~*~
Jane waited for Daria. She sensed that Daria could better cope with the humiliating experience of having her boobs sized and graded by her kid sister if there were no witnesses She wanted to be nearby, ready to respond to Daria's screams, if it came to that, but not so nearby that Quinn might start in on her boobs. She turned and began casually browsing the boot section.
"Jane Lane! I am so proud of you! And here I used to think you weren't paying attention in my class!"
Jane whirled around just as Janet Barch seized her in a bear hug. She was shaken back and forth and her breath was crushed from her lungs, then Barch slacked her hold a little.
"But you were taking it all in, weren't you? Maybe not all the science stuff, but you heard what I was really saying! Oh, Jane, knowing that just one student got it makes all the blood, sweat, and tears worthwhile!" And she was smooshed anew to Barch's ample bosom.
"Ms. Barmph! Wrblrgm you talgrphng aboup?" Jane almost managed to get out.
"Your painting, dear! Your 'masterful use of symbolism'! 'Jane Lane breaks with the traditional interpretation of the reclining nude as a passive, defenseless, idealized feminine form. Lane's nude proudly proclaims the modern feminist ideal,' 'declares her powerful intellect,' 'symbolizes her hard-won freedom,' 'bespeaks her formidable power and her determination to fight on until she has won the equality that is her birthright.' On behalf of Georgia O'Keefe, Helen Frankenthaler, Harriet Frishmuth, and Mary Cassatt, let me just say, 'you go, girl!' Only, next time, forget about winning equality. Go straight for absolute supremacy, I say! Look, dear, I'd love to stay and talk, but I gotta go find Skinny before he gets lost and starts crying again. Men! Can't live with em, and ya can't shoot 'em, right, Sister?" and with a sisterly pat on the back that knocked Jane into a display of hairy-monster-feet house slippers, she was gone.
Jane was extracting herself from the monster feet and looking dazedly after Ms. Barch when another teacher's voice behind her said, "Jane, I'm so proud of you!"
"Gaah!" Without looking this time, Jane ducked around behind the display of slippers. Then, seeing that it was her favorite teacher, Jane looked sheepish.
"Oh, hi, Ms. DeFoe. You're not going to bear hug me too, are you?"
Ms. DeFoe looked puzzled. "Huh? No, Jane, I just wanted to tell you how very impressed I was with your painting you entered in the Local Artists' show! Of all your work that I've seen, that has to be the best. The surrealism! The symbolism! It's almost...Dali-esque! I wish I could claim that I taught you how to do that!"
Jane smiled a bit sheepishly. "I know what you mean. I wish I could claim that I did it."
"But, Jane, you did do it... unless you're saying you had a collaborator?"
"Well, now that you mention it- I guess I did. The same one as on that poster last year. Daria."
"You mean she thought up the symbolism, the way she thought up the message on the poster project?"
"Well, yeah, she did, but it's more like Daria is kind of surreal, you know, and her room reflects that. I just painted what I saw. You recognized her boots, of course. They're the same ones she wore almost every day of school. As for the book and the window, all I did was move the window to the right for compositional purposes.
"You mean there are really sawed-off steel bars in her window casements?"
"Yes, there really are, and she really was reading The Gulag Archipelago while she was posing. Daria derived the symbolism after the painting was finished, and slipped it to that art critic somehow at the museum."
"But... it all fits so well, it seems as if you must have put it in there deliberately."
"Yeah, doesn't it? It even seems that way to me, and I know damn well I had no such thing in mind when I was painting it. I wish I had. Do you think I should fess up?"
Ms. DeFoe pondered. "Umm... no, I don't. You don't have anything to confess to. If that critic wants to admit that those weren't his ideas, you can't stop him, but I doubt he will. Besides, like I said, it fits so well. If you like it, go with it, I say."
"Yeah, I think I will. I just wanted you to know how it really was. Thanks, Ms. DeFoe."
"Nice to see you, Jane. Good luck at BFAC. Email me," Ms. DeFoe said as she walked off.
Jane looked at her watch, then over into the lingerie department. She decided to sort of wander by, just in case.
~*~
Daria sat on her bed, leaning against the padded wall beside the window, reading. Her right leg lay straight out in front of her, her left knee was bent at a right angle, her left foot on the bed. Skylight fell on the pages of the book that rested on her knee, supported by her left hand. The book was The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevski. Daria was without apparel. "Are you sure you can't see anything I don't want seen?" she demanded through immobile lips.
"Not from this angle, nothing that can't be seen in innumerable pantyhose ads," Jane assured her. She was standing against the far wall of Daria's room, her easel in almost the same spot as it had been for the first painting.
"It's a bad sign that that reassures me, isn't it?"
Jane smirked. "All part of my evil scheme to gradually corrupt you. Before long, you'll be posing nude in the park at midday."
"Over your dead body," Daria ventriloquized back, changing neither pose nor expression.
Following a short silence, Jane ventured, "You know, Daria, no one is going to be offended at those two little pink spots on your dorsal surface."
Daria's eyes shifted from Dostoyevski to the two little pink spots Jane meant. Apropos of nothing current, she fleetingly wondered if a baby would ever nurse there. "Whatever do you mean, Jane?" she inquired innocently. "I didn't have any pink spots on my back, last time I looked."
Jane looked at her blankly for a couple of seconds, then smacked herself in the forehead with the base of her palm, leaving there a splotch of green and a streak of gray. "Crap! Ventral! I meant ventral surface!"
Daria released the smirk she'd been holding back. Seeing that Jane wasn't painting now, she allowed herself to move her face and head. "A little vocabulary knowledge is a dangerous thing. The correct term is nipples. So tell me, Jane, according to the timetable of your evil scheme to corrupt me, how long after I yield up my little pink spots do you figure it'll take you to badger me into a full frontal?"
Jane looked horrified. "Oh, hey, no, Daria, I was just kidding about corrupting you! I hope you don't really think I would ever ask you to pose like that! I know it might look like I was gradually trying to get you to show more and more, but that's the farthest thing from my mind, really, and, and..." Jane looked closer at Daria's expression, what little of it there was. "...and you're just rattling my cage, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"Aargh! Darn you! You had me going there for a second!"
"I believe it was seventeen seconds at least," Daria smirked.
"All right, you got me. I was just trying to say that, you know, there's really very little difference between male nipples and..."
"You were trying to say, without actually saying it, that you want to include mine in your next painting."
"Well, uh..."
"But if the third suit gets something extra, so to speak, won't the first two suits get mad at him? And you?"
"Hmm, I didn't think of that," Jane admitted.
"Other than that, though, I guess I'm okay with it." Daria thought for a second, then added, "Darn you, Lane. Your evil scheme to gradually corrupt me is working after all."
"Mu-u-ah-hahaha! Thanks, Daria. Maybe in the painting after next."
"You're only going to have time for three more of these, at most, before I'm off to Raft, even if you leave the backgrounds unfinished till later. What then? It'll be two more weeks till your classes start at BFAC."
Jane smirked somewhat more wickedly. "Well, now that I'm famed locally as a master of the female nude, it won't be so difficult to find models. This is highly confidential, but I've been approached secretly by several local beauties, including the former members of the fashion club."
"All the former members?"
"You can't breathe a word of this to anyone, Daria, seriously. They're even keeping it secret from each other."
"I swear. Now spill."
"All but Stacy, and she's thinking about it."
Daria snickered. "When she finds out Quinn or Sandi has done it, she'll follow you around naked all day!"
"You realize what this means, don't you, Daria? You started a fashion trend!"
"Oh gourd, no. Kill me now."
"Sorry, no can do. I'd have to start this painting all over. Or else paint Sandi's body under your head."
Daria threw Jane a dirty look. "You wouldn't."
Jane grinned. "Hey, these canvases cost money."
"Umm, these local beauties are aware, I suppose, that there won't be another of these local artists exhibits, wherein their undraped beauty may be guiltlessly displayed to potential admirers, for another six months?"
"Well, I don't recall whether it came up in conversation, but I'm sure they're all familiar with the local cultural calendar," Jane smirked.
"I'm sure that's true." Daria was silent a minute, then sighed, "You know, somehow I pictured the summer after graduation as being slightly more fun than this. Sitting in my room naked all summer is kind of like an unusually draconian grounding."
"You're right. We should go somewhere."
"And do something." Daria added sardonically.
"Something that causes fun-having. Seriously though, we should. I know! Whaddya say we go to the beach?" Jane suggested.
"Been there."
Jane gave a slightly annoyed little smile. "You're allowed to go more than once, Daria."
"I burn easily."
"They have sunblock now that lets vampires go to the beach."
A corner of Daria's mouth turned up slightly. "Well, hell, if it's overrun with vampires, I'm not going."
"C'mon, Daria. You know you want to. Who knows, you might meet Tom, Dick, and Harry again."
Daria was silent for a few seconds. "On two conditions."
"Name them."
"You wear a bikini no bigger than mine. None of that shorts-and-halter-top stuff like last year. And leave the easel at home."
~*~
In the mists of dawn, Daria and Jane stood face to face and toe to toe. Daria's cool gaze measured her adversary.
"Jane, we agreed, no easel." Daria stood at the front door of Casa Lane in khaki cargo shorts, a red and white striped midriff tank top, which she filled out quite nicely, and sandals.
"Awww, come on! It goes everywhere with me!" Jane pleaded.
Daria was unyielding. "Not in my little car. It won't fit in the trunk, and it'll tear up the back seat. Sketchbook, okay. Pencils and pens, okay. Watercolor pencils, okay, as long as you stick to dry techniques inside the car. But no oils, no acrylics, no alkyds, no pastels, and no easel."
"Huh? Why no pastels?"
They're too messy and too hard to get out of the carpet and upholstery."
As a grumbling Jane hauled her oil paints and easel back up the stairs, Trent turned to Daria. "Thanks, Daria," he said.
"For what?"
"For being such a good friend to Janey. I know it was hard for you to pose for that painting, and I know you only did it to help her pay for college. I'm gonna be heading out to LA and take one more shot at breaking into the music racket when she leaves. I won't be able to take care of her like I used to, but I'll feel a lot better knowing you'll be with her in Boston.
Daria blushed. "Yeah, well, she'll be taking care of me as much as the other way around." She looked down at her toes. "You... saw the painting?"
Trent's smile got bigger. "Yeah, I drove her down to the museum with it. Lookin' good, Daria. Lookin' really good. You're still the coolest teenager I know." He kissed her lightly on the forehead. Daria's blush deepened to crimson, and she couldn't stop herself from smiling a big sappy smile.
Jane came down the stairs with a couple of sable brushes and a little plastic peanut butter jar filled with water, presumably to use in conjunction with her watercolor pencils. When she saw Daria, she broke out in a huge grin. "Whoa! What happened here? Gee, Daria, how'd you get sunburned so fast? That looks like a second-degree burn, maybe third. We'd better get you to a doctor!" Trent gave her a disapproving glance.
Daria gave her a venomous look. "Fine, right after we drop you off at the proctologist, asshole. Load up or get left!"
Still grinning, Jane grabbed up her stuff and headed out to Daria's car. Daria picked up a couple of remaining items and followed her. Trent leaned against the doorway and watched them go, shaking his head and smiling.
~*~
Daria adjusted her sun visor to block the early morning sunlight out of her eyes. She smiled as she settled her hand back on the padded steering wheel. It felt good. Her bucket seat felt good. The smooth dark asphalt of the Interstate felt good. Her little car's engine was a bit noisy at cruising speed, but she didn't mind. She and Jane were headed to the beach, and soon she and Jane would be headed to Boston, and she felt good. She carefully pushed the accelerator down another fraction of an inch.
Daria thought back on the last weeks, and modeling for Jane, and the painting being displayed at the art museum, and being sold, and the other connected events, and pondered their significance and possible consequences. Was she a different person now, she wondered? She didn't feel different. But wait. Yes, she did, a little. She wasn't bothered about being seen on the beach in her little blue-green bikini. She might even get to tease Jane about her shyness. She had lost some of her modesty, she realized. Or was it shyness? Daria pondered this. It was shyness, she decided, as long as it inhibited her from doing things that were okay to do, and modesty when it more virtuously inhibited her from doing things she shouldn't do. Having thought it all through before she'd done it, she had decided that modeling nude for a work of art was okay, so therefore, she'd merely lost some of her shyness, which was good.
Her mind's eye peered ahead into the future. In less than a month, she'd be in classes in a highly ranked college, beginning the final phase of preparation for her life's work... and she didn't even know what that was going to be.
Daria fully expected to do quite well in whatever classes she took, and in college generally. She felt almost as if this was what she was born for. But if she didn't decide on a fun, exciting career soon, and work really hard and smart to achieve it, she might well become one of the many unhappy people for whom college had been the best part of their entire lives.
Not that she wasn't expecting college to be a very good time in her life. She remembered how it seemed like just as she'd sort of gotten a handle on grade school, she was a seventh grader just beginning junior high, and everything was different. And just as she'd learned the ropes in junior high, she was in high school, starting at the bottom again, painfully shy, friendless and alone.
When she started at Raft, she'd start friendless and alone again, but she was no longer painfully shy. She could handle herself, and she could handle others, too, and she'd make new friends. She had a new self- confidence, part of which had grown out of her recent modeling experience. She wouldn't be needing her mousy geek disguise any more.
Daria knew there were millions of college students who hadn't yet decided on their careers. At least she knew she'd be majoring in journalism and literature. She knew she was well positioned and had lots of time. She'd done about as well as possible in high school, she'd gotten into her first choice college, and she was confident she'd be able to choose the right career when she set her mind to it. And for right now, life was good.
La la LA la la.
Well, that's it, with changes suggested by a few beta readers. I'll be making further changes in the earlier chapters starting almost immediately, so If you haven't put in your two cents' worth, please do so now, before I get overconfident and post it to the serious Daria fanfic sites. Thanks for all your reviews. Please send more!
DISCLAIMER
"Daria" and all related characters are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International, inc. The author does not claim copyright to these characters or to anything else in the "Daria" milieu; he does, however, claim copyright to all those parts of this work of fiction which are original to him and not to MTV or to other fanfic authors. This fanfic may be freely copied and distributed provided its contents remain unchanged, provided the author's name and email address are included, and provided that the distributor does not use it for monetary profit. (as if.)
Jane waited for Daria. She sensed that Daria could better cope with the humiliating experience of having her boobs sized and graded by her kid sister if there were no witnesses She wanted to be nearby, ready to respond to Daria's screams, if it came to that, but not so nearby that Quinn might start in on her boobs. She turned and began casually browsing the boot section.
"Jane Lane! I am so proud of you! And here I used to think you weren't paying attention in my class!"
Jane whirled around just as Janet Barch seized her in a bear hug. She was shaken back and forth and her breath was crushed from her lungs, then Barch slacked her hold a little.
"But you were taking it all in, weren't you? Maybe not all the science stuff, but you heard what I was really saying! Oh, Jane, knowing that just one student got it makes all the blood, sweat, and tears worthwhile!" And she was smooshed anew to Barch's ample bosom.
"Ms. Barmph! Wrblrgm you talgrphng aboup?" Jane almost managed to get out.
"Your painting, dear! Your 'masterful use of symbolism'! 'Jane Lane breaks with the traditional interpretation of the reclining nude as a passive, defenseless, idealized feminine form. Lane's nude proudly proclaims the modern feminist ideal,' 'declares her powerful intellect,' 'symbolizes her hard-won freedom,' 'bespeaks her formidable power and her determination to fight on until she has won the equality that is her birthright.' On behalf of Georgia O'Keefe, Helen Frankenthaler, Harriet Frishmuth, and Mary Cassatt, let me just say, 'you go, girl!' Only, next time, forget about winning equality. Go straight for absolute supremacy, I say! Look, dear, I'd love to stay and talk, but I gotta go find Skinny before he gets lost and starts crying again. Men! Can't live with em, and ya can't shoot 'em, right, Sister?" and with a sisterly pat on the back that knocked Jane into a display of hairy-monster-feet house slippers, she was gone.
Jane was extracting herself from the monster feet and looking dazedly after Ms. Barch when another teacher's voice behind her said, "Jane, I'm so proud of you!"
"Gaah!" Without looking this time, Jane ducked around behind the display of slippers. Then, seeing that it was her favorite teacher, Jane looked sheepish.
"Oh, hi, Ms. DeFoe. You're not going to bear hug me too, are you?"
Ms. DeFoe looked puzzled. "Huh? No, Jane, I just wanted to tell you how very impressed I was with your painting you entered in the Local Artists' show! Of all your work that I've seen, that has to be the best. The surrealism! The symbolism! It's almost...Dali-esque! I wish I could claim that I taught you how to do that!"
Jane smiled a bit sheepishly. "I know what you mean. I wish I could claim that I did it."
"But, Jane, you did do it... unless you're saying you had a collaborator?"
"Well, now that you mention it- I guess I did. The same one as on that poster last year. Daria."
"You mean she thought up the symbolism, the way she thought up the message on the poster project?"
"Well, yeah, she did, but it's more like Daria is kind of surreal, you know, and her room reflects that. I just painted what I saw. You recognized her boots, of course. They're the same ones she wore almost every day of school. As for the book and the window, all I did was move the window to the right for compositional purposes.
"You mean there are really sawed-off steel bars in her window casements?"
"Yes, there really are, and she really was reading The Gulag Archipelago while she was posing. Daria derived the symbolism after the painting was finished, and slipped it to that art critic somehow at the museum."
"But... it all fits so well, it seems as if you must have put it in there deliberately."
"Yeah, doesn't it? It even seems that way to me, and I know damn well I had no such thing in mind when I was painting it. I wish I had. Do you think I should fess up?"
Ms. DeFoe pondered. "Umm... no, I don't. You don't have anything to confess to. If that critic wants to admit that those weren't his ideas, you can't stop him, but I doubt he will. Besides, like I said, it fits so well. If you like it, go with it, I say."
"Yeah, I think I will. I just wanted you to know how it really was. Thanks, Ms. DeFoe."
"Nice to see you, Jane. Good luck at BFAC. Email me," Ms. DeFoe said as she walked off.
Jane looked at her watch, then over into the lingerie department. She decided to sort of wander by, just in case.
~*~
Daria sat on her bed, leaning against the padded wall beside the window, reading. Her right leg lay straight out in front of her, her left knee was bent at a right angle, her left foot on the bed. Skylight fell on the pages of the book that rested on her knee, supported by her left hand. The book was The Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevski. Daria was without apparel. "Are you sure you can't see anything I don't want seen?" she demanded through immobile lips.
"Not from this angle, nothing that can't be seen in innumerable pantyhose ads," Jane assured her. She was standing against the far wall of Daria's room, her easel in almost the same spot as it had been for the first painting.
"It's a bad sign that that reassures me, isn't it?"
Jane smirked. "All part of my evil scheme to gradually corrupt you. Before long, you'll be posing nude in the park at midday."
"Over your dead body," Daria ventriloquized back, changing neither pose nor expression.
Following a short silence, Jane ventured, "You know, Daria, no one is going to be offended at those two little pink spots on your dorsal surface."
Daria's eyes shifted from Dostoyevski to the two little pink spots Jane meant. Apropos of nothing current, she fleetingly wondered if a baby would ever nurse there. "Whatever do you mean, Jane?" she inquired innocently. "I didn't have any pink spots on my back, last time I looked."
Jane looked at her blankly for a couple of seconds, then smacked herself in the forehead with the base of her palm, leaving there a splotch of green and a streak of gray. "Crap! Ventral! I meant ventral surface!"
Daria released the smirk she'd been holding back. Seeing that Jane wasn't painting now, she allowed herself to move her face and head. "A little vocabulary knowledge is a dangerous thing. The correct term is nipples. So tell me, Jane, according to the timetable of your evil scheme to corrupt me, how long after I yield up my little pink spots do you figure it'll take you to badger me into a full frontal?"
Jane looked horrified. "Oh, hey, no, Daria, I was just kidding about corrupting you! I hope you don't really think I would ever ask you to pose like that! I know it might look like I was gradually trying to get you to show more and more, but that's the farthest thing from my mind, really, and, and..." Jane looked closer at Daria's expression, what little of it there was. "...and you're just rattling my cage, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"Aargh! Darn you! You had me going there for a second!"
"I believe it was seventeen seconds at least," Daria smirked.
"All right, you got me. I was just trying to say that, you know, there's really very little difference between male nipples and..."
"You were trying to say, without actually saying it, that you want to include mine in your next painting."
"Well, uh..."
"But if the third suit gets something extra, so to speak, won't the first two suits get mad at him? And you?"
"Hmm, I didn't think of that," Jane admitted.
"Other than that, though, I guess I'm okay with it." Daria thought for a second, then added, "Darn you, Lane. Your evil scheme to gradually corrupt me is working after all."
"Mu-u-ah-hahaha! Thanks, Daria. Maybe in the painting after next."
"You're only going to have time for three more of these, at most, before I'm off to Raft, even if you leave the backgrounds unfinished till later. What then? It'll be two more weeks till your classes start at BFAC."
Jane smirked somewhat more wickedly. "Well, now that I'm famed locally as a master of the female nude, it won't be so difficult to find models. This is highly confidential, but I've been approached secretly by several local beauties, including the former members of the fashion club."
"All the former members?"
"You can't breathe a word of this to anyone, Daria, seriously. They're even keeping it secret from each other."
"I swear. Now spill."
"All but Stacy, and she's thinking about it."
Daria snickered. "When she finds out Quinn or Sandi has done it, she'll follow you around naked all day!"
"You realize what this means, don't you, Daria? You started a fashion trend!"
"Oh gourd, no. Kill me now."
"Sorry, no can do. I'd have to start this painting all over. Or else paint Sandi's body under your head."
Daria threw Jane a dirty look. "You wouldn't."
Jane grinned. "Hey, these canvases cost money."
"Umm, these local beauties are aware, I suppose, that there won't be another of these local artists exhibits, wherein their undraped beauty may be guiltlessly displayed to potential admirers, for another six months?"
"Well, I don't recall whether it came up in conversation, but I'm sure they're all familiar with the local cultural calendar," Jane smirked.
"I'm sure that's true." Daria was silent a minute, then sighed, "You know, somehow I pictured the summer after graduation as being slightly more fun than this. Sitting in my room naked all summer is kind of like an unusually draconian grounding."
"You're right. We should go somewhere."
"And do something." Daria added sardonically.
"Something that causes fun-having. Seriously though, we should. I know! Whaddya say we go to the beach?" Jane suggested.
"Been there."
Jane gave a slightly annoyed little smile. "You're allowed to go more than once, Daria."
"I burn easily."
"They have sunblock now that lets vampires go to the beach."
A corner of Daria's mouth turned up slightly. "Well, hell, if it's overrun with vampires, I'm not going."
"C'mon, Daria. You know you want to. Who knows, you might meet Tom, Dick, and Harry again."
Daria was silent for a few seconds. "On two conditions."
"Name them."
"You wear a bikini no bigger than mine. None of that shorts-and-halter-top stuff like last year. And leave the easel at home."
~*~
In the mists of dawn, Daria and Jane stood face to face and toe to toe. Daria's cool gaze measured her adversary.
"Jane, we agreed, no easel." Daria stood at the front door of Casa Lane in khaki cargo shorts, a red and white striped midriff tank top, which she filled out quite nicely, and sandals.
"Awww, come on! It goes everywhere with me!" Jane pleaded.
Daria was unyielding. "Not in my little car. It won't fit in the trunk, and it'll tear up the back seat. Sketchbook, okay. Pencils and pens, okay. Watercolor pencils, okay, as long as you stick to dry techniques inside the car. But no oils, no acrylics, no alkyds, no pastels, and no easel."
"Huh? Why no pastels?"
They're too messy and too hard to get out of the carpet and upholstery."
As a grumbling Jane hauled her oil paints and easel back up the stairs, Trent turned to Daria. "Thanks, Daria," he said.
"For what?"
"For being such a good friend to Janey. I know it was hard for you to pose for that painting, and I know you only did it to help her pay for college. I'm gonna be heading out to LA and take one more shot at breaking into the music racket when she leaves. I won't be able to take care of her like I used to, but I'll feel a lot better knowing you'll be with her in Boston.
Daria blushed. "Yeah, well, she'll be taking care of me as much as the other way around." She looked down at her toes. "You... saw the painting?"
Trent's smile got bigger. "Yeah, I drove her down to the museum with it. Lookin' good, Daria. Lookin' really good. You're still the coolest teenager I know." He kissed her lightly on the forehead. Daria's blush deepened to crimson, and she couldn't stop herself from smiling a big sappy smile.
Jane came down the stairs with a couple of sable brushes and a little plastic peanut butter jar filled with water, presumably to use in conjunction with her watercolor pencils. When she saw Daria, she broke out in a huge grin. "Whoa! What happened here? Gee, Daria, how'd you get sunburned so fast? That looks like a second-degree burn, maybe third. We'd better get you to a doctor!" Trent gave her a disapproving glance.
Daria gave her a venomous look. "Fine, right after we drop you off at the proctologist, asshole. Load up or get left!"
Still grinning, Jane grabbed up her stuff and headed out to Daria's car. Daria picked up a couple of remaining items and followed her. Trent leaned against the doorway and watched them go, shaking his head and smiling.
~*~
Daria adjusted her sun visor to block the early morning sunlight out of her eyes. She smiled as she settled her hand back on the padded steering wheel. It felt good. Her bucket seat felt good. The smooth dark asphalt of the Interstate felt good. Her little car's engine was a bit noisy at cruising speed, but she didn't mind. She and Jane were headed to the beach, and soon she and Jane would be headed to Boston, and she felt good. She carefully pushed the accelerator down another fraction of an inch.
Daria thought back on the last weeks, and modeling for Jane, and the painting being displayed at the art museum, and being sold, and the other connected events, and pondered their significance and possible consequences. Was she a different person now, she wondered? She didn't feel different. But wait. Yes, she did, a little. She wasn't bothered about being seen on the beach in her little blue-green bikini. She might even get to tease Jane about her shyness. She had lost some of her modesty, she realized. Or was it shyness? Daria pondered this. It was shyness, she decided, as long as it inhibited her from doing things that were okay to do, and modesty when it more virtuously inhibited her from doing things she shouldn't do. Having thought it all through before she'd done it, she had decided that modeling nude for a work of art was okay, so therefore, she'd merely lost some of her shyness, which was good.
Her mind's eye peered ahead into the future. In less than a month, she'd be in classes in a highly ranked college, beginning the final phase of preparation for her life's work... and she didn't even know what that was going to be.
Daria fully expected to do quite well in whatever classes she took, and in college generally. She felt almost as if this was what she was born for. But if she didn't decide on a fun, exciting career soon, and work really hard and smart to achieve it, she might well become one of the many unhappy people for whom college had been the best part of their entire lives.
Not that she wasn't expecting college to be a very good time in her life. She remembered how it seemed like just as she'd sort of gotten a handle on grade school, she was a seventh grader just beginning junior high, and everything was different. And just as she'd learned the ropes in junior high, she was in high school, starting at the bottom again, painfully shy, friendless and alone.
When she started at Raft, she'd start friendless and alone again, but she was no longer painfully shy. She could handle herself, and she could handle others, too, and she'd make new friends. She had a new self- confidence, part of which had grown out of her recent modeling experience. She wouldn't be needing her mousy geek disguise any more.
Daria knew there were millions of college students who hadn't yet decided on their careers. At least she knew she'd be majoring in journalism and literature. She knew she was well positioned and had lots of time. She'd done about as well as possible in high school, she'd gotten into her first choice college, and she was confident she'd be able to choose the right career when she set her mind to it. And for right now, life was good.
La la LA la la.
Well, that's it, with changes suggested by a few beta readers. I'll be making further changes in the earlier chapters starting almost immediately, so If you haven't put in your two cents' worth, please do so now, before I get overconfident and post it to the serious Daria fanfic sites. Thanks for all your reviews. Please send more!
DISCLAIMER
"Daria" and all related characters are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International, inc. The author does not claim copyright to these characters or to anything else in the "Daria" milieu; he does, however, claim copyright to all those parts of this work of fiction which are original to him and not to MTV or to other fanfic authors. This fanfic may be freely copied and distributed provided its contents remain unchanged, provided the author's name and email address are included, and provided that the distributor does not use it for monetary profit. (as if.)