“You can’t save him,” Theo said flatly, and she heard the tone of her voice slipping, no longer straining to sound supportive, pretty sure she was at least as fed up with Keith Barry as anyone could be.

“And if you guys think you can, he’ll wind up dragging you and Mort down in flames with him.”

And then neither of them said anything else for a moment. Through the closed door, they could hear Keith tuning, rambling discord, stray chords segueing cruelly into a snatch of something that might have been funked-up B. B. King or Muddy Waters. And then the riff collapsed in a sudden, tooth-jarring twang and feedback whine, and Keith, cursing the broken string.

“What an asshole,” Daria muttered, releasing a stingy, strangled sound that might have been meant for a laugh, and Theo flinched, afraid for a moment that Daria might cry after all. Instead, she leaned back against the toilet tank and sighed loudly, inverted V of dark water and ruststreaky porcelain showing between her denim thighs.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Theo,” she said, soft as a whisper. “I mean, I never thought it was gonna be the fucking Partridge Family, you know, but I also never figured it was gonna be like this.”

There was a hesitant, soft rap at the door, just once, as if whoever it was had thought better of it at the last minute, and then Mort, sounding cautious and impatient at the same time, said, “Daria? We’re ready whenever you are.”

“C’mon, girl,” Theo said. “Nothing else is gonna make you feel any better.” And she knew at least that much wasn’t bullshit, had been through this scene enough times, scenes enough like it, to know that the only way back up for Daria was work, her music or just the coffeehouse thing she’d taken to keep the bills paid. Work that absorbed her and left absolutely no room for distraction, no room for anything but itself, and always ended in merciful exhaustion.