Chapter 6: Daria Digs
Mai considered at the bumper sticker remnants clinging to the truck.
"Are you sure you guys want to be seen in this truck, well, with me now?"
Daria walked to the passenger door. Before she could touch it Jane called out, "Shotgun."
Mai chuckled, "You're damn quick, Jane. Join that track team."
Daria rolled her eyes, opened the rear door and clambered in. She found the back seat just right for her height and comfortingly cozy. As they started off Daria decided it was pleasant to have a view of long black hair waving in the breeze from the open window. Jane had produced a red leather cap from somewhere and pulled it down over her own black hair.
The three girls did not say much as they drove and Jane gave directions to Casa Lane. Mai sang quietly in Chinese, they figured, while Jane and Daria thought they should let her process the events of the afternoon.
"Better let me go wake up Trent," Jane said as they piled into the foyer of the Lane's small house. "Daria, you know what to do."
Daria led a curious Mai to the kitchen where she made coffee.
"No, thanks. I'm kind of a tea person myself," Mai said as she eyed the proffered cup of black brew. "And caffeine so fucking late in the day?"
"For Trent it's more like early in the day. And I know now to make extra for Jane." Daria explained. She turned at approaching footsteps.
"Oh, hey," Daria began and had to force herself to continue. "Trent."
Mai gave Daria a funny look which Daria did not notice as she looked down at the floor. Mai forged ahead enthusiastically.
"Trent Lane! Wow, you're abso-fucking-lutely volleyball legend in the halls of Lawndale High."
"Hey, Daria," Trent wanted to get formalities out of the way before he addressed allegations. "Hey, uhm, Jane and Daria's friend."
"This is Mai Ling, Trent. And Daria, look what I found. All the damning, conclusive, incriminating evidence." Jane waved a garish blue-and-yellow hard-cover book around.
Daria recognized the book as a Lawndale High yearbook, an improbable item for the Lanes to possess. The cartoony yellow numerals indicated a date several years in the past.
"Ewww, let me scrub it first," Jane said, eyeing several dark, fuzzy stains and holding it more carefully. She spent some time taking a wet rag to it and washing her hands before she cracked the pages. She put the album on the counter for Daria and Mai to see.
"Jane, that's those freakin' idiots on the football team," Mai told her.
"I know, although come to think of it playing volleyball with a football would be amusing to watch. Yeah, I might pay a buck and a quarter for the privilege. I wanted to start with the football team before the grand unveiling. It's the showman in me."
Jane flipped through several pages devoted to the football team's heroic efforts on and off the field before she dramatically paused and turned a page. There in a half-page photo with caption was the Lawndale High boy's or men's volleyball team. Kneeling in the center front with hands on a ball were younger, unmistakable versions of Trent, a shorter haired Jesse Moreno and Maximillian Tyler (team captain according to the caption) with thick light hair. In the back row was a guy Daria thought she had seen in a tollbooth on a highway somewhere.
Daria and Jane stared at it. Mai was looking with interest and admiration at a couple action shots below the team photo. Trent was averting his eyes.
"Uhm, yeah," he began and could not continue or finish. He gratefully took a cup which Daria held out for him.
"Okay, brother of mine. You've got some explaining to do." Jane said no-nonsense.
"Janey, remember? Mom and Dad were home a lot that year. And you weren't even in middle school yet. You didn't need to know what I did after school." Trent said as though he had been spending his senior year robbing banks in the afternoons with Criminale Tyler.
Daria got worried as she saw her friend slip into the intense distracted mode Jane sometimes achieved when thinking about her parents. Daria was still getting used to Jane's introspection, along with not knowing how to handle other people's feelings in general. She wasn't sure she would know how but she wanted to comfort Jane whenever her friend was ready to tell her more than a few sentences at a time in the breezy, offhand way Jane affected when talking about any family members besides Trent.
Jane was thinking back, painfully trying to recall that year, those times she repressed. Trent was right; her parents had been home frequently that year. For a definition of 'frequently,' Jane now thought she had to accept that it meant Vincent and Amanda Lane's home stays overlapped and were for longer than a few days at a time. Jane, than barely more than a little girl and not yet a young woman, had been overjoyed and not questioned why they were home or if it would end. Mom helped her draw and paint; Dad taught her how to compose camera shots and to develop film.
She had worked at forgetting the awful year before when Trent had always kept her fed—how she didn't know—but they had had to skip meals on more than one occasion. And the times Trent held her in the middle of the night when she had the nightmare involving mean men talking about something called a mortgage and threatening to throw her and Trent out of their house.
No wonder she had not paid much attention to Trent and his doings. Trent, she recalled, had taken his parents' presence nonchalantly. Her parents disappeared again the summer after that school year and Jane had done her best to stamp out feelings of disappointment and abandonment. They had done something about money, however, Trent explained to her when she was a little older. Food was never an issue again and mean men in suits no longer came to the door.
"It made the footballers mad; grabbed their glory. And Ms. Li was nicer to me once I was on a winning team." Jane snapped out of her reverie as she heard him explain to Daria and Mai. "And volleyball didn't involve getting a sunburn. And I, uh, we, was…were good at it. It was fun to smack the ball down hard. And it pissed off the footballers. Oh, sorry Mai."
"I never went to college," Trent finished, apparently explaining why he never kept up with the sport. "And you don't see too many pickup volleyball games."
Trent closed the book then authoritatively and apparently signaling an end to further revelations about his sordid volleyball career.
"Jane?" Daria asked looking at her with concern.
"Okay, Trent, maybe you and I have a lot to talk about later," Jane said. "Me, I think I need a run. And don't you kids have volleyball practice to get in?" she waved at Daria and Mai.
"Volleyball practice?" Trent asked looking from Mai to Daria.
"Yeah, I'm turning Daria into a decent player to get a bunch of busybody girls and one Nazi coach off her back." Mai started in. "I've got a great idea, Mr. Lane, er, Trent. How about we coach her together?"
"Eap," Daria responded and Mai gave her another funny look. She felt her face flush.
Trent flipped the ball around a few times. "Coach," he considered. "Yeah, that might be fun. I haven't held one of these in years. I know I had enough sleep when I keep having that bad dream where someone is trying to wake me up. Daria's pretty cool. She'll catch on quick."
Daria moved with the flow of the three others as they stepped through the kitchen doors and into the backyard.
"Coach me," Daria stammered. "The two of you." She saw Jane smirk at her before going back into the house.
"You kids have fun with volleying and spiking and all that digging," Jane commanded as she came back out. "I have to talk to Quinn; she's desperate to show me some new rackets she thinks will give us the edge on Sandi and Tori. And I need a nice, long run to uhm, think about some things."
Jane had changed into her running togs. Daria noted she had taken to using love-in-Tokyos to keep her hair back as had many other girls at Lawndale High. She smiled at Mai who was in conversation with Trent; apparently her sister and friends were not the only fashion-setters at Lawndale.
Trent was still holding Mai's volleyball and regarding it like he had never seen one before. He cautiously tossed it up, jumped in place and brought his hand down in a hard serve. A second later some gingerbread fell off an already half-dilapidated gazebo in the backyard.
"Trent," a slow low voice called out. "Whoa, a volleyball." Jesse Moreno came through the kitchen doors into the backyard. Trent flipped the ball at him; Jesse considered it a moment then spun it on one finger before serving. A moment later another piece of gimcrackery dropped from the gazebo.
"Man," Jesse announced significantly. "We should get Max out here and Nick too."
"Nah, man," Trent said. "Max would be cool, but remember? Nick was into futbol." He pronounced the word in such a way to make anyone listening understand he was not talking about the American version.
Daria got a couple different coaching styles that afternoon. Mai was her usual patient, demanding and exacting coach; the men were exacting and laid back in the extreme. The session ended with a net less contest between the rusty Jesse and newbie Daria against the rusty Trent and experienced Mai. When Mai had proposed the contest, Daria had quickly rushed over to Jesse, as far from Trent as possible and prompting another odd look from Mai.
Mai though was having fun and Daria found herself relaxing as Jesse covered up her occasional flub and complimented her on her increasingly common good moves.
Before she and Mai left, Mai had the boys sign one of her volleyballs in heavy black marker.