Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Wishful Thinking ❯ Diddly Squat ( Chapter 5 )

CHAPTER FIVE: Diddly-Squat

Okay, so I can't remember diddly-squat from the moment I passed out in Darien's car to the moment when, nearly two full days later, I woke up in my own bed. I wasn't hurt by my experience, but my unwilling attempt to kick the bucket had drained me pretty badly, and I was fairly out of it for a good week. Even now, years later, I look back on this and wonder if, just maybe, I'd actually frozen more of my brain cells than was good for me. I've certainly done a lot of stupid things since then that could only be explained by my having brain damage. I have, in fact, only three really clear memories of this time: my stupid attempt to walk home in freezing weather, that hideous blanket, and the expression that had been on Darien's face when he first found me.

I'd be perfectly happy to forget all of it, but somehow the knowledge that Darien, of all people, had been the one to rescue me just didn't surprise me in the least. Darien may have hated me to the point of distraction or obsession, but he'd always had that weird radar for me built into that thick head of his. Didn't he always know where to find me, no matter where I'd gone? I'd once found it creepy that he could locate me this way, but this time he'd literally used his ability to save my life. If he hadn't come when he had, I probably would have frozen to death. Oh, someone else might have come along sooner or later, but I think I wouldn't have been alive enough to appreciate the rescue. Darien really did save me.

This, of course, caused way too many complications. Darien had saved my life, and I wasn't ready for that kind of debt to anyone, let alone to the boy who'd been tormenting me since day one. Besides, I didn't really want our relationship, such as it was, to change, and it definitely would since I now owed my entire existence to him. Even ignoring the emotional implications of this whole mess, I didn't want to lose `what we had'. Darien had done some truly awful things to me, and he often made me so mad that I wanted to cry in sheer rage and frustration-not that I ever did cry-but our arguments and our pranks added so much excitement to my life that I was honestly afraid of what this would do to us. I'd found, to my extreme astonishment and my even more extreme chagrin, that I actually liked fighting with Darien. He was quick enough mentally to keep up with me, immature enough emotionally to fight with me in the first place…there just wasn't anybody else that I could act this way with. I didn't want his saving my life to make either one of us more inclined to stop with the pranks or the fighting, because then I'd lose the best sparring partner I would ever have.

Like I said, brain damage.

The temperature had been dropping since the night of my rescue, and the cold became so bad that school was cancelled for the entire week. I spent the time lying in bed, brooding more over Darien's actions than over my own near death. I kept telling myself that I was making too much of this, that all Darien had done, really, was to find me and bring me home. He hadn't fought off any dragons for me or rescued me from burning buildings or anything like that, and I shouldn't be reacting this way.

It's probably a good thing that I never did learn to listen to myself, because even I can look back and realize how much in denial I was. I think that even then I knew, deep down, that I wasn't getting freaked out just because I now owed Darien my life. I wasn't even panicking because his actions meant that our entire relationship must inevitably change, or because I thought he might start to pity me rather than just pickingon me as he had always done before. I was-and it took me an entire week of moping to realize this-panicking only because, when I'd looked up and met Darien's gaze as he'd entered the library, I'd seen fear in his eyes. Fear for me, fear that something might have happened to me. Just…fear. I just couldn't understand why Darien had been afraid for me, the one person in his life who never cut him any slack, the one person that made him more miserable than all others combined. Even in my half-frozen, fuzzy-brained state, I had seen that Darien had been afraid that I would die, that he would lose me. Why?

Now, I know Darien was a basically decent guy. He might have been an absolute jerk, but he'd also never done anything truly destructive. I'd played some nasty tricks of my own, but regardless of how awful I was, Darien had never lifted a hand against me. Sure, he yelled at me all the time, he stole my things, and he'd practically become my stalker, but he'd never ever become violent or caused me lasting harm. I really couldn't imagine him hurting anyone, and I know he would never even have wished true pain on me, let alone carried it out himself. He certainly wouldn't have wanted me to die, alone and frozen or any other way. He would have done all he could to save me if I was really in trouble, even risking his own life, because that was just the way he was. Still, even knowing that Darien would have done everything in his power to save me, why would he have looked like his best friend-and not his worst enemy-had been the one to disappear? He should not have cared this much. The fact that he clearly did worried me more than the prospect of dying at fourteen ever could have.

The girls came to see me the Sunday before school started again. Their visit cheered me up immeasurably, but even they could not pull my mind from Darien. The fact that Mina and Raye lived with him and knew everything-or almost everything, at any rate-really didn't help. Darien's sisters kept shooting smug, knowing glances at me every time they thought I wasn't looking. I knew what they were thinking-how could I not? I'm a genius, remember, and they had always been terribly obvious matchmakers. Besides, Mina and Raye aren't exactly hard to read, and I knew them well enough to recognize every little thought running through their meddling heads.

Hey, I realize how this situation looked, but I was not falling for Darien! I don't care how thin the line between love and hate is, there's no way in heck that I was going to cross it! Mina and Raye were just so eager to pair Darien off with someone they liked that they were seeing things that just weren't there, and I resolved to let them know how misguided they were as soon as possible…just not that day…or the next…or maybe even a whole lot of nexts after that. This wasn't a conversation I was all that eager to have, and I knew I would probably find plenty of reasons to put it off for a little longer.

I needn't have worried about Darien's behavior towards me, though. I went back to school the next day, and everything was the same as it had always been. Maybe Darien looked a little harder and more intensely at me, the first time we ran into each other in the hallways, but that was pretty much it. He didn't ask me if I was okay, and he didn't treat me any differently than before. He probably knew that I'd have resented his questions in spite of everything he'd done for me--or maybe because of what he'd done--and I'd always hated having people treat me like china just because I was so small physically. The fact that Darien had every reason to be worried about me, the fact that I'd actually been in danger and was technically still recovering, had absolutely nothing to do with it, and just that once, I was actually grateful to Darien for knowing me well enough to be aware of that.

He didn't do anything to me right away, though. Usually, when I passed him in the halls like that, he'd at least call out some kind of snide remark. He'd tell me I'd obviously been a midget in a past life or that my hair looked like I'd stuck my finger in an electrical socket or something equally sweet. He might return whatever it was he'd stolen from me the day before, or dart up to me and try to knock my bag away so he could tease me about my clumsiness. This time, he didn't do any of that. He smirked at me a little as I walked by, but even his smirk was more hail-fellow-well-met than anything else. Needless to say, I found that to be immeasurably creepy. Another might believe he was only being gentle with me, trying to give me time to ease back into our way of life, but I knew better.

Darien was planning something.

I was right, of course. Darien was planning something, though not even Lita believed me when I told her about my suspicions. She just gave me an odd look, like I was crazy for thinking that badly about Darien. Personally, I think she was crazy for not believing me. I knew Darien as well as anybody, maybe better than anybody, and as the most frequent object of his wrath, I knew the signs when I saw them. Darien was up to no good, as they say, and I was on my guard.

Of course, knowing that he was going to do something didn't help in the least. Darien was becoming almost as good as I at this, and I never saw his next prank coming. Maybe it was just because he waited until the very last minute before springing his trap, until the day was almost over and I was finally getting ready to go home. I probably should have been a wreck at that point, knowing Darien was going to pull something but still not able to so much as guess at what it was. I wasn't, though. I'd actually started to buy into what everyone else was saying, started to believe that Darien was going to go easy on me, for once. I'd started to relax, and that was my first mistake.

Darien is a sneaky son-of-a-gun. I've always believed that, even from day one, but it wasn't until this particular trick that he really proved it. Like I said, he'd waited until the very last minute to spring this one on me, and that would have been bad enough. When he used his sisters and my trust in them against me, though, he took the game to a whole new level. He even pulled his mother into the deal, the jerk.

Remember when I mentioned that Darien's mother owned a sort of diner? Well, Raye and Mina had started taking me there in the weeks leading up to all of this, wanting to give me a chance to get to know her. In retrospect, I think maybe they'd started their matchmaking thing even earlier than I'd thought, and this was their way of getting me even more deeply involved in their family than I might already have been. Maybe they thought that if I formed strong relationships with the women in Darien's family, I'd be more likely to overlook Darien's own shortcomings.

Fat chance of that.

Whatever the reason for their bringing me, I'd really started to love that place. The food was good, the prices were reasonable, and Anne Shields turned out to be marvelous company. She was a sweet woman, as intelligent as her dratted son and as lively as her daughters, and I soon realized how much I enjoyed talking to her. She might have been years older than I, but she was a great friend to me…at least as long as I didn't bring up Darien or all the nonsense he and I pulled on each other. As with the twins, it was just easier not to get into any of that with someone who would feel obligated to defend him regardless of the circumstances, and since I wasn't capable of bringing up his name in anything other than a complaint, mention of Darien was always noticeably absent from any conversation his mother and I had.

Anyway, I'd gotten completely hooked on the desserts Anne's place offered. She had everything a girl with an unbelievably strong sweet-tooth could ever want: brownies, cakes, ice creams, shakes-it's probably a good thing that I have a high metabolism and never put on weight, because I'd probably weigh about a thousand pounds, otherwise. My favorite snacks, though, were the caramel apples. Seriously, what more could a person want in a treat? They were messy, sweet, and chewy enough to make my teeth stick together. Plus, since there were supposedly real apples buried somewhere beneath all that sugar, I didn't ever have to tell my mom that I'd spoiled my appetite with something completely unhealthy for me.

And Darien ruined them for me. He'd known perfectly well how much I loved those things, and he recognized the potential in them. He went to his mother, told her that he needed to do an extra credit project or something like that. He had her make a batch of caramel apples, this time using his `special' recipe…a recipe that somehow called for wax and a whole lot of other things that I still can't identify. You'd think Mrs. Shields would have realized Darien was pulling some sort of trick, but she didn't. She just went along with him, mixing colorless lumps of wax…and all that other stuff…into the caramel in small enough amounts that it wouldn't be immediately noticeable to her son's young victim. Then, heaping insult on injury, Darien left the apples where his sisters would be certain to find them. Both of his sisters absolutely hated caramel apples, and they wouldn't have eaten one if their lives depended on it. They would also, however, immediately think of me when they saw them. They knew how much I liked them, and they knew I was still getting over my little try-to-turn-myself-into-a-Popsicle thing. They swiped the apples for me, that day, keeping them in a cooler in Mina's locker until they could give them to me in private. They waited until the last class of my first day back, skipping out of their own rooms so they could bring them to me…and I, all unsuspecting, dug right in.

Sneaky, Darien. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

I didn't get sick right away. I probably scarfed down a good half dozen apples, but they took quite some time to work their way through my system. I don't know what they did to me-I probably don't want to know-but before my class was even close to ending, I was ready to hurl. By all reports, my face went completely white within just a few minutes of my returning to class, but even that wasn't enough warning. I'd immediately figured out something of what had happened, of course, and I was determined not to let Darien win. I wanted to fight my nausea, keep going just to spite him. I didn't make it, of course. The teacher soon noticed that I wasn't looking all that great, and he came over to me, asking me if I was feeling all right. I just nodded to him, not wanting him to send me to the nurse's office. He didn't look too convinced, though, and I probably didn't help my case when, just a second before he could get out of range, I keeled over and lost my lunch all over his brand-new, shiny loafers. The teacher, seeing what I had done, immediately started screeching like a little girl, and this made the entire class bust up with laughter. Even I was grinning a little at that, though I still felt too sick to really see the humor of the situation. I just excused myself, going rather meekly towards the nurse's station before the teacher could order me to go anyway.

I spent the remainder of that class with the nurse, avoiding her questions. I knew perfectly well that whatever was wrong with me probably wasn't serious, and I knew she couldn't do anything anyway. The churning of my stomach would go away on its own, I reasoned, because I still didn't think Darien would do anything permanent to me. Besides, I was too busy plotting my revenge to even think about ratting on him to the nurse. I had bigger issues on my mind right then, like trying to decide how I was going to get him back. My mom was watching me a little too closely right now, and I'd lost some of the freedom I'd had before I stranded myself at the school in freezing weather. I didn't see how I was going to get at Darien without her finding out and stopping me, but I also wasn't about to let this slide. Darien had it coming, after this, because nothing in the world could erase the memory of what I'd done over my poor teacher's shoes. Still, what could I do that would make him as embarrassed as I now was?

And then it hit me-the perfect idea. Something that would make Darien embarrassed without involving anyone else, something that he would never, ever forget: ethanol blue. It was something my cousin had told me about, back before she'd even finished college. Her boyfriend of nearly six months had taken her out one Valentine's Day, given her the most romantic evening she'd ever had. She'd been on cloud nine by the end of it, thinking that she'd finally found the one decent man on the planet, thinking that she just might be falling in love. Then, just as she had decided things couldn't be more perfect, the clod had leaned over, kissed her, and told her he was dumping her for her roommate. Now, my cousin was heartbroken, at first, but she'd also a lot like me, and she wasn't going to take that sitting down. She waited a few days, gave herself time to regain control of her emotions, and then went after him. She baked his favorite dessert-these little mint brownie thingies-and put ethanol blue in the frosting. She'd somehow talked him into eating them...and sat back and waited for them to take effect.

I still don't really know what the stuff is, but my cousin assured me that the chemical is pretty much harmless, and I was still too mad at Darien to really care even if she ended up being wrong. All it'll do, really-and I realize this is fairly disgusting, but so was what Darien had made me do to that poor teacher-is make urine turn blue. Nobody except Darien and I would ever know about it, but he'd still be incredibly embarrassed. I mean, who wouldn't be, in that situation? His embarrassment would only increase because he'd know I was responsible, for another thing, and he'd know that I knew what was happening to him. That was enough for me, because all I cared about was getting back at him. I didn't have to embarrass him in front of other people, so it didn't matter that he'd never tell a soul about what I'd done. In fact, aware as I was of the immaturity in what I was doing, I'd actually prefer it if he didn't ever tell anyone anything.

I'm not a stupid person. I was aware that Darien would never fall for the same tricks that I had, but I also knew the git would never take anything I offered him, especially when he was probably expecting me to try something in return for what he'd done. How was I going to pull this off, then? The dye my cousin so sweetly-okay, gleefully-provided for me had to be consumed to work, and I wasn't even going to bother trying to spike his food or drinks. As often and as hard as Darien watched me, he'd know if I tried something like that. I had only one choice, really, and that was to involve the two people Darien trusted most in the entire world: Mina and Raye. He'd used my friendship with his sisters to trick me, and it only made sense that I could reach him the same way. So I went to the twins, telling them everything. They started grinning even before I finished explaining what I wanted to do, immediately agreeing with my hasty, overly immature plan. They were a little irritated at Darien, I think, for using them to get at me like that, but their greatest motivation was probably nothing more than their love of messing with people's minds. Not that I was going to complain, of course, whatever the reason. Mina and Raye were the key to my little scheme, and I needed them.

I waited a few days before starting. Half of me wanted Darien to get comfortable, to think that maybe I hadn't realized who was at fault for my earlier illness and so didn't know enough to target him as he'd targeted me. The other half, like the twins, just enjoyed messing with him. Vindictive as I was when Darien was involved, there was something unbelievably satisfying in making him furious. Maybe it was just because I'd get so tired of having Darien mad at me, whether I'd done something wrong or not, that I took a perverse sort of pleasure in giving him an actual reason to hate me. In any case, I waited until Darien had left the house a day or two after my unfortunate interaction with my teacher's shoes, then slipped over to the twins'. We quickly made the brownies-and, as an added bonus, I learned that brownies were also Darien's favorite treat-mixing in the ethanol blue. Then, after covering them with plastic wrap, we forged a short note to make Darien think the brownies had come from his next door neighbor. We left the poisoned treats on the kitchen counter and snuck back upstairs to wait, trying very hard but completely without success not to laugh.

The twins and I had slipped upstairs to their bedroom, once we'd set everything out, because we hadn't wanted Darien to see me and get suspicious or anything. We should have realized that he'd guess the truth just as quickly as I'd figured out who was responsible for the caramel apple fiasco, but maybe we were too into the mischief to think ahead, because none of us ever predicted how badly Darien would react. He came home earlier than we'd expected, so we didn't have to wait long to see the results of our actions. We heard his car pull into the driveway, heard the front door slam. Darien moved around downstairs for a while-we hoped he was eating the brownies-and then the television came on. The girls and I sighed, exchanged impatient glances, and sat down to what we now realized would be a long wait. I didn't know how long we'd have to sit until the ethanol blue kicked in, for one thing, but even if it started working immediately, we'd still have to sit around and twiddle our thumbs until Darien actually went to the bathroom. I'd considered just going home and forgetting about it as the minutes continued to drift by without giving me anything in return for my efforts, but then I decided that I wouldn't be able to hear or see Darien's reaction if I did. Frankly, that would defeat the whole purpose for me, so I stayed.

Hindsight is an awful thing. Looking back after all these years, I can honestly say that I wish we hadn't done this to Darien. Maybe it's just because he's a guy and guys tend to take this kind of thing personally, but something about this prank ticked him off more than anything else I'd ever done to him. Even the time I'd packed the glove compartment of his car with shaving cream…or the time I'd pelted him with balloons filled with maple syrup rather than water…or the lemonade incident, come to that, hadn't been this bad. I still don't quite understand why Darien blew up so badly, especially since both of us had done much worse to each other in the past, but blow up he did.

Think Chenoble, or maybe Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We heard him yelp all the way through the floor. I don't think I've ever heard such a sound coming from a human being. There was shock in his cries, of course, but there was something more like fury in there, and I suddenly found myself wishing I was anywhere else. I actually glanced at the window, wondering if I could survive a drop from a second story. It'd be better, I thought as I listened to Darien's footsteps pounding up the stairs, to risk breaking my neck than to face Darien, because-let's face it, I should have thought of this sooner-he was going to kill me.