Charles Ruttheimer the third stood silent in the near-darkness of his bathroom, illuminated only by the green LED on the charging stand of his toothbrush, his fingers still on the toilet's flush handle. His fitful dreams of huge blond bullies had been interrupted by the sound of the toilet flushing in the next apartment, and by the pressure in his bladder. Having shuffled his way into the bathroom and relieved the pressure, he'd been about to flush when he'd caught the low sounds of conversation.

Half- awake, he'd stood there silently and listened for no particular reason until Daria had begun telling Jane about her night's activities. His resentment flared when she spoke of going to the other party with 'Crusher'. Then he'd listened with increasing interest and amazement as her tale unfolded. This was a side of Daria that he hadn't known existed, but it fit her so well. Megafeisty! His mind's eye pictured her stalking the night-shrouded streets, bristling with weaponry, pockets overflowing with money, her outfit morphing between what she'd been wearing last night, her signature outfit from high school, and something out of Zena, Warrior Princess. Rrowrr! He fervently wished he was in bed asleep right now, with that last image playing the female lead in a long, vivid dream.

He heard Daria say, "Can you smell me?" and then "I'll settle for that," and wished he hadn't. Those two lines conjured up an amazing number of images in his dream-befuddled mind. Then he heard footsteps coming nearer in the other apartment, the faint creak of a bedspring, the thump of a boot hitting a carpeted floor, then another one, and then the soft sounds of the wondrous Miss Morgendorffer slipping into bed, which conjured up even more images.

Chuck started to flush the toilet and go back to bed, which he now realized he should have done before listening in on a conversation not intended for his ears. But the early morning silence was still so deep that he could faintly hear the sounds of a fork against a plate as Jane finished her omelet. The sound might waken Daria, or hinder her from getting to sleep. She might even somehow deduce from it that he had been listening. Leaving the toilet unflushed, Chuck silently crept back to his bed and eased himself back under the covers. Images of Daria, Warrior Princess stalking the dark streets of unsuspecting Boston, eyes ablaze, sword ready, whispering 'Can you smell me?' vied with images of a blond, blue-eyed scowling giant as his head sank back into the pillow. And flowing through them all was the awareness that, just a few feet away, just on the other side of the wall, slept the real, the magnificent Daria Morgendorffer, resting from her real adventures. It was exquisite torture, and yet somehow strangely comforting.

Sleep eventually pulled Charles Ruttheimer away from his sad, fearful, hopeful thoughts, and into exciting but troubled dreams.

…

The next day a tired, sleepy Daria shambled back from classes and hauled herself up the stairs. The phone was ringing as she reached the third floor. She hurried to unlock the door and grabbed the handset. "Hello?"

"Hey, Daria, this is Trent. I'm here."

"No, you aren't. I'm here, and I don't see you anywhere," Daria replied, and heard Trent's laugh-cough come over the phone.

"I'm at the south end of the Raft campus. Well, the southwest end. I don't see anything that looks like an apartment building."

"Uh-huh. What intersection are you closest to?"

"I'm at the corner of Harrison and Sawyer Avenues."

"You're where? We don't have any streets by those names anywhere around here. Maybe you're at another college. There are an awful lot of them in Boston."

"I'm looking at the sign at the entrance, right across the street. It says 'Raft University, Boston Campus."

"What the… I'm calling up a map on the internet. Harrison and Sawyer, you say?"

"Right."

"G…seven. G-7. Oh, crap. You're in Old Boston. Like, ancient history Boston. You're kinda right between Boston Common and the Old North Church."

"Sounds about right."

"Oh, wait. There is a Raft campus down there, a little bitty one. It's where the College of Dentistry is. I didn't even know it existed."

"So where are you, then?"

"I'm at the Somerville campus, about four miles north of you. What you want to do is, lemme see… get on I-95 north, cross the north arm of the harbor, go about four miles, then get off on the west Halyard Street exit. Go about half a mile, then turn northwest onto Powderhouse Road. The Raft campus will be on your right. Go about five blocks to Armory Street, which only goes to the left. There's a three story red brick townhouse with white trim at the corner of Powderhouse and Armory. That's us. Turn left on Armory, then right into the first driveway. That's our parking area. You'll see me. Got it?"

"Uh, repeat everything after Powerpuff Road."

"Mnrrgh…"

…

Trent's study of phone books and his Boston map was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. He reached out a long arm and snagged it off the wall. "Hello?"

There was silence from the phone for a couple of seconds, then a young female voice asked, "Who is this?"

Trent grinned. "Hey, Daria's sister. This is Trent."

"My name is Quinn," she said, sounding peeved. "What are you doing up there?"

"Daria's letting me sleep with her."

"What?"

Trent chuckled, then coughed. "On the floor in the den. I'm visiting Janey and looking for gigs."

There was the sound of an exhalation, then "Oh."

"I'm putting together a Mystik Spiral Boston tour."

"Oh. Um, that's nice. Is Daria there?"

"No. She went out with that Chuck guy from down the hall."

"What?! Daria's dating Upchuck?"

"Uh, yeah, I think so."

"Where'd they go?"

"I don't know. Do you want to leave a message?"

"Um, is Jane there?"

"Not yet. This is one of her late days. Oh, wait a minute, I think I hear someone coming."

Outside, footsteps approached the apartment door. Trent rose and laid the phone book aside. A key turned in the lock, the door opened, and Jane entered.

"Hey, Janey, let me take your stuff, and you talk to Daria's sister," Trent said.

Jane gave him a surprised look, but handed him her book bag and a large sketch pad, and took the phone. "Yo."

"Jane, what's this Trent was telling me about Daria dating Upchuck? Where is he taking her? What are they doing? Please tell me they're not going steady!"

Jane chuckled. "I don't think it's quite that serious yet. They went to the laundromat."

"Oh," said Quinn, sounding relieved. "So they're not really dating, then?"

"Not really. Daria calls it desensitization therapy. She's trying to gradually get him used to casual contact with women. She says he's making great strides. Last time, he was able to ask some woman for change, and she didn't even call the police."

Quinn chuckled. "Well, I'm relieved, but in a way I'm almost disappointed. I was hoping she'd start to develop a social life sooner or later. Maybe I can set her up with something over Christmas break."

Jane grinned. "Quinn, Quinn, Quinn, this is me, Jane. Daria's social director. Why, just last night I frogmarched the little hermit to a mixer at the Raft Student Union."

Quinn giggled. "I wish I could have seen that. A mixer, huh? Eww, lame. But I guess that would be an improvement for Daria. Did you manage to pry her off the wall after you got her there?"

"You shouldn't look down your nose so much, you'll get crosseyed. I think you're forgetting that Raft is an Ivy League school, surrounded by other Ivy League schools. Even the outcasts around here outclass the in-crowd at Lawndale High. I got picked up by a Halyard student. And Daria did okay, too. She ran one guy off, then left with a football player."

"What, Daria? A football player? Are you sure you don't mean a foosball player? Or maybe a video game player?"

"Nope. Varsity man, first string. Blond, blue eyes, six foot seven, about two hundred seventy-five pounds. You might be able to find a picture of him in the Boston paper at the library. Look for 'Crusher' Kujowski."

"Omigod! I can't believe this! Where did they go? What did they do?"

"Well, she crashed shortly after she got in this morning, so I haven't had time to thoroughly debrief her yet, but I gather they went to a party and she met several people on the staff of the school paper."

"Ohh, no. She blew off the hunk to hobnob with some geeks? That's Daria, all right. For a minute it sounded like she was doing so good. But she wouldn't know a good time if it bit her on the ass. Darn it!"

Jane smirked. "You underestimate Daria, Quinn. She's got at least one date lined up with Al. And I can tell that you've never gone out on the town with her. That girl can run wild in ways you can't even imagine."

"Jane, don't blow smoke up my butt. I grew up with Daria. Sure she's strange, but she's dull. Dull, dull, dull."

"You wouldn't say that if you were here when she came in this morning. She… No. I should keep my mouth shut. You can get it straight from her if she wants to tell you."

There was a short silence on the line, then: "Aw, Jane, come on. You know Daria would never tell me anything interesting about herself. What about when she came in?"

Jane hesitated temptingly. "No, it's her business, not mine. Besides, you're not exactly famous for your ability to keep a secret."

"Jane, don't do this to me! I swear I won't tell a soul! Girl scout's honor!"

"Well… she came in about half an hour before dawn, armed to the teeth and loaded down with money."

"What?! Oh, come on. I can't see Daria carrying a gun all of a sudden."

"Not a gun. A sword. Also a morningstar and a boot dagger. Look, Quinn, I have to go. It's my turn to cook dinner, and Trent's here, so I gotta finish cutting up this horse. I'll tell Daria you called. Bye."

Quinn stood there, halfway between bemused and thunderstruck, staring at the phone in her hand. Daria? Dating a huge stud? Money? Swords, daggers, and morningstars? What the heck is going on? What the heck is a morningstar, anyway? I'll call Robert, she thought. I bet he'll know. Her finger stabbed rapidly at the keypad. Later. First, the former fashion club is going to meet at the library and find a picture of Al 'Crusher' Kujowski. Quinn smiled crookedly. Good thing I was never a Girl Scout.

Grinning, Jane hung up the phone. Trent, having caught her end of the conversation, said, "You know Quinn can't keep a secret, right?"

"Oh, sure. She's probably bragging to her friends right now. The thing is, she can't brag about Daria without feeling proud of her. And nothing I told her was really a secret anyway. I'm pretty sure Daria won't kill me."

Trent picked up the ninja-to, pulled the blade partway out of its scabbard and examined it curiously. "Hmm. Probably not. I just hope she doesn't cut out your tongue with this new cutlery of hers."

…

Quinn scribbled a note and stuck it on the refrigerator, then checked to make sure she still had her library card. As she headed for the front door, she realized she was looking forward to seeing Daria again over Thanksgiving break. She couldn't wait to see if her sister had morphed into a sex goddess or a warrior princess or something while she was away at Raft.

…

"You're going to wind up with pink shorts."

Chuck looked up from loading a washing machine. "Huh?"

"Always wash your whites separately, unless you don't care what color they come out."

Chuck looked at his basket of laundry. "But I don't have enough stuff to justify two loads."

Daria shrugged. "Up to you."

Chuck looked at his laundry again and then at the clothing Daria was sorting and loading. "You want to wash all the whites together?" he asked, holding up some socks and briefs.

Daria looked at what Chuck was holding, then at the bras and panties she was separating out for a white load. "Uh, no."

Looking disappointed, Chuck stood there thinking for a few more seconds, then started to load his whites into a second machine. "I can't believe how expensive this is," he muttered.

Daria said, "I know, but all the other laundromats I've seen cost the same, so apparently they're not overcharging us to the point that an entrepreneur would see it as an opportunity to move in and cut costs."

"Hmm, maybe. Or maybe the mob controls all the laundromats in this area."

"I wouldn't think there'd be enough money in it to attract organized crime. I suppose it's possible, though."

"Oh, they wouldn't operate the places. They'd sell them the machines and supplies. Kind of like a franchise owner."

"Oh. I could see that. By the way, how'd you do last night after I left?"

"Uh, well, I didn't get thrown out or beaten up."

"It's a start."

"How about you?"

Daria began shoving quarters into one of the washing machines she was using. "We went to a party and I met some interesting people, including some who work on the school paper."

"Is that good?"

"For me it is. I want to get on staff myself."

Chuck looked surprised. "Really? I thought extracurricular activities were anathema to you."

Daria seemed to be concentrating hard on selecting the ideal wash cycle on her other machine. "Mrr… well yeah, they were, in high school. All the ones that might have had any scope for intelligence and creativity were either subverted into propaganda and fund-raising organs for Ms. Li, or firmly in the grip of insufferable creeps and assholes. But when it came time to apply for scholarships, I started to see the error of my ways. I should have picked one, joined it, and taken it over. That or started one of my own."

Chuck smiled wryly. "I know what you mean. About that time I was wishing that I'd finagled some official recognition for my entrepreneurial activities on the Internet and elsewhere. And if you'd started, say, a writing club, I'd have been delighted to join. Perhaps you'd have even considered joining a stock investors' club or a dot com marketing club, if I'd started one?"

Daria gave Chuck a sidewise glance as she fed quarters into the hungry washing machine. He was starting to look nervous when she said, "You know, I probably would have joined an investors' club. I have a few stocks and a couple of funds, and it would be nice to have someone to swap ideas with."

Chuck's smile became much cheerier. "Well, hey, no time like the present, eh?"

Daria smiled a bit in return. "Sure, why not. I should start thinking about what's going to look good on my résumé. There's probably a list of the clubs and activities that Raft sponsors online."

"Oh. Well, yeah, that too, but I was thinking you could show me your portfolio and I could…" Chuck stopped, realizing the completed sentence might sound too much like a double entendre.

Daria picked up on his discomfiture and smiled. "Yeah, I guess we could do that. Get each other's opinion on brokerages, trading software, advice websites, stuff like that. I guess you've learned a lot about the markets from your dad."

"Not as much as I'd like to. I do pick up stuff from him about various companies and corporations, though. He keeps track of companies that are being mismanaged or have cash problems, or other problems that aren't generally known, as potential takeover targets. Not exactly inside knowledge, but similar. If you're thinking about buying stock in a company, mention the name to me, and if I've heard anything I'll tell you."

"I'll do that. What trading software do you like?" Daria asked, gathering up her baskets and detergent.

"Right now I'm using GreenTree's Active Investor package, but I'm thinking of switching to Marley and Hook's level 2 suite. They seem to have a better mix of the analysis tools I want. You?" Chuck replied as he picked up his laundry bag and followed Daria over to some empty seats.

"Oh, I'm using ScotchBroker's basic package because they offer the cheapest trades. I don't do much analysis."

Chuck looked surprised at this. "Then how do you decide which stocks to buy?" he asked as they sat down.

"I pick high beta stocks that go up and down a lot. They work best with my computer trading program."

"You have a computer trading program? Don't you have to have a supercomputer connected directly to the exchange floor for that?"

"It's not that kind of program. It's basically a systematized way of taking profits when a stock is going up, and buying cheap shares when it's down. The heart of it is a fairly simple formula that was originally worked out on a notebook page once a month. There's an interest group that's elaborated on it and refined it and turned it into a computer program. We have a message board and an e-newsletter."

"Huh. Does it work?"

"It outperforms all the averages, and most stock funds. It more than doubled my money last year, but that was an above average performance."

"Sounds interesting," Chuck said, "Tell me more."

…

Daria stowed the last basket of her laundry in the car and headed back into the laundromat. Chuck was still waiting on his last dryer load. As she neared the door, she heard the screeching of an angry woman. A sudden feeling of dread knotted her stomach. She hurried inside.

A woman, yelling and gesticulating, had Chuck backed up against a machine.

"What's the problem here?" Daria asked.

The woman pointed. "This creep was starin' at my undaweah," she accused in a distinctively Boston twang.

Daria followed her pointing arm to a clothes dryer. Articles of clothing gyrated and tumbled in its window, some of them undergarments. "You're kidding, right?"

"Hell no, I ain't kiddin'!"

Daria turned to Chuck, who was blushing and looking flustered. "Were you staring at this woman's underwear?" She picked up the laundry bag off his dryer and thrust it into his hands.

"I was just standing here thinking and waiting for my stuff to finish drying," Chuck said, gesturing at the dryer.

"You wuh starin' at my undies!" the woman insisted.

Daria turned back to the woman. "Are you in those undies?"

"O'coahse not, theah in the dryah!"

"Then so what?"

"He's a pehvuht, that's what!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Daria saw that Chuck had taken the hint and stuffed his laundry into the bag, and was now headed for the exit. "Well, if you think that, you should go find a policeman and tell him all about it."

"I think I will!" The woman rejoined belligerently.

"Good. I'd dearly love to listen in on that conversation, but I have things to do," Daria replied as she turned and followed Chuck out.

…

"So, how do you like it?"

Daria sipped again at the elaborate concoction before her. "Sinfully yummy. If I were a Catholic, I'd probably have to go to confession. What's it called?"

"Two Chocolate Raspberry Latté Suprémo. A small token of my gratitude for keeping that harpy off my tail long enough for me to escape."

"I'd feel better thanked if you'd quit doing things to get women on your tail in the first place. I won't always be there to act as your wingman."

Chuck looked pained and made a gesture as if pleading for understanding. "I didn't do anything. I was just waiting for my clothes to dry."

"You weren't staring at her clothes?"

"I wasn't staring at anything. I was standing there thinking about that stock trading program you told me about and sort of halfway watching my load. My eye might have been caught by some bright yellow panties popping up in the window of her machine, but hell, it's just laundry." Chuck sipped glumly at his identical concoction.

Daria sighed. "Granted, it's illogical, but you can kind of halfway understand a woman not liking you staring at her panties, even if she isn't wearing them at the moment."

"A woman who has problems relating to men, maybe." Chuck fiddled with his straw. "Ha. As if I had room to talk."

Daria studied him, uncertain what to say. "As far as I could see, you didn't do anything wrong. Just put that little contretemps down to big-city people being prickly. But it wouldn't hurt to be more careful about staring at strange laundry from now on."

"Yeah. Maybe. But stuff like that happens to me all the time. I must be doing something wrong. Either that, or I just radiate offensiveness somehow."

"No. You used to be pretty offputting, with those leering, sneering, insinuating pickup lines, but you've gotten away from that. My theory is that you just need practice."

"Hmm," Chuck replied noncommittally, staring at the cherry atop the whipped cream on his latté. I wish I could believe that, Daria, my sweet. You don't know how much I wish I could believe that. He stirred the drink with his straw, mixing a little of the whipped cream in, being careful to leave enough to keep the cherry afloat. For a moment he almost did believe it. But no. Practice might improve my social skills, but the more time I spend in the company of the fairer sex, the more certain it becomes that…but then again, maybe I'll find her. She's out there somewhere. She has to be. He looked up at Daria, sipping her Two Chocolate Raspberry Latté Supremo across the little table. She might even be…

Sensing that Daria was about to look up, Chuck returned his gaze to his drink, just in time to see the diminished whip cream island tip over, and the cherry, the bright, shiny, impossibly red cherry, slip into the murky latté and be lost to sight. Chuck sighed deeply. If it's Daria, he thought, she's hiding it masterfully.

To fend off the wave of melancholia that suddenly threatened to engulf him, he asked, "Do you come here often?"

"Here specifically? Never."

"Any Sawbuck's."

Daria looked around at the interior of the gourmet coffee shop. "Seldom. They have a few things I like, and a couple, like this, that I really like, but their prices are outrageous. I don't see how they stay in business. There must be a lot more rich people in this country than I thought."

Chuck smiled at that. "Yeah, they are kind of pricey. Will you come in more often when you're rich?"

Daria smiled crookedly. "Probably not. I have an idea of what things are worth, and I hate to pay a lot more than that for something, even when I can afford it. The thought that I'm being cheated takes the enjoyment out of it for me."

He chuckled. "My dad would really like you. Well, that was a dumb thing to say. Obviously he does like you."

Daria cocked an eyebrow at him. "I guess that would depend on your definition of 'like'."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing."

They sipped their drinks in silence for a few moments. As Charles reached the bottom of his glass, his lost cherry appeared. He scooped it out with a spoon, looked at it for a couple of seconds, then picked it up by the stem and popped it into his mouth. Then he looked over at Daria, who had apparently been watching him.

"Through?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Let's get back. I'll show you that program."