July 18: The Bi!Jane AU Pt. 18

[kinetic_elaboration]

[So I forgot when I wrote this that I’d written Part 14; it’s intended to follow Part 13. Not for this reason in particular, but I’ve mostly decided to abandon this fic, at least in this form. Unless I change my mind, this is the last installment I’ll be posting.]

*

By now, almost 2 years into the often unusual and sometimes cruel experience of going to Lawndale, and being Mr. O’Neill’s student in particular, Daria is used to weird, useless assignments like this. Pick something at which you know you’ll fail, be bad at it, and learn that failure is okay. Why does every idea this man has sound like it was cribbed from some crackpot self-help guru’s rejected manifesto first draft?

“Probably because it was,” Daria answers, when Jane poses the question. She pulls down on the lever that opens her locker, and yanks it open with that sweet spot of force it needs, even when it’s unlocked. “Do you know what you’re going to do for it?”

Jane shrugs. “Preferably something that requires very little effort.” She pauses. “Better yet, no effort.”

 

That’s Jane’s attitude toward most school work but in this case specifically, it seems warranted. Daria, too, is looking to fail at something that she either would be doing anyway or that promises some sort of extra personal gain. She settles on her idea before she and Jane have even finished grabbing their books: convince her parents to forbid Quinn from attending the Teen Fashion Extravaganza she’s been talking about nonstop for weeks. If she fails, she’s succeeded in her assignment. If she succeeds, she’ll have annoyed her sister, and possibly saved her family from imminent financial ruin. Wins all around.

(Her first idea, break up Tom and Jane, strikes her even in the moment she thinks it as unnecessarily cruel. An idea out of her basest nature, from the Devil sitting on her shoulder, and not even the funny one. She doesn’t even think the guy’s so bad anymore.)

Jane’s assignment requires some brainstorming, which they do as they close their lockers and move toward the cafeteria.

Finally, Daria suggests, “You could be conventional. Look and act just like everybody else. You’d have no trouble failing at that.”

Jane hums, considering. “You mean like wear crop tops and listen to pop music and pretend to be straight?”

Daria stops short at the last bit, pretends that she didn’t. “Basically. Just try to be everything you’re not.”

Jane grabs her backpack straps, low against her sides, and appears to turn this over in her mind. Her face has taken on an expression of light concentration: her brow furrowed with a single line, her lips slightly thinned.

In the silence, Daria considers if the Devil on her shoulder might not be responsible for this one, too. She was serious, in a way. Jane is so flawlessly and unapologetically herself that Daria can’t imagine her being any other way. She’d chafe at it. She’d pull off the persona like a cat pulling off some silly human outfit its owner tried to put on it. But on the other hand, if she did—if she allowed herself even to approximate being just like all their classmates, one of the crowd, then what would be left of their friendship? If, for example, Jane leveraged the conventionally attractive, wealthy, smooth-talking, even occasionally funny boyfriend into making people forget she’d ever been known to kiss girls, then she could probably become not just conventional but popular. And popular people, everyone in high school knew, by a science as predictable and as simple as that which kept oil and water from mixing, never hung out with outcasts or geeks.

“It could work, I guess,” Jane admits. “I’m not sure anyone would believe the straight part, though.”

“Some people already do.” She says it without thinking, wonders immediately after how the thought became one she said out loud.

Jane is frowning at her, hitting her with the sort of steady gaze that can’t be ignored. “What does that mean?”

“Just—because of Tom.”

She will, however, assiduously try to ignore it.

“When Brittany told Kevin you were dating a private school guy, he thought she said private school girl,” she continues, because she doesn’t feel like she has a choice about it. “It seemed to ignite some obligatory Catholic school girl fantasies in him.”

“Gross.”

“Very. And she corrected him, and he said he thought you were gay, and Brittany said, not anymore.” She shrugs. “I overhead it in science class, where I am cursed to sit in front of them.”

“Probably because of some terrible mistake you made in a past life,” Jane answers, but it’s obvious her attention is elsewhere. “You know that’s not how it works, right?”

“Do I know that Kevin’s an idiot?” As she crosses the threshold of the cafeteria, Kevin himself pushes past her, and a moment later a football spins so close to her head it almost knocks off her glasses and she misses the incredible feat of athleticism that was him catching it in mid-air. “There were some clues.”

Jane pulls them both out of the way of a gaggle of football players coming through and insists, “I mean it. Dating a guy doesn’t change who I am. I’ve always liked guys. I’ve just always liked girls, too.” The path clear, she starts striding toward the lunch line. “It’s not that I care what Kevin and Brittany think. But—” She grabs one of the still-wet brown trays, and looks over at Daria, but doesn’t finish.

“I know.” She slides her tray in next. “Brittany also thinks you broke up with me to date Tom. So I guess those old rumors about us never died.”

The comment feels like confession: light enough on the outside, as if utterly inconsequential, but on the inside sitting like a heavy block in the center of her chest. Something she should be feeling out tentatively.

Jane just snorts. “Ha! Of course they didn’t. You shouldn’t listen to Brittany about anything. According to the rumor I heard, her head is all air.”

“Huh. That explains the voice.”

Jane pays first, waits for Daria and then leads the way to their usual table. Daria fully expects she’ll change the subject entirely now, and the feeling of a hesitant admission, or of a mystery being carefully prodded, dissipates in her. Instead, Jane says, “If I’m going to do this, I’ll need to get some new clothes. How do you feel about a trip to the mall after school?”

She wiggles her eyebrows, as if trying to make the offer enticing, or full of excitement and mystery.

Daria pretends to be more reluctant than she feels, and agrees.