**Nick's POV**
Oh Shit- This is Surreal
December 10th, 2012, 10:10 P.M.
"Man, this is surreal," Jesse whispered to me.
He and I were pretending to watch Max teach this kid how to play drums. Hunter. Daria's son. That's what we were pretending to do, but in reality he and I were both surreptitiously watching Trent and Daria talking on the far side of the room. Neither one of them looked very comfy; in fact they both looked like they would rather be chewing on a broken beer bottle at the moment.
It was probably the hug. Daria never was a touchy-feely kinda girl, and being pulled into a bear-hug by an ex? An ex-boyfriend where the end wasn't exactly a happy thing, and she hadn't seen him in years? Yeah, that's not going to be awkward at all.
Jesse was right, this was surreal. What where the odds that of all the people who show up at our concerts, Daria's little boy would be one of the twenty or so that got hurt tonight? That she would pop back up in our lives the moment it seemed that we needed her the most? Our last two records, well, let's just say that they were a lot closer to the original Spiral stuff than any of us liked.
We need her help … god I hope Trent is thinking with his big head right now and can test the waters in that topic …
"She looks good though, right? I mean, we haven't seen her in forever, but apparently motherhood suits her," Max added in a stage whisper while Hunter was banging loudly on the skins.
He was right. Daria must have been one of those late-bloomers because it looked like she had gained maybe another couple of inches to her slight frame, or maybe I just remembered her as being much shorter. She wasn't wearing her glasses, and even though her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail it was still hard to see her eyes from here due to the attractive side-swept bangs hanging low over them. The lighting was dark so I couldn't tell if her hair was the same color, but even from across the room in the dim atmosphere I could see it shine. Her face looked a lot less dower than I had ever seen it, like a mental weight had been taken away from her younger self, but she also looked tired.
And extremely, extremely nervous.
"So, you guys know my mom? How?" Hunter suddenly asked.
"Yeah," Max laughed as he ruffled Hunter's hair, "you know anyone named Jane?"
"I think that's Auntie Yenta's real name, but I'm not sure."
Auntie Yenta? Oh god, that suits Jane to a tee. If she knew about Daria's kid though, how come we didn't? Trent never mentioned it, but he doesn't seem overly surprised …
"Hold on," Jesse said as he pulled out his cell phone and began flipping through pictures and found a recent one from the last time we saw Jane, "is this her?"
I took a long stare at the picture myself … something was bothering me about this whole situation and it wasn't because it's always awkward to be around an old friend you lost touch with.
"Yeah, that's Auntie Yenta. We don't see her very often, but she's cool. Doesn't talk to me like I'm a dumb kid. Why do you have her picture?"
"She's Trent's baby sister kid. She and your mom went to high school together; they were best friends and over time we grew on her too."
"Whoa, no way! Why didn't mom ever tell me this stuff, she knows how much I like your music!"
"She probably didn't want to brag," I blurted out.
Uh-oh. Maybe he didn't catch that.
"Brag? About being friends with a little sister of the band? Why would she brag about that?"
"She was more than just friends with the little sis dude. Your mom was, like, a part of the band ya know? She and Trent …," I cut Jesse off with a quick elbow to the gut, "ow! Oh, uh, your mom and Trent wrote songs together for Spiral. We all spent a lot of time together a long time ago."
"Really?"
"Yeah," Max smiled down at him, "she was just like one of the guys in the band for us. Except that she didn't play an instrument. Or get on stage with us. Or sing. Other than that she was a big part of Spiral for a couple of years. We probably wouldn't be here without her."
The look of shock and admiration was comical on this little boy, as his eyes and mouth grew wide open and he chanced a look at his mom and Trent on the other side of the room.
"No way. I knew my mom was cooler than other moms but … wow. I don't even have words … and I know a lot of big ones. She never told me."
"Bet you'll be a lot more popular at school once this info gets out, huh Hunter. You gonna show up to school on Monday, tell everyone, shoot up on the cool factor and gain like fifty new friends?" laughed Jesse.
"Are you kidding?," Hunter said disbelievingly before pointing to his head, "with hair like this, do you really think I need help being cool? I was born with it man. Besides, being popular doesn't equal true friends. I'd rather stick to my little group I really like then have the whole school pretending to like me for something I have no control over."
"Wow, this is defiantly Daria's son you guys. Too smart for his age, cool being himself, and rocking those glasses! Is your dad here too, kid? I'd love to meet the guy that finally roped in our little Daria's heart," Max winked up at us from his crouching position behind Hunter.
The kid just shrugged, but I could see a veil of stoicism drop down over his features, just like it used to do with his mother.
"I never met my dad."
"Wow, sorry man."
Right before things could get too weird with the way the conversation turned, we all noticed that Trent shot out of the room like a bat outta hell. Daria threw us all a look, and then looked pointedly at Hunter for a moment before subtly motioning with her hand to stay put before rushing out to follow Trent.
Uh-oh, what the hell is going on?
I turned, about to disobey Daria's silent direction to not follow them by going out to make sure everything was all right, and saw the guys casting worried glances at each other before looking intently at Hunter. Suddenly, it felt like this nagging itch in the back of my head exploded.
"Max, get someone to turn on the house lights. It's too dark in here and I can't see anything. Jesse, pull up a picture of Jane again for me," I asked as I held out my hand towards him. He flipped through his menus for a while before stopping and studying the picture before him, just as the normal lights brightened up the room.
"Whoa … man … no way …" Jesse said as he looked dazed and confused, well, more dazed and confused than usual while handing me the phone. I studied the picture Jesse pulled up of Jane, Trent and Max from a few months back, and then looked up at Hunter who was obviously pretending to focus on the drums and not listen in on us.
The thing that had hit me before, when Trent and Daria left the room in a suspiciously upset hurry, was that while this kid was really similar to Daria in personality … he didn't look like her. At all. Yeah, he had the glasses and ok, in this light you could tell that he was really pale like her, but that was it. His face, under the layer of baby fat that all kids have, was sharp. You could already see that he would have the kind of cheekbones girls would write sappy poems about in high school where as Daria's face was softer and rounder. His eyebrows didn't have the perma-cynicism arch like hers always had; they were more angular and thicker. The hair, the chin, the lips (even though he did have that little smirk that was always a permanent fixture on his mom), none of them matched up with Daria.
But it was the eyes that popped out the most, once you looked past his glasses to check them out. Hunter's eyelids seemed to be in a permanent state of being at half mast, giving him an effortlessly relaxed look. And the color?
The brightest sky blue I'd ever seen in a pair of eyes … except with Jane.
"Oh shit."
