiley?" he asked the ventriloquist dummy on his lap. "Did you have a nice time?

'When you said we were going to have a date, I thought you meant date as in the fruit kind of date! Nyuk nyuk nyuk!' came the voice of Roger through the wooden dummy.

"Shush, Mr. Smiley." He turned back to Daria. "I'd really like to do this again with you. How 'bout it?"

"Uh, Roger, you're a nice guy…. but I'm not really comfortable going on a date with a dummy,"

'Or his puppet', she silently added.

"Oh," he said disappointedly. He then brought the dummy's mouth close to his left ear, nodding, as if the doll were speaking to him. "Well, Mr. Smiley says you've hurt his feelings, and he's not comfortable going out with you either. Where he goes, I go, so I guess this is goodbye."

"Oh, that's goo-- I mean too bad," said Daria. "Bye, then." She bolted out of the car as fast as possible and headed inside the building.

It had been an extremely long night for Daria. She wearily trudged to her dorm room, unlocked the door, and opened it, sighing as she did so. She stood in surprise for a moment when she saw that Jane was there waiting for her.

"Hey, amiga," greeted Jane.

"What are you doing here?" Daria said as she closed the door behind her.

Jane rolled her eyes. "Such a warm welcome for your best friend. I'm here because I wanna hear how your date went!"

Daria frowned. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh come on, he can't be worse than Eric."

"There is nothing wrong with Eric, thank you very much," said Taryn from her top bunk. "He's nice and smart and funny…."

"He asked me to join his fan club."

"I still think you should have joined," Taryn said grumpily, going back to the Bio book she was studying.

"Anyway," Daria began. "I am not going on another blind date. No matter how much you threaten me. It's too horrible."

"Fair enough. It's your decision…. you're entitled to it. We won't force you to do anymore….." said Jane. "…..except I kinda sorta need to force you into just one more."

"Jane!"

"Well, you see, I met this really cool, cute guy, and we sorta hit it off, and I asked him if he wanted to go out sometime, but he said he'd go only if I brought a date for his friend too. Please go with me! Please!" begged Jane.

"I don't know…."

"I'd do it for you!"

Daria looked at Jane and reluctantly sighed. "Fine. Where are we going and what time do we have to be there?"