A/N: This is my story of why Seth is different from everyone else in Newport. I never really understood why he was always considered weird and how he disliked everyone around him. I mean, he grew up with them; it was all he knew, so why isn't he just like another Luke or something? I know he's Jewish and his dad is from the Bronx or whatever but I don't think that's enough incentive for him. This is my theory, it could have happened.
Life Sentence
She was a mess, that's all she was. She was full of mischief and high-jinks, with bouncy hair and a long, echoing laugh. Just a mess.
Her name was Madeline Guest and she wore eye-liner and platform shoes to Temple and white sundresses to rock concerts. She liked to do the opposite to what everyone else did, she said hello when you said goodbye, she laughed her way through Titanic while everyone else cried. She said as soon as she realised she was left-handed while all of Newport seemed to be right, it opened up a world of opportunities.
She was Jewish, just like him. In fact, beside him and his dad, she was the only other Jewish person he knew. Her name wasn't Jewish. Guest. Madeline Guest. It was her father's name, and he was Protestant. But her mother was Jewish, and the faith always got carried over by the mother. So Madeline was Jewish. She went to Temple with her mother every other week; it was where he met her.
It was his first time ever in a Jewish temple. He was nine years old. His father took him, "so you can tell Nana you have been at least once" and he found it to be the oddest thing in the world. Religion had never played a big part in his life, or anyone he really knew. He had never known Marissa Cooper to go to church.
"Are you coming Mommy?" He asked while she straightened his white shirt and stood in their front door way.
"No Seth, people like me don't go to Temple."
"So what people do?"
He decided on the car trip over to Temple that he didn't want to be Jewish anymore. He knew that Mommy wasn't allowed to celebrate Hanukkah and he was scared to go to new places without her. He wanted her to come to Temple with him, so if the people were too rude or the place too strange, he could hide behind her and she would do that "Mommy thing" and protect him. And if being Jewish meant going to a place where Mommy wasn't allowed to come and do her thing, then he suddenly had brand new faith in the idea of this "Jesus guy".
The building, the Temple, like all things Newport was new and fresh but, unlike Newport, was small and let off a different sort of air. And the people kind of looked liked him too. Dark hair and dark eyes. Loud laughs and voluminous voices. Like him.
Madeline sat two rows in front of him. He saw her as soon he sat down. She was wearing a large, elaborate straw hat, with fake pearls and ribbons falling off it, trailing down her back. It looked slightly ridiculous and hand-made and interested him immediately.
They got eye-contact halfway during talks of Yahweh and she turned and rolled her eyes at him and faked a huge, big yawn. He burst out laughing, clutching his stomach and everyone just stared. His father had to take him outside and they sat on the cool, slightly damp grass, while his father scolded him with a smile on his face.
When Temple finally finished, and it seemed to take awhile, the girl in the strange hat breezed straight past him without a word. But when she turned up at his school the following week, it was silently known that a 'bond' had been made, and she became his partner in science and drama.
"I'm Madeline," she haughtily said, and she seemed to be challenging him. She said it with one eye brow raised and tapped her foot with each syllable of the word, "I'm Mad-TAP-e-TAP-line".
"I'm Seth," he replied, and mirrored her image, raising one eyebrow and tapping his foot.
She laughed, loudly and her shoulders shook and her hair, a wild, long mess of brown wavy hair that had been curled and teased and straightened and crimped all in different sections, fell about in her face.
She was tall and liked to wear make-up on the cloudy days and wore her face scrubbed clean on the sunny ones. She was only nine, but she always wore make-up on the cloudy days.
They became friends instantly, as close as nine years old could be.
"We're Jewish Seth. That makes us special because we're different. We're no Marissa Cooper."
He didn't understand what she had against Marissa. Marissa was alright. He didn't speak to her much and he didn't really want to. But Mommy loved her and she seemed to like her daddy. So Marissa had to be alright.
Madeline didn't understand his logic. Or chose not to.
They sat up the back of all their classes now. He liked the change. He was part of the wallpaper before, an indent in the wood. Now he and Madeline were swinging in their chairs, cackling at that Luke guy, and he could tell people were weirded out that Seth Cohen actually had a voice.
"Ohhhh Coooh-en, who's your girlfriend?" Summer Roberts voice called down the halls to him.
His parents didn't like Madeline. She would come over to his house after school and they'd play warriors games and crash through the house and breaks windows when she tried to teach him baseball indoors.
"Your mother doesn't like me," Madeline sang to him always and he always vehemently protested. He liked her so how could his mother not?
She was crazy, he'd give her that. She lived in a giant house two streets away from him. Her father was a movie producer who hated L.A. so much he refused to live there and settled for Newport instead, commuting to L.A. once a week. She had four sisters, two younger and two older.
"Smack bam in the middle. That makes me different Seth. Middle children are always different."
Her mother was a tall, "Jewish princess", as his dad described her. "A Jewish bitch," Madeline said. "She's turned all Californian," Madeline whispered melodramatically. "So's Dad. Have they forgotten that we're from New York? Don't they understand that people from New York are different?"
Madeline's whole life revolved around being different and doing the opposite of what everyone else did.
"I'm perfectly ordinary, in every way," she told him on her twelfth birthday, three years of friendship full. "I'm not good in sport or music or writing or art. So I have be different, I have to dress differently, speak differently, act differently. Otherwise, how is anyone on this entire earth ever going to remember me?"
Life with Madeline was fast and she changed him, she changed him all the time.
"There is a secret I must share and it will affect you forever," she cried to him dramatically. "Seth Cohen, know this," and she leaned forward, her crazy hair falling in her face and tickling his nose. "There is more music than just the stuff on the charts. Step away from the N'SYNC. Move away from the Backstreet Boys. Seth Cohen, I am introducing you to your music revolution."
She was too mature and old and wild and insane for a twelve year old and she spent her weekends going to Rolling Stone concerts with her dad.
"God my dad annoys me. He tries to act all chummy with me, all the time. Don't your parents ever just annoy so much you want to hit them?"
But he got along with his dad and he loved his mom. So he didn't really understand.
"It's the same with Marissa Cooper. She's so skinny and fake and ugh, I hate her!"
He was used to outlandish comments from her by now but he still didn't understand what she had against Marissa Cooper. Especially since she liked Summer.
"Summer's alright. She's got spunk. She's a bitch, but she's a brave one, don't you think Seth? People will remember her. She's different."
She liked to tease him about Summer. She knew he liked her.
"Do you think a boy will ever like me the way you like Summer?"
She was brilliant, far brilliant than anyone he had ever known. In their talks about comic books she liked to sneak in political titbits and tried to broaden his horizon.
"I don't like you hanging around with that girl," his mother said to him. "She's rude. She swears. She wears too much make-up."
"Only on the cloudy days."
"Have you seen what she wears sometimes? I didn't know twelve years old could dress, dress, slutty," spluttered his mother. "Then sometime she dresses like an angel. Then sometimes like a gothic or something. It's like she's got spilt personalities. I'm worried about her. Does she have a good home life Seth?"
She played tennis with her oldest sister every Saturday at five-thirty a.m., summer, autumn, winter and spring.
"It's rest of the world's fault that they don't notice you Seth. You're the most special person I've ever met. You're like Da Vinci. You're fascinating, you're brilliant. One day, every single person in Newport is going to know your name."
She had a fascination with Leonardo Da Vinci.
"The most different, interesting person in history. He's my role model. I'm going to be as memorable as him."
They watched a lot of movies together. She was in love with Christopher Guest and between them; they had seen This is Spinal Tap twenty-one times.
"We share the same name so we already have a connection. And he's not like every other bimbo comedian in Hollywood. He doesn't care if his films make box-office records or whatever. He just wants to make his small little films and be funny. I respect that. My father should produce films like Mr Guest's."
She made him feel special and made him believe that one day Summer would do the same.
Grade Seven, the last ever year he spent with Madeline was the best year he ever had. His father got a promotion and walked around with a smile on his face. His mother finally started to realise that Madeline was not going away and stopped telling him that she didn't like him. Madeline stopped bitching about Marissa to him, sensing it was weird subject for him.
They christened the start of Grade Seven by having a sleep out on her tennis court together and singing Oasis songs together.
"Oasis used to be on the charts, but they're alright. I like them," he told Madeline sleepily.
"They're excluded from the Britney Spears trap."
They were still outcasts, they were always outcasts. The school hadn't changed, and neither had the people. Except now they were thirteen.
"A new beginning," he told Madeline at lunch.
He was acting a bit like her at times.
People thought she was weird, people would always think she was weird.
"My mom's a bitch, don't you think Seth? Fancy calling me Madeline like I'm French or something. It's like she's taunting me or something. You'll never be as good as the French. You'll always be little Jewish Madeline."
Her mom loved the French.
"So dignified," Mrs Guest told Seth the first time he ever met her, while she danced in their kitchen and made them lunch. And Seth didn't think she seemed like a bitch. She was always nice to him.
"I'm the only one with a French name. My sisters' name, ha! Kate, Lisa, Sarah, Mary. Plain, plain, plain, plain as Jane. My mother hates me."
"Maybe she thought you were the only one who could carry it off, maybe she thought you were like the French. You know, special." Seth's mother told Madeline, while she brushed Seth's hair.
"Mrs Cohen, I'd like to think that was true."
His mom rolled her eyes at him.
Madeline sure did think that life was hard done by her sometimes. She seemed to think that the problem with being different meant that no one else around her appreciated her uniqueness.
"We're all in gutters but I'm staring at the stars," she told him quietly. "Why can't someone look at me and think, hey, she's pretty much the coolest person I've ever met. Why do people look at Marissa Cooper and think that, when there's really nothing special about her at all? Seth, how come no one ever notices me?"
She seemed to hate the isolation from the rest of their grade more than him. She wanted to be different but she wanted to be noticed for her difference and appreciated. People noticed her difference then passed her off to be a geek and ignored her.
"Always trying to bring us Jews down, eh Seth?"
She wore her Jew-ness like a medal around her neck. Yet he doubted she believed in God. She stopped going to Temple in fifth grade.
"There's nothing special there."
He loved her terribly and she loved him terribly back. They were best mates, she was just a mess of feelings and hair and loud laughs and confused opinions and leaned on him for support.
"You and me, we're like this," and she twisted her index finger and middle finger together to demonstrate how close they were. "We're not like Summer and Marissa Cooper. There's depth behind our friendship."
She always said Marissa Cooper and never just Marissa. And somewhere over the year, she started to not like Summer either.
"She's changed Seth. She just tramples over people now. She's just a bitch to you. And not like the bitch she was before. She's lost something Seth. She's different. And not in the good way. I'm worried about her."
It echoed the conversation he had with his mother about Madeline.
Thirteen was hard. Madeline was getting hard to put up with. She was getting emotional, too depressed, too sadden by everything. She was especially saddened by Summer.
"She's lost something Seth," was all she kept saying.
But he kept putting up with her because he loved her. She was his best and only friend.
"I'm a lefty, so that makes me different," she announced in English class one day. "Da Vinci was a lefty."
It was followed by laughter, including Madeline and Seth. They always joined in when other kids laughed at them. It made the others stop laughing pretty quickly.
"You're my best friend Madeline. We're like this," and he twisted his index finger and middle finger together, just she had done once before.
"You're Seth Cohen. Seth Cohen. SETH COHEN. The whole world's gonna know your name."
She truly was the most different person he had ever met or ever known or will ever remember. And she knew it.
And when she died that year, that year of Grade Seven and being thirteen and having a new beginning, she died the most memorable person in his life. And she knew it.
"Blood is the most deepest of colours," she told him on the night they slept on her tennis courts.
Blood mixed with bath water was slightly paler, diluted, mixing and making swirling patterns around her.
Summer came up to him, her eyes dark, wet and swollen.
"I'm sorry your friend killed herself," she told him.
He stared at his hands and didn't really know what to say.
"She liked you," he told Summer.
And he didn't really speak to Summer for a long time. And he didn't speak to Marissa either. Because Madeline was gone but he decided he could carry on her legacy of not liking Marissa Cooper for her. And he decided keep her legacy of being different too. Never again would he act like a Newport person no more. Never again. Now, he was going to be different. He was going to keep being Jewish for her too, even though he had never really cared before. He was Jewish and "that makes us special because we're different Seth".
And the school asked him to get up and say a speech about her in assembly.
"The grade's mourning," the principle told him. "People miss her. They knew you were close to her. They'll relate to you if you say something."
People weren't missing her. They weren't remembering her. They were going to remember her death, the girl who killed herself in Grade Seven. But they wouldn't remember her.
He got up at the podium and stared at the crowd. He only wanted to say one thing.
"Me and Madeline," he began, "Me and Madeline…we're like this." And he twisted his index finger around his middle finger.
"Or should I say were."
She'd like it that he's with Summer now.
A/N: Title comes from the Epicure song of the same name. I guess I'm trying to say that Madeline almost formed Seth's life sentence for him, with the way he acts and everything; you know, an outcast in Newport. She was too influential. Does that make sense?