Daria Gender Flip From Not So Different JTL Version

56. Double Or Quits

Sonny and Jane were walking along the hallway together talking about a series of wagers they'd been having. There'd been one about which there were more of in a box, ZooZoo Drops or Juicy Joes. There'd been one, when they noticed Kevin Thompson one day at the pizzeria, about whether he would show off to his friends by crushing a can against his head or by covering his eyes with slices of pepperoni and pretending to be blind. There'd been one in Mr DeMartino's class about whether he'd address his students as 'imbeciles' or as 'morons'. Each time Jane had unwisely backed her judgment against Sonny's. As a cumulative result of doubling up in an effort to retrieve her losses, Jane was now forty dollars in the hole. If Sonny had had a conscience, it would have been starting to bother him, but he reminded himself that it's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep money. Obviously Jane was unaccustomedly flush with cash and didn't know what to do with it. From that point of view, by taking some of it away from her he was helping to solve her problem.

His attention was not so consumed by their discussion that he had stopped exercising his peripheral vision, and he caught a glimpse of Sandi Griffin heading in the opposite direction. He knew she'd been absent from school for a while after an accident in which she had broken one leg, so he wasn't surprised to see her returning in a cast and on crutches. Just slightly more surprising was the weight she'd gained while she was off her feet. It was odd that the President of the Fashion Club wasn't bothered by weight gain, even just a few pounds.

Or maybe she was? Stacy hadn't mentioned it. Of course, she had been spending less time with the Fashion Club and more time with him.

He and Jane had just walked past Quinn, Stacy, and Tiffany, so Sandi was bound to encounter that group in the next ninety seconds …

Hmm …

Sonny asked Jane to excuse him and go ahead, and then loitered in the hallway to see what would happen next.

From a carefully measured distance he could see Quinn and the others greeting Sandi, and he got a clear impression that things weren't going well. Then some boys joined the group, and while the girls' attention was consequently diverted, Sandi tried to flee.

There's a limit to the speed a person on crutches can attain. Sonny mentally plotted Sandi's trajectory to her target exit and timed himself to arrive at it smoothly an instant ahead of her. He pushed open the door and went through it, then lingered on the other side to hold it open for her. Then he closed it carefully behind her.

She looked at him, her eyes wide with confusion, and then said, 'Thank you, uh … thank you …'

'Sonny.'

'Thank you … Sonny.' Whenever Sandi had addressed him before, even when they'd been working together against Quinn, it had been as 'Quinn's cousin', or something of the kind.

She leaned back against the door, closed her eyes, and shook herself as much as her crutches permitted. Then she swallowed, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again. 'This is a great opportunity for Quinn', she said. 'The Fashion Club's strict policy on obesity means I will have to resign, and Quinn, as Vice-President, will become the new President.' She straightened up, propped herself on her crutches again, and looked at Sonny. 'Of the Fashion Club. I'm sure Stacy will be the new Vice-President. But please let me be the first to tell them … Sonny.' She swung herself back into motion.

Sonny watched her go, scratching behind his ear. He was thinking that she must have modified her ideas about the best ways of manipulating him into serving her goals, when Mr Taylor suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

'Morgendorffer.' He looked Sonny up and down. 'I see you out here and I wonder whether you were perhaps thinking of leaving school premises during school hours, which I'm sure you know is not permitted.' He shook his head. 'Probably not. You're not stupid, are you, Morgendorffer? But perhaps you think I'm stupid? Perhaps you think I can't recognize troublemakers? Whatever the reason you're out here instead of inside where you should be, I know it's subversive.' Taylor flexed his neck muscles so that his head moved from side to side, without shifting his stare from Sonny. 'Your principal puts a lot of faith in high-technology security measures, but when it comes to dealing with subversive troublemakers, I put more faith in low-technology solutions.' He tapped the side of his nose twice. 'My nose', he said, 'and my feet.' He raised one foot slightly, then brought it down hard and moved his heel as if grinding something under it.

'Is that a metaphor, Mr Taylor? I seem to recall Mr O'Neill trying to teach us something about metaphors.'

Taylor blinked once like a lizard.

Sonny went inside, thinking, Li won't be my principal for more than another few months—you're going to be stuck with her for a lot longer. He dismissed the thought. Sandi and the Fashion Club and Quinn, that was more likely to be a problem for him now than Taylor. As Sandi had made him see, Quinn might become President of the Fashion Club, and that could be ugly.

Or it might make no difference at all. But he couldn't rely on that sort of luck. He had to monitor the situation. Especially if Stacy became the Vice-President. She would have to spend more time with the Fashion Fiends and that would mean less time with him... He found this unacceptable. He had to shake his head as he thought about how even less than a year ago the thought of spending any time with Stacy would be what was unacceptable. Now...


There was something more on Sonny's mind, Jane thought, than the episode of Sick, Sad World they were watching (a psychic Nazi-hunter peddling a theory about the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler). She took the opportunity to ask him about her gambling debt, but he wasn't distracted enough to have forgotten that. Then Quinn came in and made a breathless announcement about how Sandi had resigned from the Fashion Club. Somehow (Jane could see that Quinn didn't understand the maneuver herself) Sandi had manipulated Quinn into resigning as well in solidarity. With both of them gone, Quinn didn't think the Fashion Club could go on.

Fine, so why had she chosen Jane and Sonny as the audience for her announcement? What made her think they would care? Jane looked to Sonny for a snarky response but he still had something on his mind. She nudged him and said, 'Should we alert Sick, Sad World?'

Quinn gasped and left the room, but Sonny was still silent, so Jane took up the slack. 'Did I hear right? The death of the Fashion Club? That at last the people shall be free?'

'Not likely', Sonny said. 'That club's like a hydra. You cut off one airhead, two more grow back', he continued, but his heart didn't seem to be in it.

How to snap him out of his funk? She offered him a bet on the fate of the Fashion Club and he accepted. He didn't make a further sound or move, but she could tell the gears had engaged. Good, they could use a contest: powers of manipulation pitted against each other.


Quinn couldn't remember exactly what she'd said to Sandi. Sandi had said that she (Quinn) would have to be President of the Fashion Club, what with Sandi herself resigning. Then she (Quinn) had said something about how hard it would be to replace Sandi, or something. She was pretty sure she hadn't meant that she wouldn't be President. But somehow Sandi thought that was what she meant, or something. She'd said wonderful things about what a good friend Quinn was being, resigning from the fashion club along with her best friend. It sounded too good to be a mistake.

That just left one problem. Quinn thought she remembered Stacy saying that Quinn was her best friend. And Stacy and Tiffany had said wonderful things about Quinn being President Quinn. When she had to tell them that she was resigning along with Sandi, they both started begging her to come back. They said Sandi didn't have to know. Quinn had been very confused. She promised them she'd think about it.

She didn't want to think about it, though. Thinking about it was too hard. She was hoping something else would happen so she wouldn't have to think about it.

When Stacy and Tiffany walked away from her again, the only thing that was happening was that Sonny's friend Jane Lane was talking to Brittany Taylor in front of Brittany's locker, which was near Quinn's.

'I knew this girl who went behind her friend's back', Jane was saying, 'and felt so guilty about it she ended up in an insane asylum and they made her wear drawstring pants and a big plastic bracelet.'

'Serves her right', Brittany said, 'the back-stabber!'

No! Quinn thought. I can't wear drawstring pants! She had no choice. She'd have to call Stacy and tell her that they'd just have to find some new members for the Fashion Club.


Sonny was sitting at the kitchen table eating, and screening out most of what Quinn was saying on the phone to Stacy. He gathered the conversation was concerned with girls at school of whom he wished to know nothing, and how their features or clothes or whatever disqualified them for membership of the Fashion Club. If the Club broke up he'd lose his bet with Jane. Quinn wasn't in the Club any more, but she still seemed to be concerned about its survival.

She still seemed to be concerned about Sandi and Sandi's weight gain, too, judging by what she said when she got off the phone. 'Ice cream out of the carton? You're going to end up like Sandi!'

'You mean, unable to be a member of the Fashion Club? If it can't recruit me, that'll be the worst blow it's suffered yet. I don't know how it's going to survive.'

'Sonny, you've never liked the …', Quinn started, but then she checked before continuing, '… ohh, I get it. I see what you're doing. I bet you've got some sort of plot going, haven't you? You want to see the Fashion Club fold up.'

Sonny put down his spoon. 'You're changing, Quinn. The Morgendorffers' little girl is finally growing up. It takes some kind of insight to think of something like that.' But you still don't have enough insight to stop me from keeping one step ahead of you, Sonny thought to himself as he continued. 'It just confirms the maturity you've shown over this recent development. The old Quinn Morgendorffer might have tried to protect her own popularity by returning everything to the way it used to be. She might have tried to get Sandi to lose weight and return to the old Sandi so that the Fashion Club could be restored. But not this new Quinn Morgendorffer! You're saying that you don't care about the effect on your popularity, all you want is to show that you will stand loyally by your friend and give her whatever support she needs in making her own choices for her life.'

Quinn's eyes opened wide. 'Uh … that's right! Thank you, Sonny! Sorry, gotta go now!'

Sonny permitted himself a small sigh of satisfaction and returned his attention to the ice cream.


Sonny knew how dedicated Quinn was to the maintenance of her appearance, and he figured she'd apply the same energy and commitment to licking Sandi's appearance into shape once he'd planted the idea in her head. For that matter, Sandi herself when on normal form must surely have been similarly obsessive, and he counted on that obsession returning once Quinn had given Sandi a starting kick. Still, no matter how driving and driven they were, Sandi's overweight couldn't be lost all at once. He might guess that Quinn was working hard on the project when she wasn't around, but he never saw her around much anyway, so any change there was hard to spot, and he had no way of knowing how she was spending her time without asking her, which would be way too suspicious. In the meantime his bet with Jane irritated them by hanging awkwardly suspended before settlement.

They were reminded of it in the hallway when they overheard Stacy lamenting the Fashion Club's plight to Tiffany. 'Quinn's right', she said. 'There just aren't any girls up to the Fashion Club's standards. If only looks weren't everything.'

'I know', Tiffany agreed. 'Too bad we can't let boys in.'

Unprecedentedly, Tiffany's remark gave Stacy an idea: they could recruit boys for the Fashion Club! Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie were standing at their lockers just across the hallway from Sonny and Jane, so Stacy immediately invited them to her house that afternoon to have sodas with herself and Tiffany—in other words, with the (depleted) Fashion Club, though Stacy had, interestingly, more sense than to say so.

Initially the three boys were interested only in the prospect of seeing Quinn. (Their eagerness suggested that they hadn't been seeing much of her. That suggested she was taking time away from her usual activities to attend to the restoration of Sandi to form). Unable to offer them the company of Quinn, Stacy made the mistake of offering instead a discussion on swimwear. They reacted predictably to the idea of a discussion, but she made an adequate recovery by redescribing the invitation as an opportunity to look at (pictures of) girls in bikinis. That proved to be enough to draw them in.

Sonny pointed out to Jane that it sounded as if the Fashion Club were still operating, but Jane was still sublimely confident that she'd bet the right way. She offered to double the stakes and he accepted.

With the bet still to be settled, there was a doubling of Sonny's interest in finding out how Stacy's plan had worked. He was annoyed that she had been spending so much time trying to keep the Fashion Club together. So it was not entirely unwelcome when Stacy made a cautious approach to him some days later, after she'd scanned the hallway to make sure the coast was clear.

'Hey BFF!', she said, and took a step closer. 'Hi.'

'Is there something you wanted from me?' He couldn't help but let annoyance come through in his voice.

She looked down at her feet. 'Well', she said slowly, 'Um, I'm sorry. I know I've been so wrapped up in the Fashion Club but I'm the President now and I have to try and keep it together."

"Why? You've been moving father and farther away from them since we started, uh," He looked around to make sure no one could hear them. "Dating."

Stacy nodded emphatically. 'I know. But it is still important to me! College transcripts will love seeing me as a President of a club!" She claps her hands together. "Anyways, I asked Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie to come to a Fashion Club meeting to talk about swimwear. I thought, you know, they might be interested in how girls look in clothes, or in bikinis, anyway. But when I asked them which fabric they liked best they all ran out of the house.'

Anybody but Sonny would have laughed, or at least smiled. "They aren't interested in that."

'But boys can be interested in different things, can't they?'

Now Sonny's mind started leaping forward. "Yes, they can. But not those three."

"Well, um, what if some one else did? Like you?" His face never changed. "I mean, I know you don't care, but if you joined then we could spend even more time together!"

On further rapid reflection, he couldn't see anything to lose by just being honest with her, to a point. As far as the truth worked for you, nothing beat it.

'Stacy, Jane made a bet with me that the Fashion Club was going to break up. If I joined the Fashion Club, it would feel too much like trying to rig the bet. Sorry.'

'Oh.' Stacy's face fell. 'Well, um … nice talking to you. Um … say hi to Quinn for me.' She heaved a heavy sigh. 'I don't know whether the Fashion Club can survive, then. I'm about out of ideas, and I don't think Tiffany's ever had one in her life.'

Sonny was about to tell her he was sorry about that, but then he imagined Stacy saying, 'Yeah, because you want to win your bet.' Just because it was true didn't mean he wanted to hear her saying it. Luckily, unlike Stacy, he was used to saying nothing. But he couldn't hide a slight upturn of his lips at the comment about Tiffany.


Jane was washing her hands and watching Stacy mutter angrily to herself while she brushed her hair. If Stacy was in a bad mood, it could be a sign that the Fashion Club was heading for the rocks and Jane was going to be able to collect on her bet with Sonny. A moment later Tiffany came in and Jane kept watching.

Tiffany asked Stacy the time of the Fashion Club meeting and Stacy exploded. Apparently she'd been doing all the work of running the club, or trying to, while Tiffany remained, as usual, completely self-absorbed, and Stacy had reached her (unusually high) boiling point. After doing an amusing impression of Tiffany being oblivious (it was too bad Sonny couldn't have been there to see it), Stacy announced she was quitting the Fashion Club.

'Hmm', said Tiffany, 'maybe I should quit, too.'

Stacy shrieked and ran out of the bathroom. Tiffany started plucking her eyebrows. Jane went out to find Sonny and collect her money.

She had wondered whether he'd take her word for it, but when she told him the story of what she'd seen, he just nodded and handed her the cash, which she pocketed.

They walked round the corner of the hallway and found a crowd of people gathered around … something. Sonny suggested it might be the man with the balloon animals, but when they got closer it turned out to be Quinn and Sandi. They were together again … and Sandi was back to her old weight.

They both knew what that meant. Jane pulled out the money she now owed Sonny, but he stopped her.

'The Fashion Club did break up. It's just that now it's going to get together again. What say we split the difference?'


Some dialogue from 'Fat Like Me' by Peggy Nicoll