Author's Note: Here's the second installment, for your enjoyment. I'm dead serious about letting me know of any factual or grammatical errors, or embarrassingly poorly written passages. (I take my humble pie ala mode, FYI)
I claim no ownership of or association with "Daria" or the creators thereof. This story contains profanity, drug/alcohol use, and sexual references, so the faint of heart/weak of stomach/children-whose-parents-shouldn't-be-letting-them-on-the-internet/etc., etc. should look away now.
Tiffany and Stacy stood idly by as Quinn lay a few articles of clothing into a suitcase.
"I thought you weren't leaving till spring break?" Stacy remarked, fiddling obsessively with a split end.
"Oh, I'm not, I just want to be prepared," Quinn explained. She grabbed her spare straightening iron and tossed it in.
"Like the boy scout. Who became a senator," Tiffany observed serenely.
"Wasn't that from an episode of Boston Legal? But in, like, the thirties?" Stacy asked, not distracted enough with her hair to completely ignore the conversation.
Quinn sighed and closed her luggage. "It was a movie, and-"
"Hey kiddos!" Jake leapt into the room unannounced, as was his wont. "Tiffany, you left your phone downstairs, and it's been ringing off the hook."
"God, Dad, phones don't have hooks anymore." Quinn had snapped back into her old, comfortable persona.
"Oh no! I have to get it or he'll disappear!" Tiffany took off at a quick pace—for her—and left the rest of the party mystified.
"Does she have a boyfriend now?" Stacy inquired.
"You sure ask a lot of questions," Jake commented.
"DAD!Stop eavesdropping on us!" Quinn snapped. She spun around to pick up another, smaller suitcase. "Now!"
Jake sulked out of the room, and Quinn couldn't help but notice the hurt expression on his face.
She and Stacy stood awkwardly on opposite sides of the room before the latter ventured, "I'm a little concerned if Tiffany has a boyfriend…"
"Yeah," Quinn agreed, taking a seat on her bed. "I mean, how many guys have tried to take advantage of us, when we're, you know…" she wracked her brain for something polite. "More socially apt than her."
Stacy nodded her head. "I don't know if it's anyone from school. Like, why would they be starting anything this close to graduating?"
"I think you're right," Quinn replied. "We need to find out if she's seeing anyone, and what his deal is. Get Sandi on the phone."
With the speed of a military communications officer, Stacy had Sandi's number splashed across the screen of her blackberry, and handed it off to Quinn.
Thanks to many years of rigorous practice, Quinn was able to text, "We have a situation," in a matter of seconds.
Sandi responded quickly, though her dexterity in texting was the one arena where she didn't even try to compete with Quinn.
She admitted she had also fostered concerns about the fourth-former-Fashion-Club member, but hadn't said anything about because, as she eloquently put it, "you, like, never know what the hell is going on with Tiffany." Now, however, there was a reasonable doubt, and the three of them decided to meet at the mall after school and determine a course of action.
Daria's roommate was sleeping soundly on her IKEA bed contraption, blissfully unaware that it was five in the afternoon. Daria was not close with her, and she was grateful for that, but she had come to the conclusion that the co-ed's ability to stay up for three days at a time and then sleep for twenty-four hours was the result of some synthetic substances. Since this enabled Daria to game on her laptop in all her free time, she had no complaints.
Following a successful day of morning classes, lunch in the union with a delightfully morose existentialist philosophy-major, and some studying of post-Franco Spanish architecture, Daria had retired to her dorm to play a session of the Sims full of fiery revenge, mayhem, and the ultimate triumph of the oft-suffering intellectual. It did not come as a pleasant surprise when she heard someone rap on the door.
She answered the door, perturbed that her limited relaxation time was being disrupted. Fortunately, on the other side, there was a pleasant surprise: Jane.
"You look like you've been up too long," Jane commented.
"You look like you haven't been up long enough," Daria retorted.
Jane craned her neck to look inside the room. "And it looks like your roommate hasn't been up at all."
"Trust me, in about ten hours, she will be up," Daria assured her. She stepped back to let Jane in, and went to turn off her computer before she could see what was on the screen. She was not swift enough, however, and Jane raised an eyebrow.
"Games again," she observed. "Do you even associate with other people when I'm not around?"
"I had lunch with Herbert today," Daria defended herself.
"And who's that?"
"He's a philosophy major from France," Daria explained. "He says he was a child prodigy, and he takes no issue with the Sims."
"A stormy French intellectual type?" Jane remarked, her eyes taking on that twinkle that came with teasing. "If you're not doing that, I'll give it a shot."
"I don't think his boyfriend will like that," Daria replied flatly, and Jane didn't make jokes about it after that.
They whisked themselves out of the dormroom, feeling more than slightly uncomfortable about the comatose roommate, and stopped at the end of the hallway.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" Daria asked. The two leaned against a wall, preparing for the oncoming conversation. "You said you'd be busy all month with your non-art classes."
"Oh, psh. Like I was going to pass calculus anyway." Jane stopped before continuing to try to muster a smile to match her joking tone. "But, you know, aside from lunch the other day, we haven't seen each other a lot lately. I miss our old adventures."
"Well, they did get repetitive after awhile," Daria pointed out, "but if you want to wander around and bitch about the dark outlook of our futures, I'm more than up for that."
Jane cracked a genuine grin. "I think I'd like that too."
So, then, they left the dorm, and ambled aimlessly about the campus, and held an enlightening, if equally aimless conversation, promising to spend the shortly arriving spring break together.
Sitting in the passenger seat of Jane's dilapidated sedan, surrounded by the static-dominated music of the local college station, Daria glanced out the window and saw a sign that promised only twenty more miles to Bridgetown, Massachusetts.
"When you said 'a bit of a drive,' I didn't realize you meant forty miles along a congested highway," Daria declared snidely.
"But two girls with good reputations like us wouldn't want to get caught misbehaving in our own college town," Jane smirked.
"The only reputable thing I've done is to do nothing worthy of garnering a reputation," Daria declared.
"That was quite a feat to pronounce," Jane commented. She glanced off the road momentarily to see Daria smiling faintly.
"I wouldn't do something as insane as majoring in English if I didn't have a knack for it." Daria's expression turned serious again as she continued, "It sucks that our different…academic choices have been keeping us apart, and I wasn't that into in this little trip at first, but I'm really glad we're spending time together." Narrowing her eyes, she added, "And you'd better not tell anybody I'm sentimental in the slightest."
Jane smiled in return before replying, "There's nothing to do at Raft anyway."
Daria scowled in response to this. "Hey, I don't fuck with your alma mater, you don't mess with mine."
"I love it when you tell me not to insult the very things you deride all the time," Jane snickered. "Like Quinn."
"Say the name again, and I will turn around, but I won't be bringing you with me," Daria threatened.
Jane continued laughing at Daria's quasi-joking vitriol. "If you're so nice now, just wait till we get a few drinks in you!"
Daria could only roll her eyes and began to fiddle with the manual tuner of the radio. Her finger slipped, sending them from their alt-rock refuge to the area's National Public Radio station.
"With tuitions ever rising, and admissions standards growing harsher than ever, it's hard to imagine students staying optimistic," a female anchor was broadcasting, "but today we'll talk to a number of engineering and science students from Boston University-"
Jane became a bit antsy and turned off the radio.
"I don't want to be distracted while driving," she gave as an unconvincing explanation.
"It's NPR," Daria protested, but seeing that Jane was still slightly anxious, she dropped it.
The road stretched on for another twenty-two miles, not the twenty promised, and, to both Daria's and Jane's relief, they made it out of the car and into the parking lot of a generic strip mall with their friendship intact.
"It looks like there's a movie theater, or…something…there," Jane offered unhelpfully.
Daria grimaced. "Raft doesn't seem so dull now, does it?"
Jane shook her head with conviction. "Look, there's a sizable college here, so if we get closer to it, there'll be something."
"What if it's not a college at all, but a clandestine training facility for nun spies?" Daria asked. "Like that one on Sick Sad World."
Jane blinked before soliciting, "What's Sick Sad World?"
Daria's eyes enlarged in horror, but Jane's laughter cut her off before she could express her dismay.
"I'm joking!" Jane cackled. "God, Daria, you're too gullible for someone as cynical as you."
Daria glared at her and began walking ahead, in the direction of the largest cluster of buildings she could see.
"You're walking the wrong way!" Jane called out, pointing to the correct direction.
Humbled, Daria turned around, and she and Jane walked together toward the campus. As they neared a relatively safe-looking club, Jane lifted her cellphone out of her pocket to check the time.
"Nine o'clock, on the hour," she announced to Daria. "Most of these spots aren't even open now, you know."
Daria had to defend herself on this. "I told you, I wanted to leave early because I have this crazy idea that marauding around a town we don't know anything about at three in the morning is dangerous—"
"Shh! Don't advertise the fact we're not from around here!" Jane grabbed Daria's arm and headed for the club. "Besides, that place is opening now, and the sign say eighteen-and-up."
Daria shook Jane's hand off of her arm, but she still followed her into the club. As they reached the entrance, Jane was happily rambling about the lack of cover charge, and Daria was doing her best to swallow the uncertainty buzzing in her head. The pair found their niche in a corner, and tried to look natural as they surveyed their surroundings.
"You're sure tense," Jane noted of Daria. She shrugged off the comment, and Jane felt a twinge of sympathy. "Hey, I think a band's playing here tonight. It'll be fun."
"I guess so." Daria looked out the window, seeing more economical cars and bicycles than had been there before. She realized, briefly, that if it weren't for Jane, she would never do things like this. Impulsive, scintillating, social things. And she didn't know whether to hate her or thank her for that.