It Slipped Through My Hands, Like a Shadow, Like a Dream

It Slipped Through

My Hands,

Like a Shadow,

Like a Dream

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

Synopsis: In an alternate universe, a lonely outcast named Daria moves from Highland to Lawndale, yet in the wake of a single change to the Dariaverse we know, disaster spreads unchecked. The one who could have prevented it now cannot, and the widening avalanche of chaos will engulf everyone the outcast has known—unless someone takes a stand to stop it.

Author’s Notes: This alternate universe Daria story takes place during Season One. Most other notes have been moved to the end of the story to avoid spoilers.

The title of this story was taken from a line in a translation of The Odyssey by Homer (book XI, line 204), where Odysseus unsuccessfully tries to embrace the ghost of his dead mother.

Acknowledgements: The following people served as beta-readers for this tale and have this author’s undying gratitude for their feedback: E. A. Smith, Between_the_Lines, FireWalkWithMe, Scissors MacGillicutty, Gregor Samsa, and Thea Zara. The story’s original ending was changed, and it is hoped this version is an improvement. Additional corrections were added based on feedback from Renfield, in particular (thank you!).

Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will,

shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness,

for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.

—Pulp Fiction

one

It was her room, the pink walls and white doors and salmon carpeting were hers, but in moments it would be gone from her life forever. It was already empty of every possession she had ever cared about, her books and toys carted off in boxes that very day. The place hardly looked like she had lived there at all. Even the lacy curtains over the windows had been taken. The light switch plate with the clown’s face was still there, as she hadn’t minded leaving it behind, though now she felt she would miss even that dreadful thing. She clutched her favorite book to her chest for comfort and sullenly toed the freshly cleaned carpet with her boot. Her eyes burned. The world got blurry.

“Where is she?” her younger sister snapped in a distant part of the empty house. “Daria! Come on!”

Scowling, she walked over to stand deep inside her open closet, placing her out of the view of anyone passing the doorway. She did not want to be found yet. Not by her sister, anyway.

“Daria! Let’s go!”

“Quinn,” a woman interrupted. “Why don’t you go outside for a few minutes? Give me a little time with her.”

“But we’re leaving, Amy!”

“I know, honey. Just a few minutes, okay? Go tell your mom and dad that we’ll be right out.”

Quinn blew out her breath in exasperation. “What-ever,” she muttered. The front door opened and slammed shut.

It became very quiet in the house. Daria glowered at the floor. Her sister was always bugging her like that, always yelling at her, always ordering her around. She raised her head to look out the bare bedroom window at the big green backyard she would never see again, bathed in the late afternoon sun. In moments, her anger melted again and became a grief she could not share with anyone, except—

Keys clinked together at the far end of the hallway, then fell on a kitchen countertop and were silent. Moments later, a floorboard in the hall creaked, then someone paused in the doorway of Daria’s former bedroom. Daria heard the intruder’s breathing. She hugged her book and tucked in her chin so her waterfall of red-brown hair hid her face and oversized glasses.

“So,” said Amy’s warm voice, “how’s my wonderful niece?” The words rang strangely in the empty room.

Daria pressed her lips together and stared at the carpet. She did not want to talk, but she was glad it was her favorite aunt, not her parents or sister, who came to get her.

Amy moved over to stand in the doorway of the closet. “Are you afraid of moving?” she asked.

Hesitant but honest, Daria nodded.

“Sad to leave your room?”

A barely perceptible series of nods.

“I can understand that. Which book is that, the one you have?”

Swallowing, Daria loosened her grip and showed her aunt the book. It was an oversized illustrated volume, light on text but rich in color.

“Ah, Black Beauty. That’s the one I got for you last Christmas. You like it?”

Several strong nods.

“I liked it, too. That was one of my favorite books when I was a girl.” A long pause followed. Her aunt was very patient.

“I don’t want to go,” Daria said in a rough voice. “It’s not fair.”

“I know.” Her aunt waited a beat before asking, “Can I give you a hug?”

Daria thought hard about it, then turned and walked toward the presence in the doorway. Head bowed, she let herself be enfolded in the warmth of two long arms and a perfumed purple dress.

Amy Barksdale looked down at the auburn hair just under her nose. Daria was a short, plain, sad-faced girl, barely over five feet though she was almost sixteen. She wore a gray t-shirt, black pants, badly scuffed black boots with Velcro straps, and a small necklace with a quartz crystal pendant. A thin black jacket completed the ensemble. The jacket makes her look like a goth, her mother once said, but maybe that will keep people away from her. At least if she spills anything on herself, it won’t show, and it keeps her from getting sunburned, too. She won’t take the damn thing off except for bed. I’m tired of fighting with her about it. If she wants to wear it in the summer, let her. She’ll learn what it’s like to get heatstroke.

“Be brave,” Amy whispered, her mouth by Daria’s forehead. “Black Beauty was brave, wasn’t he? We have to be as brave as he was. I’m proud of how hard you’re trying to be brave, dear. I’m very proud of you.”

Daria fought back tears. She did want to be brave, though it was very hard to do most days. She sniffed twice, then forced down the rest of her sorrow so her aunt would think good things about her. The lump in her throat hurt when she swallowed.

“Moving is hard for anyone to do,” said her aunt. “It’s tough to leave your old home for a new one.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know, but that was so brave of you to let them pack your things. That was very brave. You deserve something special for that.” Her aunt kissed her forehead and gave a final squeeze before pulling away. She noticed that Daria’s fingernails were bitten down to the quick. “Would you like to ride with me to the hotel in my little red two-seater? Just you and me? It’s still pretty warm out for September. Maybe we can stop and get a bite to eat, the two of us.”

Vigorous nods and a stuffy-nosed: “Okay.”

“I’d like that, too.” Amy did not worry about making such a promise. The cynical side of her knew Daria’s mother would not object to a family meal without Daria around. She guided her niece from the room and down the hallway, keeping an arm around the small teen’s shoulders to pull her close. “You want pizza tonight?”

Animated nods and an almost-smile: “Yes.”

“Good.” Amy smiled as they walked together. “Some things never change.”

Daria’s almost-smile went away. She looked at her feet, her hair hiding her face again. “Quinn said I never change.”

“What? Oh.” Amy stopped. “Daria? Look at me. Chin up. Now, listen: You’ve come a long way, and I’m proud of you, Daria. You’ve done wonderfully in school, you take good care of yourself, and . . . and I’m just proud of you, that’s all. You do change, because you always get better. You should feel good about yourself.”

The lack of a response was disturbing. “What’s the matter?” Amy asked, almost dreading to hear her niece’s answer. Long experience warned that Daria’s home life was anything but perfect.

Her niece licked her lips. “Quinn said I was . . . bad.”

Amy kept her face impassive. “Bad? How do you mean ‘bad’?”

Daria’s voice was very low. “Very bad.” Her right hand went to her mouth.

“Look at me, dear. Look up at me. Don’t bite your nails. Put your hand down. Listen to me. Quinn doesn’t always know what—”

“Mom said I was bad, too,” Daria interrupted, still looking down.

It was suddenly difficult for Amy to continue the conversation as she’d planned, denying the reality of the situation or recasting it as good. “When did this happen?” she said, wondering where this would lead.

“Before you came,” Daria whispered. “Quinn said I was a bad word, and Mom said I was, too.”

What the hell is this about? “What did she say?” Amy asked, keeping her voice steady and low.

Daria shook her head while looking at the floor. “Can’t say it.”

Knowing Helen’s sensitivity on the mental condition of her eldest child, Amy had a good idea what the bad word was. Worse, it was true. She swallowed. “Did she say it to your face?”

“No,” Daria whispered. “I was in my room. I heard them in the kitchen.”

Amy’s hand rose and cupped Daria’s left cheek. Aunt and niece looked into each other’s owl-eye glasses and deep brown eyes. Their faces were framed by long auburn hair that on Amy fell in kinky waves, but on Daria in long curves.

So much alike, so different.

Why am I the one who has to put everything together? Why am I the one who has to straighten things out when my stupid sister can’t juggle her overburdened schedule and can’t cope anymore and is ready to dump the hardest half of her responsibility for parenting on anyone she can con into accepting it? Why am I always the one?

She exhaled, weary from knowing the answer. Because there is no one else.

“You’re very special to me, Daria,” said Amy. “You always will be, and I will never give up on you. Never. I will always love you.”

Her niece’s eyes radiated such gratitude and joy as to stab Amy through the heart. There is no one else but me. No one else but me, no one ever. No one.

Her hand fell away.

“We’d better go get dinner,” said Amy woodenly. She retrieved her car keys from the kitchen. “We have a lot to do tonight and tomorrow.” Seeing Daria still standing there in the hall, she put a hand out to her. “Come on, dear.”

Daria took the hand. They walked together out of the empty house. Daria’s gaze lingered on the front doorknob, then they went down the sidewalk past the “SOLD” sign and the brown, rain-starved lawn. Helen and Jake were already seated in their brand-new navy-blue Lexus, waiting in the short driveway. The rear of the car except for where Quinn sat was filled with suitcases, most of them pink and obviously Quinn’s. Parked down the street was the moving van containing the Morgendorffers’ worldly goods, awaiting departure at dawn for their new home. The movers were off to who knew where, doing who knew what.

“Was she any trouble?” Helen called from the Lexus, leaning out the rolled-down front passenger window with a tense frown. Sunglasses were perched atop her bobbed brown hair.

Amy opened her mouth to say no, they had only been talking, all was well.

“We don’t have any more room in here!” Quinn shouted from the rear passenger window. “She can’t ride with us!”

“Quinn,” said Helen with a mild glance back. She looked at her younger sister again. “Amy, would you mind terribly if—”

“Daria’s riding with me,” Amy called. Her arm automatically went around Daria’s shoulders and pulled her close. Daria did not resist. “We’re going out for a little pizza by ourselves. Don’t worry about us.”

“Okay, but watch her,” said Helen, still looking irritated. “Be on her like a hawk. I don’t want a repeat of what happened at school.”

Amy returned Helen’s irritated look. What did happen at school, and why won’t you tell me the whole story? Helen had never been specific about the reason she pulled Daria out of the special education class at Highland High, except that it had to do with some boys. The implications made Amy sick to her stomach. She didn’t know whether to approach the topic with Daria, bury it, or call child services to investigate. Helen was suing the school, so child services doubtless already knew—but Amy didn’t.

“And don’t lose her baby book!” Quinn added, looking at the copy of Black Beauty Daria held. Daria glared back.

“Quinn.” Helen looked at Amy again. “We’re going to the hotel first to check in, but we’re going to be really busy unpacking before we go out to dinner, and things could be chaotic. Daria doesn’t tolerate that kind of thing very well, so if you could—”

“I know, I know.” Amy felt her face flush with anger. “I just said we were going out for pizza first. Don’t wait on us.” As if you would, you miserable wound-up pain in the ass.

A look of relief filled her sister’s face. “Thanks!” Helen waved as Jake started the Lexus and backed out of the driveway. “See you at the hotel!”

As the Lexus stopped backing into the street and Jake shifted the car into drive, Quinn took the opportunity to lean out of her open window, wearing her CD earphones and a nasty grin. “Bye, retard!” she yelled at Daria. She then settled back in her seat and rolled up her window as the car drove off down the long subdivision street.

Stunned speechless, Amy searched for a strong reaction from Helen or Jake, some sign they were angered by Quinn’s parting shot. Neither parent did a thing. The Lexus turned a corner, and the sound of its engine faded and was gone. Of all the nerve!

Amy looked down at Daria, who watched the car disappear with a smoldering expression. The bad word her niece had overheard earlier was now clear. It figured. Helen and Jake had never gotten over having a child diagnosed with such a disability. It was amazing they’d stuck together as a couple this long, given the amount of time they spent ranting about the unfairness of life in general, looking for someone or something to blame for everything.

Sighing, Amy decided to face the issue head-on. “That was just plain mean,” she told Daria, having to be content with understatement. She wanted to use pithier terms, but Daria often repeated any obscenities she heard, usually at inappropriate times, and there would be hell to pay if she did. “Quinn says things like that because she doesn’t know any better, but it doesn’t excuse bad behavior. I’m sorry that happened.”

“She is mean,” Daria spat. “She’s very mean.” She waited a moment, looking where the Lexus had gone, then shouted, “Bitch!” with naked hatred.

Amy’s stomach knotted, but she gave Daria’s shoulder a squeeze before letting go. Her niece’s storehouse of rage made her nervous. “Come on,” she said evenly. “Let’s get on the road and have some fun.”

Daria didn’t move, except to look up at her aunt with a mixture of anger and worry. “Are you mad?” she asked.

“Mad? About Quinn?”

“No. I said that word.”

“No, I’m not mad at you,” said Amy after a beat. “You know that you can say things to me that you can’t say to other people. It’s safe to say stuff like that to me, but not to anyone else, all right? Don’t tell anyone else you said that, okay?”

“Okay.” Daria’s anxiety began to ease. “You’re not mad?”

“No.” Amy started toward her sports car, parked by the curb. “Are you ready for a little drive to get some pizza?”

Temper fading, Daria followed. “Yes,” she said, looking ashamed. “I’m sorry I get so mad.”

“I forgive you. Families can be trying, I know. Just remember that you can do better than other people, okay? Good. Always do your best. Let’s buckle in.”

They roared away from the small blue ranch house and did not look back. Amy found a long two-lane straightaway outside town and pushed the top-down Triumph Spitfire to almost a hundred miles an hour. The wind howled in Daria’s ears and whipped her long hair. Her lips parted in excitement. She clutched her book and forgot everything else but the thrill of the moment, as Amy had intended.

They got to the hotel an hour later, stuffed with pizza and cheese fries. The red sun had almost slipped below the horizon. The sky was cloudless, the air dusty and dry and oven-baked even at dusk. Amy pointed out a star as they pulled their wheeled suitcases across the parking lot to the lobby door. “Make a wish,” she said—and then grimaced. Don’t mislead her like that! her conscience warned. She glanced at Daria, wondering how she’d take it.

Daria stared at the twinkling light with a rapt expression. Her lips moved but made no sound. “Okay,” she said at last. “I made it.”

“Good, now let’s get inside in the air conditioning.”

“Want to hear it? Want to hear my wish?”

Amy did not think she could take it if she did. “If you keep it a secret, it might come true,” she said, then flinched. Amy! Damn you!

“Oh.” Daria looked surprised, but her lips were sealed thereafter.

Helen, Jake, and Quinn were not in their second-floor rooms when Amy called up from the lobby. She suspected the Morgendorffers had already gone out to dinner. It then dawned on Amy that she could not get Daria into the double-bed room she was supposed to share with Quinn, the one adjacent to their parents’ room, and there was no telling when the rest of the family would return, which meant . . .

She gave up. “Can I trade my single-bed room for one with a double?” she asked the clerk. “Two queen-sized beds, nonsmoking? Put the difference on my credit card.”

Ten minutes later, aunt and niece pulled their small wheeled suitcases into a third-floor suite on the side of the hotel opposite the other Morgendorffers’ rooms. They looked out a picture window at the fiery red sky to the west, admiring the handiwork of nature, then took off their footwear, had bathroom breaks, changed into pajamas, and sat together on one of the beds to watch cable TV. Daria flicked through the numerous channels with the remote, a look of delight on her face. Amy wondered if Quinn or Jake usually hogged the remote at home.

The TV screen suddenly revealed a woman naked from the waist up, her breasts turned in the direction of the camera. Amy winced (Thanks, public educational television!), then glanced at Daria and saw her niece stare intently for a moment. “Thingies,” said Daria, pointing at the image with the remote before she continued surfing.

“Some people call them that,” said Amy, concern creeping into her voice. What does she know about sex? Not much, I hope, or at least enough to say no. Or run. What the hell happened to her at—?

“A boy at school said those were thingies,” said Daria, her voice low. She glanced nervously at Amy, then continued surfing until she reached a cartoon channel, at which point she smiled and settled back to watch the action.

Amy cleared her throat, unable to concentrate on anything else. “A guy at school said that?” she asked gently.

An irked expression crossed Daria’s face as she continued watching the cartoon. “Yes,” she said continued in a quavering voice. “He made me show my thingies.”

The news hit Amy with a jolt. She waited until she could talk in a reasonably sane tone. “He did what?”

“What?” said Daria, glancing away from the television, her face tense.

“You said that boy did something to you?”

That look of fear again. “Are you mad at me?”

“No, dear, of course not. I just want to know what happened.”

“Oh.” The frown returned. “He and his friend said I was too dumb to pull up my shirt. Then he said I was dumb because I did. I was so mad at him! He was gross!”

Amy’s thoughts became clogged with profanity.

“I like this TV show,” said Daria, her anger subsiding. “Mom won’t let me see it.”

“What happened to that boy?” Amy asked, trying to be casual. Her hands itched. She fantasized driving over the little bastard and his friend with her Triumph, then backing up and running over them again and again, even if it dented a fender and chipped the paint.

Daria frowned as she watched TV, trying to concentrate. “He was gross.”

“Uh, right. Sorry.” Amy waited until the cartoon was over and a commercial came on. “What happened to that bad boy?”

“Oh.” Daria turned to face her. “A car fell on him. It fell on his friend, too, and they died.”

Amy could only blink. This news was shockingly close to her dark little fantasy. “Whoa,” she said. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Daria became more animated. “They were fixing a tire and the car fell on them. Mom said that was good, ‘cause they were bad. My teacher said it was sad they died, but Mom said no.” She clicked the remote again and paused at a channel showing a set of concentric green ovals with the words “SICK SAD WORLD” overlaid in red. She shrugged and kept clicking.

“Who is Helen suing, then?” Amy muttered aloud, staring at the TV without watching it.

“The school,” said Daria. “The boys at school were mean. The principal died too, Mister McVicker. Mom said his heart went bad ‘cause she sued him.” She paused to reflect. “I don’t know what sued is,” she added, looking at Amy. “What’s sued mean? Does it hurt?”

Too much information, way too much. “It . . . it’s really hard to explain, even for me. It has to do with money. It doesn’t matter. Any more good cartoons on?”

Daria smiled, then aimed the remote at the tube and clicked for all she was worth.

As the shock receded, Amy discovered that the news of the two boys’ deaths was not at all unwelcome, considering the circumstances. They tried to fix a flat and ended up very flat. Yeah, that was lame, but what’s the point of a senseless tragedy if you can’t find a little humor in it? She did not laugh, however. She was too angry.

They played cards later with Amy’s deck, talking about what Daria had been doing in school, then Daria yawned, laid down on her bed “for just a minute,” and fell asleep. Amy covered up her niece, then took out her laptop computer, booted it up on the desk, and checked her e-mail. Still no word about the movie scripts her agent claimed she was floating around Tinseltown. Amy wondered if she should try writing another one.

She then roughed out a column for a travel magazine, describing how one crosses the country by highway with a mentally challenged companion. She wrote out the notes only, waiting for the trip ahead to reveal which “parenting” tricks and techniques worked with Daria and which didn’t. About midnight she unplugged her computer, got in bed, then slept until the ringing phone (Helen, of course) got the two of them up at seven a.m.

Amy and Daria met the other Morgendorffers downstairs in the dining room for breakfast at nine. Quinn said there was no room for them at the table and prepared to throw a fit when Amy reached for a chair to get Daria seated.

“Amy,” said Helen quickly, “why don’t you and Daria sit over there, by the wall? That table’s okay.”

“Why don’t we sit together like a family?” Amy asked, tensing.

“Because there’s no room here!” shouted Quinn, drawing attention from diners all over the room. “Sit over there!”

Amy’s temper began to fray. “Quinn, that’s rude,” she began. “You shouldn’t—”

“Let me handle this, Amy,” interrupted Helen, rising. “Come on, Quinn. Let’s you and I go over there, and Daria and Amy can sit with Dad.”

“Helen!” Amy protested.

“Please!” Helen snapped back. “I’m taking care of the situation, all right? Just sit down and eat! We can’t stay here and fight all day! We have to get going!”

Helen and Quinn left. Amy watched them go in disbelief, then dully got Daria seated and pulled out the chair across the table from Jake. He studiously ignored everyone and everything to dig into the food piled on his plate from the breakfast buffet. Amy dropped into the chair and rubbed her temples, feeling a sharp headache coming on. She didn’t know which of her older sisters drove her crazier with their self-righteousness and power issues: Rita, the blonde princess of privilege and entitlement, who expected to be loved and worshiped, or Helen, the authoritarian control freak, who expected to be feared and obeyed. Scylla or Charybdis: really, what was the difference?

“Try the buffet,” said Jake, looking only at his food. “Great stuff here. Love the six-cheese bacon omelets.”

“No, thanks.” Amy signaled to a waitress. “We’ll order from the menu.”

“My father never let me order from the menu,” Jake muttered. “He was such a—”

“What do you want, dear?” Amy interrupted, looking at Daria. She was not in the mood to hear one of Jake’s rants.

Daria did not answer. She was looking with a sad expression across the room at the table where her mother and sister sat and talked in a lively way. Quinn glanced up at Daria, made a nasty face for half a second, then looked back at her mother and smiled.

“Daria?” said Amy softly.

Her niece turned around, her face creased with sorrow.

“Want a waffle with whipped cream on it?”

Daria looked down at her empty plate, her hair shrouding her face, and said nothing.

Fortified by three aspirin and two ibuprofen tablets, Amy met the Morgendorffers one last time in the parking lot when they left the hotel. “We should be in Lawndale the day after tomorrow, probably about noon,” said Helen, checking a fold-up map. “Here’s the route we’re taking with the van. Drive carefully, don’t speed, and don’t take your eyes off her for a second. If she gets to be too much to handle, take her to a hospital emergency room and give them this prescription; the tranquilizers will keep her calm the rest of the way. When you get to a hotel, make sure she washes herself everywhere she’s supposed to. Watch her do it in the tub if you have to. She knows not to argue or talk back, and she knows not to hit—or she’d better know, if she knows what’s good for her. Here’s my cell-phone number and the number at the new house, in case you lost them. Oh, and the front-door key. The agent said the phones should be connected. I figure we’ll get in before you do, but you never know. Remember, she can be a handful without half trying. Be firm. If she swears or—” Helen’s voice dropped to a stage whisper “—says anything about sex—” Her voice rose again “—cut her off right away. Don’t let her get away with a thing. Got all that? Good.”

A grim, silent Amy took the house key, roadmap, prescription, and list of phone numbers, then watched as Helen walked back to the Lexus. Daria stood beside Amy with her head bowed in anger and shame.

As the other Morgendorffers drove away, Quinn stuck her hand out the window of the Lexus and nonchalantly waved her middle finger at Amy and Daria. Amy frowned and shook her head as she watched. She did not give voice to her unprintable thoughts, almost all of which were directed at her sister Helen for letting Quinn turn into a spoiled monster who competed against Daria for attention with monomaniacal determination and energy. What was driving Quinn to do that, anyway—insecurity, fear, imitation of her mother’s bad behaviors, or all of the above?

For all that, Amy could still sympathize with Helen, well familiar with her sister’s belief that she had somehow caused Daria’s intellectual deficiency. Was it that wine she drank at the office party, or the pot she smoked before she knew she was pregnant, or was it just bad genes and bad luck? The relentless guilt had crippled Helen’s good instincts. Now her family was swimming in disaster.

The very second that the Lexus was out of sight, Amy methodically tore up the roadmap, prescription, and phone list, then threw them in a nearby garbage can and dusted off her hands. She already had all of Helen’s phone numbers programmed into her cell phone, and she knew the Interstates better than either of her sisters ever would. And she was damned if she would drug her niece for any reason.

“Ready for some fun?” she asked her niece, putting the house key on her key ring.

Daria’s face lit up. “Yeah!”

“Me, too, and about time.”

They got into the car. As they were fastening their seat belts, Daria said, “Amy?”

“What?”

“Can I ask you something?”

Sensing it was important, Amy faced her niece. “Sure, anything.”

Daria appeared quite anxious as she collected herself, then suddenly blurted out, “What’s sex?”

Amy bit her lip, then went for it. “It’s how people make babies, dear.”

“Oh,” said Daria, still looking concerned. “Are you mad?”

“No, dear. Everyone asks that question. It’s good that you did.”

Daria sat back in her seat, clearly relieved. “Okay.”

“Uh . . . was that all you wanted to know?”

“Yeah.”

Amy felt a rush of relief, too. “Okey-dokey,” she said as she fired up the Triumph. They roared out of the parking lot, wind whipping through their hair.

Amy had years of experience with Daria, thanks to being badgered into caring for her niece whenever a crisis loomed in the Morgendorffer household. Traveling with Daria could wear on the nerves, but it was rewarding, too, in curious ways. Amy occasionally felt the pressure to have children of her own, but the short supply of suitable men in the Washington, D.C. area kept her from trying. She had often wondered what it was like to be a mother, to have a child, to feel that connection to another life. Daria’s off-and-on presence filled some of that need. That Amy often wrote of her experiences with Daria in magazine articles and movie scripts did not hurt, either, even if it pissed off Helen on occasion. Helen always called back to beg for more Daria-related favors. Once in a while Amy admitted to herself that, despite all the hassles involved, she was glad Helen did call her. Being a part-time mom wasn’t bad at all—trying, yes, but not bad.

We are going to have a good time, come hell or high water. Daria and I are going to have the best time of all, she repeated to herself as she went up the Interstate ramp and headed east across Texas’s flatter-than-flat plains. She glanced at her niece, who watched the passing scenery with solemn concentration. If Daria later became melancholy over leaving her old home, it could be borne. Highland was the ugliest, trashiest town Amy had ever seen, and she had seen a good many. God only knew how Helen and Jake had come to settle here in the first place. Daria would be better off elsewhere in the long run, and Lawndale was sure to have resources Highland could not hope to match.

One could always hope so, at least.

* * *

Fifteen hundred miles and two long days passed.

At four o’clock on a cloudy afternoon, a dusty red Triumph Spitfire with its top down pulled up to the curb in front of 1111 Glen Oaks Lane, in the Baltimore suburb of Lawndale. A mildly sunburned Amy Barksdale lifted the brim of her Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders cowboy hat (purchased in Dallas) and peered up at the upscale, two-story, red-brick home that would be the Morgendorffers’ new abode. She brushed the remains of Burger Baron onion rings from her sweat-stained Hillary Rodham Clinton t-shirt (Little Rock) and black gaucho pants (Alexandria), and then with her knee-high, black-leather goddess boots (Nashville) kicked aside the clattering pile of Ultra-Cola cans (everywhere) littering the floor so she could put on the parking brake.

A mildly sunburned Daria squinted at the house, her hair pulled back in a ponytail under a black VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS baseball cap (Shenandoah). She had newly pierced ears with golden earrings in the shape of horses to go with them (Knoxville), and under the black jacket wore a red top that read: I SAW ELVIS AND ALL HE GAVE ME WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT (Memphis). Her old footwear had been replaced by black walking boots that zipped up in back (Nashville). Her quartz necklace remained.

“There it is,” Amy said, waving a hand at the house and the “For Sale” sign in front that had a “SOLD” label slapped over it. She shifted in her seat and made a pained face. “God, my butt hurts,” she groaned, opening her door. “I gotta stand up.”

“Where are we?”

“That’s your new home. It’s certainly bigger than the old one, I’ll say that for it.” Amy shut the car door, then stretched and rotated her back. Every muscle and joint in her body ached from the long drive, deluxe leather form-fitting seat or no. “Do you have to go to the toilet?” she called.

“Yeah,” said Daria, still giving the house a dubious stare.

“Me, too. Let’s find one before I explode.”

Daria snickered. Her aunt always made her laugh, usually with her funny faces. They unlocked the front door and went inside, soon finding a first-floor bathroom. Then they explored at their leisure, giving it a thorough once-over.

“My guess is,” said Amy after they’d inspected the second floor, “your mom and dad will claim that bedroom there because it’s got a master bath. I don’t know what’s up with that room with the padded walls. That’s just plain weird, but it’s kinda cool in a way. I don’t know if your mom would let you have that. That leaves the bedroom with the white carpeting and the one with the salmon carpeting for you and Quinn to divide.”

“White gets dirty,” said Daria, remembering her mother’s complaints about the end-of-day condition of the white blouses she once wore to school.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Amy crossed her arms as she leaned against a wall, facing her niece. “At least we don’t have to wear it now that Labor Day’s past. So, what do you think of the house?”

Daria looked pensive. “I don’t know.” A pause. “It’s big.”

“Sure is. Hey, you remember what I said about why this house is better than the old one?”

“It’s closer to you?”

“That’s right. I live only an hour away instead of a long, long way away. I can get in my car and drive over to see you whenever I want, if your parents don’t mind. And you’ll get a bigger room than you had, no matter which one you get.”

Nodding absently, Daria turned to look back in the direction of the weird bedroom with the padded walls. It had a TV in the ceiling, and she liked bumping into the pads and hanging from the handrail along one wall. It was weird, but good weird. The closet was reasonably big for hiding in, too.

“We should wait until everyone else gets here before we divide up the rooms. Your mom will probably use the extra one, whichever one it is, for a guest bedroom. What would you like to do for now?”

Some quick thought, then: “Watch TV.”

“The moving van’s not here yet. We don’t have a TV.”

“That bedroom has one.”

“We don’t have a remote for it yet. What else could we do?”

“Oh.” Amy waited until Daria came up with: “Eat pizza.”

“That’s my girl. Must be a decent pizza parlor somewhere in this burg.”

They were on their way downstairs when the phone rang. Amy found an old rotary-dial telephone in the kitchen and answered it. Helen will replace this thing right away, I bet. “Hello,” she said.

“Amy? Helen,” said her sister. Soft piano music was playing in the background. “I tried your cell phone, but you have it turned off or something.”

“The battery died. I left it on by accident and forgot it. I’ll recharge it tonight.”

“Oh. Well, we’re in Leeville at the nursing home, visiting Mother. I thought it would be good for her to get reacquainted with Quinn when we had the chance.”

Good to get reacquainted with Quinn, but not with Daria. I understand. “Is Rita there, too?” Amy asked dryly.

“What? No, she’s not coming by until Thursday. She’ll probably bring Erin with her when she does. Erin’s twenty-first birthday’s coming up, you know.”

“Ah. Kind of like a beauty contest for cute kids, isn’t it? Complete with cash prizes and everything. Think your protégé will get lucky this time?”

“Amy, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Helen said, stung to the quick. “We’re just visiting, nothing else, and it wouldn’t hurt you to see Mom once in a while yourself.”

“I would, I would, but I—” Amy’s gaze fell on Daria, staring up at her, and she bit off her words: —don’t have a beautiful daughter for use in milking Mom for more of that lovely pile of money that Dad left her when he died. “—I’ll be by next month to take her out to lunch again. She liked that a lot the last time.”

“You took her out for lunch? The staff let you do that? When was this?”

“Last time I was there. So, when are you leaving?”

“We might be here overnight. I think we’ll take Mom out for a nice dinner somewhere. If the moving van arrives, just have them wait for us. Don’t let them unload anything until I get there.”

“Sure. Nice place you’ve got, by the way.”

“I know it is,” Helen said in a peeved tone. “You say that like you were expecting a dump.”

“Like the one in Highland, you mean?”

The phone slammed down on the other end. Amy winced, then carefully hung up. It was difficult not to smile. Touchy, touchy. She turned to Daria. “Your mom said they were running late. They’ll probably be here tomorrow about noonish.”

“Oh.” Daria thought about it. “Can we go out?”

“We sure can.”

They cruised Lawndale for half an hour before a suitable pizza place appeared: Pizza Forest, where people dressed up as giant adorable wild animals and sang songs for the customers. Small children usually enjoyed this, but it caused unending annoyance for the adults. Predictably, only families with small children and chaperoned groups of kids out for birthday parties were present when Amy and Daria arrived. They were escorted to their table by a giant opossum named Opie and a giant penguin named Tux. After three energetic choruses of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” which Daria sang with verve, Amy felt her patience slip. She quietly signed to every other oversized specimen of wildlife to avoid their table by drawing an index finger across her throat—an unmistakable signal that the costumed employees wisely obeyed.

“Did you want to hear my wish?” Daria asked just before the pizza arrived. She then clamped a hand over her mouth. “Eep!”

“A secret, dear,” Amy reminded her. She was curious to hear the wish, but she fought off the urge to ask.

Daria took a drink of her apple juice, which Amy had ordered for them both in place of caffeinated beverages that would get Daria too stirred up before bed. “The police were nice,” she said. “The ones we met.”

“Oh, um, yes, I guess they were.”

“Why did they chase us?”

“Uh . . . I was speeding, dear. They don’t like for people to go too fast on the roads. It’s not safe.” Amy found herself turning red. “I sort of messed up.”

“I was scared, but they waved at me and asked me my name and let us go.”

“Yes, with a warning not to speed again. It was just once.”

“No, three times. They stopped us three—” Daria counted on her fingers, remembering each incident “—I mean, four times.”

Amy took a deep breath, gauging Helen’s reaction to the news. “Let’s keep this a secret just between you and me, shall we?”

“Okay.” Daria took to looking for their pizza’s arrival.

“Did you have any friends in Highland?” Amy asked, and immediately regretted that she had.

Daria glanced back, then looked away and shook her head no.

“Oh. Well, maybe you’ll . . . oh, there’s our pizza and breadsticks. Just in time.” Way to go, Amy. You almost said she might find some friends here. What are the chances of that, do you think? Dope.

Halfway through the meal, Daria wiped garlic butter from her hands onto her fifth napkin and said, “I wish I was smart.”

Amy chewed very slowly on her pizza when she heard that. She glanced at Daria, but kept her gaze on the table thereafter and said nothing.

“I wish I was smarter than Quinn.” Daria picked up another piece of pizza and stared at it. “She tells me I’m stupid all the time. She tells me what to do and that makes me so mad. She always gets her way. I tell Mom and she says shut up, don’t talk about it, but she won’t make Quinn stop being mean.” She bit into her pizza. “Mom loves Quinn more than she loves me,” she said glumly as she chewed.

Amy wiped her hands, her appetite gone. What am I supposed to say to that? I think she’s right, but what do I say?

“I wish that—” Daria stopped and shook her head. “I won’t say it. I want it to come true.”

“Okay.” After tossing around for the perfect response, Amy gave up. “I’m sorry to hear all that,” she said. “I didn’t know things were so bad sometimes.” Not true. I did.

“Things are always bad.” Daria reached for another breadstick. “No one wants to be friends with me. I don’t want to go to school anymore. Other kids laugh at me and call me names. I don’t want to talk to them.”

“Do you like to learn?”

“Yes, but I hate school. I want to stay home and read.”

“Well, maybe Lawndale will be different.”

Daria shook her head with the grim look of a realist. “No, it won’t.”

“Promise me you’ll give it a try, though. That’s all I ask, to just give it a try.”

“Okay,” Daria grumbled.

“I’ll talk to your teacher so maybe they’ll be nicer to you, how about that?”

Though Daria agreed, it was clear she didn’t believe for a moment that would happen.

They drove around town after dinner until they found the Lawndale Mall, where Amy and Daria discovered a Books by the Ton outlet. Daria wanted to get George Orwell’s Animal Farm until she realized it had no pictures and she couldn’t follow the text. Amy bought a complete collection of poetry by Pushkin in a new translation, then found a book of children’s poems by Shel Silverstein, an Eloise book Daria had not yet read, and a large picture book on dinosaurs that Daria seemed fascinated with. On the way to the cashier, Daria saw Scieszka and Smith’s Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, and Amy relented and got it for her, too.

“Good choices,” said the teenage girl behind Amy in the checkout line.

Amy looked back. The teenager seemed friendly enough. She was lean and lanky, with shoulder-length jet-black hair and large blue eyes. She wore a red overshirt with rolled up sleeves, a black t-shirt and gray shorts, black leggings, and gray boots.

“My niece and I have similar tastes,” said Amy.

“She has my tastes in clothing, too,” said the teenager, looking at Daria’s black-and-red outfit. The teen was holding a large book on life model drawing. Daria turned around, embarrassed, lowering her head and hiding in her hair again. “A little shy,” said the teen, who seemed to catch on to Daria’s condition but did not seem disturbed by it.

“We just drove in from Texas,” said Amy. “Are there any pizza places around Lawndale that don’t have giant singing animals? Or at least a place where I can shoot them instead of listening to them?”

The dark-haired girl smiled broadly. “The best pizza place here is called Pizza Place—an original name if there ever was one. It’s on Bernstein Drive, near the high school. A guy with a crown is painted on the window. If you can put up with a sizeable school crowd, it’s worth the visit.”

“Thanks. Maybe we’ll see you there.”

“Probably,” said the girl. “I eat there about twice a week, more often if someone else is buying. That was a hint.”

“Next,” said the cashier. Amy paid for her items and waved goodbye to the girl in line. Daria kept her head down the entire time, arms folded in front of her. On the way to the parking lot, it occurred to Amy that the girl might be a good sitter for Daria, but it was too late then to go back and get her name, address, and phone number. Maybe we’ll see her later, she thought. She looked mature for her age, and Daria didn’t put her off, so maybe . . . wait, forget it. Helen would never go for it, if it was my idea. Oh, well.

They checked into a hotel so that Daria would have cable TV to play with. They were getting changed for bed when Daria asked, “Are you going to stay with us, Amy?”

“I can stay for only a few more days,” said Amy. “If you want, I can take you to school on your first day there, unless you want your mom or dad to—”

“No, you,” said Daria quickly. “I want you to take me.”

“Okay. I’ll have to go home to Washington, D.C., before long, but I’ll be back soon to check up on you, all right?”

Daria didn’t answer. She went into the bathroom for a while, then came out and went to bed with the covers pulled over her head. She didn’t even ask to watch TV. It was a sure sign that she was upset. It always happened when they talked about Amy leaving.

Amy stayed up with her laptop, finishing an article for a Washington political magazine and e-mailing it to the editor-in-chief. If he took it, Amy would clear fifty thousand for the year to date—less than she’d hoped because time with Daria cut into her writing, but still very nice. After closing up shop on her computer (still no word on her scripts, damn it!), she lay in bed for a long time afterward in the darkness, thinking about her niece’s larger future. Could Daria eventually get a job with a sheltered workshop, cutting up boxes or packing things or whatever it was they did in sheltered workshops these days? Would she ever be independent? Amy doubted it. Daria was functioning at a third-grade level academically, and though she was in much better shape than most people in her predicament, she still needed to learn a lot about getting around in public. Her tendency was to go off and hide whenever she was angry, frightened, upset, crowded, or overwhelmed, which was far too often.

What are Helen and Jake going to do with her? Helen said something about a group home or an institution the last time I was here, especially if Daria became violent, which I suppose she could if Quinn won’t stop ragging on her and Helen keeps playing dictator and Jake stays deliberately clueless so he won’t get involved in anything that might be emotionally unpleasant. Would Helen do that, put Daria out of the house and out of her hair? Daria’s not that hard to manage or get along with, really—or is that just my short-term experience, and not Helen’s full-time reality? I’m only around Daria for a few days at a time. How would things work out if she was with me twenty-four seven? Would we get sick of each other, or would we make it together? Why am I even thinking about this? That’ll never happen. God, Amy, just go to bed.

Sleep did not come, however. How would I ever manage things if I did wind up with Daria? She’s very demanding of time and attention, even when she’s doing things on her own. She gets angry and depressed at the drop of a hat nowadays, thanks to her deluxe nut bar family, and when she gets an ugly attitude, she’s damn ugly. And that whole hiding thing gets on my nerves. It would drive anyone to distraction. I just want to shake her and yell: Grow up! Stop acting like a little kid!

Her anger faded. Except, of course, she is a little kid. She’ll always be like this. I would have given up my arms and legs for her to be three standard deviations above normal on IQ tests instead of three below like she is, on the borderline between mildly and moderately retarded, and not a single doctor can figure out why. Thank God she’s not a Down syndrome kid, a fetal-alcohol baby, or has fragile-X. She doesn’t have a host of other disorders, like a screwed-up heart or spine. There’s so much to be thankful for that she doesn’t have. All that’s wrong with her, as far as anyone can tell, is that she’s just . . . retarded. That’s it. As things like this go, she’s as lucky as she can get, beyond this one stroke of bad luck. She’s got a future, even if it isn’t as much of one as we had all hoped. She’s got a future, as long as someone is there to help her find it.

Could I do it, if that person had to be me? Could I still churn out articles and columns for the magazines as fast as I can now, and still make them sell? My rate of production is already suffering. I wanted to crack a hundred thou this year for the first time, but it looks like I’ll have to put off that trip to Hawaii for a few more years. Could I ever go if Daria was always with me? Could I live with less just to have her, or am I happy being a part-time presence in her life? Do I really want to know the answers?

She shook her head to make the problem go away. About two-fifteen in the morning, it finally did as she slipped into exhausted slumber. A long road lay ahead. Nothing had been resolved. Nothing, except Amy knew she would try. It was all she could do. She would try.

And if it wasn’t enough, then . . .

She was asleep before she completed the thought.

two

The trees along Glen Oaks Lane burned autumn yellow as Amy Barksdale pulled her growling Triumph into the driveway of the Morgendorffers’ home. It was the first Friday afternoon in October; the sky was clear, and the breezes were warm enough to drive with the top down. Amy prepared herself as she got out of the car and headed for the front door with a rapid stride, her purse under her arm. The terse message her sister had left on her cell phone the night before said little but implied much, all of it bad. The Morgendorffers’ phone had been busy all morning, too—a very bad sign.

Half a minute went by after she rang the doorbell, but no one answered it. She was on the verge of walking around the house to see if anyone was in the backyard when she heard quick footsteps approaching. The door opened to reveal Helen in a magenta skirt-suit, a portable phone pressed to her ear. She gave Amy only a glance before walking away, still listening to the phone. Amy squelched the urge to broadcast a sarcastic remark in favor of eavesdropping on Helen’s conversation, hoping to learn how dire the situation was.

“Sorry, go on,” said Helen to the handset, making her way toward the kitchen. “Did they say they were thinking about a lawsuit, or were they planning one for certain? Her brother, what was it he said, exactly? I see. So, it looks like they’re moving ahead with some kind of legal action, no matter how things turn out. Did you get any idea if it would be civil or criminal? I’d bet civil, but . . . yes, I thought so, too.”

Amy deposited her purse on the family room loveseat. It sounded like Helen was delving into another corporate legal case, nothing she couldn’t handle at her office but always managed to bring home like any good workaholic. Where was the alleged family emergency for which she had been summoned? She considered the options. Were Helen and Jake getting a divorce? Unlikely, as their individual shortcomings meshed too well. Was one of the kids in trouble? Unlikely, too, or else Helen wouldn’t be gabbing on the phone when she should be—

“How did they get Quinn’s name, then?” Helen asked, stopping in the kitchen doorway. “It wasn’t on the news when . . . what? From the school principal? Can you document that? That’s actionable, definitely actionable. Get confirmation of that right away. It sounds like Ms. Li’s trying to spread the blame around or deflect it. She knows the school will probably be named in the suit, and her in particular, but she’s not allowed to give out the children’s names like that. She has an obligation to—oh, the hell with it.”

Amy shook her head in disbelief. Quinn was in legal trouble involving the high school? How was that possible? The last Amy knew, Quinn was a fashion drone and social conformist, cruel to her sister but nice to others, so how could she be in trouble? Amy knew she’d have to suffer through to the end of the phone call before learning the truth. Interrupting Helen when she was “going legal” was a ticket to disaster.

Helen paced to and fro in the kitchen. “When did you last check on her condition? Mrs. Johanssen, of course. I see. Did you talk with her doctor or nurse? Good. What’d they say? Wait, John, that doesn’t make any sense. A person with type two diabetes can’t be hypoglycemic; it’s the other way around, it’s hyper-glycemic. She couldn’t—oh. I see. Can the drugs do that? Get the name of the medication she was taking, then. Do the doctors have a preliminary diagnosis? Mmm-hmm. How would that happen? I see. Are they connecting the stroke with all the chocolate she ate? I have to know. Can you get into her medical chart and copy it? Yes, I know that, but can you do it anyway? Well, try, damn it! Did anyone talk with her when she was brought in—EMT technicians, ER personnel, police, anyone? Oh, she wasn’t . . . she couldn’t have said anything, then. I see. Yes, it’s terrible, but it wasn’t Quinn’s fault in any event. That woman should have known what she was doing to herself!”

Was Daria involved in this, too? Amy frowned. It was unlikely, but—

“Here’s what I want from you,” said Helen in an ice-cold command voice. “I need to know if Mrs. Johanssen’s condition was commonly known, if she was adhering to her medication, diet plans, any treatment she was getting for the diabetes, or if she knew what her diagnosis was, but she was ignoring treatment—any evidence of the latter is priority one, get it for me ASAP. If she’d been specifically told by her doctor not to eat chocolates or sweets, I need to know that in particular, and for how long she’d disobeyed doctor’s orders. We’ll build a counter-case that no one was at fault but her. She was killing herself, and there’s no one else to blame. And I need to know if that woman’s brother or adult children have evidence that they think proves that Quinn knew of her condition when she was selling the chocolates to her. If there’s physical evidence, I need to know exactly what it is, in detail. If you can get your hands on the evidence, bring it to me at once: any notes, letters, anything connecting Quinn to those sales, get it to me right away and I’ll make it worth your while. I don’t give a damn what it costs, just get it!”

Helen’s voice fell. “Look, my sister just got here. I have to go. Okay. Talk to you later tonight.” She thumbed off the phone and leaned against the doorway to the kitchen. Her shoulders slumped as she looked down at the kitchen floor with glazed eyes.

After a pause, Amy cleared her throat. She had a good idea now of the problem, but there was little she could do to help against such a nightmare. Little she could do, except perhaps—

Helen pushed away from the doorway and turned around, the handset held loosely in her fingers. She ran her other hand through her short brown hair. “Thanks for coming,” she said, without meeting Amy’s gaze. “Jake, Quinn, and I are going away this weekend. We were going to take Daria with us, but our plans changed. We need to focus on Quinn without any distractions. You can take Daria anywhere you like, but you’ll probably need to get a hotel room. Reporters might come back here if anything else happens, regardless of the court order. We should be back Monday afternoon. I hope that doesn’t interfere with any of your plans, but if it does . . . I guess I’ll find somebody else.”

That’s a bit cold-blooded even for you, sis, Amy thought. “No problem,” she said. “Just tell me what happened.”

Helen looked at the phone in her hand. “A week ago, the high school started a fund raiser for a student coffeehouse downtown. Some of the students sold chocolate bars, among other things, door to door. Then a heavy-set lady in this subdivision was discovered yesterday in her home by her brother. She’d had a stroke. She’s in Cedars of Lawndale on life support, but she might be in an irreversible coma. Her brother and her three adult children are talking about filing a civil lawsuit against whomever who sold her ten cartons of fundraiser chocolate bars that were found at her home. A lot of the bars had reportedly been eaten. One of the local TV stations got wind of it and made it a feature story last night, one of the reasons we’re getting out of town.”

“That lady was diabetic?”

“She told her neighbors she was hypoglycemic, but she was actually diabetic, type two. Her medication made her hypoglycemic, but a sufficiently large amount of sugar in her bloodstream would overwhelm the medication and worsen her condition. She must have been diabetic for ages. She was grossly overweight and in bad physical condition. You can bet we’re going to use that in court.”

“And Quinn—”

“Quinn’s accused of selling the woman the chocolate, of course!” Helen snapped. “Ten cartons of it, a hundred and twenty bars total. Quinn told me she stuck a note on one of the last three boxes, which she left on the lady’s doorstep two days ago because no one answered the door. The brother found the boxes before he found his sister. Some boy that Quinn’s dating drove her over to deliver the goods—I’ll have to talk with him and his family, too. If the private detective can get back the note that Quinn left, they won’t have anything connecting Quinn to the sale except for school records, and I can probably get those from Principal Li once I tell her she’s going to be named in my lawsuit for giving out Quinn’s name to that woman’s family!” Helen exhaled angrily. “The idiot!”

Amy wasn’t sure if that last comment was directed at Principal Li, at the unlucky Mrs. Johanssen, or at Quinn. She didn’t want to know, in any event, and Helen’s determination to get her hands on physical evidence possessed by the other side in the case sounded horrendously unethical, not to mention illegal. “What can I do to help?” she asked, eager to change the subject.

Helen checked her watch. “I need you to pick up Daria from her special ed class, the one I arranged at Lawndale High. Another high school’s been doing them, but it’s too far away to bother with if Daria got out of control, or we had to get both girls in a hurry. Jake’s been getting them and bringing them home, but he’s running some errands for me at the moment. What else . . . oh, I guess that’s enough disaster for the moment. I’ll call you on your cell phone when I can, but make sure it’s charged this time.”

“Where are the three of you going, if it’s not a secret?”

“It’s not to you, but I don’t want anyone else to know, and that means the news media, Mother, and Rita especially. Rita’s given me enough subtle digs about Daria to last a lifetime. She doesn’t need to sink her teeth into this one, too. We’re going to a mental-health spa called Quiet Ivy, near Annapolis. We . . . well, Quinn . . .”

Helen drew a long breath, continuing in a lower voice. “We’ve been having problems with Quinn. She’s almost out of control. I don’t know what’s happened to her. I’ve been called away from work more times than I can count in the last few weeks to bail her out of trouble at school. Things have gone downhill since she started there. Jake’s gone in more often than I have, since he can set his own hours at his own consulting business, but it’s not much of a business anymore with him gone all the time. I thought a weekend away for all of us would help, as things have been so tense. We’re trying to get Quinn straightened out as fast as we can, and I thought her selling candy for the school was a good thing, but now there’s this mess to deal with, and it’s too much, Amy!” Her voice rose to a shout.

Amy pondered what to say. “This doesn’t sound like something you can rush, Helen,” she began. “It could take time. If something’s happening with Quinn, there might be something happening with Daria, too, so—”

Helen threw the handset across the room. It banged into a window ledge on the wall behind the loveseat and bounced across the carpet.

“I can’t take any more of this!” Helen shouted. “I can’t save them both! I can save only one of them, and there’s nothing left that I can do for Daria!” Helen turned a ferocious gaze on her sister. “I can’t save Daria! It’s just a fact of life! Quinn’s the only one I can reach, and I’m going to save her if it takes everything I’ve got!”

Helen made a visible effort to control herself, then turned and walked aimlessly around the family room, waving a hand. “Ever since we got here, Quinn’s gotten crazier and crazier. She doesn’t make curfew, she’s been staying out a parties where the kids are drinking and fighting, and she lies like the devil. The police brought her home drunk from a party at a cheerleader’s house, and she ran away from us when Jake and I took her to Middleton to the old campus. We wanted to show her what college was like, but she took off to some fraternity house and—and I can’t take it!”

Amy found her ability to offer a snappy response was beggared. She waited, her mouth dry from shock and fear.

“I think it’s Daria’s doing,” Helen went on. “It’s her presence, I mean. It’s tearing our family apart. The two girls argue and fight non-stop. Quinn’s ashamed of Daria and won’t bring her friends over to visit. And she’s been going crazy because word’s gotten around school that Daria is her sister, and she’s been telling everyone some kind of nonsense about Daria being adopted, not even related to us! It’s just too much!”

Helen stopped at a window and looked out, her hands on her hips. “I can’t save both of them,” she repeated. “I can save only one. Just one.”

Amy had a glimmer of where this was leading, and the conclusion appalled her. “I’ll get Daria,” she said, eager to be gone before she screamed or did worse. “What time does she get picked up?”

Helen sighed as she walked back into the kitchen. “She goes to school for only half days,” she said. “Her class ended at noon. Quinn’s upstairs packing now, so don’t worry about her. I didn’t send her to school today, just Daria.”

Shocked, Amy looked at her own watch. “Helen, it’s two-twenty! Daria’s been there for—”

“I know, damn it! I can see the time! Daria waits in the school somewhere until two-thirty, when school lets out, then they bring her up to the office and they send her out the door to the car. She’s got plenty to do, so it’s not like it’s an imposition on the—”

Helen ranted on in the kitchen, but Amy had already left, leaving the front door wide open behind her.

* * *

Amy knew exactly where Lawndale High School was and how to get to the main office, near the school’s front entrance. She had escorted Daria in for her first day of school back in September, then had to leave her there and drive back to D.C. It tore her apart to leave her niece behind, clutching her books with a forlorn look while flanked by the principal and the school psychologist, both of whom looked like cold fish. Daria had been well briefed, though she was pale as a sheet and trembled.

Pushing her abuse of local traffic laws to the limit, Amy got to the school at two-thirty on the nose and parked in the semicircle drive in front. A rowdy wave of exiting students flowed around her as she headed in. Once she reached the office, however, the plan to pick up Daria hit a snag. Of five teachers and six students present, none had the slightest idea where Daria or the special education classroom was. Amy was reaching her wit’s end when a mushy-looking middle-aged man wandered in and noticed the loud debate over Daria’s physical location.

“I’m Timothy O’Neill,” the man said with a sensitive look that Amy immediately distrusted. “Are you Daria’s birth mother? I notice the resemblance.”

I damn well ought to be! Amy thought, outraged at the question. “I’m her aunt, not her mother!” she snapped. “No one seems to know where she is at the moment, and if you can’t produce her in exactly one minute, I’m going to—”

“Right this way!” said Mr. O’Neill cheerily, motioning her back into the nearly empty hall. “We’ve set up a fine classroom for her with everything she needs, just down the hall this way. Um, we have to go downstairs here, so watch your footing.”

“You set up a classroom just for her?” said Amy. “Or was it for her and the other special education students here?”

“Er . . . not exactly. I’ll get the door for you. There, we have to go downstairs here and take a right before we reach the boiler room, and—”

“Wait a minute,” said Amy, stopping at the top of the staircase. The fiery intensity of her gaze caused Mr. O’Neill to cower. “Are you saying she’s the only special education student in her room, or that she’s the only one in your entire school? And you set up her classroom in the basement?”

Mr. O’Neill looked stricken. “I’ve been assured by the principal herself that we’re well within the county and state rules for creating learning environments for special education students of Daria’s . . . um, caliber. I’m sure you’ll be pleased when you see how thoroughly equipped her room is, and she’s got the best teacher that we could affor—find, the best teacher we could find anywhere! Trust me!”

Amy noted that he had sidestepped the issue of whether Daria had any classmates. Steamed, she descended the filthy stairs into the ill-lit basement, keeping her right hand on the railing with a tight grip so she would not accidentally grab Nr. O’Neill by the throat and strangle him. She tried counting to ten to keep her temper, but she lost count as she got closer to the basement level, seeing cigarette butts, candy wrappers, chip bags, soda cans, and even beer cans down the steps. The air stank of machine oil and mildew.

“Does someone escort her so she doesn’t come down these stairs by herself?” Amy asked, unable to keep the acid out of her voice.

“Oh, certainly! Mrs. Stoller is with Daria every inch of the way. She’s been our most reliable substitute teacher, and—”

That brought Amy to a second full stop. “Substitute teacher? You’re telling me that Daria doesn’t have a qualified—”

“Oh, no!” Mr. O’Neill interjected, looking horrified. “Mrs. Stoller is fully trained as a special education instructor! We just haven’t had much of a call for that field the last few years, and—well, I’m sure you understand, she has to make a living somehow! I’m told she’s excellent!”

“Where are all the other special education students, if they’re not here?”

“They go to a new facility adjacent to Oakwood High School, a half-hour’s drive from Lawndale. All the special education students in this area are bussed to Oakwood every morning at seven-fifteen from Lawndale High’s back parking lot.” He sped up as if anticipating Amy’s next question. “Mrs. Morgendorffer was insistent that Daria attend school here, as it was convenient for her husband to pick up Quinn and Daria at the same time when he got off work. The other special education students arrive here by bus at twelve thirty for pickup, but she said neither she nor her husband could break away from their work schedules to come in that early. We’ve done our best to accommodate them, I assure you!”

Yet Helen can break away from work to help Quinn through her turmoil. Amy wrestled down her temper, then said, “Take me to Daria this second.”

Mr. O’Neill did just that, leading the way down a dim hall to a door marked “STORAGE.” “We’re going to change that,” he said nervously as he knocked, wrestled with a troublesome doorknob, then opened the door.

Amy walked in behind him. The room was better lit than she had feared it would be, but the lighting revealed the room’s other deficiencies. The floor was bare cement, though it appeared to have been swept. Water pipes and electrical conduits snaked up the unpainted walls, with open fuse boxes and water-flow control wheels within easy reach of anyone. On the far side of the room was a battered table on which was a stack of easy-reader books, with a small collection of drawings and written papers beside it. Sitting up in a chair behind the desk was a gray-haired, grandmotherly woman dressed in pastels, wearing a white knit sweater against the room’s chill. She was sound asleep.

In the middle of the room was a single desk—unoccupied—on which an open book rested. As Amy watched, the pages of the book slowly flipped over, indicating the desk had been vacated only moments before. It was the Eloise book Amy had bought for her the month before.

“Mrs. Stoller?” Mr. O’Neill called, giving a nervous look over his shoulder at Amy. “Mrs. Stoller! Please, wake up!”

Amy’s gaze ran around the room. It was devoid of all other furniture except a single orange locker in one corner. She walked over to it. “Daria?” she said softly. “It’s Amy. I’m here to take you home.”

She received no response. With care, she pulled up the handle and opened the door. Daria was hunched inside in the dark, her arms hugging her chest, her head down, her face hidden.

“Did I frighten you?” Amy asked.

After a moment, Daria nodded.

“I’m very sorry, dear,” she said. Behind her, a sleepy Mrs. Stoller and a nervous Mr. O’Neill talked in whispers. “Will you come with me? Your mother asked if you could stay with me for the weekend. Would you like that?”

With a quick nod, Daria took the hand offered her and stepped out of the locker. Cobwebs clung to her auburn hair, and her black jacket was dusty. Amy guided her back to the teacher’s desk, where Mrs. Stoller was collecting her belongings to leave.

“You must be Darlene’s mother,” said Mrs. Stoller, beaming. “She’s been such a good girl for me. Here’s some of her work.” The old lady handed Amy the few papers stacked beside the reading books. Amy took them without giving them a glance. “We had a good day today. None of those bad boys came down to disturb us.”

The news hit Amy in the gut. “Bad boys? What bad boys?”

“We’d best get back upstairs,” said Mr. O’Neill with increasing anxiety.

“Oh, those young rascals,” said Mrs. Stoller with a disapproving look. “They’re only being boys, I know, but they cause such a ruckus and use such dreadful language. It’s shameful. Children these days, I don’t know. When I was a girl—” She glanced at her watch and gasped. “Goodness, it’s late! I’ll miss the first round of bingo!” With that, she seized her things and left with surprising speed.

Mr. O’Neill was wringing his hands. “Now, before you jump to conclusions—”

“Is that why Daria hides when people come in this room?” said Amy, her voice rising in her rage. “Boys are breaking in here to harass her? Your school can’t even protect her in her own classroom, which you can’t even staff and furnish properly and which you hide in the basement?”

“In the case of the boys, it’s the natural exuberance of youth, I’m sure!” cried Mr. O’Neill. “Let’s not take the actions of a few out of the greater scholastic context! And as for the class—”

“Mis-ter O’Neill,” Amy hissed through clenched teeth. Her victim wilted under her killing glare. “Daria and I will return to this school Monday morning with one or more of the following people: the superintendent of this county’s schools, the state’s attorney general from Baltimore, a news crew from one of your local television stations, and the most aggressive civil-action attorney in Maryland, who happens to be a close friend of mine. We will personally inspect every inch of Daria’s classroom at that time and examine the educational credentials of her teacher, and we will spend the entire day in class with her, monitoring how other students interact with her. I will not meet with nor take calls from anyone from this school until we appear Monday. Do you understand me? Then I’ll see you Monday morning, seven o’clock sharp.”

With an arm around Daria’s shoulders, Amy left the room after collecting her niece’s books. They walked up the dark, trash-strewn stairs together, down the empty halls, and out the doors into the afternoon sunlight.

“Are Dad and Mom here?” Daria whispered. “Are they mad at me?”

“No, dear, it’s just me, and no one’s mad. Not at you, anyway. Your mother and father are taking Quinn away for the weekend. It’s just you and me here for the next few days.”

Daria looked relieved. “Okay.”

“Let’s go home and clean you up, then we’ll talk about what we want to do. Is that all right?”

“Can we get pizza?”

“Later, after you get cleaned up. You have yukky stuff all over you. Wait, I have a brush in my purse. Hold still.” With a little work, the dust and cobwebs disappeared. Amy had to keep her hand under Daria’s chin to ensure her head was elevated. As soon as she let go, her niece was looking at the sidewalk again.

“I don’t like school,” Daria mumbled.

“I can certainly understand why,” Amy growled, “but we’re going to fix that.” Something else came to mind, and she frowned. “Does your teacher know that your name is Daria, not Darlene?”

“She said my name was bad. She said Darlene was better.”

Amy came very close to snapping. “Idiots,” she hissed.

“Are you—”

“No, no, Daria, I’m not mad at you. I’m sorry to cut you off, but you did nothing wrong. It’s just that . . . oh, forget it. There’s the car. We’ll drive with the top down.”

They were halfway home, with her niece looking at the passing scenery in contentment, when it occurred to Amy that she had twice been mistaken for Daria’s mother by school personnel who seemed well familiar with Daria. Had they never seen Helen Morgendorffer? Was her sister too busy or too ashamed of Daria to come to school? No, that couldn’t be, because Helen said she came in to handle Quinn’s problems, so everyone should know her. Then why did everyone assume Daria and Quinn were not . . . sisters?

Then she recalled Helen’s confession about Quinn’s misdeeds: And she’s been going crazy because word’s gotten around school that Daria is her sister, and she’s been telling everyone some kind of nonsense about Daria being adopted, not even related to us! It’s just too much!

But, Helen would have corrected that notion, wouldn’t she?

Well, wouldn’t she?

I can’t save both of them, her sister had said. I can save only one. Just one.

Daria turned around in her seat, looking back in puzzlement at the intersection they had just crossed. “You went through a stop sign,” she told Amy as the sounds of skidding tires and honking horns filled the air behind them.

They made it home without further incident. Thankfully, no unfamiliar cars with TV-station call letters were in sight, and there was no crowd of shouting reporters, as Helen had feared there would be. In the Morgendorffers’ driveway, Amy got out of her car and leaned against the vehicle’s low hood, trembling hands covering her face. I will not kill my sister, I will not kill my sister, I will—

She heard Daria’s door shut. Dropping her hands, she straightened and took a deep breath, hoping she had not been speaking aloud. She then motioned to her niece, and they walked to the house together. The door was locked, so she had to use her key to get in. No one was home. The SUV was gone from the garage, though Jake’s Lexus was still there. Everyone had evidently left for their mental-health weekend. What good it would do them, Amy was unable to guess—but they were not her concern now.

After entering the house and sending Daria upstairs to clean up, Amy found she was holding both her purse and the sheaf of class papers Mrs. Stoller had given her. She dropped the purse on the love seat, then sorted through the papers. Word practice, simple math problems, a spelling test with an “A” marked at the top in red with the notation: “Good girl!” beside it—all standard stuff, encouraging if unexciting. Perhaps Mrs. Stoller did know something about teaching special education students. On the other hand, any second- or third-grade teacher could hand out the same work. Amy flipped through the papers, noting a test over the colors on the American flag (another “A”), two photocopied outline drawings of horses (filled in with black crayon, like Black Beauty), and several original drawings with the name “Daria” carefully lettered in the lower right corners.

Amy studied the drawings. One showed what she assumed was the blue ranch house in Highland, with a sun above and three figures outside. Given their heights, clothing, and hair color, the figures likely were Helen and Jake, with red-haired Quinn between them. Looking out a window on the other side of the house was a brown-haired head with only glasses for a face. Amy flipped the paper over and saw a penciled notation at the top, not in Daria’s handwriting: “My family.”

She doesn’t believe she’s part of the family, Amy translated. Quinn is the favored one, between the two parents. Daria’s inside by herself, looking out, isolated and alone. Perhaps she’s hiding, or perhaps she was left behind.

The next picture was of a tiny armless figure in black clothing, with brown hair and eyeglasses, but no facial features. The figure seemed lost on the large page, floating in nothingness. On the back was written, “Self-portrait.”

The last picture was of the black-clad figure again, but now it was larger and had rudimentary ears and a nose, with dark dots in the glasses for eyes. The hands even had five fingers.

And standing right beside the figure was a larger figure, equally complete, with long brown hair, a purple dress, and round glasses just like the smaller figure’s. Amy slowly turned the page over. She stared at the notation for several long seconds, then mouthed it to herself.

Someone who loves me.

She turned the page right side up again, staring at her niece’s handiwork. Her eyes watered, and her throat hurt when she tried to swallow.

Footsteps thumped down the stairs from the second floor. Amy put the papers on the back of the sofa by her purse as Daria came around the banister by the front door. Daria stopped short as she approached her aunt, sensing something was different. She waited, staring at Amy and playing with her fingers.

Amy wiped her eyes with a hand. “Can I see your room before we go?” she asked, wishing for a tissue in which to blow her nose.

“I cleaned it up,” said Daria, looking anxious. One hand rose to her mouth.

“I’m not worried about that, dear. No, don’t bite your fingernails. I just wanted to see it before we go out.”

“Can we have pizza?”

“Didn’t you eat at school before I got you?”

Daria shook her head.

“Your mother made you lunch, right?”

“I . . . I ate it in the car.” Her voice grew smaller as she spoke.

“In the car?”

“Yes, when Dad took me to school.”

“Didn’t you have breakfast?”

A head shake. “There was a fight.”

Amy felt a major headache coming on. “A fight?” she said. “Who was fighting?”

“Quinn and Mom and Dad.”

“So, you haven’t eaten since this morning? I can’t believe this. I swear, I can’t—”

Daria swallowed. “Are you mad at m—”

“Stop saying that!” Amy shouted. “Just stop it! You’re driving me crazy!”

Daria recoiled in horror, her eyes huge.

“Ohmigod.” Aghast, Amy hurried over to Daria, but her niece turned to run. Amy caught her, grabbing her hands to keep her from striking out, then pulled Daria close after wrestling her arms down. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! I’m so sorry!”

Daria stopped struggling and made a sound as if stifling a sob. Her shoulders began to shake as she wept into Amy’s blouse.

“You didn’t deserve it,” Amy whispered, hugging her niece to her chest. “I didn’t know you haven’t had anything to eat. This has been a bad day for everyone. I’m not mad at you. It’s just been a bad day, really bad, but it’s not your fault. I’m so sorry. Let’s go out and eat.”

Long minutes later, Daria sniffed and said something that sounded like “Okay.” They went upstairs to the bathroom to get cleaned up, peeked into Daria’s bedroom with the cheery cartoon-character posters on the walls, then left for a late lunch.

Am I any better than Helen? Amy thought as she drove, hardly aware of where she was going. How can I criticize my sister when I’ve acted just as badly over the least of Daria’s behaviors? I don’t know what to think anymore. Daria can try my patience, but she’s not impossible. She doesn’t deserve to be yelled at. This really has been a bad day for all of us. Everything’s gone to hell. I can’t even get my agent to call me about those damn movie scripts. I’m totally worthless. Okay, wait, I know that’s not right. I’m not a monster because I snapped at Daria, but I’m still ashamed of it, I can’t believe I did it. I can’t go on like this. I can’t—oh, great, now I sound just like Helen. That’s just great. Give it a rest, Amy. Get pizza. Pizza cures everything. Where in the hell is—

The advice of the girl in the bookstore came to mind. Amy cruised up and down the streets around the high school until she spotted Bernstein Drive, and moments later she pulled up in front of the fabled Pizza Place. Relieved that at least one thing was working out, she locked up the car with the top up and then headed inside with Daria.

Indeed, as the girl in the bookstore had warned, a large crowd of teenagers was already hanging around inside the restaurant, laughing and talking and even eating now and then. The two of them drew curious looks from all around, which Amy gamely ignored. Seeing what appeared to be an empty booth at the back of the restaurant, she guided Daria toward it, glad for a chance to have some privacy. They round the side of the bench facing away from them—

—and stopped dead. Someone was already sitting there, hidden from view by the bench’s high back.

“I’m sorry!” Amy said, startled. “We didn’t . . . oh! It’s a small world after all!”

It was the lanky, red-shirted girl from the bookstore, sitting with her elbows on the table. Her hands were clasped in front of her, pressed to her mouth. Until Amy interrupted her, the girl had been staring with a lost, distracted expression at the empty sea-green seat across from her, a small drink on the table by one elbow.

The girl sat up and forced a smile at them. “Disney fans, eh?” she said in a low, gravelly voice. “I’ll sing ‘It’s a Small World’ a cappella for five bucks.” She brushed back her silky black bangs. “If you don’t want me to sing, that will cost extra.”

Amy grinned. She scanned the restaurant for another empty booth, but saw none. “We won’t keep you,” she said. “I thought the booth was empty.”

“Let’s make it less so,” said the girl. “Have a seat, join the fun. No, really, sit down. My brother’s certainly not going to show up, as usual, and I haven’t ordered anything but water yet.”

“Is that a new fad diet? Go to a pizza parlor and skip the pizza?” Amy urged a reluctant Daria to be seated by the wall across from the girl, then sat down by her niece.

“I was counting on my brother to come through for the pizza,” said the girl. “He’s got the money, or he’s supposed to, anyway. He works in a music store when he’s not sleeping or almost getting fired. I kinda suspect he just got fired for sleeping on the job, so he must be dozing in his car somewhere, working off a bad case of angst. It would explain why he’s an hour late.”

“My treat, then,” said Amy. “I was in high school once, I think, and I remember what it those awful times when I couldn’t steal any spending money from my sisters. Care to join us in a giant, everything-but-anchovies pizza?”

“If I had any pride left, I’d turn you down,” said the girl, picking up her drink and swirling it around. Her red lips smiled, but not her eyes. “I’m Jane Lane, by the way, wannabe artist.”

“I’m Amy Barksdale, and this is my niece, Daria Morgendorffer. My sister and her family moved in from Texas, but I live in the D.C. area. Do you live close to here?”

Jane inhaled deeply and looked away. “I did at one time, but lately I’ve become one of Lawndale’s unwashed homeless,” she said, keeping her tone light. “I’m kind of new at it so I don’t yet have a shopping cart to hold my junk, but I’m keeping my eyes open for one with working wheels.”

“Homeless? Are you serious, or is this one of those teen phases?”

Jane toyed with her water glass. “My parents left the country a few months ago but forgot to leave the mortgage payments. The bank reps showed up a week after Labor Day and foreclosed. My brother and I had only a couple hours to move out. Everything we could save, we moved into my brother’s best friend’s dad’s garage for the time being. We used to live over on Howard Drive, but now we live in my brother’s car. A little cramped, but as they say, there’s no place like home.”

Amy’s instincts said the girl was telling the truth. “That’s awful,” she gasped.

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” said Jane, waving a hand. “I have the back seat curtained off, I found some perfectly darling carpet scraps to cover up the places where the floor rusted through, and a lady at the bagel shop is slipping us the day-olds that didn’t sell. It could be worse. We could be sharing a Yugo.”

What was I complaining about earlier today? I don’t have problems like this! Amy thought of her cell phone. “Do you need to get in touch with your parents?”

Jane gave Amy a sad smile. “I did last month when the bank reps showed up, but I couldn’t get them. They’d both moved on without leaving forwarding addresses or phone numbers, so I didn’t even know which continent they were on. I still don’t. My dad’s a freelance photographer, and my mom’s into pottery, mostly foreign techniques she has to see firsthand. I saw them last at the end of June. All my other siblings ran off long ago except for Trent, my twenty-one-year-old brother who’s probably sleeping in his car right now when he should be here feeding me, the starving baby of the family. Not that I am bitter. But enough about me.”

Jane’s manner brightened, and she flashed a genuine smile at the short, shy brunette who looked down at her lap, hair shrouding her face. “Hi, Daria,” she said. “I didn’t mean to ignore you before now. It’s not that I’m rude, it’s . . . well, it is because I’m rude. How are you doing?”

Daria’s only response was to try to hide deeper in her hair.

“Dear,” Amy whispered behind her hand, “we have a new friend.”

“I don’t have friends,” Daria muttered.

“You do now,” whispered Amy.

“I like pizza,” said Jane. “Do you?”

After a pause, Daria said, “Yes.” She raised her head the slightest bit, just enough to peek at the blue-eyed girl across from her.

“I like pepperoni and beef and onions,” said Jane. “And mushrooms, can’t forget about the mushrooms. But I don’t like whales on my pizza.”

A startled smile appeared on Daria’s face. “I like sausage and pep’roni and . . . everything,” she said after a moment.

“Except anchovies and whales,” added Amy, who was smiling, too.

“Eww,” said Daria, making a face.

“Do you like Lawndale?” asked Jane.

Daria shook her head solemnly. “No.”

“Good for you,” said Jane. “I don’t like it either, but I’m stuck here until I either graduate high school or get caught by Child Protective Services and put in an abusive foster home.” Jane caught herself and winced. “Sorry,” she murmured to Amy. “There’s something in the water here that makes me do that lately.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t do that lately,” said Amy softly. “You’re still in school, then?”

“Yeah, until they figure out I don’t have a real address anymore to receive their fund-raising propaganda.”

“Did your parents have a post office box or private mailbox?”

“Nah. It would’ve been too much work to get their mail, but they never read it before anyway. They sure didn’t read the bank notices.”

“Wait,” said Amy. “Do you go to Lawndale High?”

“I had nothing to do with that lady who ate the chocolate, if that’s what you’re asking. If that’s not what you’re asking, then yeah, I go there. It keeps me off the street. Almost.”

Oh, no, everyone’s heard about that chocolate thing. Damn it. “I was asking because Daria goes there, to a special education class that the principal apparently set up in the basement. Do you know anything about that?”

It was Jane’s turn to look surprised. She turned to Daria. “You’re the one who’s getting lessons from Mrs. Stoller in the basement? The old lady who sleeps through everything and never remembers anyone’s name?”

Daria nodded and looked at her lap again.

“Painful subject, sorry,” said Jane. She started to say more, but the waitress appeared then and took their order. When she was gone, Jane gave Amy a grateful smile. “I’ll make this up to you somehow, I swear. Need your bathroom redecorated? Mailbox painted? I’m rumored to have artistic skills that frighten the masses.”

“Hmm, I actually do need some painting done on my condo, but I live in Chevy Chase. Getting you there might be problematic.” She glanced at her niece. “I might have some other ideas, if you’re seriously looking for a short-term job.”

“Cash only, no checks or credit, and it has to be after school. If the job’s good, I’ll even drop out of my excruciatingly boring self-esteem class when the next session starts on Monday. Any amount you could pay would make me happy, so I can’t quibble about minimum wage, though I’m a lot less annoying when paid over three dollars an hour.”

Amy nodded. “I need to make a lot of phone calls tonight about Daria’s situation, and it would help if you would spend some time with her while I did. It might also help if you’re familiar with handling MR, if you get my drift.” She hoped Jane would translate MR properly as mental retardation.

Jane nodded and gave Daria a smile. “I have a cousin like that, and I took care of my oldest sister’s kids until they could run off on their own. I can deal with anything. In fact, I could use some good company. I’ve not been as cheerfully sarcastic as I was in my prime, two months ago. Do you have a TV we could watch?”

“Yeah,” said Daria brightly. “It’s big.”

“I’m borrowing my sister’s home for the weekend,” Amy added, “and yes, they do have a giant-screen TV in the family room, thirty inches at least.”

Jane’s face radiated a childlike delight that touched Amy’s heart. “Thank you so much! Are you looking for anyone to adopt? I’m relatively clean and I really am handy with a paintbrush! Just kidding, except for the part about the paintbrush. And Chevy Chase isn’t all that far away in a cosmic sense, in case you need some painting done.”

“Not far on a galactic scale, true,” admitted Amy. “So, are you free to join us after dinner and keep my niece entertained while I burn up the phone lines?”

“Well, I’ve thought about it carefully, and my answer would be . . . yes.”

“You can take a peek in the refrigerator, too. I know how cranky you teenagers get when you’re not pigging out. I should warn you that my sister is not the most creative cook, and her husband is worse, but we might forage something edible from the ruins.”

Jane shook her head, looking away. “If you ever wanna try the adoption thing, look me up,” she said wistfully. “Trent won’t mind.”

The pizza and breadsticks arrived at that moment, and table conversation ended while Daria and Jane dug in. Amy helped herself to a couple of slices, but she wisely judged that the two girls were going to kill off the rest without trouble and so refrained from eating more. She had a lot to think about, anyway, and long digestion tended to slow down the thinking process.

“Listen,” said Jane to Daria when only two slices were left. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, when I wasn’t being rude, if you could tell me what shows you watch on TV.”

“Uh,” said Daria, thinking hard, “I like the Powerpuff Girls and Dexter . . . and Spongebob . . . and the Simpsons . . . and the smart girl.”

Jane grinned. “Sailor Moon?” she teased.

Daria made an ick face. “Gross,” she said. “I mean the smart girl!”

“Lisa Simpson?” ventured Amy, raising an eyebrow.

“No!” said Daria in a tone of annoyance. “The one with the dog!”

“Oh,” said Jane. “Velma, from Scooby-Doo.”

“Yes!” Daria crowed. “I like her!”

“Jeez Louise,” muttered Amy, rolling her eyes. “I had no idea.”

“You like some really good cartoons,” Jane said, ignoring Amy. “I like those, too, but if anyone else asks, I’ll deny it. Have you seen Sick, Sad World?”

Daria shook her head no. “Is it a cartoon?”

“Seems like it should be. No, it’s about the stupid things that real people do.”

Daria glared. “I’m not stupid!” she said with real anger. “Don’t say it!”

Jane gave Amy an apologetic look, then said, “That’s right, you’re not. The show is about silly people. I didn’t mean you. I’m sorry if it sounded that way.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Amy told Jane sotto voce. “I’ve done the same thing.” She turned to Daria. “Jane likes you, Daria. She thinks you’re smart.”

Daria’s face fell, and she looked down at her lap. “I’m not smart,” she whispered. “Not smart at all.”

Amy flinched and closed her eyes, then covered her face with her hands, resting her elbows on the table. She was so furious with herself, she couldn’t speak.

“Daria,” said Jane, leaning across the table. Her voice had a tone of gravity to it that caused both Daria and Amy to look up. “I’d like to watch cartoons with you tonight, if that’s okay with you.”

Daria thought, then said, “Okay.” Her depression disappeared at the vision of the night’s promise.

Amy cleared her throat. “There’s probably some popcorn in the kitchen that we could make,” she ventured, grateful for the save.

Jane smiled at Daria. “If there is, we could have that while we watch TV.”

Daria nodded vigorously. “Yes!”

Jane put her hand across the table. After a moment, Daria shook with her as her aunt watched in surprise. “Friends,” said Jane.

“Yeah,” said Daria, smiling shyly.

But for how long? thought Amy. For tonight, for the weekend, or what? They can’t really expect anything like this to last, can they? Or am I too cynical for words? Nah. I won’t spoil it. They can be happy for a little while, until reality kicks us all in the ass again, as usual. Oh, now I really am being too cynical for words.

She shook it off. “We’d better be going,” she said. “It could be a long weekend.” She looked in her purse for a credit card and began to calculate the tip. Daria and Jane finished the pizza together while she did, then they had a swordfight with the last two breadsticks. Garlic-flavored crumbs flew everywhere.

“The breadsticks were bad,” Jane said later. “Really bad. It was worth it.”

* * *

Amy spoke with her attorney friend for almost an hour that evening on her cell phone, sitting at the kitchen table at the Morgendorffers’. She started out talking about the school problem, but she ended by spilling all her fears for Daria’s future, given the mess that her sister’s family was in. The attorney said she would do some research and call back on Saturday night. When she hung up, Amy dabbed at her streaming eyes with a tissue, blew her nose, then walked back into the family room.

Jane and Daria were on the sofa, watching Powerpuff Girls while eating their second large bowl of popcorn. Everyone had elected to skip dinner in favor of snacking, since they’d eaten so much on their late lunch.

“I love Buttercup,” said Jane with a sigh. “She’s my role model.”

Amy crossed her arms as she watched a little of the show from behind the girls. “Which one is she?” she asked.

“The dark-haired one with the bad attitude.”

“Go figure,” said Amy. She tried to smile. After her phone conversation, it was harder to do than she thought.

The episode ended. Jane stood up and stretched. “Mind if I talk with Amy for a minute?” she asked Daria. For an answer, Daria took the popcorn bowl for herself and kept watching TV. Jane and Amy retired to the kitchen as another cartoon began.

“Any luck with the legals?” Jane asked as they sat down at the table. She kept her voice low enough that the TV would drown it out from where Daria sat.

“My lawyer’s going to call back tomorrow,” said Amy, just as quietly. “She said the high school’s is probably in violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. I think I said that right. If so, the principal’s in a hell of a lot of trouble. It’s a federal law that was just passed, having to do with how kids like Daria are supposed to be treated. I wish I could explain what the lawyer said about it, but it would take too long and I’m not sure I got it all. Anyway, we might have something there.”

“Good luck sticking it to Ms. Li,” said Jane. “She’s been on my personal enemies list for ages, or at least since ninth grade. I’d be glad to testify that she once gave me detention for no reason at all, other than for drawing a picture of her getting married to Satan.”

“Your support is appreciated,” said Amy dryly. “How are things going in there with Daria?”

“Great. She did ask me what sex was, though.”

“Oh? And?”

“I told her that you knew all about it and she should ask you.”

Amy’s eyes narrowed in mock rage. “Insolent. Brazen. Shameless. And yet I like how you think.”

Jane smiled. “That makes two of us.” She started to say more, but the portable phone rang. Amy picked up the cracked handset while Jane waited.

“Hey,” said a deep, sleepy male voice on the line. “Janey there?”

“Mmm, maybe,” said Amy, then handed the phone over.

“Yo,” said Jane, wedging the phone between her right shoulder and ear. “Hey, Trent. Oh. Yeah. I bet it was the alternator. The alternator, Trent. It’s connected to the battery, which is probably also dead. You need to take it to a garage.” There was a long pause, and Jane’s face fell. “Oh, Trent,” she said. “Yeah, but you always say that, and nothing ever happens. Well, I can’t help it, that’s how I really feel. I was really counting on you to . . . okay, sure, whatever. Whatever, Trent. You can stay with Jesse and hope that his parents will feed you instead of throwing you out, but what about . . . oh, forget it. I don’t know, Trent. I don’t have any idea where I’ll be.”

Jane took the phone from her ear and thumbed it off with a sour look, then put it down and gave it a push halfway across the table. “Crap,” she said under her breath. “He lost his job because his car broke down, and he didn’t think to call in to tell the store where he was or what happened. He probably could’ve walked to work, but he wanted to sleep instead. Said he was too stressed out. Now he’s decided to live with his best friend until he gets his head together to try for another job, probably sometime next spring. Jesse’s folks would put up with one moocher, but not with two, so staying there’s not an option for me. Plus his little brother would drive me insane, asking for dates.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Drop out of school and get a job,” said Jane wearily. “I’m a survivor, so don’t get your thong in a knot over it. I can get a GED later like everyone else. I think I know of a place I can stay. This one-time classmate of Trent’s, named Monique, lives in an apartment with a side room she might sub-let to me. She used to play bass guitar for Trent’s band in high school. Child Protective Services won’t think to look for me there. I can wear a wig and work late-night shifts at the Burger Baron by the Interstate. At least the food’ll be free. Should get a day job, too. Not much time left for my art, but that’s life.”

“You shouldn’t—” Amy began, but she cut herself off. “Sorry. I was going to be an adult for a moment there. Are you sure that’s the best thing to do?”

“No. Is it the best thing I can think of right now? Yes. Can I use the phone to call Monique? She doesn’t crash until two or three in the morning.”

“Be my guest. I’m really sorry this happened.”

Jane shrugged, retrieving the portable phone. “I’ve been through worse. You don’t want to know, trust me.” She stopped, looking at Amy before she began pushing buttons. “I’m sorry I overheard part of your phone conversation earlier. I didn’t know Daria’s sister was the one who . . . with the, uh, chocolate . . . oh, forget it.”

It was Amy’s turn to shrug. “Her sister and her parents went off to a mental-health resort for the weekend. I hope it helps, but who knows. The court fight looks like it will be very bad. You don’t want to know, trust me.”

Jane turned to look back at Daria, blissfully awash in an episode of Dexter’s Laboratory. “I like her. I can’t explain why. You can tell she’s bugged by a lot of stuff, but she’s also . . . she’s okay on some level. She looks . . . content, I guess. I wouldn’t say happy, but content nonetheless.” Jane looked back at Amy. “She told me she made a wish, and she’s waiting for it to come true.”

“She probably wishes she could live with me instead of her parents,” said Amy, looking at the top of Daria’s head in the family room. She shook her head and took a deep breath. “I’ve never had kids, never been married, not planning to try either one right now. I’ve just hit the big four-oh, and when part of me thinks of a baby and says, ‘Try it, you’ll like it,’ another part of me just laughs and wanders off. The men I meet are all screwballs anyway. I probably kid myself when I think I could be more of a parent to Daria than her own mother, but some days I don’t know.”

“You’d make a wonderful big sister,” said Jane.

Amy turned around, startled. “What?”

“You’d be the best. You’re what’s known in the vernacular as ‘cool.’ I wish you’d been one of my big sisters. Life would’ve been a hell of a lot better if you had. My two sisters could hardly stand to be around me, much less be around the home more than once a year. Kinda like my mom and dad, that way. For a long time, I thought it was my fault no one stayed with me but Trent, and he wasn’t around much, either. Then I realized the fault was theirs. I got over it, but I still wish I’d had a cool big sister like you.”

Amy snorted, but she looked away because she was blushing. No one had ever said that to her, that she was cool or that she would be a great sister. Helen and Rita certainly hadn’t. “If you’re trying to get me to pay for your college tuition,” she murmured, “you’re going to have to do better than that.”

“You look a lot younger than either of my sisters, too, and they’re in their early thirties. You could easily pass for twenty-five, twenty-six—”

“You’re dangerous, you know that? You need to be locked up. Have you thought about selling used cars or doing infomercials?”

Jane grinned as she thumbed the phone on. “I’ll keep it in mind,” she said, and then dialed information to get Monique’s number.

* * *

Hours later, with Daria overdosed on popcorn and put to bed, Amy and Jane sat in the Morgendorffers’ family room and watched one of the VHS tapes they found on the shelves of the entertainment center built around the giant-screen TV.

“That was awesome,” said Jane, “and I never use a dork word like ‘awesome’ lightly.”

“I hope Daria didn’t hear any of that swearing,” said Amy with a glance toward the staircase, “but yeah, that was awesome—and I hate that damn word.”

Jane aimed the remote at the TV and clicked a button. The movie credits rewound at high speed.

“Rewind it with the machine off,” said Amy. “It’ll go faster.”

“No, I’m trying to . . . wait, there it is.” Jane clicked, and the movie ran forward.

It was the final scene in the coffee shop, where the hit men, Jules and Vincent, faced down would-be armed robbers Pumpkin and Honey Bunny. The terrified Pumpkin held a wallet that belonged to Jules, whose .45 automatic was under Pumpkin’s chin.

“You like this part?” asked Amy.

“Shhh,” said Jane. “Just a moment.”

They watched the dialogue between Jules and Pumpkin unfold until Jules asked, You read the Bible?

Not regularly, said the terrified Pumpkin.

“Here it comes,” said Jane.

Amy watched intently as Jules recited his “memorized” version of Ezekiel 25:17: The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.

Jane hit Pause, freezing the screen’s focus on Jules’s face, then turned to Amy with a peculiar grin. “That’s the core of the movie right there,” she said. “I read somewhere that the whole quote from Ezekiel is actually wrong. It’s a mishmash of bits from other parts of the Bible and some new stuff entirely, but what he’s saying is the pivot on which the movie spins. Pulp Fiction is a morality tale.”

Amy struggled for an answer. She felt strange deconstructing a movie in such depth with a teenage girl who was many orders of magnitude brighter than anyone would judge from her years. “I confess I spent most of the movie immersed in a private fantasy about John Travolta,” she finally said, “but this is the second time I’ve seen this movie, and I finally noticed that the Ezekiel thing is the only element of religion that’s actually mentioned in the whole film. And the guy who said it didn’t even believe in what he was saying, until that other guy shooting at him missed him. Funny now that you mention it, that the quote is all wrong, but in a way it’s still right.”

“And you get a happy ending in a movie in which you don’t expect one,” said Jane. “It’s all about redemption, pulling yourself out of your rut to reach for something greater. You think for a moment that the assassin is going to kill the two robbers, but then you realize he’s changed his mind. He’s not going to kill them. He’s going to save them. He really is the shepherd guiding the weak through the valley of darkness. In a twisted way, he’s the good guy in the movie.”

Jane turned her face to the TV with a dreamy look. “I wish I could create a great work like this. I know how to paint and sculpt and all that, and I love it, but I want more than anything to create art as beautiful as this movie, something that grabs people and shows them something greater than they are, something they could reach for, and maybe someday they’ll reach for it just because they saw my work. That’s what I really want.”

I wish that I could, too, thought Amy. She imagined her three movie scripts on the dark seas of Hollywood, lost in raging storms, paged through and probably forgotten by everyone who read them. I wish I could write like that. I want it so much, it hurts.

“What do you do for a living?” Jane asked, looking at Amy again.

“Uh, I’m a writer.” She blushed, staring at the TV. “Magazine articles, mostly.”

“Does it pay good?”

“It keeps me off the street.”

“I want you to know that I actually meant to say ‘pay good’ instead of ‘pay well.’ I was speaking colloquially.”

Amy grinned. “Sure you were.”

Jane laughed. “I’d like to read something you wrote, one of these days.”

“And I’d like to see something you’ve painted.”

Jane’s laughter suddenly died. She scratched the back of her head and sighed. “I saved some of my stuff when we lost the house,” she said. “I have a few pictures, but none of the big ones. I couldn’t get them into Trent’s car, and they were too big to carry.”

“I’d like to see the ones you have.”

“Sure. Maybe once I get everything moved over to Monique’s. If you get a chance to come back by here, give me a call. Or stop in at Burger Baron, whichever.”

“Deal.” Amy pulled her purse over and fumbled inside it, then took out a business card and handed it to Jane. “Here’s my phone, e-mail, and mailing address. Let’s keep in touch, shall we?”

“Thanks.” Jane took the card and tucked it in a shirt pocket after glancing at it. “Do you mind being an honorary big sister?”

She really misses her family. I can’t believe they all ran off and left her, and she’s only Daria’s age. That’s just criminal. “Do you mind being my . . . well, you’re not so little for a sister, are you? You’re kind of wise for your years. Kind of a wise-ass, I mean.”

Jane grinned. “Practice makes perfect.” She looked back into the family room, where Daria had earlier munched popcorn and watched cartoons in bliss. “I like her a lot. She’s a good kid. I attribute that to your influence. I don’t mean that in a bad way.”

“Thanks. She’s kind of like . . .” Amy’s voice trailed off. “Never mind.”

“Your daughter,” said Jane. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way, either.”

Amy felt acutely uncomfortable. “I shouldn’t talk about it,” she said quietly. “It’s out of place. I do feel very close to her.”

“I see.” Jane checked her watch. “Ten fifty-eight. I sort of overstayed my visit. Are you paying overtime?”

“Mmm, maybe. There’s an extra bedroom upstairs. Take it, if you want. Maybe Daria and I will help you move your stuff to Monique’s tomorrow.”

Jane’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding! I mean, I would love the help and I’m grateful and everything, but you hardly know me.”

“I have good instincts about people, and—” Amy smirked “—I don’t mind being free with the house because it isn’t really mine. Don’t set fire to it, though. Call your brother back later on and let him know you’re here, so he doesn’t worry.”

“Now I know you aren’t related to me,” said Jane. “None of my real sisters would ever offer me a room at their homes, much less help me move, assuming either of them had a home to begin with. Summer does, I think, but Penny’s probably living in a hut somewhere in Nicaragua. As for them helping me, they’d sooner die.”

“Interesting family you have. Reminds me a little of mine.”

“We should trade angst stories sometime.”

“Let’s not and say we did.”

“That’s a deal, mi hermana.”

“My Spanish is rusty. Did you call me your Herman?”

Jane smirked. “Look it up.”

“You are a stinker. If this house had a dungeon, you’d be sleeping in the basement cellar below that. Oh, hand me the remote.”

Jane did, and Amy clicked off the movie and tuned the set to a local station. “News is on at eleven. I have to see if there’s anything about . . .”

The anchorman on the screen was talking rapidly. “—news has learned that Ingrid Johanssen, of the six hundred block of Silver Maple Drive, died at Cedars of Lawndale Hospital a short time ago. We take you live to reporter Gary Wolcott, who’s on the scene. Gary?”

Jane recoiled. “Was that—?” she began, but she stopped as the TV showed a reporter standing in a dark parking lot near a brightly lit emergency room.

“Dave,” said the reporter into his mike, “Cedars of Lawndale just released a statement that Ingrid Johanssen, who apparently suffered a stroke two days ago after eating chocolate purchased from a fund-raiser for Lawndale High School, died at ten-seventeen p.m. tonight after she was removed from a respirator. A Lawndale Police spokesman said that an investigation into Mrs. Johanssen’s death is continuing, but no details could be released. KSBC Action News spoke earlier with Jon Thorvald, the brother of Mrs. Johanssen, and he had this to say.”

The phone rang loudly from the kitchen. Amy jumped up, cursing, and ran into the kitchen. She picked up the phone as the TV rattled on. “Hello?”

“Hello,” said a woman’s voice. “This is Rhoda Miller of WOAK-TV, Oakwood. I’d like to—”

Amy slammed the phone down. It immediately rang again. She reached over and unplugged the phone base from the wall jack—and heard a telephone ringing upstairs. Swearing loudly, she rang through the house to the stairs, quickly making her way up to the master bedroom where her sister’s bedroom suite had been laid out. She unplugged the phone there, then found and unplugged the phone in Quinn’s pink bedroom as well. Daria did not wake up, but that blessing brought Amy little relief. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this is happening. It’s a goddamn nightmare.

When she got back to the family room, she found the TV’s volume was turned down. Jane stood by the set, looking grim. “Did Daria wake up?” she asked.

“No, thank heavens.” Amy stopped, her hands clamped to her forehead. “What a mess. The media’s coming to haunt us.”

“Want me to lock the doors, pull down the window shades?”

“Yes, that would be great. Do it quickly. And turn off the lights we’re not using.”

“Sí, mi hermana!”

Jane raced off. Amy gathered her wits and looked around the family room. We’re going to have to run for it. I’ll call Helen once we get out of here. We’ll have to be gone before sunrise, for sure. Daria will be a pill when I wake her up, but we’ll have to live with that, too. Oh! Damn it, I have to get the car into the garage before the reporters get here! Then we can leave quickly and they won’t be able to waylay us in the open.

She heard Jane’s boots thumping through the house as she pulled down shades and shut curtains. Thank heaven we met her. I can’t believe her family would leave her in such a fix, her as bright as she is. I wonder if her art’s any good. I know so many contacts who could get work for her, if she’s capable of it. Amy shook off the issue. Focus on the present. We’ve got to run before the media catches us. Get the suitcases packed again, load the car, and hit the road. We can stop somewhere and get Jane extra clothes and underwear if she can’t get to her own stuff until morning. I hate taking her with us on such short notice, it’s almost like kidnapping, and she could be a blossoming sociopathic murderer—or not—but I need her to handle Daria while I’m straightening out this mess. I’m damn glad my last name isn’t the same as Helen’s—that will keep people away if we can book a hotel room until Monday morning.

She headed for the kitchen to open the garage door and pull her car in. Despite all the rush, Amy still had time to wonder if Jane was only pulling her leg about looking like she was in her twenties. She did feel young inside and always had; she’d just never believed she looked it. If Jane was truly trying out for the role of a late-arriving little sister, she was doing a dynamite job.

The night air was cool and breezy. Dry leaves rattled in the trees and blew across the driveway. Amy checked the street but saw no suspicious vehicles. Not yet.

What could I ever do for Jane in return? What could I do for Daria if it were just her and me? I don’t know. I don’t know what I could do. Jane’s not my real sister, and Daria’s not my real child. I don’t legally owe them anything. I could walk away if I had to, and no one would say boo about it. I could do it and go back to a life of writing and luxury, but if it weren’t for me . . .

She started her Triumph and pulled it into the garage next to Jake’s Lexus, then clicked the garage door remote to shelter the cars. It was time to go inside and pack as fast as she could. The question of what she would or could do for Jane as well as for Daria was unresolved. She would have to trust to the future.

The problem was, the future had yet to be of any help at all.

three

The yellow leaves turned brown and fell. The air grew cooler. Amy returned.

“Got any twos?” Jane asked, looking over the top of her cards as she sat at the kitchen table.

Daria examined her hand carefully, then pulled a single card out and gave it to Jane with a glum look.

“Got any jacks?” Jane asked next.

Daria shook her head, chewed on her lower lip, then said, “Got any queens?”

Jane sighed heavily and took three cards from her hand, giving them to her opponent. She had a feeling Daria might have the last queen and so had made a point of not asking for it.

Looking pleased, Daria took the cards and laid them aside with one of her own in a neat stack. “Got any fives?” she asked, looking up.

Jane studied her hand as if searching for any fives, though she knew she had none. As she prepared to tell Daria no, the portable phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said as she put her cards face down on the table. She then got up, retrieved the handset from the nearby kitchen counter, and thumbed it on. “Morgendorffers,” she said. “Oh, hi, Trent. What’s going on? Huh? Oh, she did?” Jane rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair, listening. “Wait a minute,” she finally said, rocking forward. She cupped a hand over the phone and looked at Daria. “It’s my brother,” she said. “I have to talk to him for a few minutes. Do you want to watch cartoons in the other room until I’m done?”

“Okay.” Daria put down her hand, making sure it was face down, then got up from the kitchen table and left. “Don’t peek!” she said as she went.

“I promise,” Jane said. Her smile vanished when she took her hand off the phone. “What did Mom say when she called?” she asked. “Uh-huh. Lebanon, that somehow figures. Uh-huh. Well, that’s very special. I’m glad she’s got all that new knowledge about making red pottery glazes. Did she say anything else? You know, about the fact that she and Dad lost the house and screwed up our lives a little bit? Mmm. Figures. Mmm-hmm. Yeah, that butterfly speech of hers really sums it up, doesn’t it? Well, this little butterfly isn’t winging its merry back to Lawndale ever again, that’s for sure.”

Jane pushed back her chair, stood, and walked across the kitchen to the refrigerator. She opened the door and peering in as she listened. “Sorry, Trent, but I’m not moving back,” she said to the phone. “No, it’s not that. Monique’s very sweet, but I couldn’t sleep with her playing that guitar all night. And Mom’s friend Kristin at the art colony got me a job that pays better than anything I’d ever get in Lawndale, plus I don’t have to worry about the truancy task force breaking down my door to drag me back to that damn high school. I’m happy being the entire maintenance crew for the colony. I plant flowers, pick up trash, and get free art supplies for the rest of my life with a salary above minimum wage. Plus, Amy’s gotten some great freelance work for me. What’s not to like?”

She pulled out a plastic-wrapped hamburger and set it aside on the countertop. “No, she won’t. I told Kristin I was being abused by the teachers, so she’s not telling anyone, least of all the police, that I live on the grounds. Well, it sure felt like I was being abused. They wanted me to learn a lot of useless crap and write stuff over and over until I was sick of it. And there was that self-esteem class. Fine, call it what you want, but I’m staying in Ashfield. Trent, you’ve got a car, so you can drive out to see me whenever you want. And a year and a half from now, I’ll have my own car instead of borrowing the colony’s van to get around. I’ll get my license then, too. Mmm. Yeah, but that hasn’t happened yet because I’m being a careful driver, unlike some people I know. No, I wasn’t talking about you. Get over it.”
She got out a nearly empty carton of milk and set it aside with the hamburger, then shut the refrigerator door. “What? No, her parents took her sister Quinn out camping so they could bond together over the weekend. Crazy Glue would have been less messy. They went south to some forest in Georgia. The trees are green there even in early November. I don’t know how—maybe global warming, maybe fertilizer. Uh-huh. I don’t know. They don’t look like the camper types to me, but who knows. Uh, wait a moment.”

Jane looked into the family room, but Daria was absorbed in the TV and paying no attention to her conversation. “Uh, yeah, Quinn’s still kinda weird,” she said. “Amy explained it to me. All this fooling around with boys and breaking curfew and fighting with her parents and sister—that was a cry for help. She was reacting to Daria, to her mother, to the move, to everything. I know, but I’m just repeating what Amy said. I can kinda see it, though. She was competing with the girls here for boys and attention, she was worried she wouldn’t be accepted because she’s got issues over her s-i-s-t-e-r, thanks to her m-o-t-h-e-r, and then came that chocolate thing. The chocolate thing almost did her in. What? I can’t explain it in detail right now, Trent.” She looked at the back of Daria’s head. “Yes. She’s about twenty feet away from me. Right, exactly. You got it. So, getting out and going camping, maybe that’s not so bad for them. On the other hand, I think it would help a lot if they took the whole family with them on their trips, but they haven’t progressed that far in therapy, I guess. They’re screwed up, but they’re getting better. Amy says so, anyway. She says she can almost stand them now. Helen even thanked Amy for fixing Daria’s messed-up special ed class. Could have knocked me over with a Dorito.”

Jane unwrapped the hamburger with one hand while listening to the phone with the other. A series of soft thumping noises came from the ceiling; it sounded like Amy was jumping around in the master bedroom. “Uh-huh,” said Jane, looking up briefly. “Did Mom ask if we went to the family reunion? What did you tell her? Yeah. I don’t have the time or the money to fly to Sloatstown just to be insulted and belittled at our grandparents’ split-level by jerk relatives who hate us no matter what we do. I can get that kind of treatment anywhere. They can kiss my . . . uh, never mind. Yeah, didn’t want her to hear. Look, I’m making dinner now, and I have to get off the phone in case her parents call. Amy’s upstairs on her computer. Yeah, you do sound pretty tired. Get some rest and say hi to Jesse, but not to Danny. Because Danny’s a creep, Trent. I don’t care, I’m still not going out with him. Okay. Thanks. You, too. Bye.”

She put down the phone. The hamburger disappeared in four bites, and the carton of milk in two swallows. Her snack finished, Jane retrieved Daria from the family room and continued with their game.

“Got any fives?” Daria repeated.

“Nope,” said Jane. She frowned at her cards. “Got any threes?”

“No. Can Amy come down and play with us?”

“Amy’s busy right now. She has to check her computer for mail.” Wonder what she was doing, jumping around up there?

“Oh.” Daria examined her cards. “Got any . . . tens?”

Jane sighed again and pulled out two tens, handing them over. Daria made another small stack of four cards at her side.

“Your parents should be on their way home right now,” Jane said. “Amy said they’d be back by six at the latest.” She glanced at her watch: 5:13 p.m. “About an hour to go. Looking forward to seeing them?”

“Sort of,” Daria said. An anxious expression crossed her face.

Jane noticed the look a few moments later. “What’s the matter?”

Daria shook her head. “Nothing.”

Jane put down her cards. “You want to talk about it?”

Another head shake. “I can’t.”

“Can’t? Why?”

“‘Cause.”

“‘Cause . . . why?”

“‘Cause my wish wouldn’t come true.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” Jane thought. “You know, if you cross your fingers when you talk about a wish, it won’t hurt your wish.”

“What?”

“If you cross your fingers, you can talk about your wish without hurting it.”

“Oh.” Daria concentrated and carefully crossed her index and middle fingers on both hands.

“Yeah, like that,” said Jane. “Now you can talk about it, and your wish is safe.”

“Oh.” Daria still looked nervous but said, “Okay.”

“So, are you worried about your wish?”

Daria made sure her fingers were still crossed. “I wished that my mom would love me,” she said, looking fearfully at her hands. “Is my wish still okay?”

A terrible sadness filled Jane’s heart. After a moment to collect herself, she reached out and held Daria’s hands by the wrists. “Your wish is still okay. That’s a wonderful thing to wish for. I really hope it comes true, Daria. You’re a wonderful person, and I think everyone who knows you should love you. That’s how wonderful you are.”

Daria did not seem convinced when she nodded. “Can I fix my fingers?”

“Wait. You can uncross them . . . one, two, three, now. Now it’s okay. Your wish is safe.”

“Sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Daria reluctantly uncrossed her fingers. Jane squeezed her hands and gave her a reassuring smile, but she noticed something was still bothering the auburn-haired girl. “What’s wrong?”

For a moment, Daria appeared close to crying. “I hope Mom isn’t mad at me,” she said in a hushed voice.

Jane looked confused. “Why would she be?”

“I . . . I tried to help her.”

“That’s great. I’m glad you . . . mmm, what exactly did you do to help her?”

The anxiety-stricken look persisted. “Something,” Daria whispered. “I’m scared she might be mad.”

“You want to tell me what you did?”

“No!”

“Okay. Then, you want me to stay here with you until she gets back?”

Daria nodded quickly. “Okay.”

“I’ll do that. They know me. Don’t worry.”

“Okay.” Daria appeared as nervous as before. “My stomach hurts.”

“Want to go lie down?”

“No.”

“Want to watch some cartoons?”

“Okay,” Daria whispered. They both got up and left their cards behind as they walked toward the family room. One of Daria’s hands sought out Jane’s, which Jane thought was odd because Daria usually held hands only with Amy.

It was then that a phone rang behind them. Jane turned, surprised at the sound, but Daria jumped in fright. The ringing did not sound like the portable phone and was oddly muffled. That’s the sound I’ve been hearing in the house since yesterday, Jane thought. Where the hell is it coming from?

“Wait a second,” Jane said, leaving Daria standing in the family room as she walked back into the kitchen. The phone rang again. It sounded like a cell phone. Jane searched as the phone rang a third time. She reached for a drawer under the counter, by the end nearest the kitchen table, and pulled it open.

Indeed, nestled between the pot holders and kitchen mitts, was a black cell phone. Jane picked it up as it rang a fourth time and thumbed it on, raising it to her mouth. “Hello?” she said.

She did not notice that, behind her, Daria had disappeared.

* * *

FROM: moirathemoviemaven@wahoo.com

TO: abarksdale@botmail.com

SUBJECT: AMY!!! CALL ME, DAMMIT!!! JESUS CHRIST, HURRY!!!

amy, wtf is wrong w/ yr cel phone??? ive tried to call u since fri, turn yr f-ing phone on or pay yr f-ing bill NOW!!! yr screenplay for ‘the road not taken’ is in BIDDING WAR, 3 studios!!! bidding was up to $1.1MILL by noon sat & still going!!! everyone loves laurie the retarded girl who travels w/ aunt from ny to la, but climax where aunt saves laurie in that hotel fire at cost of own life is pure awe-inspiring tearjerking heroism, 10 kleenex boxes worth!!! studios have gone wild, some say aunt = JULIA ROBERTS, POSSIBLE OSCARS, R U GETTING THIS LOUD & CLEAR??? CALL ME ASAP NOW U GDDAMN MORON!!! WHY ARENT U CALLING ME??? AMY FOR GOD SAKES CALL ME CALL ME CALL ME CALL MEEEEEEEEEEE!!! —luv, moira

Amy Barksdale stared open-mouthed at the screen of her laptop. She forgot what day it was, what time it was, even where she was and who she was with. All that existed in the universe was the long-awaited e-mail from her agent in Hollywood, bearing news that burst in her brain like an atom bomb.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Oh, my God!”

Amy jumped up from the master bed and ran to her long-depleted cell phone, which sat upright in its charger on her sister’s bureau, before she realized her stocking feet were entangled in the power cord to the laptop. She dived and caught the computer as it flew off the bed, but the power cord came unplugged and the battery-drained laptop promptly died. With curses that would have blistered a blast furnace, she threw the laptop back on the bed and went for the cell phone, forgetting that her legs were still entangled. She fell to the floor with a thump, then crawled to the phone and pulled it from its charger base. It took a few moments to find her agent’s number and hit speed-dial—

—busy.

She tried an alternate number.

Busy.

Panicked and praying, she tried one last number while freeing her legs from the power cord.

The line rang. After two rings, it picked up. “Hello?” Amy cried. “Moira? This is—yes! I got your e-mail! I’m sorry, I hadn’t checked it in a few days, and . . . what?” Her eyes got impossibly big as she listened. “Oh,” she said in a weak voice. “He . . . he did? Are you talking about the same director that . . . yeah? He did? H-h-how much?”

A beat. Her eyes got even bigger. “How much?” she almost shouted.

The figure was repeated. She sat down hard on her butt, her face went slack. After a long period of listening to her agent talk, without moving or saying anything in return, she whispered: “Okay. Okay, I’ll be there. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thanks, Moira. I’ll be there. And thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.”

The line rang off. The cell phone slid from her nerveless hand. Amy laid down on the carpet of her sister’s bedroom, face up, staring at a crack in the ceiling. When it hit her, the reality of what was happening, she shut her eyes and cried so hard that her skin burned as if aflame. She knew it was only hyperventilation, but it felt as if the old Amy was burning away forever, and a new Amy was being born. About damn time, too.

When the crying fit passed, she reached for the cell phone. She decided to get to Los Angeles immediately, that very night if possible, and work things out with her agent to make sure she retained creative control over the final script. To do that, she had to get home to Silver Springs, make flight arrangements, pack, and get to an airport. But first, before all of that, she had to call her sister and find out when Helen, Jake, and Quinn would be back from their camping trip, so she could get going—and maybe while she was on the line she could rub it a little, but only a little as this news would go a long, long way to sticking it to her older sisters as nothing else could. She punched in the speed-dial code for Helen’s cell phone and waited, rehearsing what she would say.

The phone rang four times before someone answered.

“Hello?” said a gravelly feminine voice.

“Hello?” said Amy—and stopped in confusion. The speaker was not Helen, and it was definitely not Quinn. “Who is this?”

“This is Jane. Is this Amy? What’s going on?”

“Jane? What the hell are you doing on the phone?”

“I’m downstairs in the kitchen!” Jane said, nettled. “I heard a cell phone ring, I found it in a drawer, I picked it up—”

“But that’s Helen’s phone! How could you have her cell phone? Did you take it?”

“Hey, I didn’t take anything! I just heard the phone ring and I—”

Amy ran downstairs, phone in hand. Jane was in the kitchen waiting for her, holding Helen’s black cell phone.

“What in the hell are you doing with that?” Amy shouted.

“I found it in that drawer over there, like I said!” Jane yelled back.

“But Helen always—” Amy stopped. After a moment, she groaned and leaned against the counter. The tension drained out of her and was replaced by mortification. “Wait, wait. I’m sorry. I screwed up, I really did. Helen told me she wasn’t taking her cell phone with her on this trip. No phone, no fax, no e-mail, no voicemail, no way to contact the outside world, she said. I swear I never thought she’d do it. She left her cell phone behind after all. Where did you find it?”

“In that drawer by your hip! I didn’t steal it!”

Amy held up her hands in surrender. “Jane, please, I’m really sorry. I tried to call Helen and I didn’t understand how I got you instead. Please forgive me. I was just . . . I had to . . . I got all worked up worrying about her.”

“Whatever.” Jane’s angry blue gaze searched Amy’s face. “Is something else wrong? You look really stressed out.”

“No, nothing’s wrong. I do feel stressed out, but it has nothing to do with you. I’m kind of . . . I’m worried about the future. I shouldn’t have jumped all over you.” Keep the news to yourself for now. It’s probably best that I didn’t get Helen after all. Don’t jinx it.

Jane nodded and appeared to let it go. “Okay, shit happens.” She looked down at the cell phone. “So, Helen just left this behind?”

“I guess she did, though I can hardly believe it. Maybe workaholics can change. Listen, I’ll be upstairs. I have to make a few calls on my cell phone. When Helen and Jake get in, send them upstairs to me right away, if you would. I have to talk with them about some stuff.”

“Sure.” Jane’s expression changed to puzzlement as she examined the black phone. She looked toward the empty family room, then put the phone on the countertop. “Did you see Daria on your way down?” she asked.

“No. I’ll be upstairs.” Amy took off without wasting a moment.

Jane watched her go, then walked out of the kitchen and stood in the family room beside the coat closet that filled the space under the stairs going up. She waited until she heard a door shut on the second floor, then tried to turn the closet doorknob. Someone on the other side held the knob in place.

“Daria?” Jane let go of the knob and tapped lightly on the door. “Daria, it’s me, Jane. Come on out.” No response. “Listen, did you try to help your mom by hiding her cell phone before she went on the trip? If you did, that’s okay. She said she wasn’t going to take it with her, anyway. You didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re worried about. And if you’re worried about Amy and me yelling a little, we’re fine, it’s over now. We’re not mad at each other, we made up. Come on out, okay? We have to finish our card game. Oh, right, we were going to watch cartoons. I think Scooby’s on again, third time today. I’ll do my Scooby voice and you can be Velma, if you come out.”

No sound. The knob remained firmly held when she tried again to move it. “Okay, fine,” she said in temporary surrender. “I’ll be—”

The house phone rang. Jane waited, thinking Amy would get it, then heard a door open upstairs. “Jane?” Amy called down from the master bedroom. “I’m on my cell phone. Would you get that for me? If it’s Helen, find out when she’s going to get here!”

“Sure, whatever.” Jane stalked into the kitchen as the phone rang again and picked up the cordless handset. “Morgendorffers,” she said—and then she listened in deep surprise. “She’s here,” she said a few moments later, a catch in her voice. “Is everything okay?”

She glanced up at the entryway to the family room—then her eyes widened and she inhaled sharply. Her pulse pounded in her ears. “Oh,” she said weakly. “Oh, no! Just a minute! Hold on!” Carrying the phone pressed to her chest to muffle sounds, she started to walk out of the kitchen but broke into a run by the time she was rounding the corner to get to the stairs. “Amy!” she shouted, taking the steps up three at a time. “Amy!”

Helen’s bedroom door opened. Looking annoyed, Amy came out with her cell phone pressed to her ear. “Jane,” she said, “I’m really busy. Just find out when they’re coming back and how soon—”

“It’s the Georgia state police!” Jane interrupted, breathless from fear. “They said it’s an emergency! Something happened to your sister’s family, and they have to talk to you!” She held out the phone.

Amy stared at the phone, taken aback. “It’s who?” she asked. After a moment to think, she then raised her cell phone to her mouth, “I’m sorry, I’ll call you back and finish the reservation later. I have to go.” She hung up and took the portable handset, dropping her cell phone in a pocket. “Hello?” she said. “Yes, that’s me.” She listened for a few moments. “What? I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

Amy turned and drifted back into the bedroom, standing beside Helen and Jake’s bed as she held the phone stiffly in her right hand. “When did this happen?” she asked, her voice rising.

Jane stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do. Her mouth was very dry.

“Where was this?” Amy asked. “Where did you say? You’re saying that they found in . . . what . . . but, uh, look, I don’t understand. Are they going to be all right?”

What the caller said next had a profound effect. Amy gasped, then her knees buckled and she sat down hard on the bed, her face frozen in shock. After what seemed to Jane like hours of time, Amy swallowed and whispered, “No, I’m here.” She repeated that in a louder tone, swallowed again, and said, “They found all three of them? What happened to them?”

Oh, no. Jane sagged against the doorframe in shock. Something terrible happened. They’re hurt or dead. How bad off are they? What’s going to happen to Daria?

“They don’t know?” said Amy in a strange, high voice. She put her free hand to her forehead and pressed as if to keep her head from exploding. “What . . . where are they now? Okay. Have you called anyone else besides me? How did you find my number here? Oh. Oh, I see. Oh. She . . . Helen left her cell phone here. She might have been trying to find it in the backpack, then, but I don’t . . . That’s my sister, Helen. Helen was the one who—”

Amy covered her face with her free hand. Jane went over but was afraid to touch her, not knowing what was the right thing to do. Finally, she put a hand on Amy’s shoulder and felt the older woman quiver at her touch—then slowly straighten up. “Can I have your number?” she asked the phone, on the verge of tears. She reached into a drawer in the nightstand beside the bed and pulled out a pencil and scrap of paper, then wrote down a phone number. “Okay, can I call you back? Is this your number or the state police number? Okay. Okay, I’ll call you right back. Okay. Goodbye.”

Very slowly, Amy thumbed the handset off and set it aside on the nightstand. “Way to go, Helen,” she mumbled, sniffling. “Oh, Helen, way to go, leave your phone at home and go and—”

Her face screwed up, and she broke down and wept.

Jane sat on the bed beside Amy and pulled her close. She knew what must have happened to the Morgendorffers, but not how. She assumed it was from a car wreck. She was stunned later to find out how wrong she was, how terrible their deaths had been.

That was not uppermost in Jane’s mind at that moment, though. As Jane held Amy, she could think only of what Daria had done to make her deepest wish come true, and how to keep Amy from ever finding out about it.

“Amy?” came a whispered voice in the silence.

Jane’s head snapped up. Daria stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watching her aunt with a distraught expression.

In her hands was Helen’s black cell phone.

“Was Mom mad at me for taking her phone?” whispered Daria, a half-second before Jane could stop her.

“What?” Amy wiped her eyes and looked up.

Jane jumped off the bed to run for the door. Don’t let her have heard that! Please don’t let—

“Mom packed her phone,” said Daria cautiously, “so I took—”

“You took her cell phone?” Amy repeated, the tone of her voice changing, rising. “You took her cell phone?”

Daria retreated from Jane into the hallway, clutching the phone to her chest. She radiated fear. “She said she didn’t want it!” she cried. “Is she mad at me?” Whether Daria meant her mother or Amy was not clear.

“Daria, go to your room!” Jane said with great urgency, pointing. “Hurry, go to your—”

Amy came out into the hall and moved past Jane. Daria saw the look on her aunt’s face and backed up against the opposite wall, eyes almost shut behind her glasses, the cell phone held in front of her.

“You hid your mother’s phone?” Amy shouted, her face red and streaked with tears. “You hid it so she didn’t have it when she needed it? Answer me! Did you hide that phone? It killed your mother and your whole family! You killed your whole family, God damn you!” She grabbed for the cell phone. Terrified, Daria struck out and hit Amy in the mouth with the phone base, splitting her aunt’s lower lip. Amy grabbed Daria’s wrists and pinned her to the wall, then slammed her body into Daria’s to keep her from kicking out. Daria howled and bit her aunt on the arm; Amy cried out, twisted, let go of Daria’s hands and slapped her niece savagely without thinking again and again until they flailed at each other with fists and nails, clawing at faces, tearing hair, glasses gone. Jane fought to separate them screaming She didn’t mean it and Stop it Amy and Damn you two stop it until at last she shoved an exhausted Amy back and dragged a shrieking, out-of-control Daria down the hall to her padded room, kicking the door shut behind them.

Gasping and panting, Amy leaned against the wall by her sister’s bedroom, not one coherent thought in her head. She put her bleeding hands to the sides of her head and looked up at the ceiling. Blood filled her mouth. Nothing was real. The day had never happened. She was in a twilight zone where reality had never existed and this was a bad, evil dream in which her sister and her family were dead and gone, unspeakably dead, and her niece, whom she had loved, had caused it to happen.

Her niece, whom she had loved.

Whom she had loved.

Amy’s fingernails dug into her scalp, then she pulled on her hair so hard she could hear the roots snap, and she began to cry and scream at the top of her lungs.

Jane, who held Daria’s arms crisscrossed from behind as they struggled in the padded room, heard the piercing screams rise up, a mad keening out of the empty heart of the universe, and she closed her eyes as she fought to calm Daria and knew that after this moment she would never need to ask anyone what Hell was like.

* * *

I hate this friggin’ job. Eric Schrecter, who normally loved being a corporate attorney, tugged at his collar, then picked up a sheaf of papers and paged through them before he continued speaking to his audience of two. At the moment, he was serving as the probate attorney for the estate and assets of Helen Morgendorffer, his deceased colleague at the law firm of Vitale, Davis, Horowitz, Riordan, Schrecter, Schrecter, and Schrecter. Helen had been a barracuda, but her sisters . . .

“Between the off-track gambling debts that Jake Morgendorffer ran up,” he said, “the family’s unpaid credit-card and utility bills, the fines that—” He coughed and cleared his throat “—Helen Morgendorffer was assessed for evidence tampering in the case of Johanssen v. the Lawndale Board of Education, et al., and the penalties over the warehousing of Daria at Lawndale High School in—” He coughed again “—in violation of federal law, very little is left of the Morgendorffers’ estate. The house and cars were repossessed, of course, their possessions are at public auction, and their banks accounts have been garnished and closed out. Their life insurance payouts have likewise been attached. The judgment against Highland High School was reversed on appeal, so no monies are available there, though the attorney in Highland is willing to pursue the case on Daria’s behalf, at your request.”

He paused again to clear his throat. Why couldn’t she have picked someone else in the firm to handle this crap? “At present, only six hundred thirty-two dollars of the estate remains for distribution, all of which was set aside in a trust fund set up several years ago for Daria Morgendorffer by her mother, Helen. More was once available, but her father apparently borrowed from the fund to cover his personal and business debts. The role of fund manager goes to whichever of you decides to become Daria’s guardian. If both of you wish to be her guardian, we’ll have to work out the details for the two of you as co-managers. If neither of you wish to be her guardian, then . . . there are other options.”

Eric looked over his desk at the stony-faced brunette and the bad-tempered blonde, waiting for one to speak. With family like this, no wonder Helen had turned out as she had. He pitied her retarded daughter for the possibilities awaiting her: life with either the Embittered Misery Queen or the Vengeful Bitch Queen, or being locked away for eternity—really, now, which was worse?

“Rita Chambers?” Eric prompted, looking at the blonde.

“No way,” said the blonde at once. “I’ve already got my hands full. My daughter Erin is planning to get married in the next few months, and I have Mother to think about. She’s in a nursing home in Leeville and needs someone to look in on her regularly. Count me out.” She sourly eyed her younger—now her only—sister. “You’re the one with money coming out of your ass, Hollywood. You like the little ‘tard so much, you take her.” Under her breath, she added, “And good luck.”

Eric sighed. He’d expected as much. “Amy Barksdale?” he said to the brunette, trying not to stare at the scars crossing her arms and face.

The brunette’s jaw tightened, but she said nothing. Her gaze dropped to his desk, to a photo of the lawyer’s wife and children. She wondered idly if Eric and Helen had been involved in an affair, though she did not care one way or the other.

“I understand you might be moving soon from Silver Springs, Ms. Barksdale,” Eric said, wondering what Amy was staring at. She made him nervous. “If you are unable to care for your niece, there is a state hospital in Swedesville where she can go. You can apply to be her guardian or, if you wish, relinquish all claims of guardianship to the state, giving up the money in her trust as well. You can, of course, contribute to her depleted trust fund at any time if you, um, wish to do so.”

The brunette stirred after a moment. “What kind of hospital?” she asked dully.

“It’s a psychiatric hospital with a separate unit for retarded and emotionally disturbed children. Your niece would probably do well there. I’ve heard the unit has a good staff, and its accreditation is solid. It functions primarily as an acute-care facility, eventually sending stabilized clients back into the community to sheltered settings, though to be honest I don’t know if Daria is likely to ever find placement if you don’t take her, given her pervasive disabilities and history of violence. Still, she would be well cared for, though once her trust runs out she will receive only the most basic care and therapy. It would certainly help if additional contributions were made to the trust for her welfare, to offer her a wider range of—”

“She killed my sister and her family,” interrupted the blonde in a venomous tone. “I don’t see why we should do the little shit any favors.”

Eric winced. “Punishment would be inappropriate, Ms. Chambers. Daria’s actions were unlikely to have had any significant effect on how . . . uh, how things turned out. The psychotropic berries that Helen and her family consumed were the—”

“Don’t,” Amy interrupted, looking away. “Just drop it.”

Eric subsided. He waited nervously, hands clasped before him on the desk.

“You know what you could do,” Rita said to her sister. “You could drive her into the woods and do the same thing to her that Helen did to—”

“Shut up!” Amy jumped to her feet, spilling her purse and its contents to the floor. “Shut your goddamn fucking mouth, you brainless slut!” Amy then strode out of the room, went down the hall to the women’s restroom, and locked herself inside.

Trembling with rage, she put her forehead against the cool mirror, knotted hands gripping the sides of the white sink. She could actually see spots before her eyes, she was so angry. Breathing through her nose slowed her down after several minutes, but it was like stopped a speeding car with the emergency brake. It didn’t quite do the trick.

A headache burned in her temples. She stared down into the empty white sink and remembered the report she’d read from the foster home where Daria was staying. In her mind’s eye, she saw a small plain-looking teenaged girl with round glasses and tangled auburn hair standing at a window, hands and face pressed to the glass, crying for those she believed still loved her. She saw the girl hiding in a closet filled with the torn-out pages of a book called Black Beauty, her glasses broken, biting her fingernails down till they bled as she rocked back and forth on the floor, then later lying in bed, refusing to move or eat, waiting to be saved or die.

The worst part of it was, she found the report to be rather satisfying.

I have fallen to this. Amy looked down at the empty sink, but saw all. I never thought much about damnation until now. It was too alien a concept, too unrelated to my world, but my world was small, my vision narrow. I never imagined damnation as a real condition, never foresaw it might one day be the perfect shorthand description of my life. I never thought about my soul, but I remember what it was like once to have had one.

It’s not all bad, damnation. I understand everything now. I know why Jane picked me as her new big sister. I had all the right vibes of one of her real sisters, all the right signs that when the chips were down, there was a grave risk I would revert to my true nature. I’ve always been out for myself at heart, using people and then walking away when the going got tough. Jane sensed that I might abandon her like everyone else, destroying all hope she had of cobbling together even a fake family to love her. She hoped I would be greater than that, hoped I would get over my damn cheap self and emerge triumphant, but I fooled her. I fooled everyone. I’ve seen Jane only once since that day, when she drove in from the art colony to ask me not to abandon Daria. She actually begged me on her knees, offered me anything if I would not turn Daria away, but I already had. I threw my niece into the foster-care system and washed my hands of her, even if she really was innocent of my sister’s death. It was too much to deal with. There was no way I could stand to be with her again. If God Almighty had come to me and said, Your niece is without sin, I would have said, Of what use is that news to me? and then cast her into the abyss. I don’t need the drama and trouble. Damned I may be, but I am damned of my own doing, damned of my own free will, and so be it. Amen.

And I see why Daria loved me, for I was so much like her mother. She must have known that was in me. No wonder she loved me as I was—untrustworthy, unreliable, incapable of lasting love, the perfect parent within that tiny world she knew. I’ve become Helen, all the worst things I ever saw in her, all the things I hated about her. I cursed my sister for dumping Daria on me, then I took advantage of it for my own purposes, then gradually dumped Daria on Jane, and here I am now, walking away from them both when they desperately need me, when Jane needs a family and Daria needs anyone who will save her from life imprisonment in an obscure state institution. I’ve thrown them both away, and I don’t even care. Even Helen was better than that. Helen set up the trust fund, gave the appearance of caring when she knew she was overwhelmed by it all. At least Helen tried, though she was a rotten parent. All of us Barksdale girls were rotten parents, just like Mom. It must run in the family. But Helen did try.

I won’t make that mistake.

So, where do I go now? What do I do? It’s all about me, as it always was. I need to fly to Hollywood and fight for creative control of my movie script, then start writing on spec again, do more scripts, take more shots at the big time. I can leave all this behind. Daria will be well cared for, the lawyer said, she’ll be well cared for in that big bland hospital that I’ll never have to see, and all I have to do is sign the papers and give her up and leave, maybe throw a few bucks into her trust fund to look good, as someone’s bound to find out about her. I’ve got the spare change to keep the trust going for ages, but I don’t care if she ever gets better or ever gets out. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. I am tired and want to go home and take a long hot bath and go to sleep.

When this is done, I will. Just one last thing to do, and then I’m free. I’ve hit the big time. I may be damned, but at least I’ll be sleeping on silk sheets in Hell, and not in a straightjacket. Glory, halleluiah, amen.

Her breathing was slow and silent. Her headache was almost gone. Her hand rose and wiped at her eyes.

If Daria had been normal, where would I be? If Daria had been a genius, where at this moment would we all be? It’s a trite conceit to imagine things would have been any different. I’m a realist, not a fairy-tale reader. I know individuals don’t matter all that much in the world; they’re ground up by the machine and served for dinner every day, and no one cares. This is reality, not a replay of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The only difference between that imaginary other world and this one is that Daria would have died on the camping trip with Helen and Jake and Quinn, driven mad and destroyed in the vilest way, and I would be here doing exactly what I am, crying over a bathroom sink in a second-rate law office after hearing Helen and Jake’s last will and testament, how they frittered away all they had and ruined themselves, only there would be no Daria left to torment me. I have no idea if that’s a better world or a worse one. About the same, I guess.

All the disasters that have followed Daria through her life would still have happened even if she had not been retarded. Those two evil boys in Highland would still have died trying to fix a car, and her old principal would have died from some other cause instead of from being sued by Helen. My sister would still have been a pathological control freak right up to the end, her family in turmoil and disintegration. That diabetic fat lady would have eaten the chocolate and died. Nothing would have changed. Everyone would be in the same fix they are now, even poor homeless abandoned Jane, who I wish to Christ would stop trying to call me from Ashfield. I’ve got to get another cell-phone number right away.

I wonder if they’ll ever find that Ms. Li who was indicted for corruption and misuse of state funds. She was a piece of work, she was. I should do a script about someone like her. At least they caught that ex-football player who attacked the cheerleader right before they dedicated a goalpost to him. At least that went right. What a lousy school, Lawndale High. Almost as bad as my old high school. Almost.

Breathing in, breathing out, over and over. She was calm now and free of pain, but her vision was still very great. She still saw it all.

It wasn’t her fault, of course. She nodded, her eyes half-closed. It wasn’t Daria’s fault. Jane was right. Daria didn’t know. She thought she was helping her mother by taking that cell phone and hiding it. It wouldn’t have mattered if Helen had had the phone. She had already eaten the berries. She was already insane. She already had Quinn’s blood and more all over her. It wouldn’t have mattered a wit. Daria was innocent and didn’t deserve what she got. She tried her best to do right, and for that she was punished. She deserves better—

—but not from me. I can’t take care of her. I don’t have it in me. I’m a good-time aunt, not a full-time mom. I don’t have what Helen might have had a little of, what Rita claims to be full of when all she’s really full of is shit. I can throw money at her trust fund, but I don’t have it in me to be good and do the right thing.

And that’s maybe all that needs to be said.

She turned on the faucet, washed her face and hands with cold water, and dried herself with brown paper towels. She cleaned her owl-eye glasses and put them on, checked herself in the mirror, then walked back to the attorney’s office. Eric was still there, waiting for her. Rita was gone. She sat down in her chair after picking up her purse, which had all of its contents carefully replaced.

“Do you have the paperwork for that institution?” she asked. “And for transferring her guardianship?”

He had them. He went over them carefully with her, she asked a few questions, he made a phone call and gave her some answers. A hearing would be necessary for transferring guardianship, but she might not need to be present for it, only her personal attorney. She uncapped her gold fountain pen and held the papers steady with one hand and put the pen over the space she had to sign to make it happen.

This is it.

The pen hovered over the page.

If I want my soul again, this is my last chance to get it, my last chance to turn from damnation. I still have a chance, one miserable little chance, and no more.

She became aware of her loud breathing in the silence of the lawyer’s office.

The time has come.

She signed the papers and dated them. Eric promised to send her copies. When she stood up, she felt curiously light-headed, as if a part of her had been taken away. She could not think of what it was that was missing, but it didn’t matter. She felt loads better with the paperwork done. She checked her watch. There was much to do before she got to Los Angeles and began the fight for creative control when filming began for her movie—her movie. She left the office feeling she could do anything, anything at all, and nothing and no one could stop her.

As she drove home on the freeway, she turned on her cell phone and noticed she had twenty-seven messages from a phone number in Ashfield. She threw away her phone and reported it stolen, then later got a new one with an unlisted number.

epilogue

She waited by the multipurpose room’s main window as she did every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after breakfast, looking out into the parking lot, blinking behind her big glasses and trying very hard not to take off the soft gloves and chew on her scab-covered fingers. The unit staff watched her as they went about their morning rituals, getting the other patients off to their groups, the med clinic, or structured recreation. Only the auburn-haired girl in the black sweat suit and Velcro-strap sneakers was left to her own devices. No one dared to tempt her away from the window—not more than once, certainly.

Just before nine, she saw an ancient yellow VW Kombi pull off the highway and start down the long, tree-lined driveway toward the hospital. The auburn-haired girl smiled, then turned from the window and walked quickly over to the corner of the multipurpose room where the art supplies were kept in a large cabinet. There she pulled two chairs over to the most secluded table, then walked across the huge room to the double doors, where she stood by herself and fidgeted with ill-concealed excitement.

A long minute later, one of the doors opened and a tall young woman in a bright red sweater and black slacks walked in. Her blue eyes sparkled when she saw the auburn-haired girl. “¡Mi amiga!” cried the taller girl in delight, and she spread her arms and hugged the other girl tightly, whispering to her in Spanish. The auburn-haired girl hugged back for all she was worth, burying her face in the taller woman’s sweater and silky black bangs.

“I cannot believe that lady can do that and not get bitten,” muttered one of the staffers, a twenty-something female tech watching from across the room. “That would just scare me to death, getting as close to her as she does. I’m glad I work third shift. Pulling a double with first just tears up my nerves, keeping an eye on her when she’s awake.”

“I sure wouldn’t get that close to her without backup,” said a male nurse. He usually worked on another unit at the hospital, but he had heard stories about the problematic patient everyone called The Dee. “Is that that lady artist from over in Ashfield?”

“Yeah,” said the tech. “You’d think she’d know better than wear those big dangly earrings around The Dee, though. Remember last year when she ripped out Eileen’s earring and tried to choke her with her keychain? I mean, there was blood all over—”

“Keep it down,” said an older woman, seeing the tall lady glance in their direction before taking the other girl’s gloved hand and walking with her to the far corner where the chairs and table awaited.

“She’s got The Dee doing art therapy three times a week,” said the tech to the nurse. “That lady’s taking classes at Lawndale State, working her way through to get her degree in psych. I think some artist colony’s helping her out financially, too. I gotta hand it to her, she’s good. She’s got a great future working with people like that.”

“Did The Dee ever attack her?” asked the nurse, watching the two across the room. After getting the auburn-haired girl seated, the woman in the red sweater opened a nearby locked cabinet with a key and began looking through its contents.

“She did a couple of times when that girl started coming over here a few years ago, when The Dee was on the adolescent unit,” said the older woman, “but she kept coming back, no matter what. Someone asked her once why she volunteered to work with The Dee, and she quoted something from the Bible about lost children and being a shepherd in the valley of the shadow, something like that.”

“Twenty-third Psalm?” said the tech.

“Maybe. I don’t know what it was. The second-shift RN told me about it.”

“She doesn’t seem like the religious type,” said the male nurse. “Look at those boots she’s wearing, with those big heels.”

The tall young woman found a large box of colored chalk in the cabinet and set it down in front of her companion with a big square of paper. Then she took a seat across the table and quietly chatted as the girl picked out a piece of black chalk and began to draw with great intensity.

“That lady’s a miracle worker,” said the older woman. “She started coming over here right after The Dee came in. I’d have given up myself after I got attacked the first three or four times, but I heard she kept on coming, and The Dee settled down and they took up together like you wouldn’t have believed. She even got The Dee to not act out after she left each time, and I heard she was a holy terror. I don’t know that lady’s name, June or Jane or something. Some of the other staff might know, the old timers, but most of them left here ages ago. I just never thought to ask.”

“Security would know,” said the tech. “They always let her in, so you could ask them. Maybe The Dee’s aunt hired her.”

The male nurse raised an eyebrow. “Her aunt?”

The older woman shrugged. “Could be, but I heard her aunt doesn’t want anything to do with her. Can’t hardly blame her, knowing what The Dee’s like.” She looked at the male nurse. “Her aunt’s a millionaire, lives out in Hollywood, swear to God. You remember that movie that came out last year, the one about the retarded girl? She wrote that.”

“You’re kidding.” The male nurse shook his head. “Dee’s one lucky girl.”

The two women looked at him in disbelief, then looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “I don’t know about lucky,” said the older woman, “but her aunt does send her money. It pays for her field trips and clothes. Pays for her art supplies, too, but that lady there won’t take any money for working with her. She said she’d only do it for free.”

The tech shook her head. “She’s crazy.”

“Maybe they’re related,” said the male nurse.

“I don’t think so,” said the older woman, “but someone would have to be crazy or else related to come all this way just to be with The Dee.”

“Maybe The Dee’s kind of like her special college project, for credit.”

“Nah, she started visiting before she got into Lawndale State. They must know each other from somewhere. That lady goes with The Dee on those field trips around the county every month, too. She’s the only one who can really manage her. She’s amazing.”

The male nurse shook his head, then glanced at his watch and left to do headcount and finish paperwork in the nurses’ station. The older woman went to work with a group of patients on their reading skills. The tech went on break.

Three hours later, after the lady in the red sweater was gone and The Dee was with the other patients at the cafeteria for lunch, the tech and the male nurse walked over to the corner of the multipurpose room where The Dee and her friend had been sitting. A new drawing had been added to The Dee’s older ones on the wall, a large picture in black chalk on a beige sheet of oversized newsprint.

“That’s not too bad, really,” said the male nurse. “Looks like a herd of horses.”

The tech smiled. “It’s a herd of brave ponies running free across the plains. The one in the lead is Black Beauty. That’s what The Dee told the art lady it was. I overheard her.”

The male nurse smiled, but the smile soon faded. “That’ll be a hard day when that lady graduates college and moves away. I don’t know what The Dee’ll do then.”

The tech said nothing as she stared at the drawing of the herd of ponies. She had a feeling the art lady wasn’t going to ever stop showing up. She couldn’t put her finger on why she felt that way, but it seemed right. She hoped that the woman with the red sweater would always be here for The Dee, but only time would tell.

She gave a last look at The Dee’s picture, then began straightening up the big room, getting it ready for the patients when they came back from lunch. On the wall behind her, the herd of ponies continued on across the plains, brave and wild and free.

Author’s Notes II: This story came to me when I began wondering how much good Daria did during the course of her show. Her presence does appear to bring more good than harm to many people (e.g., to Link in Is It Fall Yet?, and to Lawndale High students in general in “Fizz Ed”). What would happen if all the good she did was removed, much as happened to someone else in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life—but Daria was still there? This story doesn’t pretend to offer the answer, only one possible answer. Her family might pull together instead of falling apart as it does here, but worse-case scenarios have always intrigued me, so here you go. Situations in which Daria might possibly have made a difference for the good were reversed, leading to the dreadful conclusion. (The original version of this story had an even worse outcome for everyone, but I elected not to publish it. It was a little much.) Amy’s “vision” of how things might have turned out if Daria had been smart is wrong, of course. Some cause-and-effect bits were assumed, such as Daria’s presence being necessary for Jane’s house not to be taken over by the bank (per The Daria Diaries), but the assumptions were mostly reasonable.

I also wondered what would happen if Daria’s intelligence quotient was three standard deviations below normal instead of three above. A long thread on PPMB about Daria Morgendorffer’s intelligence and interests (begun by me, when I was considering this story) provided much food for thought. My thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion. The thread (“How intelligent is Daria, anyway?” in the Deep Thoughts forum) may be found at:

http://thepaperpusher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9716

The three parts of the story correspond to the move to Lawndale (as described in The Daria Diaries), the period during and after “Café Disaffecto” (again, using the diary in The Daria Diaries), and the period after “The Teachings of Don Jake.” The story also makes use of characters, places, and events from certain Beavis & Butt-head episodes, particularly “Spare Me” and “Beavis and Butt-head Are Dead.” The description of Daria’s room in Highland is derived from scenes in “Boxing Daria,” and the spare bedroom appears in “Aunt Nauseum.” Mrs. Stoller appeared in “Lucky Strike.” Amy Barksdale appeared in “I Don’t,” “Through a Lens Darkly,” and “Aunt Nauseum.” Opie the Opossum is an invention of Galen “Lawndale Stalker” Hardesty. The Ashfield Artists’ Colony appears in Is It Fall Yet?; a still from the series appeared online and offered the colony’s full name.

Place names in Lawndale were based on the Virtual Lawndale webpage in the “Daria” section of the MTV site at:

http://www.mtv.com/onair/daria/lawndale/

The map of Lawndale in The Daria Diaries was also used, with preference for names (where disagreement exists) given to the former source.

Interviews with Glenn Eichler, conducted by Kara Wild, supplied additional material, such as Amy Barksdale’s approximate age and possible career, details on the older Lane siblings, the location of the suburb of Lawndale, and more. The first interview was particularly productive and can be found at:

http://www.the-wildone.com/dvdaria/glennanswers.html

A Digression on Being “Out of Character” (OOC) and the Interaction between Canon and Alternate-Universe (AU) Material:An interesting discussion developed as this story was being posted on PPMB. The issue was whether certain characters in this story were portrayed as out of character. The problem is, given the Daria show’s many takes on the different personalities involved, you can get wildly different takes on them—and be supported by canon.

Take Helen Morgendorffer, for instance. The Helen here is derived from the series, though with a bleak twist. Consider these comments about her and the other Morgendorffers—from canon sources. Show transcripts are from Outpost Daria, at: http://www.outpost-daria.com.

From The Daria Diaries, first page of Daria’s diary: “Left the town of Highland this morning with no regrets, looking forward to the move to Lawndale with excitement and anticipation. Then I remembered my family was coming too.”

From the MTV “Virtual Lawndale” webpage, if you click on the Morgendorffers’ house: “All the love and frozen lasagna you’ll ever need. Except maybe for love.”

From The Daria Diaries, third page of Daria’s diary: “Mom has thrown herself into home and work, except for the home part.”

From “Esteemsters,” Helen speaking to Daria: “We tell you over and over again that you’re wonderful and you just . . . don’t . . . get it!” [slams fists on table, shouts] “What’s wrong with you?”

From “Psycho Therapy,” Daria’s evaluation of her mother: “Mom’s resentful that she has to work so hard, which obscures her guilt about actually wanting to work so hard.”

From “Psycho Therapy,” Helen’s words to Daria in the parking lot: “I’ve shut you out so many times, you don’t even try to talk to me. . . .”

From “Psycho Therapy,” Eric reading aloud Helen’s psych evaluation: “Helen Morgendorffer suffers from overarching competitive aggression, unhealthy self-involvement, a gross insensitivity to others’ needs, and an overriding conviction that she is always right.”

From “Mart of Darkness,” Daria and Jane discussing an argument that Jane had with Tom:

· Daria: “Look, Tom's reasonable enough. Maybe if you just talked it out.”

· Jane: “Hmm. Sounds sort of drastic.”

· Daria: “Then, how about this: serve him some frozen lasagna and tell him you're sorry you haven't been around much lately, but as soon as you get some time off, you're gonna do something fun together and really catch up on each other's lives.”

· Jane: “You know, Helen ought to write a book.”

Whew! Now, had I wanted to take the opposite view, I could have dragged up lots of quotes and data to support the idea that Helen was a loving, caring mother. The show can support many viewpoints, which makes fanfic writing for this series so much fun. You can literally do anything and drag up canon to prove it. Food for thought.
Daria’s case is different. Though she lacks her high intelligence, she has some elements from the show. She avoids people when upset, she wants to be loved by her parents (which the Daria from the show wanted, too, though it wasn’t always shown), has a major problem with her sister Quinn, and has a close connection with her aunt Amy. She also loves to read, has few friends outside her family, and can get violent if much provoked (as per the ending scene in “The New Kid,” when Quinn gets pounded).

Why make Daria retarded? Because Daria’s high intelligence is the very thing that sets her apart from almost everyone else in the show. Nearly everyone else is stupid, or acts that way. She sees through the hypocrisy, the lies, the double-dealing, the shams. She has a superior moral plane for the most part—and she can think her way out of trouble, and help other people out of trouble as well. After reviewing a lot of the old shows, the books, and some B&B episodes as well, it became apparent that Daria has, knowingly or not, saved many people from disaster. Her effect on the world is extraordinary, even if she doesn’t believe she has much effect on it at all. Not such a misery chick after all!

Do AUs have any relationship at all to canon material? I believe they do, if handled well. Look at Daria’s story in “Write Where It Hurts.” She writes about her family in the future, and all the characters have changed over time as the result of certain events. Quinn’s had kids, Jake’s had a heart attack, Helen’s retired, Daria’s gotten married and found her voice at last as a columnist. They aren’t “in character” per the show, because they are reacting to new events that Daria adds to her tale. The point of an AU is to explore what might have happened if X or Y took place instead of Z. An AU is guaranteed not to have “in canon” characters; a bit of “OOC” is to be expected, so long as it can be justified logically. A good AU often justifies and elaborates on canon material.

Moreover, there are many possible AUs for any single event, such as Daria being born a boy in “Darius.” (She and Quinn could have been born as fraternal twins, too.) All the characters in the show have both good and bad elements in them, and no one is quite sure which will win out. Helen could be a good mother to a retarded daughter—or a bad one. The show offers evidence to support either possibility. The author picks one outcome for the AU and runs with it, supporting it as well as possible.

By the way, I noted reasons why Helen could turn out to be a bad mother. Amy could also turn out bad overall, too. Why was she absent for so long in her sisters’ and nieces’ lives before “I Don’t”? Why does she fight so bitterly and with so much energy against Rita and Helen in “Aunt Nauseum”? She connected with Daria in “I Don’t,” only to make fun of everyone in that episode. Thus she bails on Daria and Jane here at the worst possible time, per usual (as I see her). She knows she’s doing the morally and socially wrong thing (heading for damnation), but still she does it. She’s in it for herself, and she's okay with that. The fact that she doesn't get the basic message in Pulp Fiction is a tip-off, with her earlier worries that if things go bad, she doesn't have a plan to stick around.

The tale could have gone many ways. I happened to want this one. Thank you for reading.

Original: 04/01/06, modified 06/04/06, 09/18/06, 05/21/07, 08/18/08, 11/13/08, 05/07/10

FINIS