Jane had been a bit on edge—untamed, even, Daria would have said—since their trip to the zoo. She'd blown her pizza money at the art supply store and then walled herself off, telling Daria that her new piece wasn't to be seen until complete. "Not by you, not Tom, not anybody."
"Oh," Daria had said. It was getting harder to be articulate, what with the increased risk she felt of stumbling into a danger zone, into the unstable landfill on which she now feared her only friendship might be built.
Even Trent could tell that Tom was feeling something about her. About her, Daria, the girl who had once faked glamor for three minutes because her spite had overpowered her anxiety, the girl who could see in the mirror half a dozen times a day that she was by any measure infinitely less attractive than the girl Tom was actually dating. 'Twas the undeniable truth of their friendship, or one of them anyway: Jane was the pretty one. The one whose veins burned with an energy that Daria could never summon, a conflagration so unlike the diffuse cat-in-a-sunbeam warmth of the only crush Daria had ever felt.
When Jane finally called, Daria popped with relief, followed quickly thereafter by another wave of worry. Just what was it that Jane hadn't wanted anyone to see in progress?
At least Jane was happy when she greeted Daria at the front door of Casa Lane. Jane being unhappy—and worse yet, Jane feeling hurt and confused over something Daria was even in part responsible for, even just because she had failed to believe it could be happening and thus failed to stop it—that made Daria's stomach drop.
"You're early," Jane said. "My other art critic is on his way."
"Tom?"
"Mm-hmm. Come on up."
Jane moved with alacrity up the stairs to her bedroom. Daria caught up a moment later. Just as she was reaching for the doorknob, Jane moved to stand behind her and covered her eyes with her paint-flecked hands.
"Is that necessary?" Daria asked.
"For the drama!" Jane insisted.
"If you wanted to blind me, you could have just taken off my glasses," Daria pointed out. She reached out to where she remembered the doorknob to be, gave it a twist and pushed forward.
Two steps together into the room, and Jane withdrew her hands with an exclamation of "Ta-daa!"
It was a self-portrait, Jane amid jungle foliage, Jane with nothing but jungle foliage cutting off the view beneath her shoulders, and with stripes of gold ochre tangling messily in her unkempt midnight-black hair.
Daria wanted to make some monotone comment like technically, among your better representational works, but she didn't know what kind of feedback Jane wanted to hear.
None, for the moment, apparently, because the doorbell was ringing and Jane was off downstairs again to answer it.
Had Jane kept this behind closed doors until it was complete because of some emotional resonance? Or because she had been working from... a live model? And only added those last garlands of leaves in the final stage?
"The lady and the tiger!" Jane announced from behind her. Daria turned to see her gripping Tom's arm. "My new look. I've decided to dye my hair, and this will be the model. Now you'll get both and not have to choose. What do you think?"
"Please tell me you've found a professional who can do those streaks," Tom said. "Elsie tried dyeing her own hair when she was twelve, and I got mockery material for weeks."
"Hmpf. But you approve?"
"The painting is great, as is the artist," Tom said.
"Agreed on all points," Daria concurred.
"But the new look?" asked Jane.
"It's hard to imagine," Daria said, "improving on how you look now."
The wave of humiliation struck a heartbeat after she realized she had said it. "Eep!" Daria raised her fingers to her lips, stopping herself just in time before she did the even more embarrassing thing of trying to hold back words she had already spoken. "I promise I meant that in a nonsalacious way. In a totally aesthetic way. Like the Fashion Club commenting on the models in Waif. Yes. Just like that. Shallow. Vapid. Nothing..."
Her valiant attempt to pass her observation off as something inconsequential was, she could tell, failing hard. To judge by the shock on both Jane and Tom's faces, it was counterproductive indeed.
"... Sorry?" she offered at last.
"Daria..." Jane began, still wide-eyed, but her voice turning tender.
"I should go," Tom said, making an effort to detach Jane's fingers from his elbow.
Daria asked, half in a whisper, "Why bother?" Her self-immolation was already complete.
"Because," Tom said, "um, everything I could say right now would sound like wishful thinking?"
And Jane laughed. It started as an anxiety giggle, on the edge of desperate, and then it mellowed into something warm, and suddenly Daria had permission to smile herself. She let her eyes fall, bashfully but not in terror, and she heard Tom start to let out his own stress in a wobbly chuckle. And then Jane took a step forward. Daria looked up to see her best friend, interlocking Tom's fingers with her left hand and reaching her right hand out to caress the side of Daria's blushing face.
The conflagration was stronger than Daria had ever seen, stronger than Daria had ever imagined, and Jane's voice came from low in her throat. "None of us have to choose."
Daria's last coherent thought was a gasp of gratitude that at least Jane had the experience not to make a kiss into a collision of noses and teeth.
She rose from bliss into half-awareness to find that Jane had pulled her forward, or Tom, or both.
"You've got to try that," Jane said.
So he did.