Categories > Cartoons > Daria > Silent Cynic
The Silent Cynic
By Dr. T
Chapter 4 – To the Mall
“Just how big is this to-do becoming?” Jane asked at lunch the Monday after school restarted from the Thanksgiving break. She was referring to the upcoming Mall trip. “I thought it was just our section, or at least just our grade.”
“There are six econ classes; two each, grades ten through twelve,” Jodie pointed out. “It turns out we’re all going, not just the Sophomores.” Everyone at the table ignored Daria rolling her eyes. “Two buses, and about a hundred of us.” Econ was one of the smaller classes.
“I had an idea I wanted to put to you two,” Mack said to Daria and Jane in the silence that followed Jodie’s remark.
“Go on,” Jane told him, suspiciously.
“Two friends of mine, the two of you, and Jodie and myself stick together at the Mall as much as possible. Ms. Bennett said she was sending out teams of four to six to investigate ‘mall economics,’ so we volunteer to be a team. Nothing says we have to be in the same grade.”
Daria glared at him.
“No, they are juniors and they are not on the football team.”
Jane looked interested; Daria was frowning. “Come on,” Jane told her friend. “Mack wouldn’t intentionally steer us wrong, and is less likely than most people to mess up.”
‘True,’ Daria tentatively agreed. ‘Who?’ she asked Mack.
“Jane, I know you know Troy Loomis, but do you know Paul Thomas?”
“I know who he is, but nothing more than that,” Jane commented. “I take it Paul for me and Troy for Daria?”
“I know Troy does art, but I got the idea that you two aren’t exactly friends,” Mack pointed out.
“Friendly acquaintances,” Jane corrected. “We get along, but there’s never been anything like a spark, good or bad, between us. As for Paul….” She turned to Daria. “He’s a bit taller than Mack, but I don’t know much about him, other than they both seem polite enough.” She turned back to Mack. “Isn’t he in band, like Troy? How do you know them?”
“I know them because they live in my neighborhood,” Mack replied. “We aren’t best friends or anything, but we’ve all lived near each other since we were born. And yes, Troy plays trombone and Paul is a drummer.”
‘Are they around?’
“Three tables down, facing us. Troy has the brownish-black hair. Paul is next to him, on the outside.”
The two were easy enough to pick out as they chatted and ate lunch. Both looked average at first glance. Troy’s hair was a bit longer than most of the ‘popular’ boys’, while Paul was mixed-race, much lighter than Jodie, let alone Mack. Both wore flannel shirts and old jeans.
‘Tell me about them.’
Mack considered. He decided to start with Paul. “Paul’s a nice guy; probably the best word to describe would be….” He thought, so Jodie supplied, “Affable.”
Mack nodded. “He’s pretty smart, but not a genius of any kind. He likes all kinds of music and art; kind of shy, but he’s not boring. He can be kind of funny, not that Jodie appreciates it.”
“Like she doesn’t always appreciate my or Daria’s humor?” Jane teased.
“Exactly.”
“I’m just not as into sarcasm as you two,” Jodie defended herself. “But yes, they have the same sort of sense of humor as you two, Paul a bit more so than Troy.”
“Then it might work.”
‘And what’s wrong with Troy, since you are all avoiding talking about him?’
“Daria, you are definitely the smartest person in our class,” Jodie stated. “If it weren’t for PE, you’d likely have a 4.0 GPA, a 4.3 if they averaged in A+ grades. I bet you’re smarter than anyone in the Freshman or Senior classes, too.”
‘But not the Junior class?’
Jodie shrugged. “I’m not sure. Granted, you would outscore him in Science, a least in part because of Ms. Barch, and probably Math, but he’s so smart he can be scary.”
“He’s a good technical artist,” Jane spoke up. “I don’t know how good a musician he is. He’s a chess master….”
Daria made a sign of inquiry.
“He’s technically a National Master, and he should become an International Master in a year or so,” Mack said. “He plays first board at school tournaments, where he hasn’t lost a match since he started playing for the Middle School team. He’s won a couple of major tournaments, and he placed fourth and then third the last two years at the US Open.”
“And he’s some sort of language genius,” Jodie put it. “He reads something like more than a dozen.”
‘That seems implausible.’
“But true,” Mack insisted. “Granted, they aren’t languages like Chinese or Thai, but still….”
Daria stared at Mack for a few seconds. ‘What’s the long-range plan here, and whose plan is it?’
“You’ve been here long enough to know how Lawndale High is socially fragmented” Mack pointed out. “On the one end, there are the ‘popular’ people plus the socially acceptable athletes. Even if I can’t always figure why some people are in and some aren’t accepted, it’s pretty clear who most of those in people are.” Jodie, Jane, and Daria had to agree, although Jodie was a bit reluctant.
“They’re what, all told; ten to fifteen percent? Lawndale’s a relatively small school – a few more than a thousand of us combined. So, say a hundred and twenty at the start of the year and a hundred and fifty by the end, as more grow more ‘in’ than lose out. Maybe a few marginal, so say two hundred at most, probably it’s less. On the other end, there are those determined or forced to be real social outcasts, the pot-heads, and those already totally burned out or crushed. Maybe seventy-five? A hundred? A few dozen that just drift though without any impact, in class or out? The few who most people just don’t like, such as Upchuck? That leaves a lot of people in the middle, but a lot of them form their own factions, from being in the band, orchestra or stage guild or whatever. That means it’s hard to cross some of those lines. I don’t know if you four could become friendly, let alone friends or even couples. Still, I thought it worth a try. Both guys have casually dated within the band, but haven’t really clicked with anyone. Check with Tori to see if they have bad reputations if you want, but why not take a chance?”
“I never thought of you as a Yenta,” Jane teased.
‘Actually, while ‘Yenta’ was the matchmaker in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ the actual name means ‘gossip’,’ Daria pointed out.
“Fine,” Jane grumbled. “I never thought of Mack ‘playing’ Yenta. Is that better?”
‘Yes!’ She turned back to Mack. ‘And?’
Mack shrugged. “If you don’t click….”
“And if we do?” Jane broke in.
‘As in, besides being the nice guy you are, why would you want us to?’
“Ah, well….”
“My Dad would prefer I go on group dates instead of it just being Mack and me,” Jodie broke in.
“And that usually means Brittany and Kevin.”
‘Say no more,’ Daria signed. She rather liked Brittany in small doses, but Kevin was one of the more annoying people she had to interact with. She looked around, spying where Quinn and Tori were holding court. ‘I will return in a moment.’ She got up and walked over.
Quinn and Tori glanced up as Daria approached them. Both took careful note of who looked displeased at the interruption. ‘We have a few minutes before the bell,’ Daria signed Quinn. ‘May I please talk with Tori in private? Jane and I need her advice.’ She held up the notepad. Quinn just smiled and leaned over to whisper in Tori’s ear. “Be right back,” Tori said, standing and smiling. She had not interacted much with Daria since Brittany’s party, other than a few run-ins at the Morgendorffers. Still, they got along well enough. “What can I do for you?”
‘‘What can I do for you,’ not ‘what do you want.’ That’s Tori, always interested in people, and not just out of self-interest,’ Daria thought. She sat at an empty table and wrote out Mack’s idea, ending with a big question mark.
“They’re both nice enough,” Tori answered with a shrug. “They’ve both dated a little within the band and band front.” Tori currently placed the pair in the ‘ok but not popular’ mid-range category, much like Jane, and a bit lower than Daria currently was after her put-down of Sandi. The ‘band front’ included the majorettes, color guard, and a group of thirty pennant-wielding girls who marched with the band and who the musicians took their cues from to hit their marks. “I’ve never heard anything bad about either of them. They both come from skilled working class/lower middle class families, so they can’t play the competitive dating games a lot of the unattached popular and well-off boys are forced into.” Daria’s eyebrows went up at this honest assessment. “Just because I assess and play that game, doesn’t mean I don’t understand that’s what it is. If I were less pretty or less well-dressed, I know I’d be on the outside looking in.”
‘I understand. Thanks for being honest.’
“No problem. Like I was saying, neither is up for taking dates out to fancy places, but I doubt if you or Jane care much. I also doubt Troy is up for the grunge club Jane goes to and no doubt wants to get you to, unless you’re seriously dating him. I know one girl who asked one of Troy’s dates if all he talked about was chess, and she said it never came up, which is a point in his favor since he’s certainly well-known for it. I do know he likes classical music, while Paul likes modern jazz. It’s up to you and Jane to decide if those are pluses or negatives.” She smiled. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, and no, I don’t think you’re gay, but are you really interesting in dating?”
Daria thought, and wriggled her hand in the well-known ‘so-so’ gesture, and then wrote, ‘More so than I thought I would be.’
“Then for what it’s worth, my advice would be, ‘give it a try.’ It’s only a school trip.”
‘Thank you,’ Daria wrote, with just a sliver of a smile.
“Glad to help,” Tori replied, thinking, ‘When she smiles like that, I can almost feel myself wondering again if I am actually bi.’ Tori would ponder that thought for some time.
*
To the Mall
“Are you feeling okay?” Troy asked, concerned.
‘I do not normally get car sick, but it is hot, stuffy, and Brittany’s perfume is getting a bit overwhelming,’ Daria replied, not happy with the rough ride to the Mall in a school bus that had something wrong with its suspension.
Daria and Troy had not interacted much once Mack’s plan had been accepted, other than to greet the other briefly in the halls. Obviously that changed on the bus trip itself, as the six were sitting as couples. Daria had been surprised during their first short ‘meet and greet’ that Troy also knew how to sign. It turned out that he had helped Mack learn, teaching himself along the way. Like Jane at this point, he was better at reading signs than making them.
Troy stood and struggled with the bus window. He managed to get it down an inch. He nudged Mack, seated in front of them. “Hey Mack, can you get your window down a bit more, it’s getting a bit stuffy in here.”
“Sure.” Troy felt a bit better to see the very athletic Mack struggle with his window as much as he had, albeit with a bit more success. This led a few others to struggle with the windows of the old bus, and soon there was some decent circulation. Daria started to look a bit less pale.
‘So, it is true you know over a dozen languages?’ Daria asked.
“Yes and no. I really know French, Spanish, Italian, and, I think, Latin. That is, I can not only read them, but speak and write them.” He frowned. “But I do have a weird knack. With just a few weeks practice, I can read most Indo-European languages pretty fluently. However, I don’t know them well enough to speak them, let alone write in them.”
‘Most?’
“Except for Irish, which I’m still struggling with, all the others I’ve tried that use our alphabet – Welsh, German, Icelandic, Polish, Croatian, Czech, and of course Portuguese and Romanian – I’ve been able to read in one to three weeks. Irish uses the same alphabet, but uses it differently to the others. Lithuanian did take five weeks.”
‘And others?’
“If you mean other Indo-European languages, it took me six weeks to read Greek, and five for Russian, mostly because of the alphabets. I can actually understand the transliterated Sanskrit and Hindi I’ve found, but I just can’t make sense of their regular writing, at least not yet. As for other languages?” He shrugged. “Unless you count computer coding languages like Basic and C+, nope. I’ve tried Basque, Hungarian, and Turkish, since they use variations on our alphabet. Arabic and Hebrew are just squiggles. Yiddish is fine when it’s in our alphabet, but that’s somewhat more of a Hebraic variation on German with some Polish and French than a variation on Hebrew and Aramaic. Unfortunately most Yiddish I’ve seen isn’t written in our alphabet.” He smiled. “Enough about me; I’ll probably end up talking too much given a chance. Tell me about you.”
*
Ms. Bennett separated the class into two groups. Some of the smarter students quickly understood why over half the students were sent off early to work on their group observations – they were groups where all or most of the members would need the extra time for any assignment (like Kevin), or were students that she did not want representing Lawndale High (like Upchuck, and for that matter, Kevin). The other half were herded into a large conference room, where half of that group still had to stand around the back and one of the sidewalls.
As it turned out, perhaps Ms. Bennett should have thought her group selection out a bit more. It was quickly clear to most of the students that they were being used for market research, and it was just as clear that most did not appreciate it. It was Daria who apparently first noticed that the mirrored wall the Mall staff was standing in front of was likely a two-way mirror. She signed the information, which Jane, Mack, and Troy picked up. Jane, also using sign language, made the suggestion of turning out the lights. Troy found and flicked the switch.
After all sides calmed down, the upshot was all 48 students were given $20 gift certificates. It was Paul who made the obvious suggestion that the group trade around so they got certificates they could use. Granted, Jane was disappointed when it turned out that ‘Scissor Wizard’ was a hair salon, but she was able to redeem the coupon for $10. Mack had traded around, and ended up for a coupon for Sports Shorts, where he picked up a pair to use for his workouts.
By then, the group was hungry. Therefore, they put off the remaining four shops and went off to observe traffic patterns in the food court. They were lucky that the assignments had been made as they had entered the Mall, before the group was split into two. Ms. Bennett had given Daria’s group the easiest assignment, but that was before they had embarrassed her by revealing the Mall executives’ plan.
It was Jodie who spied another group of teens, who should not have been present. She pointed them out to Daria. Seeing the look on Daria’s face, the other five held back as she crossed the food court and tapped Quinn on the shoulder.
“What?” Quinn demanded as she turned around. “Eep!”
‘And just what you doing here on a school day?’ Daria demanded. ‘I know you are not in any economics class. And, on top of why are you here at all, why are you here today, when you knew my class would be here?’
“None of us have econ, so the teacher wouldn’t know us.”
Daria’s eyes roved over the group, and saw three other Freshmen girls, and one of the older boys who must have been conned into driving them. ‘Ms Bennett may or may not know any of you, but there is a good chance that Ms Li’s secretary, who is the one chaperoning the other bus, might know at least one of you. And we will not be the only students here – some might eat at one of the kiosks or sit-down restaurants, but most will be drifting through here. What are the odds of everyone keeping their mouths shut, even if I will?’
“We just got here; we’ve got to carry on, but I’ll make sure we’re as careful as we can be.”
Daria sighed. ‘Fine. Good luck.’ She returned to her group, while Quinn went to remind her friends why they would have to be careful.
Jodie looked conflicted.
‘Look,’ Daria retorted, ‘there is a very good chance Quinn will be caught. Let us not be the ones who cause it.’
Jodie, rather grumpily, agreed to go along. After lunch, Paul used his coupon for a cd, while Jodie picked up four pairs of silver earrings from a kiosk with hers. Jane also bought a pair with some of the money she had gotten from her coupon redemption. Daria had a coupon for Books by the Ton, and all wanted to look around there so they went off to redeem Troy’s coupon first. To everyone’s surprise, Troy had taken Daria’s original coupon for the Doodad Shop and became their 10,000th customer. He didn’t mind, for although he no interest in any of the various doodads, he assured the others that his mother was a sucker for some of the kitsch, while he also had three nieces and three nephews, all much younger than theses six were, who would certainly like some of the stuffed doodads. He would make certain his mother knew that it was originally Daria’s coupon, putting her in favor to at least start things off.
After spending the rest of their time in the bookstore, the six managed to arrive back to the rendezvous point a minute before the deadline, which still put them in before a third of their classmates, not to mention Ms Bennett, who had spent the entire afternoon in the Fuzzy-Wuzzy Wee-Bit Shoppe.
*
A little more than half-way through the ride back to Lawndale, Paul and Troy exchanged looks, and then turned to their seatmates. “Daria, may I ask you something?” Troy asked.
‘Yes.’
“I think the day went nicely; I hope you think so, too.”
‘Yes.’ Fortunately, this was accompanied by a nod and the slightest involuntary upturn in one corner of Daria’s lips.
Swallowing nervously, Troy pressed on. “It may seem odd to ask you this, when we’ve never technically been on a real date, but would you go to the Snow Ball with me?” Even a new student like Daria knew that the Snow Ball was (potentially at least) a big deal. Like the Prom in the spring, it was formal – most of the boys would be wearing tux’s, all the girls would be in gowns. It was also held jointly not only by all the public schools in the county but with two private schools – Grove Hills and Field Prep.
Daria frowned, and asked, ‘Why?’
Now Troy frowned. “Why do I want to go with you, or why do I want to go?”
‘We have really only known each other, rather than just been aware of each other, today. Yes, I had a good time, but we would not be going as more than friends, no matter if anything develops in the future. So, mostly yes, why do you want to go?”
“Maybe I’m curious, or maybe I’ve felt pretty left out of things. Overall, I don’t think either of us think much of high school.”
‘Very true.’
“But we’re stuck here, adolescents in body but not in mind. Well, maybe in body and emotions, sometimes I’m not certain of that. We might be smarter than nearly all the others around us, a lot more than most, but that doesn’t mean we’re better. It does mean that most things in school are geared towards them, not to people like us. You’re…very attractive, even if you downplay it, but physically, I’m about as average as can be. So, I’d like to go in the first place, because yes, that’s ‘normal,’ and I thought I’d give it a try. I’d like to go with you because you’re very smart, very interesting, and very attractive.”
Blushing a bit at the compliments, which certainly sounded sincere, Daria considered this very unexpected request. Troy was not handsome, any more than he was unattractive – his assessment of looking pretty average was accurate. He dressed very casually (which would bug Quinn at least). He did have very nice eyes, the same vibrant color as Jane’s, and was a bit on the stocky side. He was polite, he was smart, and yes, he was nice.
‘I have never been all that interested in normal,’ Daria mused to him after thinking things through. ‘Still, I suppose it would not hurt to try. I suppose your friend is asking Jane?’
A relieved Troy answered, “Well, he’s supposed to be.” He tapped the top of Paul’s head. “Yo! Paul, you available?”
Paul and Jane’s heads popped over the seatback. There was a trace of lipstick on Paul’s lips and Jane’s lipstick was smudged.
“I think we know her answer,” Troy remarked.
‘Jane just likes marking her territory.’
Jane flushed a bit as she turned Paul’s face to hers and wiped the lipstick off.
By Dr. T
Chapter 4 – To the Mall
“Just how big is this to-do becoming?” Jane asked at lunch the Monday after school restarted from the Thanksgiving break. She was referring to the upcoming Mall trip. “I thought it was just our section, or at least just our grade.”
“There are six econ classes; two each, grades ten through twelve,” Jodie pointed out. “It turns out we’re all going, not just the Sophomores.” Everyone at the table ignored Daria rolling her eyes. “Two buses, and about a hundred of us.” Econ was one of the smaller classes.
“I had an idea I wanted to put to you two,” Mack said to Daria and Jane in the silence that followed Jodie’s remark.
“Go on,” Jane told him, suspiciously.
“Two friends of mine, the two of you, and Jodie and myself stick together at the Mall as much as possible. Ms. Bennett said she was sending out teams of four to six to investigate ‘mall economics,’ so we volunteer to be a team. Nothing says we have to be in the same grade.”
Daria glared at him.
“No, they are juniors and they are not on the football team.”
Jane looked interested; Daria was frowning. “Come on,” Jane told her friend. “Mack wouldn’t intentionally steer us wrong, and is less likely than most people to mess up.”
‘True,’ Daria tentatively agreed. ‘Who?’ she asked Mack.
“Jane, I know you know Troy Loomis, but do you know Paul Thomas?”
“I know who he is, but nothing more than that,” Jane commented. “I take it Paul for me and Troy for Daria?”
“I know Troy does art, but I got the idea that you two aren’t exactly friends,” Mack pointed out.
“Friendly acquaintances,” Jane corrected. “We get along, but there’s never been anything like a spark, good or bad, between us. As for Paul….” She turned to Daria. “He’s a bit taller than Mack, but I don’t know much about him, other than they both seem polite enough.” She turned back to Mack. “Isn’t he in band, like Troy? How do you know them?”
“I know them because they live in my neighborhood,” Mack replied. “We aren’t best friends or anything, but we’ve all lived near each other since we were born. And yes, Troy plays trombone and Paul is a drummer.”
‘Are they around?’
“Three tables down, facing us. Troy has the brownish-black hair. Paul is next to him, on the outside.”
The two were easy enough to pick out as they chatted and ate lunch. Both looked average at first glance. Troy’s hair was a bit longer than most of the ‘popular’ boys’, while Paul was mixed-race, much lighter than Jodie, let alone Mack. Both wore flannel shirts and old jeans.
‘Tell me about them.’
Mack considered. He decided to start with Paul. “Paul’s a nice guy; probably the best word to describe would be….” He thought, so Jodie supplied, “Affable.”
Mack nodded. “He’s pretty smart, but not a genius of any kind. He likes all kinds of music and art; kind of shy, but he’s not boring. He can be kind of funny, not that Jodie appreciates it.”
“Like she doesn’t always appreciate my or Daria’s humor?” Jane teased.
“Exactly.”
“I’m just not as into sarcasm as you two,” Jodie defended herself. “But yes, they have the same sort of sense of humor as you two, Paul a bit more so than Troy.”
“Then it might work.”
‘And what’s wrong with Troy, since you are all avoiding talking about him?’
“Daria, you are definitely the smartest person in our class,” Jodie stated. “If it weren’t for PE, you’d likely have a 4.0 GPA, a 4.3 if they averaged in A+ grades. I bet you’re smarter than anyone in the Freshman or Senior classes, too.”
‘But not the Junior class?’
Jodie shrugged. “I’m not sure. Granted, you would outscore him in Science, a least in part because of Ms. Barch, and probably Math, but he’s so smart he can be scary.”
“He’s a good technical artist,” Jane spoke up. “I don’t know how good a musician he is. He’s a chess master….”
Daria made a sign of inquiry.
“He’s technically a National Master, and he should become an International Master in a year or so,” Mack said. “He plays first board at school tournaments, where he hasn’t lost a match since he started playing for the Middle School team. He’s won a couple of major tournaments, and he placed fourth and then third the last two years at the US Open.”
“And he’s some sort of language genius,” Jodie put it. “He reads something like more than a dozen.”
‘That seems implausible.’
“But true,” Mack insisted. “Granted, they aren’t languages like Chinese or Thai, but still….”
Daria stared at Mack for a few seconds. ‘What’s the long-range plan here, and whose plan is it?’
“You’ve been here long enough to know how Lawndale High is socially fragmented” Mack pointed out. “On the one end, there are the ‘popular’ people plus the socially acceptable athletes. Even if I can’t always figure why some people are in and some aren’t accepted, it’s pretty clear who most of those in people are.” Jodie, Jane, and Daria had to agree, although Jodie was a bit reluctant.
“They’re what, all told; ten to fifteen percent? Lawndale’s a relatively small school – a few more than a thousand of us combined. So, say a hundred and twenty at the start of the year and a hundred and fifty by the end, as more grow more ‘in’ than lose out. Maybe a few marginal, so say two hundred at most, probably it’s less. On the other end, there are those determined or forced to be real social outcasts, the pot-heads, and those already totally burned out or crushed. Maybe seventy-five? A hundred? A few dozen that just drift though without any impact, in class or out? The few who most people just don’t like, such as Upchuck? That leaves a lot of people in the middle, but a lot of them form their own factions, from being in the band, orchestra or stage guild or whatever. That means it’s hard to cross some of those lines. I don’t know if you four could become friendly, let alone friends or even couples. Still, I thought it worth a try. Both guys have casually dated within the band, but haven’t really clicked with anyone. Check with Tori to see if they have bad reputations if you want, but why not take a chance?”
“I never thought of you as a Yenta,” Jane teased.
‘Actually, while ‘Yenta’ was the matchmaker in ‘Fiddler on the Roof,’ the actual name means ‘gossip’,’ Daria pointed out.
“Fine,” Jane grumbled. “I never thought of Mack ‘playing’ Yenta. Is that better?”
‘Yes!’ She turned back to Mack. ‘And?’
Mack shrugged. “If you don’t click….”
“And if we do?” Jane broke in.
‘As in, besides being the nice guy you are, why would you want us to?’
“Ah, well….”
“My Dad would prefer I go on group dates instead of it just being Mack and me,” Jodie broke in.
“And that usually means Brittany and Kevin.”
‘Say no more,’ Daria signed. She rather liked Brittany in small doses, but Kevin was one of the more annoying people she had to interact with. She looked around, spying where Quinn and Tori were holding court. ‘I will return in a moment.’ She got up and walked over.
Quinn and Tori glanced up as Daria approached them. Both took careful note of who looked displeased at the interruption. ‘We have a few minutes before the bell,’ Daria signed Quinn. ‘May I please talk with Tori in private? Jane and I need her advice.’ She held up the notepad. Quinn just smiled and leaned over to whisper in Tori’s ear. “Be right back,” Tori said, standing and smiling. She had not interacted much with Daria since Brittany’s party, other than a few run-ins at the Morgendorffers. Still, they got along well enough. “What can I do for you?”
‘‘What can I do for you,’ not ‘what do you want.’ That’s Tori, always interested in people, and not just out of self-interest,’ Daria thought. She sat at an empty table and wrote out Mack’s idea, ending with a big question mark.
“They’re both nice enough,” Tori answered with a shrug. “They’ve both dated a little within the band and band front.” Tori currently placed the pair in the ‘ok but not popular’ mid-range category, much like Jane, and a bit lower than Daria currently was after her put-down of Sandi. The ‘band front’ included the majorettes, color guard, and a group of thirty pennant-wielding girls who marched with the band and who the musicians took their cues from to hit their marks. “I’ve never heard anything bad about either of them. They both come from skilled working class/lower middle class families, so they can’t play the competitive dating games a lot of the unattached popular and well-off boys are forced into.” Daria’s eyebrows went up at this honest assessment. “Just because I assess and play that game, doesn’t mean I don’t understand that’s what it is. If I were less pretty or less well-dressed, I know I’d be on the outside looking in.”
‘I understand. Thanks for being honest.’
“No problem. Like I was saying, neither is up for taking dates out to fancy places, but I doubt if you or Jane care much. I also doubt Troy is up for the grunge club Jane goes to and no doubt wants to get you to, unless you’re seriously dating him. I know one girl who asked one of Troy’s dates if all he talked about was chess, and she said it never came up, which is a point in his favor since he’s certainly well-known for it. I do know he likes classical music, while Paul likes modern jazz. It’s up to you and Jane to decide if those are pluses or negatives.” She smiled. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, and no, I don’t think you’re gay, but are you really interesting in dating?”
Daria thought, and wriggled her hand in the well-known ‘so-so’ gesture, and then wrote, ‘More so than I thought I would be.’
“Then for what it’s worth, my advice would be, ‘give it a try.’ It’s only a school trip.”
‘Thank you,’ Daria wrote, with just a sliver of a smile.
“Glad to help,” Tori replied, thinking, ‘When she smiles like that, I can almost feel myself wondering again if I am actually bi.’ Tori would ponder that thought for some time.
*
To the Mall
“Are you feeling okay?” Troy asked, concerned.
‘I do not normally get car sick, but it is hot, stuffy, and Brittany’s perfume is getting a bit overwhelming,’ Daria replied, not happy with the rough ride to the Mall in a school bus that had something wrong with its suspension.
Daria and Troy had not interacted much once Mack’s plan had been accepted, other than to greet the other briefly in the halls. Obviously that changed on the bus trip itself, as the six were sitting as couples. Daria had been surprised during their first short ‘meet and greet’ that Troy also knew how to sign. It turned out that he had helped Mack learn, teaching himself along the way. Like Jane at this point, he was better at reading signs than making them.
Troy stood and struggled with the bus window. He managed to get it down an inch. He nudged Mack, seated in front of them. “Hey Mack, can you get your window down a bit more, it’s getting a bit stuffy in here.”
“Sure.” Troy felt a bit better to see the very athletic Mack struggle with his window as much as he had, albeit with a bit more success. This led a few others to struggle with the windows of the old bus, and soon there was some decent circulation. Daria started to look a bit less pale.
‘So, it is true you know over a dozen languages?’ Daria asked.
“Yes and no. I really know French, Spanish, Italian, and, I think, Latin. That is, I can not only read them, but speak and write them.” He frowned. “But I do have a weird knack. With just a few weeks practice, I can read most Indo-European languages pretty fluently. However, I don’t know them well enough to speak them, let alone write in them.”
‘Most?’
“Except for Irish, which I’m still struggling with, all the others I’ve tried that use our alphabet – Welsh, German, Icelandic, Polish, Croatian, Czech, and of course Portuguese and Romanian – I’ve been able to read in one to three weeks. Irish uses the same alphabet, but uses it differently to the others. Lithuanian did take five weeks.”
‘And others?’
“If you mean other Indo-European languages, it took me six weeks to read Greek, and five for Russian, mostly because of the alphabets. I can actually understand the transliterated Sanskrit and Hindi I’ve found, but I just can’t make sense of their regular writing, at least not yet. As for other languages?” He shrugged. “Unless you count computer coding languages like Basic and C+, nope. I’ve tried Basque, Hungarian, and Turkish, since they use variations on our alphabet. Arabic and Hebrew are just squiggles. Yiddish is fine when it’s in our alphabet, but that’s somewhat more of a Hebraic variation on German with some Polish and French than a variation on Hebrew and Aramaic. Unfortunately most Yiddish I’ve seen isn’t written in our alphabet.” He smiled. “Enough about me; I’ll probably end up talking too much given a chance. Tell me about you.”
*
Ms. Bennett separated the class into two groups. Some of the smarter students quickly understood why over half the students were sent off early to work on their group observations – they were groups where all or most of the members would need the extra time for any assignment (like Kevin), or were students that she did not want representing Lawndale High (like Upchuck, and for that matter, Kevin). The other half were herded into a large conference room, where half of that group still had to stand around the back and one of the sidewalls.
As it turned out, perhaps Ms. Bennett should have thought her group selection out a bit more. It was quickly clear to most of the students that they were being used for market research, and it was just as clear that most did not appreciate it. It was Daria who apparently first noticed that the mirrored wall the Mall staff was standing in front of was likely a two-way mirror. She signed the information, which Jane, Mack, and Troy picked up. Jane, also using sign language, made the suggestion of turning out the lights. Troy found and flicked the switch.
After all sides calmed down, the upshot was all 48 students were given $20 gift certificates. It was Paul who made the obvious suggestion that the group trade around so they got certificates they could use. Granted, Jane was disappointed when it turned out that ‘Scissor Wizard’ was a hair salon, but she was able to redeem the coupon for $10. Mack had traded around, and ended up for a coupon for Sports Shorts, where he picked up a pair to use for his workouts.
By then, the group was hungry. Therefore, they put off the remaining four shops and went off to observe traffic patterns in the food court. They were lucky that the assignments had been made as they had entered the Mall, before the group was split into two. Ms. Bennett had given Daria’s group the easiest assignment, but that was before they had embarrassed her by revealing the Mall executives’ plan.
It was Jodie who spied another group of teens, who should not have been present. She pointed them out to Daria. Seeing the look on Daria’s face, the other five held back as she crossed the food court and tapped Quinn on the shoulder.
“What?” Quinn demanded as she turned around. “Eep!”
‘And just what you doing here on a school day?’ Daria demanded. ‘I know you are not in any economics class. And, on top of why are you here at all, why are you here today, when you knew my class would be here?’
“None of us have econ, so the teacher wouldn’t know us.”
Daria’s eyes roved over the group, and saw three other Freshmen girls, and one of the older boys who must have been conned into driving them. ‘Ms Bennett may or may not know any of you, but there is a good chance that Ms Li’s secretary, who is the one chaperoning the other bus, might know at least one of you. And we will not be the only students here – some might eat at one of the kiosks or sit-down restaurants, but most will be drifting through here. What are the odds of everyone keeping their mouths shut, even if I will?’
“We just got here; we’ve got to carry on, but I’ll make sure we’re as careful as we can be.”
Daria sighed. ‘Fine. Good luck.’ She returned to her group, while Quinn went to remind her friends why they would have to be careful.
Jodie looked conflicted.
‘Look,’ Daria retorted, ‘there is a very good chance Quinn will be caught. Let us not be the ones who cause it.’
Jodie, rather grumpily, agreed to go along. After lunch, Paul used his coupon for a cd, while Jodie picked up four pairs of silver earrings from a kiosk with hers. Jane also bought a pair with some of the money she had gotten from her coupon redemption. Daria had a coupon for Books by the Ton, and all wanted to look around there so they went off to redeem Troy’s coupon first. To everyone’s surprise, Troy had taken Daria’s original coupon for the Doodad Shop and became their 10,000th customer. He didn’t mind, for although he no interest in any of the various doodads, he assured the others that his mother was a sucker for some of the kitsch, while he also had three nieces and three nephews, all much younger than theses six were, who would certainly like some of the stuffed doodads. He would make certain his mother knew that it was originally Daria’s coupon, putting her in favor to at least start things off.
After spending the rest of their time in the bookstore, the six managed to arrive back to the rendezvous point a minute before the deadline, which still put them in before a third of their classmates, not to mention Ms Bennett, who had spent the entire afternoon in the Fuzzy-Wuzzy Wee-Bit Shoppe.
*
A little more than half-way through the ride back to Lawndale, Paul and Troy exchanged looks, and then turned to their seatmates. “Daria, may I ask you something?” Troy asked.
‘Yes.’
“I think the day went nicely; I hope you think so, too.”
‘Yes.’ Fortunately, this was accompanied by a nod and the slightest involuntary upturn in one corner of Daria’s lips.
Swallowing nervously, Troy pressed on. “It may seem odd to ask you this, when we’ve never technically been on a real date, but would you go to the Snow Ball with me?” Even a new student like Daria knew that the Snow Ball was (potentially at least) a big deal. Like the Prom in the spring, it was formal – most of the boys would be wearing tux’s, all the girls would be in gowns. It was also held jointly not only by all the public schools in the county but with two private schools – Grove Hills and Field Prep.
Daria frowned, and asked, ‘Why?’
Now Troy frowned. “Why do I want to go with you, or why do I want to go?”
‘We have really only known each other, rather than just been aware of each other, today. Yes, I had a good time, but we would not be going as more than friends, no matter if anything develops in the future. So, mostly yes, why do you want to go?”
“Maybe I’m curious, or maybe I’ve felt pretty left out of things. Overall, I don’t think either of us think much of high school.”
‘Very true.’
“But we’re stuck here, adolescents in body but not in mind. Well, maybe in body and emotions, sometimes I’m not certain of that. We might be smarter than nearly all the others around us, a lot more than most, but that doesn’t mean we’re better. It does mean that most things in school are geared towards them, not to people like us. You’re…very attractive, even if you downplay it, but physically, I’m about as average as can be. So, I’d like to go in the first place, because yes, that’s ‘normal,’ and I thought I’d give it a try. I’d like to go with you because you’re very smart, very interesting, and very attractive.”
Blushing a bit at the compliments, which certainly sounded sincere, Daria considered this very unexpected request. Troy was not handsome, any more than he was unattractive – his assessment of looking pretty average was accurate. He dressed very casually (which would bug Quinn at least). He did have very nice eyes, the same vibrant color as Jane’s, and was a bit on the stocky side. He was polite, he was smart, and yes, he was nice.
‘I have never been all that interested in normal,’ Daria mused to him after thinking things through. ‘Still, I suppose it would not hurt to try. I suppose your friend is asking Jane?’
A relieved Troy answered, “Well, he’s supposed to be.” He tapped the top of Paul’s head. “Yo! Paul, you available?”
Paul and Jane’s heads popped over the seatback. There was a trace of lipstick on Paul’s lips and Jane’s lipstick was smudged.
“I think we know her answer,” Troy remarked.
‘Jane just likes marking her territory.’
Jane flushed a bit as she turned Paul’s face to hers and wiped the lipstick off.
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