Chapter 2: Daria Digs
"Hey Daria. Hi Jane." Daria heard Mai softly say as she worked her locker door at the end of the next school day. Daria had tried to shoo Jane away before she would meet Mai for coaching but her friend had insisted on sticking around to possibly witness the miracle of Mai Ling speaking cleanly.
"Hey," Daria turned. "Mai," she concluded. She saw that Mai had already changed into comfortable shorts, shoes and a tee. Over her shoulder she was carrying a draw-string bag bulging evidently with a few balls.
"Hi Mai," Jane started in. "I hear you're going to teach Morgendorffer here how to spike and set and fetch and retrieve and all those good volleyball skills."
Mai laughed a bit nervously. "Well, I thought we'd start with your basic bump and set today. Maybe a little practice serving if we have time. Hey, Jane, wanna come with? I hear you and what's-her-name-Daria's sister-have the Lllawwwndale High badminton championship sewed up tight. So add another freaking skill to your repertoire."
Jane laughed in turn. "Thanks, Mai, but nah, my repertoire's dance-card is pretty full. Besides, I hear a long, lonely, steep hill a couple miles from home is just yearning to have old Janey run up it."
"Oh, yeah, I've seen you run out past our place on Hwy. 55. You should join the track team next spring, Jane. The team captain Evan's kind of an asshat dick but my buddy Siobhan says ya just gotta put him in his place right away and then he's okay."
"Thanks, that's tempting. I do love putting guys in their place having had lots of practice with my brother. I'll think about it, Mai." Jane smiled a bit saccharinely at Daria and set off.
"Ready, Daria?"
"I am ready to dive at your order and skin my knees bloody to learn practical volleyball skills, sir...err...ma'am." Daria deadpanned.
"Hardly," Mai giggled. "We'll start light today but I hope you have kneepads for future sessions. And cut the Peppermint Patty sir shit or I'll start calling you Marcie. "
Daria nodded and hefted her backpack made a bit heavier that afternoon with gym uniform, shoes and knee protection.
"Is there a place to change or do I just run behind a tree and flash the squirrels?"
"Oh, they actually got a changing room in the shelter house. It's not real shit-grody or anything even."
Mai led her out to the parking lot. Daria stared up and up as Mai unlocked the passenger door of a huge, high red pickup. Daria took in the bumper stickers: one Ford Tough sticker; "I swerve and hit people at random"; "Bad Ass Ladies Don't Drive Mercedes" around a Ford logo, and, although the truck was gleaming and spotless, the exhortation: "DO NOT WASH. This vehicle undergoing scientific dirt test."
Mai smirked, "I used to have one of Calvin pissing...er...peeing...uhm urinating on a Chevy logo but Dad made me scrape it off."
"It's okay, Mai," Daria assured her. "I've heard the all p-words before although I prefer the term 'making water' myself."
"I admire you, Daria," Mai chuckled. "You can think of the funniest, snarkiest, insightful things to say without swearing once."
"I think it comes from having a crazy, though repressed family. I don't think Mom heard most unladylike words until she went to college. Dad rants with the best, and I've picked up some style points, but the most he says is 'gah-damn' after he drops a squirrel trap on his toe. He went to a military high school. I think that burned him out on swearing."
Mai sighed. "I swear too much. Gotta cut back. It's hard."
"You don't have to be lady-like for me, Mai."
"That's not it. That old bat Li hears me and gives me too many fucking detentions."
"That sounds like the best kind," Daria said surprising herself.
Mai laughed loudly as she put the ball bag in the bed. She opened the passenger door and Daria thought she expected to have to help Daria up. Daria deftly put a boot on the narrow running board and scrambled quickly onto the seat without assistance.
"Score one for pipsqueaks," she told a smiling Mai.
"Of course," Mai said simply and went around to the driver's side.
"I heard you were about the only sophomore who could drive," Daria said as the pickup's low growl started. She shivered, feeling it through her skirt and green jacket as Mai took them out of the parking lot. Daria noted that Mai seemed to have on-off fits of nerves and she could not figure out why. Surely she wasn't nervous about her coaching ability.
"Yeah, I'm about a half-year or so older than kids in our class; I guess driving is one of the few advantages of that. But then all your friends want a fucking ride all over hell too."
Mai explained, "I was real sick with pneumonia a lot in second grade so Mom and Dad held me back a year to let me rest. That's one reason I got into volleyball. Dad was a star on his university team. As I got better he started teaching me to build up my lungs and strength. We started with soft kids' play balls like you buy in a supermarket to shut the little yard apes up."
"Hmmm, maybe a big shiny pink ball would work on Quinn," Daria speculated.
"Your sister? The badminton queen? We could look for a pink shuttlecock," Mai offered.
Mai drove more carefully than Daria had anticipated on first glance at the big pickup and the bumper-stickers, both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road at all times. Mai shared a story about Kevin Thompson mixing chlorine bleach and ammonia because he thought two strong cleaning agents were better than one; she told it with a mix of horror and humor.
"He said he thought the bubbles were real pretty but he then thought all the churning action maybe meant something was wrong. Probably the first damn thoughts he had in years and almost his last."
Daria could tell a few good Kevin stories herself and she noticed that the more they talked the more at ease Mai got with her nerves and her swearing. Soon they were parking in front of a sign announcing the Walnut Street Park.