Balancing herself on a crate serving as an ersatz chair, oven-like heat pressing into her from all sides, Daria wondered if this would be the last time she'd ever ride in the Tank.
When a sudden jolt nearly threw her on the grimy floor, she surmised that might not be such a bad thing.
"Sorry about that, Daria," came Trent's smoke-scarred voice. "I didn't see the pothole until it was too late."
"That's okay. I didn't need all my fillings anyway."
Jane had slept through the impact, her right hand protectively clutched around her canvas-wrapped paintings. She somehow managed to look exhausted even while sleeping, an impression exacerbated by her mouth's faint twitching motions, the movements of someone trying and failing to speak.
Outside, colorful houses receded into the past as Trent drove them towards Pat's Easel, the art gallery selected for the show. Daria edged closer to the front. The simple motion conjured dozens of memories, all those times she looked on the driver with adolescent yearning, her soul made raw by the very idea.
A different world, almost.
"Have you seen these paintings?" Daria asked.
"Not yet. I figured I'd wait so I can see them when they look the way Jane wants," Trent said, his voice taking on the seriousness he attempted whenever discussing his sister.
More likely you just forgot to care.
"They're really good," Daria said.
"She's got talent."
"She's been working really hard on it too. Has she been, uh, sleeping okay?"
"Huh? I guess. Why?"
"Jane's just seemed really tired this past week."
"You know how it is with artists, Daria. We put everything into our work. You won't ever find me sleeping on a regular schedule—"
"Watch out!" Daria exclaimed, seeing the Tank veer into the incoming lane.
"Oh, right. Sorry," he said, correcting the path. "Heh, no one ever said it was easy following your dreams."
"Or safe."
Retreating to the back of the van, she reflected that her worries were probably needless. It wasn't as if anyone in the Lane family was known for keeping regular schedules.
Daria jogged her friend's shoulder when the Tank came to a sputtering halt in a bland market plaza. It took her a moment to find Pat's Easel, half-smothered between the storefronts of its neighbors, a Starbucks and a Verizon outlet. Faded paintings wilted behind dusty windows, looking as if they hadn't been replaced for decades.
"On the plus side, I don't think you have to worry about this one being an art theft ring. If they were, they'd put more effort into it," Daria said. Jane didn't seem to hear as she stumbled out of the Tank with the paintings under her arm. A look of concern crossed Trent's face.
"You want some help with that?" Daria asked.
"Nah, I'm okay. Let's go."
The interior of Pat's Easel lived up to the exterior and then some. A paltry collection of generic paintings languished in stale air intermittently cooled by a noisy AC. All the usual suspects were there—sloppy coastal landscapes, children with faces straight out of the Uncanny Valley, and portraits that had tried to go for realism before making unintentional last-minute turns into abstraction.
A paper taped to the front desk advertised "Local Artist Competition – 7/26 – Courtesy of the Foundation for the Promotion of Local Talent." A man whom Daria took to be the proprietor stood at the back, staring at one of the paintings until he noticed the visitors.
Daria almost recoiled when he turned to face them, more like some living exhibit in the Museum of Medical Oddities than a resident of Lawndale. Wide flabby lips sagged on a pallid face that would have looked more natural on a slug's underbelly than on a human being. His head seemed to almost taper into a point, and Daria wondered if that was the result of genetics or some gruesome accident. The way he walked came across as wrong, his steps not placing weight at the right times, giving a hobbled appearance.
"Welcome to the gallery!" he said, and the normalcy of his voice brought Daria out of her morbid fascination. She felt a twinge of guilt for staring. Glancing around, she saw Trent also eyeing the man with uncertainty, though Jane seemed unaffected. "I'm Pat Mayhew, the owner."
"Hi, I'm Jane. I'm here to put some paintings on the showcase."
"Great! Here, I'll take those for you," he offered. Some of the weariness in Jane's movements lifted the moment she handed them over to him. "Thanks. I'm still setting it up, but you're all free to take a look."
With that, the trio followed him towards the back of the gallery, a drab partition placed between it and the front. More of the same sorts of paintings waited on the other side—Jane probably didn't have much to worry about in the way of competition.
Daria almost did a double-take when she saw a large and dark-colored painting propped up against the back wall. Thick oils swirled in a stagnant sky over a black sea, and weed-encrusted obelisks leaned at mad angles over sharp waves. Figures, smudged as if the artist couldn't bear to work them into finer detail, twisted and danced in the shadows of a great monolith in the foreground.
It looked remarkably similar to Jane's in terms of content, though done with less skill. The artist had tried for a more realistic style, which only diluted the fantastical quality. At an utter loss at what to say, she turned to Jane, and then back to the nameless image on the wall. This one, at least, didn't inspire any sense of vertigo, though that probably had more to do with the lack of fumes.
"Um, Jane," she mumbled.
Jane stepped closer, her bleary eyes startled into wakefulness.
"Yeah, the competition's pretty fierce," Pat chuckled. "That one's from Darren Lansky, he brought it in yesterday. I like it; could be something from a heavy metal album cover."
"It looks a lot like my submission," Jane said, still staring at Darren's painting as Pat finished unwrapping her work. The sickly proprietor looked between the two, his drooping face bemused.
"Huh, that is odd. We actually have a third one like that too," he mentioned. "I'm still trying to find a place for it."
"I'd say that's more than just odd," Daria said.
"Hey, great minds think alike?" Pat suggested with a shrug. "They're not really that similar. Especially not yours, Jane; the figures you painted at the bases are truly something else, very expressionistic."
"Thanks, that was the idea."
"But why are they so similar? Doesn't that seem strange?" Daria continued.
"As an art dealer, I've seen stranger," Pat said. "I wouldn't worry too much about—"
He stopped at the sound of heavy feet stomping into the gallery, choked gasps struggling to reach a full-throated yell.
"I know what you're doing!" a woman bellowed, her voice deep and rough, modulated by a slight Texan drawl.
Pat pressed a pale hand onto his forehead, his irritation clear.
"Excuse me while I go deal with this. Hopefully she won't damage anything this time."
"You stop right now!" she shouted again, a wheezy quality creeping into the voice.
Daria, Jane, and Trent hurried to the front, where they were confronted with the sight of Pat, his hands raised in a conciliatory gesture as he walked with exaggerated caution towards a livid Mrs. Johanssen, her craggy face flushed and eyes wide. The woman slammed her trunk-like arms on the front desk.
"Mrs. Johanssen, I don't want to have to call the police on you, but I did ask you not to come here again."
If they fight, my money's on Johanssen. Daria only had the briefest encounters with the woman, but never imagined her possessing such visible anger, each word coming out as an aggrieved snarl.
"You think that's gonna stop me? I'm not letting it happen!"
Mrs. Johanssen tore a painting off its hanger with a single swipe, and advanced toward Pat like an ambulatory Mt. Rushmore carving.
"Dammit!" Pat cursed. He waddled behind the desk and grabbed the phone, his pale and stubby fingers dancing out the pattern for 911.
"No!"
Mrs. Johanssen grabbed the phone and tore it out Pat's hands. She ripped a drab landscape painting off its perch and stomped on it, her massive feet crushing the canvas. Only then did Daria see the tears streaming from Mrs. Johanssen's eyes, which even then fixed on her.
"Girls, where is he keeping all them paintings? The bad ones?" the woman demanded.
You'll need to be more specific, she thought, too stunned to voice it.
"Mrs. Johanssen, maybe you should sit down. You don't want your heart acting up again," Jane cautioned.
"This is too—"
Mrs. Johanssen leaned against the wall, her cheeks taking an ugly hue, her breathing rapid.
"That crazy woman is in my gallery again!" Pat shouted into the phone. "Send the police over right away."
"Girls, I know what he's doing," Mrs. Johanssen said, her words forced out between sharp gasps. "It can't happen here."
Flashing lights and wailing sirens suddenly filled the lot. A police car must have been nearby.
"Mrs. Johanssen, you do know that I have a restraining order against you? Jane, I'm sorry that you had to see this. I'm afraid this woman is very ill. I assure you that nothing more will come of this."
"Please," Mrs. Johanssen gulped, her entire body trembling and covered in sweat.
They only watched as two officers marched into the gallery. Moments later, the police guided a deflated Mrs. Johanssen out of the store and into the back of the cruiser, leaving the front of the gallery in shambles.
By the weekend, Daria was about ready to write off the whole episode as a series of slightly odd but not at all significant events made more ominous by her own anxiety regarding college. Even the confrontation seemed more absurd than threatening.
She pictured it retold as a Sick Sad World episode. "In one corner, with 400 pounds of Texas fury, Mrs. Johanssen! In the other, half-frog and half-man, Pat Mayhew! See who wins the Clash of the Lawndale Titans, next on Sick Sad World!"
A pretty good byline. Pat didn't really look like a fighter even without his decidedly odd physique, and Mrs. Johanssen would have had a field day with him had the police not arrived.
Fate prevented Daria from attending the showing. She'd been called away at the last minute by another battle in the endless war between Aunt Rita and her mother. Daria and Quinn mostly sat it out, and she remembered the almost inconceivable pride she felt at seeing Quinn reading Mansfield Park entirely of her own volition.
If only you'd done that three years ago, she'd thought to herself, not allowing more than a brief, half-second smile at the scene (Daria herself was working through Empire of the Sun).
She'd met Jane the day before the gallery showing, determined to wring the most out of their last summer. Jane seemed more like her old self after submitting the painting: sharp, deadpan, and confident. They'd wiled away the afternoon through witticisms and television, as they'd done so many times in the past.
College can't be that much of an improvement—too many Lawndale alumni matriculated into it, Daria reminded herself.
More of the same, in other words, but without the people who'd made it bearable the first time around. As such, she often lost herself in the blur of her life since she'd moved into Lawndale, drawing out the memories to create something eternal and constant.
Such sentimentality would have sickened her a mere month ago, but she hadn't been quite so close to losing it.
The phone rang, yanking Daria back to the world of the living. She picked up the receiver and answered.
"Yo," came the familiar voice, quiet and subdued.
"Oh, hey! Sorry I couldn't make it to the show."
"Ah, you didn't miss much," Jane said.
"How did you do?"
"I won."
"Well, I can buy you a pizza," Daria offered.
"I never turn down a free pizza. Here, come on over and we'll have it delivered. Watch some Sick Sad World reruns. You can spend the night, if you want."
"Sure, that should be okay. Is, uh, everything all right?"
"Just been a long day. Figured it might be nice to have company."
"I'll be there soon."
Hanging up the phone, she reflected on how Jane's voice somehow recalled all the strange events of the past week. Alone in her air-conditioned room, Daria shivered, and wondered why.