Daria

Try as I may, and I have tried, I can't properly remember the first time I met "the girl who looks like Daria."

It's a fuzzy combination of stills and soundbites, and facts I know that I've slotted in to give the memory substance. I know we must have met sometime in September 1997. We must have met in Ms Sink's Novel Approach class (6th Period!), because it was the only class we shared. Surprisingly, there weren't that many girls in the class, and certainly not that many 8th grade girls, so we must have started hanging out fairly early on in the school year.

That's what I know.

I remember Cassie Harris quite clearly, because our father's worked at the same place. She came up to me very early in the year... maybe the first day... and introduced herself. Our dad's work together, she said. I've just moved here for Rodondo Beach.

I liked Cassie right away... clearly, since I actually remember this first impression. We started talking. She wanted to be a journalist, and she loved the 1940s, and she liked to read. Obviously.

Ms Sink's class was the greatest invention ever. I didn't actually want to be in it, but I'd been sick when the year 8 electives were chosen (after having an emergency apendectomy), so my mother chose them for me. I was a little disappointed to be in novel approach.

Turns out it was one of the greatest mistakes fathomable. The concept of the class was simple. We would arrive, we would sit, we would take out a book and we would read. Occasionally, she would read to us. But mainly, we just read our own books. If we were there, and we read lots, we got an A.

After not-so-long in Ms Sink's class, I invited Cassie for a sleepover. She said "let's invite Megan too". So we did.

Megan was very tall at that point. She's still tall, but back then, the rest of the tall girls hadn't caught up. She had glasses and very dark brown hair. It wasn't naturally that colour, but I thought it was for the longest time. She had boots. The whole effect was slightly anti-social in the coolest of ways... to the point that many of the other kids called her Daria.

She was ahead of her years.