Everything's Cool and Froody
by Jill Palmer
jill@mail.one.net
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A cynical teenager prone to arguing with her mother is placed in the Esteem-a-Teen class... sound familiar? It’s something completely different. Hitchhiker refs abound.
LEGAL NOTICE
I did not create Daria, or any of Lawndale’s citizens, braindead though most of them are. MTV did. Post this story on your site if you so desire, but tell me where it is if I didn’t send it to you. I like to keep tabs on my personality and parts thereof.
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o/~In the clearing stands a boxer, and a fighter by his trade/And he carries a reminder of every glove that laid him down/And cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame,/“I am leaving, I am leaving,” but the fighter still remains...o/~
“But Muh-OM!”
The sound of an arguing mother and daughter was well knwon throughout Lawndale, but an argument of this caliber was normally reserved for fashion heads or truly desperate girls who could pass for intellectual.
“No buts, young lady.”
“We both know they’ll dismiss me offhand because of my reputation. Those things are hard to change once you’ve got them.”
“I still want you to start one of those clubs. And someting’s going to need to be done about your grades as well.”
“What, would you rather I be miserable in ten years’ time than doing what I want?”
“I already know what you’ll-”
“No, you just THINK you know what my career holds for me. The way you want me to start at it requires me to not be true to myself. Besides, I’m not even interested in that kind of job.”
“We’ll discuss your personality problem tomorrow.”
***
Alexandra Griffin was a regular fixture at Mystik Spiral gigs, mostly because the music drowned out all possibilities of thought. Considering her family, this was likely a good thing. Also, if she could hear at the moment, there were people around she could carry on an intelligent conversation with.
The Zen’s bartender, having seen her coming, had a Shirley Temple ready by the time she got to the bar. She paid for the drink and stirred the grenadine around with the straw for a bit. The band hadn’t started yet, so her latest argument with her mother was still echoing about her mind.
“Hey, Alex.”
The source of the voice was easily located. “Hi, Monique.”
“Something eating at your soul?”
“My mother, slowly but surely. Why can’t she ever work late?”
“But then she wouldn’t be around to annoy you. Forebear all ye saints if that happens.” Monique had served as a sounding board for these tiresome maternal entanglements before, and noticed that her friend was especially glum this time around. “I take it this particular row was a bit worse than its predecessors?”
“You know me too well. Report cards came back today.”
“That bad?”
“Actually, no. Only in terms of the reaction. Mom wanted to know how I’ll possibly have time to be the most popular girl in school if I’m busy getting straight A’s.”
“She thought they were too high?” Monique was suddenly finding it hard to keep a poker face. This was a new low for Linda Griffin, possibly a world first as per the circumstances.
“Go ahead and laugh,” Alex said dejectedly, in full Marvin mode. “I can tell you find the whole thing very amusing.”
Might as well feed the insanity. She needs a break. “What are you supposed to do with a chronically depressed teenager?”
“You think you’ve got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a chronically depressed teenager? No, don’t bother answering that. I’ve had two trimesters of high school to think it over, and I still don’t know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to my classmates’ level.”
“But the Answer is forty-two.”
“Wrong question. Shall we return to our regularly scheduled rant?”
“Your mother thought your grades were too high, and...”
“Had I not known she would deck me, I would have laughed in her face. So instead, I asked if she’d rather have me be a trophy wife with six kids in ten years’ time as opposed to doing something useful with my life.”
“Lesser of two evils?”
“Well, not as likely to give me a bruise. Turns out Mom has some serious delusions of grandeur concerning my future as a model - something I’m not even interested in. She thinks the perfect place to start is by assuming the role of fashion queen of Lawndale High, and may well be right. But as that would require me to be a platinum-plated bitch, I see no need to even get involved in all that, and told her as such.”
“It wasn’t pretty, right?”
“On the nosey.” Alex sipped at her drink before continuing. “Mom told me to get out of her sight, and ‘we’ll deal with your personality problem tomorrow.’ Three to one odds that translates into she drags me to the mall and flat-out refuses to buy me anything I want, instead burying me in the latest in asinine clothing trends. Five to one odds I’ll want to return it all, and there’s an Infinite Improbability Drive running in the area if any of them go back.”
Monique winced. “Ouch.”
“Luckily, she hasn’t found my top three hangouts yet.”
“Can’t banish you from someplace she doesn’t know exists?”
“Exactly.”
***
o/~Father’s watching the bouncing ball/Strangers mystified by all/All the goings-on...o/~
Thank God for small favors. Weird answers on the trimester-opening psychology test had landed Alex a spot in the Esteem-a-Teen class. It was the perfect place to be if you wanted to avoid the popular populace. She still hadn’t heard the end of it at home, but that was not one of her concerns. Who would’ve thought Ms. Li’s honor-and-glory fetish could ever prove useful?
Mr. O’Neill was teaching the class, and she wished the guy luck giving anybody more self-esteem. He needed a strong dose of the stuff himself. Better his touchy-feely stuff and bad memory of names for an extra hour after school than Mr. DeMartino’s borderline psychosis, she supposed. Or Ms. Barch’s rampant feminism - though useful for tests, the constant ranting about her ex-husband tended to get annoying after a while.
Thirty seconds into the class, she was already confused. Realizing your actuality? “He’s read way too much pop psychobabble,” she said to herself.
The girl next to her overheard and replied, “Of course. Why do you think he’s teaching this? Self-esteem is the necessity that spawned the stuff.”
“Touche.” Alex surveyed the source of this wit. She was wearing a red shirt jacket-style over a black V-neck, gray shorts, black tights, and gray fireman’s boots. Three silver earrings were visible on the ear that wasn’t covered by her angular haircut.
What the heck? An actual friend in school can’t hurt. “I’m Alex Griffin.”
“Me llamo Jane Lane, artiste extraordinaire and pizza critic.” A pause for thought, then: “Haven’t I seen you at a few Mystik Spiral gigs?”
“Several would be more like it. The noise drowns out all coherent thought, and when they’re not playing, my friendly neighborhood sounding board listens to me gripe about the latest ‘tiresome maternal entanglement,’ as she puts it. I get good advice out of the deal sometimes.”
“My brother’s the lead singer.”
“You must have very sturdy eardrums.”
“What?” Jane shot back, feigning deafness. “I didn’t hear that. Guess the Spiral needs to practice in somebody else’s basement.”
Alex smirked. “Nice try, but anyone who puts up with that much noise on a regular basis either has excellent hearing, or is deaf as a stone post. You overheard my psychobabble rant, therefore you must be one of the former. Too late to change your mind now.”
“Some of them fall for it, some of them don’t. It is useful for getting rid of Kevin, though. Wanna get a pizza after this?”
“I leave the decision of which place in your capable hands, O great Pizza Critic.”
***
Both girls were reassigned to the class after the first round. When her mother asked why, Alex suggested that she lay off her delusions of grandeur. She didn’t, of course, and so the stage was set.
After the class was over for the day, the girls usually went to Jane’s and watched Sick, Sad World. On Mystik Spiral nights, they went to Pizza King instead, and Jane taped the show. They would talk at the gig.
Neither one passed the final Esteem-a-Teen test, but since it wasn’t held over the summer and both survived exams, they were free for three months. Every other Saturday was declared Bad Movie Night. Alex refused to host any of them, not willing to risk a shouting match with company over, so they traded off responsibility for the night’s entertainment (or lack thereof, this being a bad movie night).
School started again, as it always does, and Alex refused to test out of Esteem-a-Teen so long as her mother kept insisting she start a Fashion Club. Jane was just staying in because, in her own words, “I like having low self-esteem. Makes me feel special.”
The wandering Lanes were regrouping for a funeral, and Jane and her brother Trent were being sent to represent their parents. Said funeral was being held the same day as opening ceremonies for Esteem-a-Teen - this would be round six for the two.
It proved to be a very interesting day...
***
The new girl sat down in front of her. Alex had seen her in the hallway a few times - green jacket, orange shirt, black skirt, lethal-looking boots, formidable glasses. Perfectly atrocious outfit. She loved it.
Mr. O’Neill babbled for a bit, then her hand went up. When he seemed to ignore her, she said, “Excuse me. I have a question.”
“Sorry, question and answer time is later.”
“I want to know what ‘realizing your actuality’ means.” Me too, Alex thought. Never did figure that out.
“It means... look. Just let me get through this part, okay? Then there’ll be a video.” Mr. O’Neill babbled on, and Alex decided this girl had potential.
“Don’t worry about what it means,” she advised. “I don’t think he even knows, and the video sure doesn’t explain it.”
The new girl turned around. “How am I supposed to follow if I can’t understand him?”
“You’re not. Just sit back and listen to the nice man’s soothing voice.” A pause to consider, then: “You want to move back here? This goes a lot faster when there’s someone to talk to.”
She did so. “Daria Morgendorffer.”
“Alex Griffin. It’s really too bad Jane’s not here. You two’ll probably get along great once you meet.”
“Sick?”
“Family representation. Her parents travel a lot, and they find it easier to send her and her brother to stuff rather than leave their current project site. She’ll be back this evening, if you can escape your house.”
Daria considered. “Lasagna with my family, or mystery food with a mystery guest... I think I’ll take door number two. The future only holds more lasagna, interrupted by my father’s attempts at cooking, and there’s a 50% chance of intelligent conversation if I take up your offer.”
“The other obvious questions will be saved for later, then, so you don’t have to answer them twice. Well, except for the obvious question of where you live, since I’m assuming you’d like to get to Pizza King.”
“If they make edible food there, you assume correctly.” She wrote down her address and phone number on a scrap of paper. “Call if you can get through. My sister might have the phone lines clogged beyond hope.”
“Do I want to know how bad?”
“We just moved here yesterday, and she’s already got every single member of the football team wrapped around her perfectly manicured little finger. On top of that, she’s planning on starting a Fashion Club.”
Alex let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God!”
“Who are you, and what have you done with the person I was just talking to?”
“Forgot you don’t know the background. It’s a long story...”
***
o/~Wonderful day passing my way/Knock on my door, even the score with your eyes/Lovely to see you again, my friend...o/~
Alex’s blue convertible pulled into a parking space at one end of a strip mall. “It may not look like much,” she explained, “but if you believe Jane’s pizza ratings, they make the best pies in town here. She said something about the cheese-crust-sauce ratio once.”
Daria got out of the car. “Pizza ratings?”
“Scale of one to ten,” Jane said from behind them. “Pizza Forest was lowest, for obvious reasons. Nice outfit, by the way.” She walked around to where she could face them, and Alex saw she had her skull-and-crossbones bag with her.
“But which is my best side?” Daria deadpanned. “I know they’re both good.”
Alex decided to ask Jane about her bag before she forgot. “What’d you do, walk here from the airport?”
“Three words: airplane food sucks.” That said, she started introductions off. “Hola. Me llamo Jane Lane, artiste extraordinaire.”
“Daria Morgendorffer, cynic extraordinaire. Also the sister of a fashion fiend... though if you take her word for it, I’m her cabana girl’s friend’s adopted cousin or something. She hasn’t asked any pressing questions yet, so if you’re interested, I’ll be answering them.”
Jane smirked. “Of course I’m interested. Alex has good taste in friends. How about we discuss these pressing questions over a pizza?”
“No objections here,” Alex replied.
As they went in, Daria asked, “What channel is Sick, Sad World on here?”
***
In the school cafeteria the next day, four girls were eating salads and discussing plans for their new club.
One of these had long, bouncy red hair, and was wearing a pink shirt with a smiley face on it and blue jeans. Her name was Quinn Morgendorffer, and she was founder and president of the Fashion Club. How the school had gone on without a club like this she didn’t know.
Stacy Rowe, the vice-president, had tried to start one before Quinn moved to town. No one had seemed interested then, and she gave up the idea. She was wondering if some of her ideas, when combined with Quinn’s, might work out even better than each by themselves.
Tori Jericho, the secretary, was wondering why she hadn’t tried to help Stacy start one earlier. Maybe then I’d have a higher rank, she thought, sipping at her diet soda. Thanks to her weird family, she knew she didn’t have too much hope of getting higher up, and was prone to passing the time ranking everyone else’s popularity.
Coordinating officer Tiffany Blum-Deckler wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but that was normal for her.
The girls decided to go shopping at Cashman’s after schools, followed by a meeting at Stacy’s house to organize an “accepted dates” list.
***
The phone was ringing. Monique finally woke herself up enough to answer it. “H’lo?”
“Hi. It’s Alex.”
“You woke me up.”
“And you’ve been spending too much time around Trent. It’s four in the afternoon!”
“No need to wax psychotic on me, girl.” Hold it - “wax psychotic?” Sounding board mode on. “You just had one hell of a row with your mother, didn’t you.”
“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. Meet me at the Chinese restaurant next door to McGrundy’s in twenty minutes.”
“All right.” Not being one to let her friend down, Monique got herself up the rest of the way and got dressed shortly after the conversation ended.
***
o/~We oughta send Officer Joe Strange/To some Australian mountain range/So we all can do the ring-around-a rosy rag...o/~
Twenty minutes later, Monique walked into the Chinese Lantern and found Alex sitting at a corner table, morosely stirring the contents of a teacup. She walked over, sat down in the other chair, and said, “If I were to ask just how bad this spat was, would I regret it? More importantly, would I live to regret it?”
“No on both counts. Just don’t mention life, all right? I don’t want to talk about life.”
“Not to worry, Marvin. I’ll let you mention it.”
“Ha ha.”
“Tell me, do you get on well with other teenagers?”
“Loathe them. Except for Daria and Jane, but that’s because they talk like real people.”
A waitress came over and set a bowl of soup down in front of Alex. Monique ordered one for herself, as well as some egg rolls. When the waitress was gone, Alex started her story.
“Figuring we had both the answers and a good shot at creeping out Mr. O’Neill, Daria suggested we test out of Esteem-a-Teen early. We did so, and instead of creeping him out, we got to do an umspeech at the next assembly. Jane faked a relapse, Daria publicly thanked her ‘only child’ little sister, and I couldn't have cared less about the whole deal.”
“I thought you weren’t going to quit until Mommy Dearest laid off on the Fashion Club deal.”
“So did I. Daria’s sister started one, though, and I’ve been hanging out at their houses since then for the appropriate amount of time. Mom was none the wiser until dinner last night.”
“And then everything went foom?”
“More or less.” She took a few bites of soup, then stirred the rest of it around as she continued. “Our economics class went on a field trip to the Mall of the Millennium last week. I was given the platinum card and told to max it out. Which I completely failed to do. The bill came this morning. She wanted to know why.”
“And you explained.”
“Every detail included. I told her I have no interest in being a model, despite her delusions to the contrary. I told her I’m perfectly happy with the friends, status, hobbies, and life I’ve got, and I see no point in throwing all that out the window just so she can pretend to be twenty-one... in five years. Then I told her someone else started the exact kind of club she wants me to, and that I didn’t care.”
“Kablooie!” Monique supplied.
“Parody ahead.” Alex slipped into a bad imitation of her mother’s voice. “Well, you should care! You’re letting some undeserving plebe walk off with your rightful position of most popular! A golden opportunity is slipping through your fingers! Start a rival club! Join this one and take over! I’m not going to give up until you’re queen of the school! We’ll deal with your personality issues this weekend.”
“Yow. ‘Kablooie’ was an understatement. So you’re trapped at the Temple of Groom this weekend?”
“No.”
“How are you going to weasel out of this mess?”
“Mystik Spiral’s got a couple of out-of-town gigs. We’ll be back in time for school. Jane said they won’t turn down extra gas money.”
“Or food money.”
“Or help pushing the Tank, lame excuse for a van though it is.”
“And you’re willing to risk close quarters with the Spiral?”
“Better than close quarters with my mother.”
***
“So that’s the whole story,” Alex finished. “Either I start my own Fashion Club, or I join Quinn’s and usurp.”
“Maybe you and Quinn should just trade places,” Daria remarked. “Your mother would be in heaven.”
“But yours would probably notice something was up.”
“Damn.”
“Otherwise, it was a perfect arrangement,” Jane commented. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing at all. Unless you count passing off hanging out with you guys as club meetings.”
“Won’t she catch on when you’re not regularly maxing out at least one credit card?”
“I plan on taking one to Dega Street every now and again and doing just that. Should throw her off the trail for a while.”
“Point.”
“But what will you do if she does catch on?” Daria wondered.
“Your objections pending, we sit in the living room at my place and mimic the real FC. More likely than not, I’ll wind up having a shouting match with Mom. At that point, I wouldn’t object to your leaving for fear of further eardrum damage. I’d be leaving myself if I weren’t the one doing half the shouting.”
“How could I let a chance to act like my sister go by unnoticed? Pass the drain cleaner, please.”
“This is only a backup plan for now. Should the need arise, dress as you normally do, and have plenty of sarcasm on hand.”
“When do I not?”
***
If not for Monique, Alex thought, I’d go criminally insane by bedtime.
Daria had been dragged off for a family camping trip over the weekend. Something about bursting blood vessels in her father’s eye. Jane and Trent were dealing with a family reunion. The prospect of spending the entire weekend in the house with her mother was terrifying, in a way.
Fortunately, Monique was still around. Since she was due for another credit card max-out fairly soon, Alex suggested they go to Dega Street and browse. Plans were made to meet up on Mystik Spiral’s usual performance night.
Grabbing her car keys and a cassette tape, she left her room and hunted down her mother. It didn’t take much to get use of the platinum card out of her (accompanied with, “And max it out this time, young lady!”). The combination of driving and Janis Joplin at high volume drove out all familial thoughts, and Monique was waiting for her when she parked at the shopping end of Dega Street.
“What’s up?”
Alex smiled. “Everything’s cool and froody.”
“So everything’s under control, then?”
“No, everything is not under control. That would not be cool and froody.” This said, Alex led the way into one of the stores.
END
NOTES
-The title is one of several Hitchhiker references in the fanfic (an approximation of the exchange it came from is the last bit of dialogue), and it’s just about the only one that doesn’t involve Marvin. The ones that did were changed to fit the situation properly.
-The soundtrack in order:
“The Boxer” - Simon and Garfunkel
“Sufficiently Breathless” - Captain Beyond (had to guess at the lyrics...)
“Lovely to See You” - Moody Blues
“Ring-Around-a-Rosy Rag” - Arlo Guthrie
-I’m not sure if anyone else has used “Esteem-a-Teen” as the name for the self-esteem class, but it sounds good to me.
-Some of Daria’s opening dialogue (as well as Mr. O’Neill’s replies) were taken straight from the “Esteemsters” transcript at Outpost Daria. Very handy things, those.
-I think Jane’s pizza place scale was once on MTV’s site.
-Yes, the time flow is a bit erratic, but I really didn’t want this to be an uber-fic.
-Coming up next: “Asphyxiation By Ivy”. Available at a website near you as soon as my muse gets around to starting on it.
-Thanks to Corvus Marinus for writing “A Change (Would Do You Good)” and returning my muse to this idea, and to my motley crew of beta-readers for their mostly helpful suggestions.
