"Hey, dude, wasn't that Daria's dad?" Max, steering the tank with his knee, coughed, and exhaled a thick stream of blue smoke.

     "Daria who?" Jesse took a bong hit of his own.

     Max shrugged "Woah. Cottonmouth. You know, that girl that Trent always talks about."

     "He's a dick." Jesse took another hit.

     "Trent? Yeah, kind of, I guess. Why won't he hang out and party with us anymore?" Max had forgotten what he was talking about.

     Jesse giggled, blowing out pot smoke. He'd meant the guy in the car. "It's that one girl, Daria. He's whipped. What a loser, going to college. Lawndale Comuuunity College. What a joke. He even showers every day, now."

     Max shrugged. "First Nick, now Trent. The criminalis are goin' down. It's too bad Monique finally dumped him. She's cool with just being a musician."

     Jesse choked. "He's crazy, man. Monique... she's just so hot."

     "Jake! Remember what Dr. Bourne said. Get control of your anger!" Helen sighed. She'd out-earned him again, in spite of his hard work, and it had hurt his pride. Jake was a competitive soul, and it galled him.

     Jake took a deep breath. "Alright, alright. Control. Gotta get control. Don't cut me off, you bastard! Right. Cool blue ocean, cool blue ocean. Dammit! I hate the freezing blue shitty ocean! He just picked me up by the back of the shirt and threw me in, right off of the pier, shoes and all! I almost drowned! He said it was the best way to learn. First snowfall of the winter, first snowfall of the winter, that's got it. Ya know, Helen, I miss snow. We ought to move somewhere that has a real winter. I remember winter as a kid. Sledding. Skating. Snowballs. Hard, tight packed slush-balls, mercilessly hitting me! Then when I was crying, he stuffed the freezing cold things down my pants and back! Can't take it, Jakey? Let me rub some in your face, Jakey. Toughen up Jakey! Real men don't cry, Jakey! Ghaaaa! I WAS ONLY SIX, YOU ROTTEN OLD BASTARD! BURN IN HELL! BURN IIIIN HEEEEELLLLLL!"

     Rubbing her temples, Helen thanked God that they hadn't had sons. Jake wasn't a role model for anyone. Wondering when he was finally going to disintegrate all together, she decided to get some more health insurance.

     Flashback: the mid-1970s...

     Rick Zavaleta strutted down the pristine halls of Lawndale High, checking out the girls and giving all the guys the fish eye. His main purpose in attending dear old Lawndale High was the "high" part.

     "Rick!"

     Zavaleta turned. It was the Bomber. "Alright! My man, Bomber."

     "Got it all done, Rick." Tom grinned. He was in metal shop, one of Bell's "burnouts," and he loved to make bongs, roach clips, power hitters and big elaborate hookahs. He had a popular table at the weekend swap meet at the Glenn Oaks drive-in. He also liked to make model rockets, some with high explosive tendencies.

     "Where is it?" Rick was hopeful. This would solve his inventory woes.

     Tom reached under the tail of his combat jacket and pulled out a gray metal sheet of about one square foot in size, with a thin metal welding rod spot welded to one edge, sticking out slightly on each side. "Here you go, my man. One trick trapdoor." He walked over to Rick's locker.

     Rick opened it up. "It's small enough. You'd think a new school would have full sized lockers."

     Tom shrugged. "I don't give a shit. At least this one doesn't smell like a graveyard." He felt around the inside top of the locker. "Just that one rivet left to pop." He pulled the big clasp knife out of its sheath on his belt and used the bowie tip to punch the rivets out on both sides, at the back.

     Rick shifted impatiently. "Hurry up, man. I don't want Ruttheimer seeing this and ripping me off. I'm gonna tear his Adams apple off one of these days."

     "Fuckin' A. He's always hitting on my chicks." Tom scowled. "He hits on Linda, too, when you aren't around."

     Rick looked up the hall. "Who?"

     "Linda. The disco queen. The one you've been going out with since junior high." Tom boogied a couple of steps. "You know, Dancin' Linda."

     Rick shoved him back. "Ah, man, don't do that shit."

     Tom smirked, picked up the metal plate, maneuvered it to the top of the locker, tipped it sideways and inserted one end of the rod into a rivet hole. With a quick blow from the heel of his hand, he popped the other side in. He pushed it up until it caught on the rivet in front. "Yowza."

     "I hate all that disco shit." Rick tapped the "Disco Sucks" sticker, with its dead disco duck, on the inside of the locker door.

     "Yeah, me too, but that's where you find all the hot chicks." Tom stepped back with a flourish. "There you be, my man. A genuine Bomber made locker stash. Totally narc-proof."

     "How does it work?" Rick pushed at it with the heel of his hand and it pivoted on the rod, opening the compartment. "What keeps all the shit from falling out?"

     "Got a rare earth magnet for you, dude. Ripped it off from Venner's lab." Tom laughed. "You just stick it to the bottom of the roof. It's the same color."

     "Rare earth? I hope that fairy Venner don't cry again." Rick grimaced in loathing. The science teacher was a "sensitive" guy.

     "Bell won't cry. He'll set Psycho looking for it." Tom looked around, with some trepidation.

     "Fuck Psycho. What's he gonna do? He's only a trainee, anyway." Rick couldn't suppress a shudder. The man had funny eyes and never blinked.

     "I don't know. I heard he was in 'Nam." Tom positioned the magnet.

     "Far out, man. I'd like to do that," he lied. "Get me a cobra, fly around and zap the VC, just like my brother did." In truth, he was profoundly grateful that he wouldn't be drafted. When Tony Zavaleta had been killed, it had torn his family apart.

     "Psycho probably went out at night and killed them with his teeth." Tom opened and closed the door. "Here you go, man."

     Rick took a baggie out of a boot. "Good job. Got your lid right here, my man. Got some righteously fat buds in there."

     Furtively, shielded by Rick and the locker door, Tom sniffed the weed. "Woah, ditchweed." He pocketed it. "S' cool. I'll dye it with green tea and vinegar. Then I can dust it with some bugspray and sell it to Buttheimer as Colombia Gold. Maybe it'll sterilize the motherfucker."

     "I gotta try that. I can't get anything but shitty commercial here." Rick took a bong made from an Everclear bottle from the bottom of his locker and wedged it into the stash. "It works. Cool."

     They started to walk away. Rick took a few steps, then looked uncomfortable. "Hey, man, I'll be right there." Tom nodded and left.

     Rick jumped and gave his locker door a tremendous kick, springing it. He sang, "An' everybody was kung-foo fight-in', fast as light-nin'..."

     Unlocking the door, he took a careful look at the still-closed stash trapdoor and nodded in appreciation. Looking around, he pulled his little .25 automatic and an address book out of his coat pocket, shoving them into the front of the stash. He still had his .44 snubby in his boot. The little .25 was just embarrassing.

     After slamming the wasted locker door three or four times, he went out to the parking lot and took a hit off of a passing doobie.

     A jacked up '62 Galaxy roared up, headers protruding from the hood scoop, its fat cheater slicks kicking up dust and its stereo adding to the chaotic din rising from the area in front of the high school. Lynyrd Skynyrd, KISS, ELO, BTO and the Amboy Dukes were joined in the parking lot party by Iron Maiden.

     "Aaaay! Rick-man!" The two in the car were so stoned that their eyes were almost bleeding.

     "What's happinin,' dudes?" Rick laughed at his two best customers.

     "Takin' a little road trip, buddy." John was getting cottonmouth.

     "You guys are too fuckin' stoned to drive." Tom had come up, laughing.

     "That's why they call it a trip. You should come along. We're going to San Diego, California." Bill laughed. "Gonna get us some surf, sun and bodacious weed."

     "You guys want to go west? Why?" Rick was worried. All these guys did was buy pot from him and toke up all day.

     "Weed, dude! My cousin that lives there says that you can get weed in Tijuana for about ten bucks a pound. All you have to do is swim around the border with a couple of pounds in a jar. There isn't even a lifeguard!" John grinned. "Three trips gets you a new Firebird!"

     "Woah!" Rick was tempted. "Can we crash somewhere there?"

     "There's always the beach. In a couple of trips, we could get an apartment or a beach house. Maybe even get a boat!" Bill had it all figured out. They'd be rich, sleeping on bales of cash, surrounded by beach bunnies.

     Linda pulled up in her mustang, with Rhonda and Laurie, her two Fashion Club slaves. Fox On The Run was playing on her 8-track.

     "Woah." Tom swallowed as she got out. "Nah, I can't go."

     Linda glared at Rick, hands on her hip, her two lieutenants behind her in a diamond formation. "Rick, you were like supposed to meet me so I could help you get your hair cut and dress you for the Bee Gee's concert today. I can't be seen with a guy wearing that awful combat jacket. Maybe you don't want to take me to the prom after all?"

     "Oh, Linda!" Laurie gushed. "You'll make such a cute couple! He'll look like Sonny and you'll look just like Cher!"

     "No fuckin' way." Rick had had it.

     "Rick!" Linda glared. "You like, promised, last night!"

     "That is like, maaajor un-cool," Rhonda drawled.

     Rick slipped into the backseat of the Galaxy. "Shit, lets go."

     Tom laughed incredulously. "You're going to California? Just like that?"

     "California! But like, what about our relationship!" Linda glared, furiously.

     "What? Fuck that." Rick smacked the back of the seat. "Pass me a brew and let's get the hell outa here. I wanna go someplace real." The opening riffs of Rock On came on the radio.

     "Far out, man!" John passed one back and popped a Schlitz for himself. He flipped the pull ring off of his middle finger out into the dirt parking lot, turning it into the bird pointed in the direction of the glaring Vice Principal's office window. Taking a big swig, he toasted Vice Principal Bell and nodded at the knot of people gathered around the car. "So long, class of '74. Don't wait up," he said. He took another swig and then blew a mouthful of Schlitz all over a shocked Linda as they accelerated headlong for the Golden State and destiny.

     Present day...

     Daria was crossing the parking lot, when the bottom of her new see-through plastic security bookbag ripped open, spilling all of her books and more importantly, her notebook out onto the asphalt.

     Horrified, she scrambled to pick up the loose pages before they blew away. Then the absolute worse happened.

     "Tall and seemly, guitar screaming, come save me from this useless dreaming?" Jane had a shocked expression as she stood there looking at the verse Daria had scribbled on the page. "My god! I thought you were way over that, Daria."

     Daria flushed, furiously collecting paper. "That's an old page."

     "Sorry, chica, I'd buy that, but it's dated." Jane sighed, handing her the paper. "Just ask him out sometime, Daria. It's really no big deal."

     Daria smirked, head still down. "Do you really think that Jesse would go out with me?"

     Jane looked horrified. "Ye gods! He'd go out with anyone, Daria." She shuddered.

     "Well, then you ask him for me." She looked up, openly smirking.

     "Har-de har-har." She started gathering books. "These bags blow. They provide security for everyone except the books, their ostensible purpose for existing."

     Daria had picked up the last sheet and was interestedly examining a small object sticking up from beneath the cracked asphalt. "Well. Parking lot archeology. I've found the sword in the stone." She desperately wanted to distract Jane from the verse she'd read.

     Jane, with an armload of books, approached. "Looks like the ring in the asphalt to me. Hey, it's got a little metal tail, sticking down in the pavement. I wonder what it is?"

     Daria shrugged. "Maybe it's the school self destruct ring. When the enemy approaches, pull the secret ring and blow up the whole school, like the ring on a hand grenade. That way, you deny them the benefits of a third-rate education."

     "Oooh! Let's see! Pull it." Jane was eyeing her friend, full of concern. She'd seen some other poetry that was worrisome. One, titled No one but me, had shocked Jane. Thinking back, she realized that Daria had been a little too quiet, for a long time.

     "Already on it." Daria carefully worked it back and forth until it came free. "It's an incomprehensible bit of metal attached to a ring. What do you suppose is under it?"

     "A giant crystal pyramid, bigger that the ones in Egypt, with the perfectly preserved mortal remains of Elvis Aaron Presley entombed in the center, in his Las Vegas suit, poised to sing. Hit it on the point with a golden mallet and it reverberates to the tune of Jailhouse Rock, on all frequencies." Jane grinned, her next art project fully conceptualized.

     Daria smiled, then quickly looked away. "Maybe we should apply for an excavation permit. We could dig a big pit and catch Kevin's jeep." They started walking back toward the school. "He almost hit me again this morning. He must have been doing over seventy. He never saw me. A cop saw the whole thing and pulled him over. When I reached them on foot, they were talking football. He never even got a warning."

     Jane frowned. "That idiot. Why don't those stupid jocks ever get what they deserve?"

     "Law of nature. What really bothers me is that if he ran me down, my tombstone would read; Here lies the troublesome, insignificant mortal that almost disturbed the historically important career of the mighty football legend, Kevin Thompson. No great loss." Daria sighed. "Why did they have to move into my neighborhood? I can hear Brittany's incessant crying, even over Quinn's constant whining."

     Jane smirked. " You hated your old neighbor too."

     Daria nodded. "Yes, I came to hate Mr. Johns, but he expected it. He was a tuba player. He practiced all the time. It was like living next to a foghorn. In retrospect, I must say that he was a dream neighbor. He is missed."

     Jane shrugged, thoughtfully. Trent wasn't exactly popular in the neighborhood, either. "You can't really blame her. You'd be crying too if you got knocked up by Kevin."

     Daria looked appalled. "You got that right. She comes over every few minutes to torment me, now. Kevin's still an oh-so-important QB, but Brittany is an outcast now. She's so depressed. She's sure that the bastard is running around."

     Jane wasn't surprised that Daria put up with it. She had a large soft heart underneath all that cynical armor. "Brittany made her own bed, let her lay in it. She's got what she always wanted, or so she says. Married to 'Kevvie,' home of their own, football career ahead and if that fails, Kevin could fit right in with her pinhead Dad's marketing company."

     Daria scowled. "He's a toad. Brittany really does love him, but to the toad, she's just another perk for being the QB. She ought to get an abortion and divorce that worthless fool while there's still time."

     Jane shrugged. "Did you say anything to her?"

     Daria smirked. "Oh, right, Jane. Romantic advice from Daria Morgendorffer. What the hell do I know about it?"

     Jane looked at her friend and cautiously began teasing her. "If you want to do some field research, you could always come on over to my place and crawl into bed with Trent on some cold night. He's still around on most weeknights. I have the feeling that he'd probably want to keep ya."

     "Jane! He'd probably call a cop." Daria flushed. "Besides, My Dad's company wouldn't pay enough to keep us in popcorn."

     "There's something about Trent that you need to know. I didn't tell you before, because I thought that you'd lost interest." Jane smirked. "He talks in his sleep. It's cute. Sometimes he says, Daaria, Daaaria Daaaa, woah, Daria! I think he really likes you."

     "Right." Daria was getting pissed. Jane was doing it again. Jane would be completely insufferable if she ever found out about Trent's emails. He'd asked her how to use email after he finally got a computer to use for burning CD's. They'd been writing long letters to each other every day since, for months. It would all hit the fan when Jane found out about her carpooling arrangement with Trent. Daria would soon start taking her advanced placement classes at LCC, and Trent was enrolled as a student there. She would take a school bus to the campus, but ride home with Trent.

     Jane tisked. "Now, don't reject my advice out of hand. Wouldn't it be good for Helen? She'd finally have that home office that she's been dreaming of!"

     "And I'd finally have that SWAT team after me that I've always wanted. Mom would go totally ballistic. Of course, it would take a few weeks for her to notice. She's in Washington DC, at some seminar again, but when she got back I'd hear the screams of anguish and outrage all the way up in Tre..." Daria flushed. "Over there. She'd have snipers after Trent."

     "You'd both die veeery happy, Daria." Jane was glad to see Daria fighting back. She was afraid that her partner in crime and closest friend was sliding into depression.

     They reached the school doors, with their new metal detectors. The guard, having heard the comment, was suspicious. He stopped them and ran his small detector over Jane.

     "Lawndale's newest correctional institution welcomes you." Jane glared at the guard with the scanner wand. "Watch it with that thing, buddy. I want to have kids someday."

     "It's harmless. I'm just doing my job." He scanned Daria, stopping at her hand. "What do you have there?"

     She showed him the pull tab. "I have no idea."

     He smiled. "That's a pull tab from an old beer can. They quit making them like that way back in the seventies."

     "Oh." Daria threw it into a garbage can.

     The guard waved them through. "Go on."

     Jane fished a roll of ductape out of the art supplies closet. "Put the books in, first."

     Daria shoved a stack of books into the clear backpack. It gaped open at the bottom. "What a great idea. American ingenuity at the dawn of the twenty first century. You could just frame this, Jane. It works on so many levels."

     Jane's eyes briefly lost focus. It was a startlingly good idea. Trust Daria to refine sarcasm into an art form. "No, not enough people would get it." She taped the torn pack up. "There, now you have the only designer book-bag in school."

     Daria picked it up. "Yet another triumph for the miracle technology that is ductape. Don't tell Quinn that it's a designer bag, or she'll want one too. She won't touch these things, as they are. She just makes her pet football monkeys carry her books individually, now."

     Jane smirked. "Ah the amazing power of monkey love."

     Daria shrugged. "I don't know. At least she has someone around that gives a damn." Daria shook her head, an expression of embarrassment and surprise briefly flickering across her face. "I need to dump off some of these books. This thing might not hold."

     Jane nodded, then gazed after her, sorrowfully. She had been spending a lot of time with Tom and his friends. Daria was lonely and too closed off to do anything about it. Jane decided to ditch Tom and hang with Daria on Saturday. It was too bad that the two of them were so afraid of each other. Jane wasn't stupid. She'd seen the way that Tom looked at Daria, sometimes. Daria definitely liked his deadpan humor. She knew that they liked each other. She also knew that it was her that Tom had stared at for an hour and then picked up in the club. He'd completely ignored Daria.

     Jamming the books into her crammed, too-small locker was tricky. The big books went on bottom and the rest were carefully arranged to leave the lightest books on top. Then Daria slipped the remaining books into the middle of the stack, individually, so that the pile was raised past the level of the top of the locker door. When she finished, the locker was totally full. She had to slam the door three times before it would latch. The door was badly sprung. "Why do I always get the bad locker?" Daria looked at the clock and went to the rest room.

     They met up by Jane's locker and left for their next class, but they were stopped by two security goons. "Miss, that's an illegal pack."

     "Oh? Did Congress pass a law against ductape now?" Daria hated the new security force. They were stupid, obnoxious and unfriendly. Taking their cues from Li, they assumed that the small, crime free suburban school was a simmering cauldron of repressed violence that they had to aggressively keep a lid on.

     "I can't see inside it. Assume the position, please." The man spoke self-importantly.

     "Assume what position? Is this some kind of sex thing? Because if it is, you're going to the big house, then the poor house." Jane despised the new security with every fiber of her being.

     "Uh, just stand aside." The poorly trained security guards searched Daria's pack, and the youngest of the pair started flipping through and randomly reading her notebook.

     Daria glared. "Get your hands off of that, you ass. You have no right to read that. Read one more word and I'll have my mother sue you into an early grave."

     The guard swallowed and closed the book. "We'll need to open your locker, now."

     "Enjoy." Daria walked away, with Jane.

     In science class, the fire alarm went off. Barch stopped her rampage and had the girls file out first, then the boys.

     Daria was sitting on the knoll, reading, when they came and arrested her.

     "Expelled!" Daria gaped at Li.

     Li glared. "You brought a gun to school, Morgendorffer. When the guard opened the locker, it fell out and shot him in the leg. It's mandatory to expel you for 365 days, and refer you to the authorities. You'll never come back to Lawndale High!"

     "I didn't bring a gun to school! I don't have a gun!" Daria felt like she'd stumbled into some twisted dreamscape, where the familiar turned deadly.

     "It was in your locker, Ms. Morgendorffer. The security tape shows you at the locker just minutes before it was searched. It shows the incident, and it shows that no one touched it in the interval. Frankly, I've had my doubts about your mental health for a long time." Li turned to the policeman. "Take her away."

     Daria sat in the holding cell at the Lawndale Juvenile Justice Center and wondered what she'd done to deserve this. The cell wasn't that bad, but it was still a cell. She wondered when her mother was going to come and get her out, or if the nightmare would just continue.

     The door opened. "Morgenderffer, come on. It's time for your evaluation." The woman was obese and had tiny, mean eyes.

     "What? Don't I get a hearing or something?" Daria stood, happy to be getting out of the cell.

     "You will. But first, you get a psychiatric evaluation. Then we hold you for seventy-two hours. Then you see a judge." The woman prodded Daria out of the door.

     "What does the picture look like?" The psychologist had ragged fingernails and a noticeable tremble in his left arm.

     Daria, terrified into submission, told the truth. "A green butterfly on a dirty windshield."

     The doctor frowned. "Being uncooperative won't help you, now. I might be able to get you the help you need."

     "What does it look like to you?" Daria simply didn't know what to say.

     He sighed, and checked the 'Uncooperative' box on the form.

     "What I think doesn't matter. Now try again."

     "Tire tracks?"

     When they were done, the form was a wasteland of checks. He never noticed that he had the wrong cards, because he never once looked at them.

     Detective Perez sat on the other side of the glass, eyeing the girl. He couldn't interrogate her yet, not until a parent got there. She looked hard and brittle, the kind who would break totally if hit just right. He figured that some boyfriend had probably asked her to hold the gun for him. He'd probably follow that avenue. If he could whip this thing up, make it into a neatly averted Columbine, he could get some good ink out of it. After all, the Mayoral special elections were coming up, now that the Mayor had finally been convicted.

     Jake arrived with a bang, almost getting arrested himself. He loudly proclaimed Daria's innocence at first, waving off the lawyer as unnecessary. Lawyers were expensive and the whole thing could be cleared up in a few minutes anyway. All he had to do was talk to Daria.

     Perez sized Jake up as a nut and invited him into the viewing room for a word. They stepped in and both stopped, struck by the eerie way that an expressionless Daria seemed to be staring directly at them through the one-way glass mirror.

     "Get her out of those handcuffs!" Jake carefully restrained himself from putting Perez through the glass.

     Perez nodded, stepping well back from the enraged man. "Sure, Jake. I just didn't want to give her the opportunity to hurt herself, while I was out of the room."

     Jake stared. "Hurt herself? You don't believe that crap about the gun, do you?"

     Peres shook his head sorrowfully. "She's a great kid, Jake, but she has problems." He turned on a VCR and a monitor came on, showing the lockers at Lawndale. "See the clock on the wall, in the background? This is Thursday night, after classes."

     Two security guards walked by, randomly searching lockers. Perez fast forwarded, until they opened Daria's locker. ""This is Daria's locker. You can see the sticker mark on the inside of the door."

     Jake shifted uncomfortably as the guards emptied the locker and thoroughly searched it. "What are they searching for?"

     "They pick them at random." Perez fast forwarded, then restarted the tape. The halls were packed. Daria was shown at the locker, then being stopped for a search. "Here we have the definitive proof, Mr. Morgendorffer. We know that there was no gun last night. We have continuous footage of the locker, until Daria got into it. Now we see her being searched for an illicit backpack. Since she committed a breach of school safety regulations, she's being written up and her locker will be searched."

     "But... the guard could have..." Jake rubbed his forehead, flushing red. He had no outlet for the anger that was building in him.

     "No. Here it is. She verbally threatened the guard, before the incident."

     The halls emptied, and the two guards opened Daria's locker. After eyeing the solid mass of books, the younger guard shrugged and pulled several large textbooks out of the middle. A small black gun fell out of the top, hit the floor and soundlessly fired. The man fell, writhing.

     "Damn!" Jake stood and whirled furiously in Daria's direction. "How could she!"

     "Is it your gun, Jake?" Perez played his fish with a loose hand.

     "No! Helen made me sell my guns, years ago." He sat, looking old. "Damn Helen! I knew that Daria had something wrong with her... All that morbid crap in her room... She fixated on death!"

     Perez shrugged sympathetically "I'm not a psychologist, but our evaluation suggests that you're right. She's sick, Jake. We need to get this over with fast and get her some help."

     Jake stood. "Okay."

     Daria's breath whooshed out with relief when Jake came into the room. "Dad! They say I brought a gun to school and shot someone! I don't underst--"

     "Tell the truth, young lady! Where did you get the gun! Are you seeing some thug?" Jake was as angry as he'd ever been.

     Daria turned her face away and sobbed, once.

     It was relentless. When Daria explained that she hadn't known anything about the gun, Perez, unopposed by council, got her to admit by a process of elimination that the gun was in the locker.

     "You didn't see it when you put your books in?" Perez was acting like her good friend, officer friendly. He had the surveillance tape playing at double speed, running in an endless loop on a big screen TV in the interrogation room. Perez hadn't had to push hard at all to crack the suspect and get her to talk, but she wasn't changing her story.

     "No! It just wasn't there. I don't know anything about it!" Daria was terribly rattled. The tape was damming. If she didn't know that the gun wasn't in the locker, she'd have believed it herself. With the tape, the case seemed open and shut.

     Perez nodded, sympathetically. "But you see, Daria, here on the tape, it shows you taking something out of the bag. You seem to be hiding it from the camera."

     "Yeah, Daria! Was that the gun?" Jake leaned forward, furious. "That was the gun! Admit it! I raise you and this is how you repay me?"

     Daria sobbed. "But I didn't have a gun! That was a banana! I was going to eat it for lunch. I wasn't trying to hide anything. The tape is faked, somehow!"

     "Damn it, Daria! Tell the truth!" Jake slammed his fist on the table, making her flinch.

     "Bu... But I am telling the truth! Why can't you believe me?" Daria was shaking, and tears were streaming down her face.

     Jake was hot, seeing it as an attempt at manipulation. "You've ruined your life! How can we live this down? Its those sick books you read, and that damn skeleton fixation. You like death, Daria! You're some kind of a--"

     "Calm down, Mr. Morgendorffer. We'll just talk this out and get down to the bottom of this." Perez turned to Daria, offering a box of tissues. He wanted to break her, fast. The way her father was turning on her, although very helpful, was depressing him. He said, reassuringly, "It'll be alright. All you have to do is tell us the truth, Daria, and we can all go home."

     "I don't believe the tape." Daria stubbornly resisted.

     "That seems a little paranoid. Who'd go to all that trouble to frame you?" Perez wondered if she just honestly didn't remember. The psychologist, who Perez wouldn't trust his dog to, said that she had evidenced pronounced schizophrenic tendencies during his interview.

     Three hours of relentless interrogation were taking their toll.

     "Come on Daria! Tell us." Jake was ready to confess. His eagerness for Daria to confess was based on his own tiredness.

     The pressure on Daria was intense. All cried out, she just stared blankly at her reflection in the two way mirror.

     Helen hurried along, desperate to support her daughter. She hoped that Jake, for once in his life, had done the right thing. Her flight had been delayed on the ground for three hours.

     She burst into the wrong room and froze, seeing Daria's desperate face through the one way mirror. Jake was there, with a detective. Helen gasped when she realized that there was no lawyer. Bile rose in her throat when she heard Jake angrily plead with Daria to confess, while the detective watched.

     She quickly entered the interview room. "Detective, my daughter is availing herself of her right to remain silent. This interview is over."

     Jake saw her face and knew that he was in trouble. "Helen! She--"

     "Shut up!" Helen, grated, "You... Just shut your mouth."

     Perez stood. "That's fine. I've already got what I need."

     "It's inadmissible." Helen was glaring at Jake.

     Perez shook his head regretfully. "Now counselor, all I need is one parent."

     "It's inadmissible." Helen stared coldly at Perez. If she had to have Jake declared incompetent and committed, she would.

     "I know the law--"

     "That's a matter to be settled in court, Detective. I need to speak to my daughter, alone." Helen's glare could ignite glass.

     "Very well. You can use the room." He gathered his things, and turned off the recording devices. He looked regretfully at Daria, who seemed almost catatonic, then left.

     "Jake! Go next door and make sure that they aren't watching." Helen spoke to him like he was a dog and glared at him as he silently skulked out.

     "Daria, I'm so sorry that I wasn't here to help you." She hugged her daughter. "We'll fight this to the end."

     Daria cried again, surprised that she had tears left. "Oh, Mom, I don't know what's happening! They say that there was a gun in my locker, and they have a tape... She hiccoughed, then wiped her tears away, again. "It looks like there was a gun in my locker, but it just couldn't be! I can't understand it. I'm innocent."

     "I don't care, Daria." Helen rocked her, holding tight. "It doesn't matter if you're innocent or guilty. I know you wouldn't have a gun. But they'll come after you, anyway." She'd been watching the surveillance tape loop. She'd have to see about getting that excluded from the evidence.

     "Mom... Why did this happen to me?" Daria was so exhausted that she just wanted to sleep right there.

     "Every one gets a little undeserved pain in her life, Daria. But I'm here for you. It will all blow over in time."

     "I'm innocent." Daria was firming up.

     "I know. I wouldn't care if you were guilty, my dear. It's us against them." Helen shot a poisonous glare over Daria's shoulder at the glass. When all this was over and Daria was out of trouble, Jake was history.

     In the next few weeks, Daria went through hell. She was processed through the system like a cow through a slaughterhouse. Nothing that she said or did made a difference.

     The lawyer hired by her mother didn't have much ammunition. The tape was admitted and Daria's locker had contained a tablet, with the violent poetry from inside her closet door copied onto it. It talked about 'killing them all like rats' and 'being the secret angel of death'. Along with her Melody Powers stories, and the evaluation, it was damming. The poetry had the true tint of madness. It was in her handwriting, but she couldn't prove that she hadn't been the original author. She'd copied it from her closet, before the broken door was replaced. She'd decided to show it to O'Neill because it was rather good, in a chilling sort of way.

     It cost her a court ordered stay in the Greenwood Clinic for at risk juveniles, part of a deferred prosecution deal. If she successfully completed treatment of her supposed mental problem and didn't re-offend in a year, the criminal charges would be dropped. Helen reluctantly agreed, because it would spare her daughter the stigma of a criminal record.

     Jane was sitting on her bed, crying her eyes out. She'd gotten to see very little of Daria during the hearing and less after.

     Trent came in and sat next to her on the bed. "I couldn't even visit her. She's in isolation for thirty days." He sighed. "What about you?"

     Jane sniffled. "What about me?"

     "When are you going to come out of isolation? You haven't been to school this week and you missed three days last week." Trent was worried. He'd never seen Jane so upset. The whole thing had left him gasping. Daria was his online friend. They had shared a lot of secrets. He'd had plans to take her out, after she turned eighteen next month.

     "I'm thinking about quitting. I can just take the test, get a GED and start community college early." Jane sighed. "We can go together."

     Trent put his arm around her. "You gotta hang in there, Janey. If you run away, they win. Concentrate on helping Daria. Don't hurt yourself with a useless protest."

     She sniffled and leaned into him. "The rumors are killing me. They're saying that we were lesbians, plotting some big anniversary massacre. It's just so stupid. That little tiny gun... God, what I would give to know where it came from! Someone's pulled a fast one." Jane bit her lip. Who could be so cruel?

     Trent shook his head. "I saw the tape. It was in the locker." He hesitated. "I can't believe it either, but you never really know. Sometimes people can surprise you, Janey. We all live inside our own heads and no one else can ever really come in. People who seem completely normal can just decide to check out and you just never know why. Remember Marjory Hanes?"

     Jane did. Marjory Hanes had been in high school with Trent. She'd hanged herself. "You think she brought the gun to kill herself?" Jane was just too apathetic to get angry again.

     "I don't know. It doesn't seem likely, but it doesn't matter now Janey. I think she's in real trouble." He looked at his last and favorite sister, keenly. "I think she needs us to be there for her. I think she needs very good, close friends who really care about her and can concentrate on helping her get it back together when they get the chance to see her again. We can't do that if we let our own lives fall apart, Janey."

     She nodded, tears flowing.

     He sighed, resentfully wishing that Vince would drop by more often than once a decade. He shouldn't have to think like this. "Imagine us as mountain climbers. She's slipped, and she's hanging by a thin rope, out over a long drop. If we jump, we can't help her. But if we hang on, we can help pull her up over the hard part when she comes back within our reach."

     Jane walked down the hall, anonymous and glad to be that way. The interest in Daria had died down after a few weeks. Jane hadn't bothered to reply to anyone, but Quinn had defended Daria to the bitter end. The Fashion Club, Brittany, Jodie, Mack, Ted DeWitt Clinton and the three J's had all supported her and the whole thing had quickly died down.

     Even more surprising was the way that Upchuck had reacted. He'd analyzed the tape, frame by frame, carefully looking for signs of an edit. Then he'd checked the camera and wiring, looking for taps. He'd prowled around Daria's locker, trying to figure out how a gun could be planted in plain sight. He checked the walls of the neighboring lockers, even though no one had been in them.

     Over the weeks Upchuck got more and more depressed until he'd finally gotten a three day suspension for fighting, after beating Bobby Martin into a bloody pulp. Bobby had been going on about crazy dykes and knocked up cheerleaders. Upchuck had just seemed to snap. Now he had transferred to Oakwood.

     Jane wondered how long he'd had the crush on Daria. A lot of unlikely people came to commiserate with Jane, fishing for gossip, but she gave them all the cold shoulder. She felt like Upchuck. She didn't want any friends from Lawndale High, anymore.

     "Yeah, I got put in there by my mom." The girl, Carla, shuddered. "I turned eighteen and finally signed myself out last month."

     "Did you see my friend?" Jane was eager for news. She'd heard about Carla The Spazz from one of Monique's band-mates.

     Carla was a mess, twitching and flinching, but she was at the Zon almost every night, gamely trying to make up for two years in Greenwood.

     Jane was trying to find out what went on in that place. Every time she tried to visit, she was told that Daria didn't want to see her.

     "With the glasses? Yeah, they went right to work on her. She was tough. They really worked her over. You might as well forget about her. She's just a zombie, now." The girl took a step away, a distressed look on her face.

     Jane grabbed her arm. "Wait! A zombie? What do you mean? Tell me about Greenwood."

     She pulled free, shuddering. "Don't touch me! Don't ever touch me!" Heaving, she calmed down. "Sorry. I'm... sorry. It's worse than a prison, there. They find out what you don't like, then make you do it. They punish you, if you don't." She hesitated, showing sympathy.

     "How do they," Jane scowled, "'punish' you?"

     Carla swallowed. "See, it doesn't matter if you're really bad or not. They want to punish you. That's how they break you down, you know. They keep pushing until you push back and they can punish you. They want to break you down and build you back up, better, they say. It took two weeks in recyc, but they finally made that girl sing. A person will do anything to avoid recyc."

     "Sing? What's recyc?" Jane's face was working.

     Carla nodded, unaware of the stark, chilling terror on her own face. "It's hell. Blind deaf and dumb, trapped like an animal in a big diaper and a straight jacket. It's not so bad for her right now. She's still a zombie, a head case. They dope you up after recyc. We called it the chemical straightjacket. It keeps you from killing yourself. They don't want you talking to visitors or thinking too much while you get used to doing what they say and thinking their thoughts."

     Carla heaved a big sigh and collected her scattered wits. "See, they want you to learn to stop yourself from thinking. The fear... starts controlling you."

     "What do you mean, sing?" Jane was silently crying.

     Carla stared at her shoes. "They wanted to punish her, right when she got there, see? They saw that she was shy, so they told her to sit on a stool in front of the lunchroom and sing. Michael, Row your Boat Ashore and shit like that."

     "Oh, no." Jane was dismayed. Daria wouldn't go for that at all.

     Carla nodded "Oh, no is right. When she wouldn't sing, they used it to get her. They strapped her into a straight jacket until she went crazy." Her voice trembled. "It only takes a few hours, really. They tighten the laces until you can't breath, then leave you in a little cell, like a coffin, with these foam earplugs in your ears and a black hood over your head. All you can hear is this loud humming sound. She swallowed, white faced. "I... I thought it was the devil. They leave you like that for eleven hours at a time, then suddenly tear you out, shine lights in your face and yell at you for shitting your diaper. Now she's tranked to the max, singing in the cafeteria and doing handy-crafts in the therapy room."

     "Oh, no." Jane fought back tears.

     Carla glared, suddenly resentful that no one had ever cared about her suffering. "I had to tap-dance. At least she got to do something that she's good at."

     "When will she get to have visitors?" Jane collected herself. She couldn't believe that it could be that bad. There were laws. Carla had to be exaggerating.

     Carla shook her head for a beat too long. "She'll never have outside visitors. Never. Only the family, and only once a month. They don't want the old friends contaminating their brand new person." She swallowed, her face working. "I... I sometimes want to go back." She pulled free of Jane and ran off, into the night.

     Jake sat in his office, looking at the letter from the attorney. It was over. nineteen stormy years of marriage, ended, just like that. He rested his head in his hands. He was going to be alone now. He sighed. She had prepared well, separating their financial affairs, then sucking the accounts dry. She'd mortgaged his office again, leaving it up to him to pay the freight or lose the damn place. She'd even tried to sell his car. He should have known better. He'd seen it her eyes when she walked into the interrogation room. Worst of all, Daria wouldn't even look at him when he visited. She just stared off into space, ignoring him. His head thumped on his desk. He was useless.

     Trent waited for a cloud to cover the moon, then slipped over the wall. Looking around the poorly lit grounds, he found a bench that looked like the sort of place that Daria would sit. Taking out a stick of Janey's distinctive artist's chalk, he chalked MS and a crude spiral shape on a slat, then put the piece of chalk in the crack between the slats. She was smart enough to get the message. If they could just communicate somehow, he'd be able to get her out. He'd seen enough while peering through the grilled windows to know that this place was hell on earth. He'd often prowled the grounds at night, but it was too well guarded in the daytime. He couldn't come near the place.

     Quinn sat listening to Tiffany's plan for coordinating them through the rest of the month. She was finding it hard to care. She'd caught her father moving his things out of the office and she was upset, worried that he might be planning to leave Lawndale. He wouldn't say what he was doing, only that it was a surprise.

     The cafeteria was almost silent, except for the clinking of utensils and the singing. Black and white posters proclaimed anti drug and anti crime messages. Small signs on the walls demanded 'absolute silence'. The tables were full, as each inmate or 'student' as they were euphemistically called, listlessly ate the bland, nearly protein-free food.

     Daria sat on her stool singing I Cover The Waterfront, accompanied by piano music from a scratchy old vinyl record. Her voice was clear, beautiful, expressive and completely free of sarcasm. She was well suited to the old Billie Holiday arrangement. Daria was a natural torch singer and could easily produce the bluest of the blues. They didn't let her sing the blues very often, but the boy that arranged the records slipped one in occasionally, when Blount was out. The 'students' watched her, expressions ranging from apathy to tears.

     She had been quickly and ruthlessly broken of her habitual sarcasm. The drugs made her mind fuzzy and impeded her ability to focus on the task of resistance. Giving up had been a blessing. Now there was part of the handle of a serving spoon tucked into her hair. Maybe, she thought, she'd get the chance to sharpen it tonight and cut her throat with it, before they could put her back into the straight jacket. She could tell by the way that North and Dr. Blount were watching her that it was almost time for another treatment. She had gone very deep the last time. It had taken days for her to come back. What if she didn't, one day? That's what they wanted. They wanted to kill her mind, to take her soul.

     It had been shattering to realize that with a stroke of a judge's pen someone could gain so much power over her. Daria had always believed that her intellect gave her an inherent power and that she could use it to force the world to adjust to her. Greenwood had soon cured her of that delusion.

     Days of fighting for breath, mewling into the rubber bit jammed into her mouth had taught her that Quinn was right. The only way to survive was to learn how to please the ones who had the power. Dignity, free-will, hope... all nothing but illusions. Four months among the dammed had taught her well. There were only two choices. Willingly conform to their mold, or die. Daria chose to die, while she still had a scrap of her own mind left. She just couldn't stand the constant fear any more.

     The record ended. The 'student' who had been assigned the job carefully put the 45 in its jacket. The old records had the song with vocals on one side and the bare instrumental on the other. Catching her eye and showing her the next record, he nodded in mute approval of her singing. There was a tearstain on his face. He flicked his eye wryly at the new record. He was awed by her talent and he always tried to give her one that she liked before making her sing one that she hated. It was the theme from Anne.

     Daria waited a beat to make sure that he hadn't put on the side with the vocals, then expressionless, started singing the hated show tune, with a slightly different emphasis.

     The cook, wet eyed, counted the spoons several times, then sent for the head orderly, North.

     Daria had learned to get to the staff with this one. They knew what the tomorrow that she referred to was. Breaking their hearts was the only way that she could fight back. She remembered feeling guilty when she had first begun to enjoy the singing. It was something that they wanted her to do, so she shouldn't do it well. She had stopped worrying about it after her third go-round in recyc, though. The truth was that they were going to win, if she stayed. She was essentially defenseless. Taking pleasure in singing was a sort of victory, if she looked at it right. She badly needed a victory. She had a sudden memory of her visit to Brittany's house.

     She had met Steve Taylor and Ashley Amber. The man's vicious temper had shown itself when his wild son had annoyed him. The expression on Brittany's face made perfect sense, now. Daria completely understood her. When you live in hell, you'd better learn to like the smell of brimstone.

     Orderlies lined up the 'students' against the walls, then went down the line, searching each 'student'. They finally found the spoon in a trashcan, but part of the handle was broken off, missing.

     Daria, still singing, prayed that they would forget her, but as usual, there was no help anywhere.

     "Come on, Daria. Stand up." North hoped she had the piece. She didn't want to have to conduct seventy body cavity searches.

     Searching carefully, North patted her down, then ran her fingers through the girl's hair. "Well, Daria. Why am I not surprised?" She plucked the inch long metal fragment out of Daria's hair.

     "What were you going to do with this?" North looked into the girl's eyes and shivered. She knew the answer. This one would have succeeded. Greenwood would be lucky to survive another suicide. Daria would have made eight.

     "Nothing." Daria made no show of defiance. Nothing that she could say would save her now, but maybe there was still something that she could do.

     "Daria, we are only trying to help you. When are you going to quit fighting us? It's been nearly four months and you still try to resist. I'm sorry, but its back into recyc for you." North truly believed in what she said. She was proud of the clinic's work. These kids were so screwed up that there was only one answer for them. Brainwashing was an ugly term, but it was fitting. The dirty minds that made these teens into drug addicts, vandals, gangsters and prostitutes had to be cleaned. A short, shocking period of suffering now would keep them from a whole lifetime of misery. Violent disruption of the personality followed by isolation and strict discipline would accomplish the resetting of the person into a new life pattern. It was heartbreaking, but necessary. After all, Dr. Blount said so, and he was well known as a leading authority.

     Daria closed her eyes, trembling as they stripped her, restrained her and then shaved her head. Hide something in your hair and you lost it. A few quick passes with the electric clippers left her auburn locks in a pile on the floor. They took her glasses and roughly dressed her in an open backed hospital smock and a large diaper.

     Numbly, she let her feet drag as the two beefy female orderlies hustled her to the isolation wing. She had tried to smash her head into a wall, so that they would take her to a real hospital, but they were ready for that. All that her attempt at resistance got her was another three days of recyc.

     The small, coffin-like cells resembled nothing so much as an oven. They were just 3X3X7 boxes, with a door on one end and a plastic covered foam exercise pad on the floor. Inside, they were thickly padded in black rubber, just big enough for a person to lay in, but too small to sit up in. Pitch black and heavily soundproofed, the morgue-like plywood cubbyholes were a cost effective solution to Dr. Blount's requirement for low cost cells to provide the necessary sensory deprivation to 'recycle' people in.

     Blount had coined the term to describe the process. First he broke them, putting them through recyc, burning away the dross, rendering them soft and malleable, just like an old can in a blast furnace. Then by the old technique of extinguishing inappropriate behavior and rewarding appropriate behavior, the new person would learn to prosper in an orderly world, no longer a problem to society. Although BF Skinner had first proposed it and the old Soviet Union had perfected it, Blount guilelessly called it the Blount method.

     Daria whimpered and began to claw at the orderlies, but it was futile.

     The older woman looked around for witnesses, then brutally punched Daria in the head, expertly stunning her. They crammed the foul tasting rubber bit into her mouth and strapped it as tight as it would go. It would keep her from choking, chewing her tongue off or tearing up her mouth-parts in the first few hours. It would also muffle her screams, so that none of the recycs in the other cells would be distracted from their own ordeal.

     The orderlies were hard hearted, neither being very bright. Daria recovered from the blow and wildly struggled as they slipped the jacket around her, but it didn't help. Both orderlies were two hundred pounders. Never very large, the Greenwood diet had reduced Daria until all of her ribs showed, very clearly.

     With her foot on Daria's back, the larger of the two orderlies pulled with all of her might, lacing the jacket as tight as she could.

     Daria fought to take a breath. All she could do was sip oxygen. Breaking completely, she tried to scream, but all that emerged was a breathy little whine of despair.

     They put foam earplugs into her ears, a hood over her head, strapped her legs together so that she couldn't kick them and then roughly slid her into the cell.

     Alone in the dark, Daria screamed into the bit, drummed her bound feet and felt her bladder empty as the door slammed.

     Sandi was critiquing the club's hair, when the fight started. Her brothers, Chris and Sam, came tumbling through the room, beating the hell out of each other.

     "You nasty little brats! Get out of here!" She wanted to wade in, but the two evil little runts would almost certainly wipe something disgusting on her if she did. They set her up that way, all the time.

     Tom was plotting his divorce when the noise level rose enough to penetrate his office walls. He slammed down his pencil. "Damn those brats!"

     He went to his living room and broke it up. "You boys go rake the yard!"

     "Aww, Dad! But he--"

     "You want to scrub the trash bins out, too?" Gratified by their sudden show of obedience, he watched the boys leave. According to the blood tests that they'd all taken last month for the new HMO, neither one was actually his.

     He surveyed his daughter's friends, saw Quinn, and remembered hearing all the details of her sister's arrest. Hearing about it over and over had made the name stick in his mind. He decided to show Sandra that he was paying attention, by addressing the only one of her friends that he knew by name. "Hello there, girls. How's your sister doing, Quinn?"

     Quinn's face crumpled. "She's not the same any more. I went to see her and I don't think that she even recognized me. God, she just sat there drooling!"

     He was a little taken aback. "What are they doing to her?"

     Quinn shrugged, red eyed. "They have her on drugs. She didn't do anything, but they decided that she's crazy."

     He frowned. "I heard that she brought a gun to school."

     Quinn glared at Sandi. "They found one in her locker. She did not put it there."

     Stung, Sandi shrugged. "The camera showed her putting things in, then the guards searching. The gun was there. If she didn't put it in, then how did it get in?"

     Tom frowned. "Maybe it was already there."

     Quinn tried not to cry. "That's what we said, but Daria says that it wasn't."

     He shook his head. He had a very, very bad feeling. "Did anyone ever really check the locker?"

     Three hours later the Fashion Club, Tom Griffin, Helen, Ms. Li and two angry, defensive, security guards in their casual clothes stood in front of the locker. The guard opened it and the current tenants possessions were removed.

     "I don't see anything." The usual flashlight inspection revealed nothing to the guard.

     "Let me check." Tom shoved his hand up and just as he'd thought, the stash opened. A bong and a yellowed notebook fell out.

     "Oh my God..." Li was absolutely stricken. Looking into Helen's triumphant, vindictive face, she knew that the school district and the county juvenile justice system faced an immense lawsuit for criminal negligence.

     "This was Rick Zavaleta's locker. I made this for him myself. The magnet must have pulled the door shut again." Tom couldn't meet Helen's eyes. "A genuine Bomber made locker stash," he said, sorrowfully. "God, I'm sorry, Helen. He left Lawndale the same day that I put this in. I never gave it another thought."

     Helen nodded, her eyes ice hard. "It wasn't your fault, Tom. Thank you for coming forward with this. Was this Zavilata character the type to have a gun?"

     "He was a dope dealer back then. He carried a gun all the time, to keep from getting ripped off. A lot of us carried weapons, back then. I had a big clasp knife. It just wasn't considered that big a deal here. No one ever got hurt." Tom rubbed his head. "God, I'd forgotten all that." He opened the notebook. "Rick's old memo book. See, he's got initials, amounts and prices."

     Helen picked up the ancient bong. "Are you going to try and say that this is Daria's too?"

     Li slumped in defeat. "I'll reinstate Daria, at once."

     "You'll hold an assembly to inform the student body of what happened." Helen's poisonous glare speared her.

     "Yes, of course." Li knew that she had better call the district attorney, her personal attorney and the superintendent, at once. "You security guards, search all of these lockers for compartments."

     Perez was sitting at his desk, working on a mileage report for his department car when the call came. Absently he picked up the phone.

     "Detective Perez." He was absorbed in justifying his odometer reading. He'd just used the car to visit his ex wife and ex kids in Maine.

     "Perez, this is DA Somers. Do you remember the Morgendorffer case?"

     Perez did, very well. "Yes, sir."

     "I'm going to need all your notebooks on this. It's just come unstuck." Somers knew that this one would really cost the taxpayers. Helen Morgendorffer was out for blood.

     "Oh, hell. How?" Perez couldn't see how it was possible.

     The DA rubbed his forehead. He'd used the incident in his campaign. He'd pilloried the previous DA, for his leniency. "Daria's locker had a secret compartment in the top. A dope dealer had the locker back in the seventies. The gun was in there all along. The lab has confirmed that the shells in the gun were all seventies vintage. We have to get her out of Greenwood."

     Perez swallowed. "The mother..."

     Somers heard the remorse. "You did what you thought was right. Helen woke up Judge Leary and has a court order for her immediate release. I'm sending you and a couple of men to see that it all goes down smoothly. Don't give her any more ammunition against us."

     Perez drove to Greenwood. Helen was impatiently waiting, with a deputy and a camera toting private investigator.

     "Hurry up, Mr. Defective." She pushed the bell before he reached the door. It was almost midnight.

     "Mrs. Morgendorffer I just want to say--"

     "Save it." Helen punched the bell again and held it down. "I'm going to grill your ass, especially. You never even looked at the top of the locker, you incompetent son of a bitch."

     Perez swallowed. The deputy sheriff that Helen had hired to enforce the court order grinned at him. There was little love lost between the city and the county authorities.

     Two more city policemen arrived and the door opened.

     Mona Harakans, the night orderly, stood, blinking. "May I help you?"

     "Deputy." Helen stepped aside.

     "Good evening, I'm Deputy Sheriff Rance J. Killborn. I have a court order, directing you to immediately release Daria Morgendorffer into my custody. Please go and get her."

     "I can't." Harakans stepped back from the door.

     "If you don't comply, I'll arrest you." Killborn was tired. He wanted to get home.

     "She's in recyc." Harakans swallowed. "Only Dr. Blount can let her out and he's not here."

     "Let's go get her." Helen pushed her way in.

     "Oh, there's no unscheduled visitors allowed." Mona knew that the Doctor wasn't home.

     "We're not visitors. She's coming with us. If you don't want to come with us too, in handcuffs, I suggest that you take us to my daughter, now." Helen was quite convincing to the less-than quick-witted woman.

     "Helen, please..." The deputy glared at Harakans. "You have to comply with the court order."

     "Come on, then. I ain't gettin' fired. Y'all let her out." Harakans lead them to the isolation ward.

     Helen's scream split the night. A policeman caught her when she fainted.

     Perez took a disposable camera out of his pocket and took pictures alongside the PI, while the furious deputy cut through the lacings of the straight jacket.

     When they pulled the hood and mouthpiece free, Daria just lolled, nervelessly, eyelids open, but her eyes blank and rolled up in her head. The smell was terrible.

     The PI got a good shot of her eyes.

     "They gets like that, sometimes." Harakans swallowed, sensing that she might be in trouble. The doctor had been called away on a family emergency and no one else was around to check up on the student.

     "God! She's laying in her own... Open the rest of these cells!" Killborn furiously called for an ambulance and more deputies. He was ready to start arresting the staff on sight. Fortunately, Daria was the only victim in recyc that night.

     Gray faced, Perez got on the phone with the DA, at home. Things had just gone nuclear, exploded in everyone's face. He wondered if he'd ever get that image out of his head.

     Jane sat in the auditorium, reading. She had taken it up to fill the empty hours at the school, after losing her best friend. It also gave her an excuse not to talk to people. Jodie had made the occasional overture, trying to be friendly, but she had always been far more in tune with Daria than Jane, who frankly disliked her. Brittany had sometimes talked to her, but they didn't have much beyond Daria in common. It still amazed Jane that Daria had taken the time to bother with Brittany. Maybe it was just outcast solidarity. Idly, she wondered what had become of the hapless blond.

     Jane simply hated LHS and every single person in it. She spent her time with Tom and his friends now. LHS was just a place to get a diploma. Even the teachers had stopped calling on her, feeling obscurely guilty for their lack of power over federal law and district policy. She was as isolated as Andrea.

     Li came on the stage. "Students! Students, calm down. Settle down, now."

     She cleared her throat. "Students, today's assembly is informational in nature. I'm sure that most of you remember the first week of school, when we had the gun incident."

     There were murmurs of interest and things quieted down.

     Li cleared her throat in embarrassment. "There was no incident. The gun was there all along, hidden in an old drug stash built into the locker. The student was innocent. We, the staff and faculty of Laaaawdale high deeply regret this tragic incident."

     "Hey, Warden! Have you already forgotten her name?" Jane stood, defiantly.

     "Yeah!" Quinn shouted furiously. "Say her name, you bitch!"

     Li's mouth dropped open in shock. "Ms. Morgendorffer, Ms. Lane, I--"

     "Daria got put into hell because of you and these stupid fucking stormtroopers!" Quinn wasn't even slightly forgiving. "Seven people that I know have dropped out this year because of you. You just want to get test scores up! Quit! Get out! You're no good!"

     Jane started chanting. "Li, out! Li, out! Li, out..."

     The students immediately took it up, stamping with each syllable.

     Li stood on the stage, feeling the general hate and discontent of the school focus itself on her. Since the new security measures had been implemented there had been a steady increase in the number of reported incidents of violence and vandalism. The security force had turned LHS into a war zone with its heavy-handed tactics. She had never meant to let things go so far. The Superintendent of Schools had pressed her to implement the measures. The fact that the security money went to companies that were indirectly owned or controlled by members of the board of commissioners had made the damage politically impossible to undo.

     DeMartino, Barch and O'Neill, sitting at the bottom of the bleachers, started to chant along with the students. They knew that her hand had been forced, but they had little sympathy. Her job was to do what was best for the school. If that meant defying the local political kleptocracy, then so be it.

     Li, with an unreadable expression, turned and left to type out her resignation. She had done her best.

     Daria was rushing through an inky black tunnel at tremendous velocity, finally free of the terrible restraints. She saw a light ahead and pushed even harder, straining with all her might to reach the apparent exit. Just as she reached it, she smashed into a barrier and bolted upright, gasping. She was looking into a light over a bed. She was in a hospital bed, unless it was all just another hallucination.

     "Daria!"

     She turned toward the voice, a voice that she had never thought to hear again.

     "Are you real?" She didn't have her glasses. They had been confiscated to keep her from using the glass to open a vein. She'd fought and the orderly had deliberately stepped on them.

     "As real as I get." A large hand took hers. "Hey, Daria. I'm so glad that you're back. I climbed over the fence to scout the place, but they had alarms on everything."

     Daria gasped. "It was you. I saw your messages, but they make us spy on each other. I couldn't answer." She remembered the alarm going off and the rumors of a man on the grounds. She'd pinned her increasingly desperate hopes on Trent somehow breaking her out.

     "It was me." He sighed. "I'm sorry, Daria. The place was just too well guarded. I finally smartened up and applied for a job there as a cafeteria worker."

     She felt lips on her palm. "Trent," She sighed. "I'm out of there?"

     "Yes. They found out how the gun really got in the locker. It was hidden in the top, all the time. You're free, Daria." He kept kissing her hands. "You're so thin."

     She took a deep breath, feeling his tears dripping on her arm. "I'm still alive. I'm still here."

     "Be careful of the IV, Daria." He looked at the marks of suffering on her and his face went cold. "I'll find that doctor. I'm going to really hurt him. I'm going to put him in a wheelchair, for life." Trent felt his fury, like a distant thunderstorm, displaced as it was by his happiness to see her. She was a pathetic shell, a bundle of bones. "He'll pay."

     "No! Don't do it, Trent. It's just not worth it. He's crazy. They all are, at Greenwood. He really, really thinks that torturing people is good for them." Daria twined her bony fingers in his. "Will you promise me that you won't try to get any revenge?"

     Trent was silent for a long time. "I promise."

     "No justice either. Just leave them alone. Nothing that you could do to them could be worse than being one of them, Trent. Really." Daria tried to squeeze his hand for emphasis.

     Trent chuckled. "Okay. I promise. You're a wise one, Daria Morgendorffer."

     She smiled blindly in his direction, then dozed off.

     Jane stood at the hospital desk. "But I've got to see her!"

     "Sorry, but there will be no non-family visitors." The nurse had seen the girl when she came in. The police had put a guard on her door, to keep the reporters away and to insure that nothing else happened to her.

     Jane opened her mouth to expostulate, when she saw Trent hurry by, peering at a clipboard, wearing a doctor's smock and scrubs. His hair was neatly trimmed, his earrings were out and he was wearing a stethoscope draped over his shoulder.

     Jane chased him down. "Trent!"

     "Janey!" He slowed and she caught him.

     "Did you see her?" Jane was impressed by his outfit. He looked subtly right in it.

     "Yeah." He sighed. "She's had a bad, bad time, Janey. She's just skin and bones."

     Jane shook her head. "Is she still the same, mentally?"

     Trent sighed. "No." He blinked back tears. "No, she's been hurt, Jane. She's so... hurt."

     Daria slid her feet out of bed, stood up, and stumbled. Quinn caught her and steadied her, concealing her shock at the frailty that she felt in her sister.

     Daria had never been very heavy, but Quinn knew that her sister had always been a little bigger and heavier than her. It was dreadful to feel the bones under the thin hospital smock and the lightness of her body.

     "Thanks." Daria tottered to the bathroom and Quinn straightened out the sheets on the bed.

     Daria came back and stood looking at the high hospital bed. "I think I might need a boost, Quinn."

     "Sure." Quinn just lifted her into bed, tears in her eyes. It was like lifting one of the Gupty kids.

     "Thanks. And thanks again for bringing me the glasses. You don't want to be blind in a place like this." Daria shuddered.

     "You're welcome. Were they trying to starve you?" Quinn had always thought that thinness equaled beauty. Now she saw that it just wasn't so.

     Daria cleared her throat. "No, but I was in recyc for eight days this time, Quinn. All you get is oatmeal and water every eleven hours. I don't remember eating anything at all. I think I just... went away on the third day, but Blount wasn't there to stop it."

     Quinn shuddered, swallowing. She'd been told what 'recyc' meant and she'd seen the pictures that the police and the investigator took.

     "Tell me what's been happening to you." Daria smiled. "I really missed hearing you talk."

     "Well, It's been... Nothing to compare with what happened to you." She cleared her throat.

     "That's ... good." Daria veged out, then roused herself. "Did you hear from Jane?"

     "They won't let her in here. She says hi." Quinn cleared her throat and asked the question that had been preying on her mind for months. "What happened with Dad? Mom won't say."

     Daria hunched over. "He thought I did it. He just... turned against me. I think that's just what his dad always did to him."

     Quinn swallowed, paralyzed. She didn't know whether to tell her about the divorce.

     "I hate him." Daria shivered. "He helped them put me in there."

     Quinn hesitated. She missed Jake and often visited him. "Well. He's living in the Louis Hotel, now."

     Daria frowned. "Did Mom divorce him? I think I remember him visiting and saying something about it, but I was too doped up to understand. Maybe it wasn't real."

     Quinn nodded. "Mom divorced him. He's gone."

     Daria felt a pang of sorrow. "I wish..."

     Quinn shrugged and patted Daria's hand. "She told me that was going to happen anyway, once we left. Do you remember my visits?"

     Daria shivered. "No. Not at all. Can I go home? Am I still in custody?"

     Quinn shook her head. "You're free Daria, but you're still too sick to leave the hospital. You're growing and they're worried about that being affected. You'll get another physical today. They had you on an IV earlier, helping to get the drugs out. You were also really dehydrated. Mom will be here this evening and tomorrow, you come home." A vindictive smile spread across her face. "Were gonna sue them all. Greenwood, the county, the school district... all of them."

     "Where's Mom?" Daria felt herself drifting.

     "She's working, Daria. She's been meeting with all kinds of people about your--" Quinn saw that she had fallen asleep.

     Jane was on the phone with Helen. "What are you going to do about her room?"

     Helen blanched. "Oh, hell. We'll put her in the guest room." The old padded cell just wasn't going to work. "I tried to get her to talk to a therapist, but she's so terrified of them..."

     Jane's breath caught. "I'm... afraid of them now, too. Look what happened to Daria."

     Helen sighed. "Doctor Blount is a madman. One bad doctor doesn't mean that they're all bad."

     Jane was unconvinced. "It doesn't mean that they're not, either. It might just be a matter of degree."

     Helen hesitated. "He might not even be a real doctor, Jane. We're looking into his background but some things are just not adding up."

     "What a surprise. I'll stick to plain old headology, if my psyche is in need of adjustment." Jane said goodbye and hung up.

     Jake sat in the Louis Hotel bar, mumbling to himself. He wasn't very drunk, but he was maudlin anyway. Helen wouldn't even let him in the house to visit Daria. She kept telling him 'later,' and threatening him with a restraining order. He knew that she would just destroy him in court, so he grudgingly acquiesced.

     "Fancy law school education... Thinks she's too damn good for me, now. Daria's my daughter!" Jake sorrowfully drained his martini. "You won, old man. You finally won." Jake decided to completely forget the old bastard, in revenge.

     "Hi, Jake." Smiling, Linda sat down next to him and signaled the bartender for two more martinis, indicating that she wanted hers to be a double.

     He looked up, for a brief moment hoping that it was Helen. "What? Oh, uh, hi, Linda." He looked around. "Where's Tom? I want to thank him again, for helping Daria."

     Linda shrugged, trying to show off her new dress. "He's probably with his secretary."

     "He's really working late." Jake smiled at her, then looked away, flushing. He really missed having a woman around to talk with.

     "He moved out, Jake." She took a sip of her martini and grimaced. "The bastard! She's twenty-eight! He's divorcing me, trading me in on a newer model."

     Jake, caught in mid drink, coughed. "Oh! I'm sorry, Linda. Divorce is a terrible thing. He's a fool if he thinks he can do better. You're one of the most beautiful and accomplished women in Lawndale." He was sincere. Helen was better looking to his prejudiced eye, but not by much. "He'll regret it some day, when she gets over the crush and he tries to talk to her." Jake shook his head.

     Linda shot a startled look at him, then smiled, gratefully. "Thank you, Jake. I could say the same for Helen." Tom had always been a rounder, but everyone knew that Jake Morgendorffer, last of the squares, was a real man who just didn't fool around. She was willing to bet serious money that he'd never been with any other woman than Helen.

     "So how have you been, Jake? How are you holding up?" She smiled at him, encouragingly.

     "Oh, I'm missing my family. Quinn visits, but its not like being there. I chucked the business and took a job managing this place for a group of investors I put together. I think that this hotel is a real potential moneymaker. Lawndale needs an adult nightspot." He nodded in the direction of the large ballroom. "Drinking, dining, dancing, good bands and a nice room to spend the night away from the kids is what this depressing little burg needs. Disco Rules!"

     "Oh! I love to dance! Tom never liked it, though." Linda sighed. "I was once the best dancer at Lawndale High."

     Jake laughed. "I'll bet! I can just see it. You've got a dancer's legs. Helen has two left feet, but me and Willow won a bunch of dance contests. That's how we paid for the commune's microbus!"

     Linda put a hand on his arm and smiled, looking him in the eyes. "It's a date then. We'll go dancing when you get the ballroom done."

     Jake's eye's widened in surprise. "Uh, sure. I guess. I hadn't really thought about dating again. I--"

     She put a finger on his lips. "I understand. So Jake, who's your lawyer?"

     He shrugged. "I didn't have a lawyer. It will all be final in a month anyway. Helen can have everything she wants. It's all my fault, anyway."

     Linda smiled. "I doubt that, Jake. It takes two to tango. Why don't you come with me to see my lawyer? She's really good. She'll make sure that you don't get cut off from your kids."

     He nodded, reluctantly. "Sure."

     Daria went home a few days later, spending the rest of the week in her own bed, recuperating. Beyond insisting that she wanted her own room, she was largely monosyllabic and didn't interact with people very much.

     Daria got up very early Monday morning. It was time to get back into her life. After showering, she took out her old skirt and jacket combination. In spite of all the extra thick protein shakes that she was forcing down, it was still far too loose.

     Sighing, she dug out an old outfit from Highland. Even that was too loose. She took in a hand-full of material and safety pinned it in place, then looked in the mirror. Wishing that she hadn't looked, she put on an old sun hat to cover her short bristly stubble of hair and set out for a walk.

     She found herself at Lawndale High, just as the false dawn began to fade into the real thing.

     Daria sat down on her favorite knoll, shivering a little, and faced the east. As the sky began to lighten, she tried to find a connection with the person that she had once been. What had that person wanted? What had she cared about?

     Daria didn't have a clue. She had tried to defend her own identity, but that had been taken from her with pathetic ease. She couldn't even really remember it, now. She had defined herself by her disdain for the popular culture and her opposition to the molding forces of the society around her. But that society had effortlessly destroyed her illusions of superiority. She was as stupid, unlucky, weak and mortal as all the rest. What was left for her? What was the point of fighting an unbeatable force? What do you do when all the roads seem to lead straight to nowhere?

     The birds were chirping and the sun was just peeking over the horizon when she moved again. Rested, she walked toward Dega Street. She had to get out of the straightjacket in her mind.

     She passed the music store and halted, struck. There was one thing that she liked. She liked to sing. It was all that she really had, right now.

     At first, in Greenwood, singing had been a joyless humiliation. Then it had become her weapon of choice against the staff. She had discovered that people responded emotionally to her singing and had taken a quiet pleasure in using her voice to connect with them and then to twist those emotions in them like a knife.

     The staff gradually turned over and were replaced by people that were either tone deaf or had no detectable emotions. By then though, it had become a thing that she looked forward to for it's own sake. When she sang, the omnipresent terror receded.

     Jane saw the newspaper truck go by and put on a burst of speed. She was racing herself, trying to shave a few seconds off of her previous best. She turned down Dega Street and suddenly stopped, dead in her tracks. Daria was standing in front of the music store, staring into the window. She looked ragged and gaunt, like a homeless castaway.

     Jane watched her for a few minutes, then jogged over. "Hey there, Amiga!" She laid a hand on Daria's shoulder.

     "Aaah!" Daria flinched, then flushed. "Uh, Hi, Jane. Sorry, I was... in a trance."

     "What's the matter?" Jane looked at her friend, anxiously. She had visited every day, but this Daria seemed more and more like a stranger.

     "Nothing, really. Just spacing out."

     Jane could always tell when Daria was lying. "Come on. Let's get some breakfast. My treat."

     Daria sat and automatically moved to take off her hat. She paused, then took it off.

     Jane looked at the stubble and felt ill. "Those evil bastards."

     "They weren't evil." Daria opened a menu

     Jane looked up. "How can you say that? They tortured you!"

     Daria shrugged. "They really thought that they were doing the right thing, Jane. Dr. Blount was crazy and his minions were just the usual cast of idiots."

     "But why?" Jane closed her menu, appetite gone.

     "Why?" Daria shook her head. "Because shit happens. People are stupid, so society is stupid so the government is stupid and lets stupid things like that happen. Blount wasn't even a real doctor. He faked all of his credentials. He got a contract with the state to help 'adjust' at-risk juveniles."

     Jane shuddered. "Didn't they check up on him?"

     Daria nodded. "Sure. They always made an appointment so he could tidy things up before they came by. The truth is, they loved it. His method really works."

     "How can you say that?" Jane couldn't believe what she was hearing.

     "Because I saw it work. It worked on me." Daria looked up, then put down her menu. "They changed me, Jane."

     Jane snorted. "How."

     "I like to sing. I can't do the sarcasm thing anymore. I'm just not a nonconformist." Daria sighed. "I'm afraid now. They taught me fear."

     Jane shook her head. "Oh, I call bullshit on that."

     Daria looked up. "Why?"

     "Because you took that hat off." Jane smirked. "I could read it on your face. You thought, 'Oh dear, I look funny. Maybe I shouldn't take this hat off. Then you thought, 'Screw them. If they don't like it, they can leave,' Just like you always have, Daria." Jane measured the impact of her words. "So you found out that you like to sing. Big fat effing deal. As for the sarcasm... it's still early days. You'll be back, just as soon as they lock up Dr. Mengele."

     Daria shrugged. "I can't hide from what happened. There's no place to hide, Jane, ever. The big bad world has teeth and I know it now. I should be back to Sick Sad World, writing and whatever it was that I did before." Daria sighed. "But it's not happening."

     "Why not?"

     Daria took off her new glasses and polished the lenses. They had been picked out by Quinn, small ovals instead of the large round lenses that she favored. "I guess I've just kind of lost myself. It's like suddenly switching bodies with someone. The old Daria is as foreign to me as if she lived here a thousand years ago."

     Jane swallowed. "You seem pretty much the same to me."

     Daria smiled. "Maybe you're the one that needs the glasses."

     The waitress arrived with glasses and a pitcher of ice water. "What'll it be, gi... gawd! The things you kids do to yourselves!"

     Jane's face darkened in anger. "Wh--"

     "It's all the rage, these days." Daria looked up at her. "Toast and grape juice, please."

     "Sure. Why did you do something like that to yourself?" The woman was staring.

     "I didn't." Daria passed her menu over. "The orderlies back at the laughing academy shaved it off so that I couldn't hide things in it."

     "No!" She stared. "Really?"

     "Really." Daria looked over at Jane. "Want anything?"

     "Two breakfast specials and some coffee." Jane smirked at Daria. "Sorry, but you heard the doctor. You have to eat until you're back to normal, Daria." She looked at the waitress. "We've gotta get her fed and back to the nuthouse. She's got shock treatments scheduled at seven."

     "Oookay." Shooting them both dubious looks, she moved off.

     "What were you hiding?" Jane looked at her, closely.

     Daria poured, then sipped from her water glass. She looked up, considering her answer. "A key."

     "Ah. Escape plans." Jane nodded, then froze, struck by a nasty thought.

     "Exactly." Daria was relieved. She'd almost said too much.

     DeMartino walked into the restaurant, bought a paper and took his usual seat.

     "Hey, Tony. What can I get you today?" The waitress sat a coffee cup and a pitcher of cream down.

     DeMartino smiled up at the waitress. "Oh, the Belgian Waffle breakfast sounds good, Anne."

     She marked it in the order book. "Say, Tony. Those two near the door. Are they yours?"

     "Wha- Dear god! What did they do to her?" DeMartino stared.

     "I take that as a yes." Anne looked over. "She said that they shaved hear hair off to keep her from hiding things in it at 'the laughing academy.'"

     He nodded. "She got committed to Greenwood, out on route nine. It was all a big screw up. She just got out last week."

     "Is that the place that was on the news last night? Where they were brainwashing those kids?" She looked over at Daria. "That poor kid."

     "Yes. Excuse me, Anne." He walked over to the table.

     Daria looked up. "Mr. DeMartino!"

     "Hello, Daria. I'm glad to see you..." He gestured at her, helplessly. "What happened?" He'd seen people that looked better when he was a POW.

     Daria shook her head. "Bedlam hasn't changed very much at all, Mr. DeMartino. It was a madhouse in there."

     DeMartino swallowed. She had the thousand-yard stare that he remembered from the prison camps. "If you ever need to talk to someone, I was a POW. I know what it's like, being helpless in the enemy's power. Don't worry, Daria, it all gets better, eventually. It's like decompression. Just... ignore the bad stuff."

     Daria tried to smile at him and failed. "Thanks."

     "You were a prisoner of war?" Jane looked up at DeMartino, interestedly.

     "Yes." He'd spent years trying to live it down. He still keenly felt a soldier's guilt over surrendering. "Are you coming back to school?" The memory made his razor wire growl of a voice even harsher than normal.

     Daria shrugged, not letting it bother her. She understood. "I don't know. The last I heard, I was expelled and some Federal law said that I couldn't go back there for a year."

     DeMartino fought down a tirade on the subject of grandstanding second rate politicians and managed to hold it to a frown. "I'm the acting principal, Daria. Li decided to take a job in the private sector. If you come to school, I'll re-enroll you, law or no law. If they want to make laws regulating the minutiae of school administration, then they'd better figure out how to make me enforce them."

     He smiled at her, with what he thought was a pleasant smile. It didn't help that he was imagining the political carnage he could wreak with this situation if he was bothered.

     Daria gazed off into space. "I don't know. I don't want to be in a place where guards are watching me all the time any more."

     DeMartino nodded. He understood, better than anyone. "Li went off of the deep end with all that security." He coughed, feeling sorry for Li. Unlike him, she was ambitious. She had been caught in the middle of a bad situation. It didn't help that the superintendent's brother in law was the contractor that installed the security systems. "I fired the security guards for negligence, got rid of most of the surveillance and plan to stop using the metal detectors. Lawndale High is going back to the way it was."

     "Oh, to jump for joy. A return to serene perfection." Daria looked up at him, deadpan. "I'll be there later this morning."

     "Good." He chuckled. "I missed that refreshing sarcasm."

     Jane spoke up. "So now that the guards are gone, aren't you worried about the inmates rioting?"

     He shrugged. "Not really. What's the worst case scenario? So we lose a couple of students. Big deal."

     Daria laughed. "You're a great educator, Mr. DeMartino."

     "How come they made you principal?" Jane was curious. "I'd have thought that Barch would get it."

     He laughed. "She's crazy. I have a degree in public administration and I've done it before. I was acting principal for three long years, the last time, until they finally hired Li." He saw the waitress coming with their food. "Excuse me, ladies. See you later, Daria." As he walked back to the table, he realized again that he didn't want to be a principal. He liked being with the students, in spite of their stupidity. Unlike adults, they had an excuse.

     Jane looked after him, curiously, then shifted her gaze to Daria. "I saw some wigs back at--"

     Daria lifted a hand. "Quinn already bought me several. I don't know if I want to wear one."

     Jane smiled. Daria was back. "Worried about vanity, again?"

     Daria shrugged. "People should know what happened to me, so it can't happen to anyone else. Why should I help them sweep it all under the rug?"

     Jane looked at her friend. "This is high school, Daria. The lurid rumors are worse that anything that might have happened."

     Daria frowned. "Don't count on it, Jane."

     Quinn turned off the alarm, yawned and sat up. After she performed her morning ablutions, she looked in on Daria, as she had every morning.

     The bed was empty. Alarmed, Quinn looked around the house. She was getting ready to wake up Helen, when Daria came in the front door with Jane.

     "Daria! Where did you go?" Quinn looked her sister over, anxiously.

     Daria smiled. "I was out walking my angst." Quinn had been as close as her shadow since she got back.

     "Ewww, Daria! You didn't get one of those lizards, did you?" Quinn shuddered. "They give you warts!"

     Daria and Jane laughed.

     "I let it go, Quinn." Daria looked at the clock. "I'm going back to school today."

     Quinn frowned. "It's still kind of soon. Don't you want to wait until you gain a little more weight? You still need to gain at least twenty pounds."

     Daria shook her head. "No, I have to get back into life. Sitting around here, feeling suici--it's no good."

     Quinn and Jane exchanged an alarmed look.

     "Well, you can't go like that." Quinn looked at Jane appealingly, then back at Daria. "Let me put together an outfit for you that fits."

     Later that morning, DeMartino stopped at Greenwood and collected Daria's school records. She'd attended a school there, and apparently done well in spite of her zombie-like condition. Looking through it, he shook his head and started forging sections wholesale. He was determined to make sure that she maintained her stellar GPA. He'd also had a word with the teachers. Daria wasn't to be singled out or questioned about her experiences.

     Trent drove them all to school. "Hey, Daria. You're better. Pretty soon, you'll be all the way back to gorgeous."

     "Uhm, thanks. That was a very polite way to tell me that I look like hell." She smiled at him and blushed when he smiled back. "I started reading through your emails last week. It's taking a while, because I'm trying to remember what was happening on that day and answering each one in order, like I would have if I had gotten it then. It's helping."

     He shrugged. "Good. I got used to writing you every day, so I just kept on." He threw his arm over the back of the seat, invitingly.

     She scooted over against him. "Me too. I just never wrote mine down."

     Jane, in the back seat, stared, open mouthed. "You two were having an on line romance all the time? Oh, how cool! I--"

     "Lay off, Janey." Trent scowled resentfully into the rearview mirror.

     "Well excuuuse me." Jane smirked at Quinn and they exchanged a low five, behind the seat.

     Daria approached the new locker with trepidation. This time, she cautiously poked around inside before accepting it as safe.

     "Can't be too careful with something like that, eh, Daria?" Jane put Daria's new books inside the locker.

     "Do tell." Daria looked over at her old locker and shuddered. "I wish I could find the jerk that left the gun in there and slap him into recyc for an hour or two."

     Jane looked thoughtful. How many Zavaleta's could there be?

     "Alright, Daria!" Kevin walked up with Doris and slapped her on the back, almost knocking her down. "Wow! You're really bony!"

     "Really?" Daria shook her head. "How's Brittany doing?"

     Kevin flushed. "She uh, went home or something."

     "Home?" Daria shot Doris a hostile look. "I thought you guys got a house when you were married."

     Kevin shrugged with an idiot's grin. "Her dad took it back when she started all her crying and split. Hey, I told her that she shoulda gotta abortion. Well, gotta go!"

     "You do that, Kevin." Fixing an embarrassed Doris with a glare, Daria watched them go.

     "What a total creep." Jane dismissed him with a sneer.

     "What ever happened to Brittany?" Daria looked around, upset. She hadn't seen her since she got back.

     Jane shrugged. "I think that she finally just dropped out. I wasn't really paying any attention to the people here. All of her so-called friends just ignored her." Jane shook her head. "Even Jodie."

     Daria nodded. "Of course they did. Rule one in the high school popularity game is to never associate with losers. You don't want to give somebody a break if they screw up. It's a slippery slope and they could drag you riiight down."

     "Is that why you haven't called Dad?" Quinn had walked up behind her.

     Daria flinched.

     "Oh, that's good." The lawyer smiled at Helen, then caught himself and frowned. Having a lawyer for a client was hard. He kept reacting wrong.

     Helen, a tax lawyer, frowned back. The senior partner had referred her to this firm, but it wasn't looking good. "Why would my divorce have any bearing on this?"

     The senior partner cleared his throat. "Well, the more drama the better, Helen. This could easily go to the fifty million mark."

     Helen goggled at them and rose. "I think I've made a mistake in coming here, gentlemen. Tort law isn't my specialty but I know how to check on someone's net worth. The Greenwood Clinic doesn't have that kind of money and the school district will be tough to collect from. Even winning from them would be an iffy situation. I doubt if any Lawndale Jury would give us even a tenth of that. Maybe two or three million if were really lucky, but--"

     "No, no, you've misunderstood!" He leaned forward, intensely. "Three million is chump change, Helen. We're not litigators. We're entertainment law specialists. We're talking about the rights to the story. This is huge!"

     Helen collapsed back into her chair with a thump.

     Daria went into the hotel with some trepidation. It was beautifully restored inside. She walked up to the concierge. "Hi, I'm looking for Jake Morgendorffer?"

     He flicked a glance at her and nodded, approvingly. "Come on."

     He led her through the restaurant kitchens and into the maids supply rooms. "Fill this application out. This is your locker. You're responsible for the lock. Find a uniform in that closet, change in the changing room and report to the housekeeping manager, in the lobby. She'll be expecting you, directly." He spun on his heel and left.

     Daria stared after him. "It must be the water in this fruit-loop town." Shaking her head, she saw a map of the hotel, with the name Jake Morgendorffer, General Manager, on the bottom with an arrow leading off to a room near the front desk. She let the form that the concierge had given her flutter to the floor and walked away.

     Daria walked down the corridor found the door and raised her fist to knock.

     "Hey!" Sandi came out of the stairwell directly across from the door. "What are you doing here?"

     Daria looked at her. "I could ask you the same, but since you helped get me out of chez loopy, I'll answer. I'm looking for my dad. What about you?"

     Sandi scowled. "My mom's in one of these rooms with some guy. She barely comes home, anymore. I have to take care of my brat brothers. She's not registered and I want to know who she's with." Sandi looked up, shot through with horror. "Oh please don't let it be your dad."

     Daria swallowed, feeling a spasm of nerves. "Amen." She raised a fist to knock and the door was thumped and rattled from inside.

     Sandi grabbed her and dragged her back into the stairwell. Daria was still spindly and frail, unable to put up much resistance.

     "Wha--" Daria stiffened in outrage as Sandi put a hand over her mouth and pulled her deeper into hiding.

     The door opened and Linda stepped out then turned back. "Are we still on for dancing tonight, Jacob?"

     "Huuu! She keeps her clothes there!" Outrage made Sandi's sibilant whisper in Daria's ear sound like a shout.

     Jake emerged in a tux and kissed her, backing her up against the stairwell, right over Daria and Sandi. "You know it, Sweetheart. We're on for dancing every night." He took her hand, stepped back and kissed it with a sweeping, courtly bow.

     Linda giggled and curtsied. "You're so distinguished looking, Jacob."

     Jake took her in a close embrace."It's easy for a man to look distinguished with a pretty woman on his arm and you, Linda, are nothing short of ravashing."

     Linda flushed. "Want to go back to bed for a while?"

     "Later. For now, the dance floor calls!"

     They tangoed away up the corridor, in time with Jake's humming. They were startlingly good.

     "Oh, God, no. They're in like, looove!" Sandi burst into tears. "Noooo not Quinn! I can't have her as a stepsister! Oh, God, take me now!"

     "Welcome to my nightmare." Daria thought for a minute. Far from the wretched hobo that she'd expected, Jake had actually looked pretty carefree. He was certainly much fitter and far more animated. Uncomfortably, she recalled her mother's constant bullying and nagging. "I just can't deal with this, today." Daria wrenched herself free of Sandi's death-grip, turned and ran for the exit, just a half step ahead of a wailing Sandi.

     Daria got home and went straight to her room. She booted up her computer and wrote a long email to Trent, putting her feelings about Jake into words. She had been mad at him before, but now she felt terribly betrayed. It was like one of the pillars of the world had fallen. The answer came back immediately, in the form of a haiku.

          The pine tree shivers.
          Alone by the winter's lake.
          Her laughter rings out.

     Daria smiled. Trent was a pretty good poet, too. Daria sat, thinking, then printed it all out. Taking down her latest notebook, she clipped it into the binder. She kept everything involving Trent.

     Of course Jake was lonely. Nodding to herself, she picked up a pad and started a long letter to her father.

     It took months for her life to stabilize. Daria was assigned to a twenty-five year old student teacher, Melissa, who proved to be a good friend. For three hours a day after school they rapidly caught up to where she should be, fudging the time sheets as Daria rapidly mastered all the subjects. DeMartino assured her of a perfect grade no matter what, but she worked hard anyway. The hospital measured her knees, calculated her probable optimal height and prescribed a course of growth serum to counteract the stunting effect of the malnutrition that had inhibited her final growth. She quickly grew as tall as her mother, irritating Quinn.

     The divorces were finalized, Jake's amicably and Linda's less so. Jake and Linda continued to see each other, but were much more circumspect after Sandi's screaming fit. Quinn was ejected from the Fashion Club, after getting in a fight with Sandi. She acted like she was delighted with the whole situation between Jake and Linda, a move calculated to boil Sandi's blood. Linda found out that the HMO had made a mistake on the blood tests of her sons and sued them. They settled out of court for enough to let her take it easy and not worry about paying for her children's college. Tom got dumped by his girlfriend, apologized to Linda and made a move to get back together with her, but she just laughed at him and closed the door in his face.

     Daria, after corresponding with Jake for a while, finally visited. She was surprised at how happy she was to see him and how quickly she forgave. He was very successful in his new job and bought her a brand new yellow Infiniti convertable for her eighteenth birthday.

     Helen finally went on a date with Eric and came back in a very sour mood about the whole experience. She got enough of work at work. It was interesting that soon after the date, she finally made partner.

     The criminal prosecution of the Greenwood Staff dragged on and Helen's lawyers prepared for the onslaught. Daria began to get interviewed by TV news and print reporters over the matter. The lawyers assigned a publicist to help Daria get the right spin on everything.

     "Daria, I know that you don't want to talk about it, but... well, you could all be rich. Do you want to be a millionaire?" Millie was careful not to press too hard. She'd decided that the best way to get through to Daria was directly through her intellect. A million bucks could overcome a lot of angst.

     Daria sat on her bed and looked at the woman. She was smart, talented, a good writer and had been forced by circumstances to kowtow to a moody teenager. Daria didn't want to be in the same boat as Millie in a few years, so she had decided to cooperate. "Here's how it goes down. I'll cooperate, but I want control."

     "Control?" Millie smiled her best quirky smile. "I don't understand. Do you mean that you want to run the offense?"

     "Don't patronize me," Daria snapped. "I want editorial control on the contents of any book, play or movie deal or any other venue which uses my name or likeness. I want to control the writing. My dad isn't going to be portrayed as a villain. I want to have a veto on the casting, the music and the content. I want to okay the director." She wondered if Mystik Spiral was up to doing a soundtrack.

     Millie nodded. The story had ignited a national debate. "Done and done." She leaned forward. "Why are you even keeping us around?"

     Daria flushed. "I checked you out. You guys are the best at promotion. This story isn't that big a deal really, and if someone wanted to make a movie about Greenwood they have a lot of victims to choose from. You guys know how to publicize a story and assemble a team."

     Millie laughed. "We can put this scene in the movie, right?"

     Daria smiled, pleased. "I have some things that I wrote, which you might want to look at." She handed over the notebooks with her emails in them. "Trent said that he doesn't mind me showing you this. It's honest."

     "Emails?" Millie flipped through a notebook randomly, then stopped, reading. After a while, she looked up, tearfully. "Oh, my. I had no idea. We can use this, Daria."

     Daria was on the freeway, going very fast. Trent was sound asleep in the passenger seat, headphones over his unconscious ears. They spent most of the afternoon seeing Blount in court for the first count of fraud and the boredom had overcome Trent. Fumbling around, she shoved a loose CD into the car player. When the music came up, she smiled. It was Fiona Apple.

     Daria glanced at her passenger and sang along with Criminal.

     Trent's eyes opened wide, but he didn't move. She was really good.

     Daria almost wrecked the car when she noticed Trent awake, smiling at her. "Oh, hell."

     "Gotcha." He sat up. "It's open mic night at the Zon, Siren."

     "Was I torturing your naked ears?" She grinned at him.

     "Woah! You said naked! Does this mean that I get laid tonight?"

     Daria rubbed her head, theatrically. "Oh dear, I feel a month long headache coming on. Doubtless it will only get worse if I have to humiliate myself during open mic night, tonight."

     Trent smirked. He knew an empty threat when he heard it. "C'mon, Daria, you know you need me." It was true. She was a real firecracker.

     She looked at him, feigning surprise. "You?"

     Thinking fast, he changed the subject. "You know, you do everything better than Monique. Especially singing. It'd be so cool to see you up on stage." He stared into her eyes, soulfully, until the car started to drift and fear made him give it up.

     Daria snapped out of it. "Ha! Do you think that's going to work every time?"

     He shrugged. "Not while you're driving." He looked around at the beautiful interior. "I like my Plymouth better. It's got more experience. And I don't feel bad about spilling stuff."

     Daria shrugged, tacitly agreeing. "Not to mention it has a huge backseat."

     "If only it still ran." He looked, but he knew better than to touch her while she was driving.

     "I can't believe that you let that moron Jesse work on it. So, what do you say we go by your place." Daria blinked at him, deliberately.

     "Good plan!" Trent sat bolt upright, then slumped. "With only one drawback."

     "Jane." She sighed. "Does she have to know every single detail of our lives?"

     Trent laughed. "She's doing a collage based on us. Tom's working for his dad, so she doesn't have much else to do."

     "Oh, joy. We need to figure out how to get her a job." Daria felt a pang of guilt. She had been neglecting her friend, badly. She decided to ditch Trent and spend Saturday with Jane. Tom was interning with his father's firm and didn't get much time off.

     Trent looked at her, mock martyred. "Well, I did offer to find us an establishment of our own."

     "Sorry. I don't do the shacking up thing." She pulled into his neighborhood.

     He wondered if Jane would be home. Politely ditching her was a chore that he wasn't up too. "How about your place?" Trent knew that Helen was working crazy hours, now.

     Daria shrugged thoughtfully. Trent in her little padded bedroom would certainly be an interesting fulfillment of her old fantasies. "Well... Maybe."

     Helen quickly climbed out of the car and then stuck her head back into the door. "Thanks for the lift, Eric. I guess I just forgot to have the car serviced." Jake had always taken care of that, for her.

     "What time do you want to be picked up Monday?" Eric smiled at the beautiful redhead. He'd been itching to get closer to Helen since he'd laid eyes on her and this was his second chance.

     "Oh, that's alright. I can get a ride in with my daughter if need be. The car should be ready by then. Thank you, Eric." Helen would rather call a cab than give Eric any more of an excuse to come over. The man had no conversation outside of his own legal exploits.

     "Okay then. See you Monday!" Eric drove away, disappointed.

     Helen trudged indoors, looked around the house and then sat on her sofa, listlessly watching TV, tired and lonely. She had impossibly, cleared her desk. There was just no more work to do and it wasn't even six, so sleep was out of the question. The girls were out and one more work-based conversation would cause her head to explode. She had a crick in her neck and her feet ached. Sighing miserably, she sharply missed Jake. He did a fine foot massage. Picking up a professional journal, she forced herself to concentrate, but the print kept getting blurred by tears. Presently, she gave up and put on some old home videos. Pouring a glass of wine, she sat and watched images of her young family until it was getting dark outside. The level of the wine bottle dropped steadily and she didn't bother to turn on the lights.

     Scowling, Sandi watched her apron clad mother dance around the kitchen, cooking. "Like, wouldn't you rather go out?"

     Linda whirled, eyes blazing. "We have an agreement, Sandra."

     Sandi recoiled, resentfully. "Alright. I'll be polite. But don't expect me to like it!"

     Linda advanced, eyes blazing. "What I expect, is for you to keep your brothers under control, show some courtesy and keep your attitude to yourself! Do you know how hard it is for a divorced woman over forty to find a good man?"

     "Why don't you just take Dad back?" Sandi flinched at the look in her mother's eyes.

     "I said a good man." Linda clamped down on her tirade, then relaxed. Sandi was old enough to hear the truth. "Do you know why he abandoned us?"

     "The blood test. But that was all a mistake and now--"

     "He wanted to move in with Mary, because he said that I was 'stifling' him. Well, do you know how long it has been since I had any fun? Your father just didn't love me anymore, if he ever really did. At least Jake takes me out. We go dancing, to yoga class, to meditation and to the dog track. He's considerate, and likes to please. Your father never took me out anywhere." There were other more salient reasons that she preferred Jake to her ex husband, but she wasn't about to get into that with her daughter.

     Sandi looked down, tacitly acknowledging the truth. "But Jake Morgendorffer? Surely you don't love him! Can't you find like, a better guy?"

     Linda sighed. "Yes, Sandi, you can always find a better guy. It's a big world. There are always better guys out there. But I don't have time to look. That's what your twenties are for. As for love, that is a myth. Jacob is a fine looking man, we like each other, he dances like a dream and he makes me smile. That's all I want out of life, at this point."

     Sandi looked ill and the doorbell rang.

     Linda waved a spatula at her. "Now go let Jacob in and you had damned well better be nice to him."

     Resentfully, Sandi went to the door. She opened it and gasped. "Dad! What are you doing here?"

     "Hi, precious." He kissed her on the forehead.

     Linda was at the door in a flash. "Yes, Tom. What are you doing here?"

     Tom swallowed. She looked great. "Hi, family. I uh, just thought I'd stop by for a visit."

     Linda sneered. "Your visiting hours for the boys were over at six, Tom. You never bothered to show up. Please call before coming over in the future. We're about to have our dinner."

     "Sorry, I got held up at work." He sniffed. "Is that your honey marinated roast? I tried to get them to make it for me at Chez Pierre, but they couldn't get it right. Did you know that their chef has an anchor tattooed on his arm? He learned to cook in the Navy."

     "Well, I don't give out my recipes. You ought to take up cooking. It would give you something to do, now that you're not so stifled any more." Linda shoed Sandi away and started to close the door.

     "Can't we just talk, Linda?" He blocked the door with his foot.

     Linda dropped her voice. "When you decide to pick up the boys and act like you care about them, we can say hello and goodbye. Do you realize that Manuel, the gardener, spends more time with them than you do?" Pursing her lips, she glanced at the clock. "What's the matter? Don't you believe the DNA tests?"

     "Alright." He sighed. "I wish that we could give it another try."

     "We gave it another try, after Lola, Sally, Rhonda and Laurie. You are over, Tom. Don't go away mad, just go away. Maybe Mary will take you back, if you..." Linda suddenly wondered why she was even arguing. It was nothing but habit. "I don't want to have to go back to court. Let's keep it light. Don't pull anything like this again."

     He sighed and removed his foot. "Goodbye, Linda." Conceding the point, he walked away.

     In his car, Tom saw a new Lexus pull up. Jake Morgendorffer got out, with a large bouquet and a gift wrapped box of fancy chocolates.

     Tom's jaw dropped. "That asshole? Come on, Linda, get a freakin' grip."

     Jake came up the walk with a big smile, doing a little tap-step. It was going to be perfect. He'd missed being in a family situation. Now he'd get a chance to see how well he fit in, when everyone was ready for him.

     "Aaaaahh! The roast! The cleaning cycle! Who switched the oven onto self-clean! Goddammit!" Linda yanked frantically at the oven door, but it was locked shut as the oven began its programmed high heat cycle, designed to reduce stuck on food to carbon ash.

     Chris and Sam exchanged a smirk and slipped away to call Quinn. Sandi grabbed Chris, the ringleader and much to his disgust kissed him on the top of the head.

     As smoke, hysteria and screams of anguish filled the house, Jake pressed the doorbell.

     Tom, able to see through the front window, smirked. "Welcome to hell, Jake." He pulled away, light hearted.

     Helen heard a thump and quickly switched off the TV. She didn't want to get caught being maudlin.

     The door swung open, and two dusk-shrouded forms entered.

     "Is anyone here?" Trent spoke in a deafening whisper.

     "No. Mom's SUV isn't here and Quinn is afraid of the dark. She would have every light in the house on." Daria slipped out of her coat and hung it up.

     "Good." Trent kissed her, shrugging out of his coat. "Are you ready to rock and roll all night?"

     "For an hour or two." She smirked at him and playfully bit his lip, turning it into a kiss, sliding her hands down inside his waistband, behind the back pockets of his pants.

     Helen sat up, suppressing a shocked gasp. She had no idea that Daria had a boyfriend. She felt a rush of profound relief. Daria was a high risk for suicide, according to the councilors that she had talked to. Survivors of institutional abuse often lost their ability to cope.

     "Hey, we can go longer than that." He slid his hands up the back of her shirt.

     "Daria!" Helen flipped on the light at the same time she spoke, to maximize the shock value.

     Daria jumped back from Trent so fast that she ripped open the buttons on his pants and tore her shirt right off. "Mom!"

     "Woah!" Trent blinked in shock as his pants dropped around his ankles. Instantly, face purpling, he handed Daria her shirt and snatched them up, rapidly re-buttoning them.

     Helen's jaw dropped. "Oh dear." She sniggered, then toppled back onto the couch, prostrate with laughter.

     Daria's face flamed red and she ran for her room.

     Trent shrugged in embarrassment. "Uh, hi there, Mrs. Morgendorffer." Since she was too far gone to answer, he made for the exit, only to be blocked by the entrance of Quinn and Stacy.

     Quinn opened the door into chaos. Trent was in the hall, red faced. Daria was retreating up the stairs, wearing only her skirt and a bra. Her mother was rolling on the couch, laughing like a demented person.

     Quinn reached the only likely conclusion. "Stacy, you'd better go. I think my mom's having a some kind of breakdown right now, okay?"

     Stacy was staring at Trent, completely smitten, with a deer in the headlights expression. "Www... Whu... What?"

     "Bye, Stacy." Quinn shoved her out and closed the door behind her.

     Helen went into fresh paroxysms of laughter and Trent smiled, slightly.

     Quinn put her hands on her hips. "What's going on here?"

     Trent shrugged. "Just... getting acquainted. Putting my best foot forward. Showing off my assets."

     Helen, out of breath, choked and started coughing.

     Quinn looked over at Helen. "Mom, are you all right?"

     Helen finally got control. "I'm fine dear." She stood, controlling herself. "I'm sorry, Trent, but you kids startled me."

     He smiled. "We startled you?" He shook his head. "So, Quinn. Did any of your boyfriends ever get pantsed in the hall, or is it something that only Daria does?"

     Helen broke up again.

     "Well, I've heard enough, so I'm just going up to see Daria byeee!" Quinn went after her sister.

     "So what's this about rocking and rolling for a couple of hours?" Helen wondered why she felt so relieved.

     Trent thought fast. "Well, we have a gig tonight, and the first hour is open mic, until the place starts to fill up. I thought that Daria might want to sing."

     "Really?" Helen smiled. "I'd love to see that."

     "Why don't you come along?" He was sucking up, but Wind had advised him to do so.

     "Oh, shit!" Daria stood at the top of the stairs in a fresh shirt. Quinn had quickly hounded her out of hiding.

     "Daria!" Helen sniggered again.

     "Well? Are you ready?" Trent grinned up at her. He had her neatly trapped.

     "Sure." Daria was nervous, but also felt a sense of relief and anticipation. "But you have to play for me."

     Trent shrugged. "I'd planned on it. What do you want me to play?"

     Daria smiled. All he would need was an acoustic guitar. "My repertory is a little dated. Blount's record collection was from the mid-seventies, and was dated even then. Have you ever heard of Billie Holiday?"

     Jake sat in his suite, feeling sick. The uproar at Linda's house had been familiar, but nothing else had been right. Sandi was bearable, but he'd felt bad instincts bubbling up regarding the boys. The parental instincts that he'd inherited from the Mad Dog told him to grab a strap and beat them bloody. He quietly reflected on how lucky he was to have girls.

     He'd dropped off his gifts, then left as quickly as was politely possible, feigning a business emergency. The ruthlessly domineering domestic Linda was very different from the carefree, happy, dating Linda. Stress did bad things to the woman. If he stayed with Linda, they would soon slip into the same old pattern that he'd had with Helen. He had an uncomfortable feeling that Linda was ten times worse than Helen could ever be.

     Shamed, he realized again that it was his fault for letting people treat him like that. The psychiatrist that he'd been quietly consulting over his depression had helped him to understand himself better. Of course understanding came too late. He knew that he acted like a fool to get attention, because as a child, foolish behavior brought mild punishment, the closest thing to positive attention that he ever got. Helen's preoccupation with her career had provoked the old pattern.

     He needed to get away from that sick cycle. Depressed, he realized that Linda and her sons were just another trap, waiting to spring.

     The phone rang.

     "Hello?" He hoped it wasn't Linda. He wasn't sure yet, but it might be time to break it off with her.

     "Dad, can you help me?" Quinn had judged her moment nicely. Chris and Sam were her spies in Sandi's camp. The two boys had hopeless crushes on her and reported Sandi's every move. They'd followed instructions perfectly, and her chance had come. Both parents were vulnerable.

     "Sure, sweetheart!" Jake was enormously cheered to hear from his daughter. "How can your old dad help?"

     "I like, need you to take me to the Zon tonight, Daddy. I need a ride and I've never been in a place like that before. I'd feel better if you were there." Quinn had been in much worse places and there were at least a hundred guys that would rent a limousine for the opportunity to take her anywhere. She had a plan.

     Jake was overjoyed, suddenly feeling useful again. "Sure, Princess, Of course I'll come. Why do you want to go there?"

     The Zon was almost empty, as Helen sat at a table with a soda. She'd had enough to drink. She was a little nervous, feeling out of place, but she had to admit that it was better than sitting home in the dark, crying drunk.

     Daria was sitting on a bench at a nearby bus stop, practicing On The Waterfront with Trent. A man walked by, slowed, stopped, listened for a while, then dropped a ten-dollar bill into Trent's open guitar case. Daria blushed.

     Jane got off the bus, immediately joining a growing audience that was standing around the bench. Daria, feeling trapped by their expectations, had gone on, essaying You're So Vain and American Pie. Trent effortlessly kept up. The trouble was that just as she felt that they could leave someone else would put a bill in the case.

     Helen was just beginning to think that she'd been abandoned, when she looked up and saw Jake, in a tux, staring at her. He looked so good that she gasped. "Ja--" Her mouth froze on his name. She looked around, expecting Linda, who had lost no time at all in letting Helen know that she had collected Jake on the rebound.

     "Helen!" Jake walked over to her and valiantly resisted the urge to drop to his knees and beg for her to take him back. It hadn't worked before and it wouldn't work now. He shifted on his feet. "Where's Daria?"

     Helen smiled at the longing in his eyes. Jake had always worn his heart on his sleave and all it took was a glance to see that Linda hadn't made much of an impression. "Hello, Jake. Daria went out somewhere to practice for a few minutes. Would you like to sit down?"

     Jake didn't need to be asked twice.

     Quinn, observing from across the room, smiled. "I love it when a plan comes together."

     Troy, a college senior that she'd been talking to, frowned in confusion. "What?"

     "Don't pry, Toy." She took a drink of her soda.

     "That's Troy."

     Quinn spared him a disinterested glance. "Whatever."

     "We have to be getting on, so we'll take one more request, if you like." Daria smirked. "Providing Trent can play it." The crowd had grown, but it was friendly.

     Trent shot her a mock-offended look. "Hey, I can play anything."

     "I Am Woman!" Barch stood at the edge of the crowd.

     "Like I said, I can play almost anything." Trent shuddered. Barch hadn't put anything in the case, so he felt free to ignore her.

     "Typical male! You don't really need him, Daria. C'mon, skinny." Barch grabbed O'Neill and they both walked away.

     "I could say ditto, but it would be redundant." The crowd tittered and Daria smirked over humiliating her teachers.

     "Froggy Went A Courtin!" Jane made a helpful suggestion.

     Trent shook his head. That was one of the first songs that he'd mastered with the Buck Owen's guitar course when he'd first learned to play. Jane had usually provided the vocals, back then. He looked at Daria. "Know it?"

     Daria, nodded, shooting Jane a look. "To my everlasting regret."

     A ripple of laughter passed over the crowd.

     "Okay, Jane. Anything to shut you up. Here you go." Trent started playing.

     Daria shot an exaggerated grimace at Jane, then started.

          "Froggy went a courtin' he did ride uh uhm.
          Froggy went a courtin' he did ride uh uhumm.
          Froggy went a courtin' he did ride,
          Sword and pistol by his side..."

     Jake was expansively talking about the Louis Hotel Ballroom and his long term plans for the place. Helen leaned forward, entranced. This was a stronger Jake, a man with a hard won core of self-respect. Reluctantly, she admitted to herself that the divorce had done him a world of good.

     Helen waited for a lull. "So how are things going with Linda?"

     Jake looked bewildered. "Who? Oh. Linda." He shrugged. "I think that's pretty much run its course. How did you know about her?"

     Helen smiled, triumphantly. "She just couldn't wait to let me know."

     Jake shook his head. Linda and Helen were natural competitors. He always seemed to get caught between two strong women. "How about you?"

     "Me?" Helen sipped her gingerale. "What do you mean?"

     "Well, I figured that good ol' Eric would have gotten his foot in the door by now." Jake smirked at his wife. Two could play at her game.

     "He tried, but frankly, he just didn't measure up, Jake." She toasted him. "You set a pretty high standard."

     He shrugged. "I let you all down by not dealing with my problems."

     She winced, internally. Time for a pity party. "Maybe we were the ones that let you down, by not helping you deal with them."

     He frowned, heavily. "Look, Honey, I have to be a man and face facts. I knew better, knew that I was getting too tightly wound up, but I didn't get help, so I lost out. It cost Daria so much... I deserve what's happened to me. She didn't."

     Helen shook her head. "Daria understands. We talked. She didn't blame you for what happened in court, or for being thrown in Greenwood. That interview was excluded anyway and had no bearing on the way things went."

     He looked down, distress on his face. "I know, but in that cell... What possessed me? My own daughter, handcuffed in a cell and I yelled at her?"

     She reached over and rested a hand on his arm. "Oh, Jake. Your father--"

     "Is dead, Helen. I'm not forgetting what the man did, but he had his own problems. What could you expect from an orphaned car thief who was forced into the Marine Corps at the age of seventeen? He never even finished high school. He was in combat, killing people in Korea before he was old enough to legally smoke." Jake shook his head, rubbing her hand. "What he did was evil, but what happened to him was worse. It warped him in ways that we could never even begin to understand. I forgive him for what he did. He really tried, but the poor old bastard just didn't know how to be a father, or a husband. He did his best. I can't blame him for my own shortcomings anymore, Helen. That's the easy way out."

     Helen was quick to make excuses. "But you did so well, coming from where you did. All those years and you never cheated, always put the family first, never got angry or abusive when I wasn't there for you." She sighed. "You did fine."

     "Except for letting my anger build until it erupted on Daria. I just blew it, Helen. What I do is my own fault and no one else's." Jake briefly closed his eyes and commenced an exercise to calm himself.

     Jake's Yoga and transcendental meditation classes were helping him learn real control. He was well on his way to becoming a master. When he opened his calm, serenely emotionless eyes, Helen was smiling at him, tearfully.

     This was the man that she'd glimpse when they'd married. She'd almost forgotten him. "Oh, I've missed you! Come back home, Jakey."

     He stared in shock. "Do you really mean it, Helen?"

     "Yes. I'm so lonely without you." She sighed in contentment as he kissed her.

     "Okay, that's it folks. Thanks for the money, you've been wonderful." Trent scooped up the bills in the guitar case and handed them to Daria. "The diva is Daria Morgendorffer and I'm Trent Lane. We'll be performing over there in the Zon directly, so if you want to hear more, head on in and have a seat!"

     The crowd began breaking up, about half drifting for the Zon.

     Daria smiled at him, counted out half the money and wordlessly handed it back. She turned and speared Jane with her eyes. "Just don't expect me to ever sing that ridiculous song again, Jane."

     Jane laughed. "Awww, I liked it. I know more songs, though. How about, "Animal Fair?"

     Daria frowned. "Is there a clean version? Forget it. No more requests for you."

     Quinn looked up from her corner, past the knot of guys surrounding her and smiled. Her home was clearly no longer broken. The awful threat of being stuck with Sandi as a step sister was averted.

     The door banged open and the place suddenly filled up. Harry, the owner/manager noticed and came out of the side room that contained the wet bar. He saw a man he knew, in the crowd. "Bret! What's going on?"

     Bret nodded a greeting. "Hey, Har. I'm here to catch the singer."

     "Singer?"

     "Yeah, this girl was down at the bus stop, practicing. Darla or something. She's great. Really drew a crowd." He looked around. "I haven't been in here for a while. Where can I get a drink?"

     Harry loudly pointed out the bars, both dry and wet. The Zon had two rooms, and a dual use license. He could sell soft spirits and food until ten. He concluded that this Daria person was going to be up during the open mic hour. He might even make a decent profit, tonight.

     Daria entered and was quickly surrounded by fans. She talked with them, then suddenly saw her mother and father, sitting together at a table, looking happy.

     "Woah, I thought they got divorced." Trent had come up behind her.

     "Well, I think--" Daria spotted Quinn, surrounded by college guys. "Make that I know who put it together." She smiled. "I have to make a call, Trent."

     "There's a phone by the bar." He led her over to the alcove in the passage that had the phone.

     Harry came up and cleared his throat. "Excuse me, but I'll have to see some ID if you want to go in there."

     "I'm just making a call. I don't drink."

     He noticed the looks that she was getting. "Say, are you Daria?"

     Daria nodded. "In the flesh."

     "I'm Harry Blithe, the owner. I understand that you planned to perform during open mic hour?" He smiled hopefully at her.

     Daria shrugged. "I'd thought about it."

     He swallowed, wondering why she wore her hair so short. "Well, I just want to welcome you to the Zon. Anything that you want is on the house."

     Daria nodded. "Thanks."

     He smiled in relief. "You can start anytime. There's a band coming in later and then a DJ, but feel free to stay up there as long as you want. They all stink."

     Trent frowned. "Hey! We're bad, but we don't actually stink any more."

     Harry finally noticed him. "Oh, sorry, Trent." He looked back at Daria. "Do you know, Trent, Daria?"

     Daria gave a Mona Lisa smile. "Only in the biblical sense."

     Trent grinned. "She's the good half of the act."

     Harry nodded. "Is this a separate thing, or are you part of Mystik Spiral?"

     Daria shook her head. "I'm just here to sing a few oldies, with Trent."

     "Great! Can I give you an intro?" He smiled, tacitly pushing. Some among the busload of people that she'd brought in were looking restive.

     Daria shrugged. "Sure. After I make my call."

     He nodded and laid a handful of coins on the shelf under the payphone. "So where did you sing last?"

     She frowned. "I had a long running engagement in Greenwood."

     Harry only read Rolling Stone and the Racing Form. He only watched Speed Racer and Batman cartoons. Harry consequently had no idea of what Greenwood was. "Okay, so how do you want to be introduced?"

     Daria shrugged. "My name is Daria Morgendorffer."

     He nodded. "Okay, just give me the high sign when you're ready." He hurried back to his bar.

     Daria dialed. "Hello, Jamie? Never mind who this is. Quinn's at the Zon, and she's all alone." Daria hung up and called Joey and Jeffy, with the same message.

     Trent wedged himself into the niche with her. "Taking care of the little sister?"

     Daria kissed him. "I wouldn't want some older guy striking her dumb and make her fall in love with him."

     He laughed. "Would that be so bad? Hey, believe me, I understand. I have a younger sister that I care about, too."

     Darin smiled. "Quinn's not so bad. She's done a lot for me."

     Quinn got a ride home from Jeffy, because he hadn't helped Joey and Jamie beat poor Toy into a pulp and throw him out into the alley. Being so attractive and popular was such a burden sometimes. Her dad had taken her mom home after Daria had left the stage the first time, so she needed a ride.

     "Your sister's like, so cool! I can't believe that she can sing like that. She was really wailin'! " Jeffy looked over at Quinn, then hurriedly qualified his statement. "But not as cool as you. You're the coolest, Quinn!" He felt relief that she hadn't seen him take that Troy dude down with a left hook, or stomp his ribs. The guy had just pissed him off, looking at Quinn like that. Jamie and Joey had jumped on him right before she looked, thinking to get the credit, but it had backfired.

     Heh. Losers and weepers. He leaned back and smiled at her.

     Quinn smiled back, modestly demure. Jeffy had a really nice smile. "Well my sister is pretty cool, actually. I knew she could sing from hearing her in the shower, but I never expected her to like, do it in public.

     Jeffy wrenched his eyes away and swallowed. "She could be a real star someday."

     Oh, I know. They're probably going to make a movie about her and that place. She'll be a big celebrity with Trent but then I'll get to be an actress because Daria will help me and write movie parts and stuff for me."

     "You'd be perfect at it, Quinn. When you become an actress, I'll be your most devoted fan." Jeffy was glad that it was dark in the car. He had never tried to be smooth before and it was making him blush.

     "Jeffy!" Quinn blushed and scooted closer to him in the car seat."That was a nice thing to say. Are you sure that you havent been taking lessons from Trent?"

     Jeffy frowned. "Trent? Was he that guy with the band? Daria was great, but that band just absolutely sucked. I mean, I was ready to go until she got up there and started doing those Joan Jet covers." Jeffy shuddered at the memory of Ice Box Woman.

     Quinn nodded. "He's really awful, but Daria loves him. I hope she keeps it up. Daria can be funny like that, though. That club guy offered them eight hundred bucks to play there Saturday nights, but who knows, with Daria?"

     Jeffy shrugged, trying to think of something to say that Quinn would like. "I thought she was kind of shy."

     She smirked. "Well, that's not really true anymore. Daria sang I love Rock and Roll, but she really loves Trent. She'll do it for him."

     He looked at her, then went for broke. "You'll probably forget me when you're a famous actress with a celebrity sister and I'm just an ex college running-back."

     "Oh, Jeffy, I could never forget you." Quinn smiled at him. He would do, until someone better came along.

     "How about a kiss then?" He grinned at her, hopefully.

     "Okay, when we get to my house, but that's all." Quinn knew that she was too valuable to just go around doing it with everybody. Sluts like that ended up as losers, like poor Brittany. She couldn't believe that she'd once tried to get Kevin Thompson. He was such a moron.

     Quinn looked at the dark house and shuddered. "Would you like to come in and watch TV for a while? My dad must have taken my mom to his suite."

     Jeffy couldn't believe his luck. "Sure!" He led the way in, hoping for some burglars to bash. Anything to impress Quinn.

     Daria was helping Mystik Spiral load their equipment. Jesse and Max were restive, while Nick and Trent seemed overjoyed. Daria glanced around at the silent musicians and sensed the simmering undercurrents. "I'll be in talking with Jane, Trent."

     "Sure." Trent followed her back inside with his eyes, then turned to Jesse. "Did you have something to say?"

     Jesse shrugged. "Are we still Mystik Spiral? I mean, Daria's great and all, but is that our thing, being the background players for some chick?"

     Nick gave an exaggerated frown. "Are you out of your tiny goddamed mind? We can make a hundred and fifty bucks a gig with Daria! Each! We're lucky that she doesn't demand half!

     Max sneered. "I remember when you guys didn't worry about money. Maybe you want to sell out, but it's still all about the music, for me."

     "Hey, dude, we got nothing to sell anyway. Who cares what the name of the band is? We were going to change it anyway. I'm here for the money. M-O-N-E-Y. Baby needs a new pair of shoes and a whole bunch of other crap." Nick wasn't kidding. Baby supplies cost an arm and a leg.

     "Hey, the Spiral rocks." Jesse frowned at Nick. Jesse rarely paid any attention to what the bass player said, but he was vehement over the money.

     Nick glared back. "I made about eighty bucks today, hanging drywall, and ten with this gig. You guys don't know what it's like having to scratch around to pay rent and keep a kid in baby food. I don't have time to--"

     "Yeah, yeah. We've all heard it all before." Max was tired of hearing it.

     "You're such a freakin' child, Max." Nick grabbed him in a headlock.

     Daria let the exit door close and walked back into the Zon. She hadn't realized that the band would resent her so much. Maybe she should just stick to writing. She'd really enjoyed herself, though.

     Jane walked up and grabbed her arm, shouting into her ear over the techno-pop housemix. "Daria!" Look who's spinning tonight!"

     Daria gaped. "Upchuck?"

     Jane nodded. "He looks stretched."

     Daria remembered what she'd been told about his attempts to prove her innocent. He'd come the closest to finding out the secret of the locker, before Li had intervened and forbade him access. "I want to thank him."

     "Well watch out. His arms are longer now." Jane trailed along, interested.

     Charles had been spinning for a while, needing the extra money. Luckily, he'd turned out to be pretty good at it. He was living in a small apartment outside of Oakwood, having been cut off by his dad. He wouldn't get control of the trust fund set up by his grandfather until he was twenty one, so that meant lean times and no college for a while. He had a night job working for an ISP as a technician and was maintaining, but things were pretty tight. He spun up some dance-mix and looked up unexpectedly into the eyes of Daria.

     "Daria!" He had forgotten to turn off his mic, so it boomed out, startling her. Grinning, he took the mic off and set things up so that he wouldn't be needed for a little while. He came from around his station and motioned her out the front, where they could hear. "Hey, I knew that someone named Daria had played, but not that it was you. How are you doing, girl?"

     Daria smiled. He had changed. "Oh, can't complain. And... thanks."

     He frowned. "I don't see why you would thank me. I was stupid. I knew that dammed gun had to have been in there all along, but I never did more than look at the roof of the locker. I'm sorry, Daria. I should have got a crowbar, ripped those lockers off the wall and peeled them apart."

     She shrugged. "You couldn't have gotten a crowbar past the security guards. DeMartino told me that Li had you marked as a troublemaker. They were watching you. Don't worry about it, it wasn't your fault." She cleared her throat, looked around and then gave him a brief hug. "Thanks for trying."

     He hugged her back, but in a brotherly way. "Well, it's really good to see you back. I had such a crush on you." He laughed at her expression. "Don't worry, I finally grew up and got over myself."

     She nodded. "I know. So what happened? I heard that you went to Oakwood, but that's it."

     He shrugged. "I was having some problems at home. Bobby just said the wrong thing at the wrong time."

     Daria smiled. "Thanks for defending my reputation, anyway."

     "Well, it was Brittany that he slandered, really." He smiled back at her. "She was my old grade-school crush, you know."

     Daria felt a rush of interest. She'd tried to find out what happened to Brittany, but no one knew. Steve Taylor had closed the door in her face when she went over to ask. "Do you know what happened to Brittany? I can't find out anything about her."

     He flushed. "She's got a nice little place in Oakwood. She's doing okay, working after school as a phone sales person. The baby's fine, with just under a month left to go."

     "Where? What's her number?" Daria was happy to hear it. She'd been worried. Brittany wasn't a friend that she would have chosen, but she was a friend. Daria had learned to value her few friends.

     He handed her a card. "You can get her here."

     Daria examined the card. "The Bodacious Ruttheimer?"

     He smirked. "I do a Rap-Magic act, too."

     She shook her head. "So, I guess this means that Brittany is staying with you then."

     He nodded. "I... found her on the beach. She wasn't doing too good, after that shithead Kevin dumped her and her dad took the house back and threw her out on the street. I let her stay with me. My dad finally came home and told me that he wasn't going to pay for someone else's mistake. He threw us both out after I told him off." Charles frowned. "Things were really hard for a while, but we're doing okay now."

     Daria shook her head. "You're all right, Charles. I'd like to visit."

     He brightened. "Sure!" He continued, more somberly. "She'd like that." He looked pained. "We don't have very many friends." The music ended. "Gotta run! Be sure and call Brit!" He ran for the stage.

     Daria pocketed the card and walked through to the back of the Zon, collecting Jane on the way.

     They came out the back door into the aftermath of a miniature riot.

     Jane smirked. "Ooooh, another band meeting." She turned to Daria. "They have one of these, ever so often."

     Trent was sitting on the stoop, looking dazed. Jesse was sitting in the mud next to the wheel of the Tank, holding his belly and groaning. Nick was sitting next to him, stanching a nosebleed and Max was standing, clutching his head and looking at a new dent in the side of the Tank.

     Trent noticed her. "Hey, Daria."

     "Are you all right?" She looked at him, full of concern.

     "Yeah. Nothing that four asprin, a hot shower and some sleep won't cure." He waved his arm at Jesse.

     Jesse glared, then took a deep breath, getting up. "Like, hey, um, Daria."

     Daria arched her eyebrows at him. "Yeeesss?"

     "We just wondered if you would join our band." He glanced resentfully at Nick. "We really need the gig."

     Daria shrugged. "It's up to you. I like to sing, but I don't want to push in where I'm not wanted. You know that I'm under twenty-one and still in school, so that limits our potential gigs."

     "What gigs? You're in or I'm out." Nick spoke, ironically. "We would have emptied this place out if you hadn't come up and saved us, Daria. I think we could actually get some good gigs with a little talent in the band."

     She nodded. "Thank you, Nick. What do you think, Jesse?"

     Jesse nodded. "Sure. It's cool." He didn't want to lose his buddy Trent over a girlfriend.

     She looked at Max. "How about you?"

     Max shrugged, then nodded. "Yeah, you're cool. It's the end of an era, though." It was Trent's way or the highway. He'd bounced Max off of the van and explained that they could get Monique for guitar and backup vocals and some synth drums and do fine without either of them. Max doubted if he could get into another band. He wasn't the world's greatest drummer and it galled him to have to admit it.

     Daria smiled. "Okay then. But I'm only up for Fridays and Saturdays, like Trent."

     They all agreed. They all had jobs of their own. None held out any real belief in achieving fame. They had accepted their townie status as permanent. Mystik Spiral was just a way to make a few dollars and have some nightlife.

     Jane looked over, playfully. "Can I join up too? I'm one hell of a morocco player."

     "I vote no." Trent stood up, grimacing with pain. "Come on, Let's go home."