Click, Click, Boom
©2003 Roger E. Moore
(roger70129@aol.com)
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me,
whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: roger70129@aol.com
Synopsis: Somewhere in an alternate
universe, Daria Morgendorffer meets Jane Lane—and before you know it, things
click and they’re all over Lawndale, shooting people.
Author’s
Notes: This
is an alternate-history “what if” tale of Daria and Jane, spawned by a PPMB
“Iron Chef” contest started by Brother Grimace. He asked for stories in which
one or two “Daria” characters followed one of their other major interests in
life, not the one most prominently displayed on the show. The character
otherwise had to be the same as on the show. A happy ending was also required.
This story’s title comes from the
2001 hit song by Saliva, “Click Click Boom.” It was too, too perfect.
Acknowledgements: Grateful thanks go out to
Brother Grimace for the contest, and deep apologies to Wyvern, who was chatting
with me online while I was complaining about getting distracted by story ideas,
and about that same moment, this idea came to me and I didn’t write back to him
right away, as I was too distracted. Sorry about that.
I can see it in my mind,
I can see it in their eyes,
It's close enough to touch
it now,
But far away enough to die.
Click, click, boom.
—Saliva
Daria Morgendorffer sighed in resignation as the new high school came into view through the windshield of her father’s Lexus. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic, she thought, pushing her glasses up on her nose. This place can’t be any worse than Highland. A car horn honked to her left. She turned and saw a pair of students in a candy-apple Jeep pulling ahead of the Lexus. The driver was a moronic-looking black-haired jock wearing a football uniform, his passenger a buxom cheerleader with blonde pigtails waving at students in other cars. Damn it, wrong again. Daria glanced at her sister Quinn in the front seat, taking a moment to check her makeup in the car’s rear-view mirror. Ready to take the local dating scene by storm, she mused. Some things never change.
Her father Jake turned the blue
Lexus into the semicircle drive that led to Lawndale High School’s main
entrance, where a large crowd of students milled about. “Now, girls,” he said,
turning in his seat, “don’t get upset if it takes the other kids a little while
to warm up to you.”
The words were barely out of his
mouth before Quinn was out of the car and gone, heading for a trio of fashionably
dressed girls who appeared to be her age. Daria eased out of the Lexus with her
backpack in hand, noting that Quinn was surrounded in seconds by a swarm of
eager, testosterone-fueled young males. That didn’t take long. This could
even be a new Quinn record for boy collecting.
“I’ll see Quinn through this difficult period of adjustment,” Daria told her father in her usual monotone. As she spoke, she carefully set her backpack on the ground and unzipped it.
“That’s my girl!” Jake
exclaimed, standing up outside the car to stretch his legs. He looked down to
see what Daria was doing. An anxious look crossed his face. “Uh, Daria, don’t
you think—”
“I sure do,” Daria interrupted,
rummaging in her backpack.
“I mean,” he went on in a pained
tone, “after everything that happened in Highland, you don’t want to get off on
the wrong foot here, do you?”
“It’s the only foot I have,” Daria
replied. She pulled a Canon EOS-1N telephoto camera from her backpack and
glanced at the settings, then popped off the lens cap and swiftly raised it to
her face. The autofocus took over, and when the little light turned green and
the moment seemed right, she pushed the button with her forefinger. Click.
Quinn’s first day at Lawndale, captured for all eternity—the adoration of the
masses for their newly crowned princess.
At that moment, for reasons Daria
could not fathom, Quinn turned around. Perhaps she’d heard the film wind in the
Canon with a low whirr. She spotted her sister and the camera instantly,
but she betrayed no expression. A breeze lifted her orange-peel hair. Her look
was perfect: unruffled, in charge, majestic and serene. Daria pushed the button
again. Click.
Quinn turned back to her new friends
as if Daria had never existed. Daria lowered her camera, sensing she had a
winner. It paid to wait a moment after a shot was taken, just in case a better
shot appeared—which it often did. Quinn had learned a thing or two about
photography herself, primarily that she should never, ever make a nasty face
when Daria had a camera at hand. It took some of the fun out of photographing
her, true, but it made for pictures that Quinn would later buy for her personal
use. A sister with a photo bug had its advantages for a wannabe fashion model.
“See you, Dad,” Daria said absently.
She put her camera away, then shouldered her gray backpack and headed inside to
class.
What did you do at school today,
Daria? her mother would ask that night over dinner.
I shot Quinn with my Canon,
she would reply.
* * *
The school psychologist was not
amused when Daria took a surprise close-up flash photo of her while the shrink
was giving Quinn an inkblot test. Daria’s mother came to school later to rescue
the expensive Canon from confiscation, but further retaliation was in store. No
one has a sense of humor around here, Daria mused as she walked down the
empty hallway and pushed open the door to Mr. O’Neill’s classroom. Her fate was
hideous: an eight-week-long, after-school class in self-esteem with an
oversensitive teacher. So much for this town’s imagined superiority to
Highland, she thought. Maybe there’s uranium in the water here, too.
Daria unslung her backpack and looked for a seat among the handful of other students—but the leggy girl with the red jacket and black bangs caught her eye in an instant. Rather, it was what the girl was turning over in her hands, at which she stared with a concentrated frown, that locked Daria’s attention. The girl was holding a black Nikon F-501, what appeared to be an original model from the late 1980s.
Without hurry, Daria took an
empty seat next to the girl in the red jacket, who glanced at her before
turning her attention back to her camera. Daria remembered seeing this girl in
Mr. DeMartino’s history class, where the girl sat in the back and looked bored
and said nothing. The girl squinted at her camera and made a sound of disgust.
“Yours?” said Daria.
The girl turned to her with large
blue eyes. “Oh, it’s a hand-me-down from my dad,” she said in a gravelly voice.
“He does magazine photography, travels around a lot. I get his rejects, the
ones he doesn’t drop off cliffs or into volcanoes.”
“That’s a hell of a reject,” Daria
said. She tentatively held out a hand. “May I?”
The girl looked at Daria, then at
her camera, then handed it over. “Sure, why not. The autorewind’s jammed again,
and I don’t have the tools to get it loose. Jane Lane.”
“Daria Morgendorffer.” Daria
absently reached in a pocket of her green jacket and pulled out her camera
toolkit. “You shoot a lot?”
“All the time.” Jane saw the toolkit
and noted the familiarity with which Daria handled it. “Hey, thanks.”
“No problem.” Daria stopped and held
up the Nikon, staring at the odd lens on it.
“It’s a fisheye,” said Jane. “I use
it for taking pictures of teachers and classmates.”
“Warped portraits,” said Daria,
catching on.
“I call them ‘truer than life,’
myself.”
“Welcome, seekers of self-esteem!”
announced a cheery Mr. O’Neill to his little class, while perched on the edge
of his desk. “Esteem, a teen. They don’t really rhyme, do they?”
Daria picked a miniature screwdriver
from her kit, then turned Jane’s camera over in her hands. “You showed me
yours. Wanna see mine?”
“Got it with you?”
Daria put the camera and screwdriver
in her lap. She then reached down, unzipped her backpack, and brought out her
Canon, handing it to Jane.
“Whoa,” said Jane, handling the
camera with awestruck care. “This is bloody nice. What are you doing after
school?”
“Um . . . what are you
doing?”
“Shooting.”
“Me, too, then. What do you like?”
“Weird people, ugly things. You?”
Daria looked at Jane and blinked in
surprise. “Ugly things, weird people. Truth.”
Jane smiled and put out her hand.
“You’re a dream come true, amiga.”
“My sister says that, too,” said
Daria, putting down the screwdriver again, “only I think she uses the word
‘nightmare’.”
They shook hands. The friendship was
born.
“Does anyone know what self-esteem
means?” asked Mr. O’Neill, looking around the classroom. “Anyone?”
* * *
They walked around Lawndale together
after class, their backpacks on and cameras hanging from shoulder straps at the
ready.
“Then comes role-playing,” Jane
said. “We take turns being evil cashiers who won’t give correct change, or
wimpy customers struggling with lifelong personal issues, like—”
“Target at two o’clock,” Daria said,
eyeing a man in rumbled clothes, smoking a cigarette at a bus stop. Both girls
stopped and went for their cameras. The man flipped his cigarette to the ground
and went inside a store, unaware of his narrow escape.
“Bastard. Got away.” Jane lowered
her Nikon. “Anyway, after the role-playing, they divide up the girls and the
guys, and some lady talks to us about body image. Yadda, yadda, yadda. How’d
you get into this?”
Daria inspected her Canon for dust
on the telephoto lens. “I was on the school paper back in Highland. I took
pictures of anything, just to see what they’d run. I won this last year in a
state contest. I used to write, too, but that always got me into trouble.”
“What’d you write?”
“Oh . . . revenge fantasies, horror
stories, end-of-the-world stuff, anything that would get a reaction.”
“So, photography kept you on the
straight and narrow?”
“Nope,” said Daria solemnly. “It’s
gotten me into more trouble than writing ever could.”
Jane grinned at her new friend.
“You’re a twisted little cruller, aincha?”
“It’s what I do best,” said Daria.
“What about you?”
“Oh, it’s all art to me. I drew on
the walls too much when I was little. My oldest sister gave me a camera to keep
me out of the crayons. The rest was history.”
Daria stopped and pointed. “Target
sighted, two o’clock.”
They raised their cameras as the man
in the rumbled clothing walked out of the store, smoking another cigarette, the
very image of city grit and grunge.
Click. Click.
* * *
The door-to-door sale of chocolate
bars for Lawndale’s new cyber-café did not go as planned.
“We should be doing something about
now,” said Jane, looking down at the overweight woman in the muumuu who
collapsed after attempting to buy all of their chocolate bars. “I’m sure of
it.”
Daria nodded slowly. “Yeah. I think
you’re right.”
In unison, both girls raised their
cameras.
Click. Click.
* * *
“Big crack in the sidewalk coming
up,” said Jane, guiding Daria by the elbow. “You’ll want to watch out for that.
Oh—look out for that branch! There’s a dog coming. Never mind, it’s over by
that maple.”
“Damn contacts,” Daria grumbled. Her
eyes were still shot through with red. “Can’t even see through the viewfinder
without tearing up.”
“Suffering from camera obscura, eh?
Well, you made it this far. I can’t believe you didn’t bring your gla—”
A honking horn cut Jane off.
Daria squinted at the fuzzy blue car
stopped on the other side of the street. “Who’s that?”
“Oh,” said Jane, waving. “It’s
Trent.”
“Hey, Daria!” Trent shouted from his
car. “Looking good!” He smiled, waved, and drove away.
Daria felt her face burst into
flame. Boom, boom, her heart thundered in her ears. She swallowed and
wondered what Trent really thought of her. She was terrified of finding out.
Jane let go of Daria’s elbow and
took a step away. Daria made the mistake of looking in her direction, blushing
furiously.
Click.
Daria gasped. “Damn you, Lane!” she shouted.
Jane merely grinned and held steady.
Daria’s trick about waiting for a better shot had paid off in spades.
Click.
* * *
Click.
Daria lowered her camera, pleased
with the shot she’d taken of the Lawndale Lions mascot, staggering drunkenly
about in the parade. I wonder how he gets any air in that costume, she
thought. Glad that’s not me in there.
“Well, I certainly understand why
you wanted to share this experience with Jane,” she said, advancing the film
with her thumb. She hated using the school camera. It was as old as the Stone
Age. “Sorry that you two never hooked up.”
Tom Sloane shrugged, feeling far
more tired than he thought he should. “It’s okay,” he said. He glanced at
Daria, who was intently searching the passing parade for more photographic
fodder. She hardly knows I’m here, he thought. She’s just as bad as
Jane. She’s really different and interesting when you can get her to talk. She
might even be brilliant, but . . . He looked away, shaking his head. “You
know how she is,” he said.
Daria nodded as she raised her camera, focusing on the next float. Quinn and her fashion friends were on it. Daria was low on cash, and Quinn could use another batch of glamour shots. “Yeah, I know. She really gets into this.”
The irony of that remark was
not lost on Tom. I’d better cut the cord, he thought, before I say or
do something I’ll regret. “I’ll try looking for her over there,” he said.
“Good luck with your yearbook photos, Daria.”
Daria nodded, getting Quinn in her
viewfinder. “Thanks,” she said.
Click.
When she lowered the camera, Tom was
gone. She shrugged and went on taking pictures of Quinn and a particularly
dreadful looking clown.
“Hey,” someone called. She looked
around and spotted Ted walking up with an excited grin on his face. “How’s it
going? Get some good ones for the yearbook?”
He bent his lips to hers, and they
closed their eyes. They kissed.
“You’ll be amazed,” Daria said when
the kiss broke.
“I know what that means,” Ted
said, rolling his eyes. His good humor faded. “Weird people and ugly things.
Irony at its most cutting.”
“It’s what I do best,” Daria said
with a smirk. “Have you seen Jane?”
* * *
“I can’t believe this,” Jane said.
She sat with Daria at their usual table in Pizza King, a Mondo Supremo Deluxe
half-eaten between them. “Not in a million years could I believe this would
happen on the same damn afternoon. What did Ted say?”
Daria glumly reached for another
slice of pizza. “Just what I told you. He didn’t like my attitude about
photography, for one thing. Too much Diane Arbus, not enough Ansel Adams, I
guess. Then he said I wasn’t getting into the spirit of the yearbook. He said
it’s not about weird, ugly stuff, as if there was anything else to put
in a high-school yearbook. I think Ms. Li chewed his ass off when she skimmed
the layout and saw that pic of the dead rat in the cafeteria. That probably did
it.” She paused before taking a bite of her slice. “So, what exactly did Tom
tell you?”
“I don’t know. I was too busy
yelling at him to hear much.” Jane picked up her glass and swirled her
Ultra-Cola around inside it. “He was going on and on about me not paying any
attention to him, being too caught up in my work, something like that. And all
this time I thought he liked my artistic side.”
“He sure liked your nude photo
series,” Daria said. She took another bite of pizza.
“Yeah, he liked that side of me, all
right. He liked every side I had, there.” Jane exhaled long and slow, staring
at her fizzing drink. “Maybe he’d have stuck around if I’d given in and put out
like he wanted me to. Must have finally gotten to him, all the black-and-white
but no pink. You think that’s why Ted broke up with you?”
“Mmmm,” said Daria, her mouth full.
She gave an exaggerated shrug and reached for her drink. “Who cares,” she said
a few moments later after swallowing. “Screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke.”
“Yeah,” said Jane, and she took a
sip of her cola. “Screw ‘em. They say they love you, then—boom.”
They ate moodily for several
minutes.
“Could have been worse,” said Daria
at last. “We could have married them.”
Jane nodded. “Yeah,” she said. She
found herself looking at Daria, who looked back at her without blinking. Their
mutual gaze lasted much longer than either expected it would.
Daria put down her pizza slice and
wiped her hands on a napkin. Jane put down her drink and wiped her hands on her
red jacket.
They reached for their cameras. They
took time to focus and adjust for ambient light. Each of them was clear and
centered in the other’s viewfinder.
Click. Click.
“Boom,” said Daria in her deadpan.
“Boom,” said Jane with a grin.
Original: 3/20/03
Alternate history
FINIS