A/N: A little prequel to "Three Graduations and A Wedding" that spans from the time Madison found out about the switch to her very rare encounters with Mac, along with her thoughts on both sets of parents. I should have the first chapter of "A Multitude Of Casualties" which will be my AU season three that goes along with my two one shots "The Moment It All Changed" and "Airplanes" up by soon as well! Hopefully within the week!
And of course, I don't own these characters.
Discovery
"Shelly, I told you I have to find my passport, I'll be at your house at six, I swear" I told my best friend of many years (later I'd discover that she wasn't what you'd call a 'real' friend, just another 09er that wanted the right friends to boost her popularity). It was spring break of freshmen year, my parents were off at some charity event in New York for the week, Lauren was staying with our grandparents in Las Vegas, so I had the entire house to myself.
Dick had suggested I blow off my trip to Mexico and spend the week having a never ending party and blowing him. I did end up staying home, but not for those reasons.
After hanging up the phone I looked through my desk, still trying to find the passport which I hadn't seen since the past summer when I had gone to Paris with my grandparents. Emptying pretty much everything onto the ground I huffed, realizing it wasn't there. My next stop was my father's study, which I wasn't supposed to go in but it wasn't as if I ever paid attention to anything they told me to do anyways. Stomping down the stairs before bouncing through the doors of the study; I went for the desk first, opening the top drawer and finding that it wasn't there, before noticing that there was a lock on one of them. Curious, I took a bobby pin from my hair and attempted to pick the lock. It took about twenty minutes and five bobby pins but I finally got it open (the Veronica Mars I'd come to dislike years later may have been impressed even).
Most of the files were pretty boring, some financial stuff I didn't really care about, but it was a file labeled 'MacKenzie' that caught my attention. The name sound vaguely familiar, I just didn't know why. As soon as I looked inside my heart nearly stopped. It was papers from a lawsuit from Neptune General. I always thought that my parents looked at me differently, but now I understood why; because I wasn't theirs at all. As I kept reading I didn't notice the tears falling down my face, I didn't care, all I knew that everything that I had in my life wasn't really mine. I wasn't anyone anymore.
My breakdown lasted for at least an hour when I got a call from Shelly asking where I was. Trying to sound convincing I told her I wasn't feeling so great, and that the trip would probably only make whatever I had worse. She bought it, and told me that instead she'd just take Pam. She didn't seem fazed or worried one bit, but it didn't really surprise me. Our friendship was made up of shopping, gossiping and expensive trips. The real stuff was never important, but as I put the papers back in the same exact spot they'd been in I realized that nothing seemed real anyways.
I wasn't Madison Sinclair, at least I wasn't supposed to be, I was Cindy MacKenzie, whoever the hell that was.
I spent most of the next week crying, no one even called when they didn't hear from me. No one cared, it made me wonder if Cindy MacKenzie had people in her life that actually gave a fuck about her. I looked her up in the school yearbook from a year before, she was pretty in that nerdy kind of way. Still, I wanted to know more about her, what her life was like, who got the better end of the switch.
I spotted her sitting alone after spring break was over; she was a total freak show. Baggy cargo pants, converse, a tee shirt from a band I'd never even heard of, and purple streaks through her hair. Still, she seemed completely comfortable in her own skin, her style alone made it clear that she didn't care what anyone thought of her. She was just herself.
I kept up with her over the years, saw her with the few friends that she had; she wasn't some rich entitled bitch like my friends and I, she didn't have a lot of money, she drove a car that was basically falling apart but in spite of all of that she seemed happy. That made me incredibly jealous.
When she started hanging out with Veronica Mars I couldn't believe it. She seemed so innocent, yet she was always hanging out with that skank and her basketball playing lapdog.
The first time we spoke was my birthday, I was a bitch of course, but she did crash my party with Veronica, everyone knew how much I hated her. I still don't know why I hate her so much, I just turned on her when everyone else did. It's not like we were ever close, just hung in the same clique, but still.. I never thought twice about turning my back on her. Then I think I became jealous of her strength, something that I never had.
The next day she came back over to get her purse, I saw the look in my mother's eyes. The love she had towards the daughter she didn't even know, it was more love that she'd ever given me in my life. It was obvious that she wished she'd gotten the right daughter, the smart one, the one who cared about school more than shoes and diamonds. It killed me to watch them together, a mother and a daughter who would never know each other. Then there was me, the one that that threw cash and new cars at so they didn't have to spend time with me.
The second time we ever spoke was when she started dating Cassidy, Dick and I had drunkenly hooked up after a party the night before. When I woke up I could hear Cassidy talking and a female giggle. It was her; the girl who was living my life.
"Have a nice night Madison?" Cassidy had questioned as I tried to sneak past him, a sadistic little smirk on his face. I didn't think about it til after graduation, but I had always noticed something a little off about the brother of my ex-boyfriend.
"Fuck off Beav" I spat, holding my heels in my hands.
"His name is Cassidy" Mac told me, defending her man, I just rolled my eyes, laughing bitterly at the couple on the couch playing video games.
"Yeah whatever, it's easy to tell you're both still virgins.. Probably all sorts of pent up geek sex tension, huh?" With that I flipped my hair and walked right past him and out the door. In reality I wished I knew what it was like for a guy to care about something besides my money and bra size, I'd never tell her that though.
She'd never know how lucky she was and that killed me, she had a family that loved her even though they knew she wasn't biologically theirs. My family could barely look at me for that same reason, though neither of our parents knew that we knew the truth. It was probably best at the time, I knew that even if I had gone to the right family I'd still be me, superficial, shallow, bitchy and greedy. Mac was better than that, she was a good person. As horrible as I knew that I was, I know that she deserved the life she was given. The parents who chose to love her regardless of what a DNA test might prove.
I'll still never admit that, but as much as I envied her, I knew that she'd do things to help the world; something that I knew I wouldn't.
A/N: As always, review!