Beat It

Chapt. 6

Indeed, the Harvest Festival at Lawndale State had gone well.

By the time December rolled around, Contrapasso had a serious following, at least from an older College and young professional crowd. Quinn had quietly put her obsession and expertise with social media to work for her sister's benefit. Despite the differences they may have had in the past, she was proud of her sister's talents.

So what if the sound of her band didn't exactly appeal to the high school crowd? It was pretty clear that Contrapasso didn't follow popular trends, and it was now apparent to even the dimmest Lawndale High School male that there was more to Quinn's quiet, brainy sister than anyone had suspected.

Didn't hurt that she was actually kinda hot, too. How had most everyone missed that?

Mack had to smile as he watched Daria shoot down yet another fool trying to ask her out. She'd dropped the old outfit she'd worn for as long as Mack had known her. These days she favored jeans and t-shirts, saving the trouble of changing before heading off to practice with Jane and sometimes Trent, depending on his work schedule.

"You better watch it, Morgendorffer," Jodie snickered. "You might be the first person to actually sprain their eyeballs if you keep rolling them like that." She had to admit, Daria was being a lot mellower these days and was actually able to see the humor in the situation.

"Laugh it up, Landon. You're lucky that your boyfriend is the only guy worth dating around here." Daria had to smile at Mack's spit-take.

As far as guys went, neither Daria and Jane had any use for the drama of high school society and had checked out, pretty much waiting out their senior year so they could graduate. Sure, they were civil and didn't go out of their way to cut anyone down anymore. They just didn't care these days. As the name of the band pointed out, everyone in the end was their own undoing- sometimes, in unexpected ways.

Jane handed Mack her napkin.

"Thanks," he offered. "Sorry about that."

"No problem," Jane grinned. "Can't see the spots for all the paint on my shirt anyway."

Mack wiped the front of his sweater. "Is it my imagination or are you two using Jodie and I as human shields?"

"No, it's just that you two are the only intelligent conversation around here that doesn't come with too much weirdness as part of the deal," Daria deadpanned.

Jodie smiled as she returned with more napkins. "Li is still pissed about you guys turning down performing at her fundraiser fair."

"We didn't turn her down. She just didn't like the terms I laid out," Daria clarified.

Jane grinned. "Not claiming credit for her outstanding music program, since Daria and I never took band, for one."

"And not diverting any revenues into anything other than academics," Daria added.

"It would still be good publicity for her and 'Laaaaawndale High," Jodie laughed.

"I figure she'll capitulate soon enough, once she realizes that. I really don't have a problem with it, since it would make for a pretty nice extracurricular on our school records. Besides, it'll be good exposure for Trent." Daria slipped and let a small smile show.

She stood before the portal to the pink palace, and raised her hand to knock on the doorframe.

"Hey, Sis."

"Hey, Rockstar." Quinn couldn't help but smile. While Daria didn't show it, she was baffled, not used to in the least with dealing with the unwanted attention of teenage boys.

Daria growled in frustration. "I need your help."

Quinn could never understand how someone so smart could be so thick sometimes. "Sis, it's easy. Just have Trent be your fake boyfriend."

Daria leaned against Quinn's doorway, arms crossed and an eyebrow raised.

"Look, I'll spread it around at school that you're unavailable. We'll just let them draw their own conclusions. You back it up by being seen somewhere public with him holding hands or something."

Daria nodded after a long pause, no longer quite focused on the conversation. "Yeah, that'll probably work. Thanks, Quinn." After a moment, she turned to go.

"Anytime," Quinn smiled after her older sister. Fake, indeed.

Trent smiled as he put his arm around her waist, feeling her slight shiver at the not quite familiar contact.

"Aren't you eating with us?" She paused, her hand on the door of Pizza King.

"Actually, I gotta go. I'm running a staff meeting at the store in a half hour. But let's deal with your problem first." He followed her into the restaurant and waited a bit before placing his hands gently on her shoulders, turning her to face him.

"I'll call you after the meeting," he said a little louder than usual, placing his fingertip on her chin. Without warning, he pulled her into a kiss.

On the lips.

With tongue.

With that, he left.

Daria resisted the urge to facepalm. He's doing it for effect, that's all. It's an act. It doesn't mean anything. Why would I care anyway?

But it sure didn't seem that way. He kinda seemed to enjoy it.

And why did she return the kiss in exactly the same way it was delivered?

It was nice, she realized, turning to face the now quiet restaurant. Jane waved happily from a booth. Jodie and Mack sat with her, bemused smiles on their faces.

She made her way to them without further incident. She was oddly calm, but fully aware of the eyes on her.

"Excellent histrionics, Morgendorffer," smirked Jane quietly as she moved over to make room. "Very convincing."

"Thank you, thank you very much," replied Daria, in a surprisingly passable Elvis.

"So," Jodie laughed, "is he good in bed?"

"Olympic material in competitive sleeping," huffed Daria. "Shut up."

"Figures you'd go for older guys," offered Mack. "He's, what, five years older or something like that? And your Mom's a lawyer too. Brave guy."

Jodie had to ask. "So when is your eighteenth birthday, Daria?"

"About six months."

"Jailbait," Jodie laughed.

Daria dropped her voice, the better to preserve the illusion that Trent had worked so hard to create. "It's not an issue."

"Yet," deadpanned Mack. Jodie punched him in the arm.

"All righty then." Jane grinned, placing her hands on the table. "May it be noted that I never said a freaking thing during this peculiar and rather randy digression. I shall not be accused, kapische?"

Jodie laughed, digging through her backpack. She handed Daria a small square packet. "Here. Just in case."

Daria frowned, looking at the prophylactic in her hand. "Oh, goody, my favorite brand."

Sure enough, Quinn was right. Word of the little performance at Pizza King had spread and served to sufficiently demotivate potential suitors, which was fine with her.

So why had Trent insisted on dropping them off at school, complete with an encore performance?

Not that she was upset about it. She'd played along willingly. In fact… if she was perfectly honest about it, she had enjoyed it as much as he seemed to.

"Hey, Daria," called Jodie, walking up briskly with a smirk on her face. "You called it. Li's ready to meet your terms, I think. She wanted me to ask both of you to see her before the bell."

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more." Daria muttered, as they turned towards the office.

"Holy crap," Jane whispered, looking out from behind the high school auditorium curtain. "It's a full house!"

"Must be Quinn's work," Trent grinned. "Too bad we don't get a cut of the door." He checked the wireless feeds to the PA that Jack had borrowed for them tonight. It was compact, but state of the art and surprisingly clean. Mick, the store gearhead, had jumped at the chance to play with it and had volunteered to mix for them.

"But we do," Daria smirked. "Not much, only a dollar per head, but it was my idea to do this set in the auditorium as a separately ticketed show."

"And while I appreciate the credit, I think that this might have more to do with the attendance," Quinn grinned. She pulled out a newspaper clipping.

"Whoa," Trent raised an eyebrow. "This is a Harvest Festival music review from Mike Walker, in the Baltimore Sun!"

"And who at Lawndale High actually reads a real newspaper?" Daria asked with genuine curiosity.

"It was reprinted in the school paper yesterday," Jodie grinned.

"And it's very favorable, and it specifically mentions the two beautiful and talented high school players in Contrapasso." Quinn's smile widened. "Apparently he was sent some material by an anonymous fan. I got permission to put the article up on the Contrapasso website, too."

The lighting in the auditorium was barely adequate; after all it was a high school. Still, the theater techs that Li had dragooned into helping tonight were having fun lighting the performance. Someone had actually explained to them the connection to Dante's Inferno, and the trio had stepped on stage silhouetted against a flaming glow on the backdrop before the stage lights came up.

After a few minutes into the set Daria had pretty quickly sussed out that the younger-skewed audience was getting a little lost, not quite able to appreciate some of their more refined and serious stuff. Catching Trent's eye, she muted her vocal mic and mouthed fuck it.

With that, she shifted to a more visceral feel, and they began to freestyle. Jane grinned, and without a word the three of them decided to see if they could get the audience up on their feet like they had done that afternoon in the store. The new wireless transmitters plugged into Jane's bass and Trent's guitar let them begin to really move with the beat.

Let's just jam, do what feels right. Mick will be recording this, so we can go back and listen and analyze it later.

Daria had to hand it to him; Trent knew how to work an audience. He had stage presence, and damn he looked good from where she sat behind her drums.

Jane had that hip bassist vibe turned all the way up, her instrument hung slightly lower than usual, looking cool as hell. Daria hadn't noticed it before, but the Lane siblings moved with the powerful, athletic grace of two black panthers. For herself, she was finding the impromptu experiment in mind control fascinating, and at the same time the thrill and terror of performance was exhilarating.

At the Harvest Festival- their first really big, serious gig- she had discovered, much to her surprise, that her initial stage fright actually morphed into a kind of hyperawareness. Every nuance of her mates- the glint in Trent's eyes, the curve of his eyebrow, the set of Jane's jaw as she slid her hand up the neck of her bass- it was like they could read each other's minds. That night, Trent had summed it up afterwards, as they relaxed on the basement couch.

"That's what's supposed to happen- when you play live, you have to reach out and touch the soul of your bandmates, and let yourself open up. When you groove together, it's like we become one. If you let anything get in the way of that touch, it kills the magic. The Spiral never had that- well, maybe Jesse and me did, a little, but that shit between Max and Nick… I might as well have been sitting in the basement by myself, playing all the instruments track by track and mixing it down into something that kind of sounded like a rough idea.

"There was never anything more, nothing more than the energy I put into it myself. The Spiral was an imaginary band, like a tea party with a bunch of stuffed animals sitting round while I convinced myself how cool it all was."

He had leaned into Daria slightly as they sat on the couch that evening, something that perhaps substituted for throwing his arms around her to thank her for the greatest musical night he could remember for a long, long time.

For herself, Daria had been savoring the rush as well, in her own methodical fashion. She thought about the energy she could feel coming off the audience.

It was how you knew when you were doing it right. It was the same way a viewer was drawn into a painting; the hungry silence of listeners at an author's reading; the resonant motion of heads and feet as an audience got into the music.

That was what made live recordings sometimes magical, despite the technical difficulties of recording a live performance. True, there were those times where the players were just going through the motions, faking it because they were tired or pissed or maybe just fulfilling a contractual obligation, or when the creativity and rightness was no longer the important thing.

No, more often than not, it was in those obscure recordings made on crappy equipment in small clubs that sometimes-sometimes- held that magic. It was when you gave in to the music, and let it all out for just a little while.

And Contrapasso had done that. The three of them had done it together, at the Harvest Festival, and again at the school fundraiser tonight.

And it had been freaking awesome.