Madeleine Hart's phone buzzed in her pocket to signal that she had a text. This was only slightly unusual as she didn't have many people's notifications on, if someone desperately needed her they'd know to call her. She pulled her phone out assuming it was one of her older brothers sending her a freshâ„¢ meme, but to her surprise it was Clyde Donovan. Now this was definitely unusual, partially because Clyde rarely sends her a message directly, if he has something to say to her he wasn't afraid to say it in the group chat, but also because Clyde was sat directly opposite her so whatever he wanted to say to her he really didn't want to say in front of the other guys.

Clyde: dude Kenny has been staring at the back of ur head for the past 10 minutes

Maddie: probably zoning out tbh, sometimes when you look at his eyes its like you can hear elevator music

Clyde: stare into his eyes much? Lol

Maddie: shut up asshole

Clyde: nah but he's done it almsot every lunch for the past 4 weeks

Clyde: *almsot

Clyde: FUCK *almost

Maddie: like I said bro, elevator music

Clyde: im gonna tell u to come watch a video + u can see for yourself

Clyde: when i nudge u look up

"Mads come look at this." Clyde laughed, motioning for her to go over to his side of the lunch table. The boy was a surprisingly good actor.

"I swear if it's another dick pic I'm going to slap you into next week." She played along, getting up to join him.

"Another?" Craig snorted, sounding only slightly surprised. He didn't pry any further when neither of them answered and went back to his conversation with Token, Tweek, and Jimmy.

Maddie looked down at Clyde's video, and to his credit there was a montage of cats falling off of walls. When Clyde nudged her she looked away from the phone.

"Come on! You know I hate videos like that! Those poor cats!" This was completely truthful so it wasn't difficult to fake at all. She looked up and away from the phone, her eyes darting around until they met Kenny's across the lunchroom. Like Clyde said, he was staring directly at her and rather than seeming embarrassed to have been caught, he smirked. Maddie quickly averted her eyes and went back to her seat, soon tuning back into the conversation between the other boys which appeared to be a debate on who's the most 'buff'.

Madeleine moved to South Park from New York when she was 13. At first she was determined to not make any friends, she hated the town and she hated the people in it. After 2 weeks she warmed up to Token, he seemed like the most grounded person compared to the insanity that seemed to follow everyone else in her class. Another week later they found themselves 'dating' to put it loosely. They never really considered themselves together, it was more that everyone else expected them to be a couple as at 13 it was unheard of for a boy and girl to be friends without them also secretly frenching behind the bleachers. Maddie was soon integrated into what was known as "Craig's Gang" which she was delighted to find a group of people who were also fairly 'normal' barring Tweek's caffeine addiction, Craig's obsessive use of his middle finger, and Clyde's general vanity. Token and Maddie 'broke up' after a couple of weeks of 'dating' though they continued to be as close friends as ever and her place in the group remained. Of course rumours went around that she was screwing all of the boys but when Tweek and Craig came out as a couple people focused more on them and Maddie blissfully slipped into a life of irrelevancy. However, Kenny was threatening that irrelevancy by staring at her. If what Clyde had said was true and he'd been staring for days, maybe even weeks, his obnoxious group of assheads were bound to pick up on it.

The bell rang to signal that they had 5 minutes to get to next period, which for Maddie was Science, and the lunchroom quickly dispersed.

"Later losers." Maddie gave her group of friends a short salut goodbye as she picked up her bag and left. She loved Science but sadly none of her friends were in the class with her and she was stuck sat next to Butters, who despite being an absolute little sweetheart, was a primary target for Cartman's schemes and thus put Maddie at the risk of being caught up in one. Bless the boy though, he was still nothing but nice to her.

Madeleine got her books out of her bag and popped them down on the desk as she shuffled into her seat, trying her best to tune out whatever Butters was saying to her. As soon as their teacher Professor Gardener walked in a hush fell across the classroom. Professor Gardener was known for being particularly strict, especially when it came to noise in his classroom. Not even Cartman dared to talk much.

Maddie scribbled down notes on photosynthesis, only half paying attention as she was more excited about the fact that it was Friday and she had no plans for the weekend which meant that she got to play video games alone for hours on end.

"Don't get all excited, I'm going to be assigning your partners for this project." Suddenly Maddie wished she had been paying more attention. The word 'project' was daunting enough, but 'partners'? That was truly terrifying. For once, she hoped to be paired with Butters, she could stand Butters if they were working in solitude. Groans echoed around the class as the Professor wrote up the names of each pair and which plant they were given to study for the following weeks. Her heart paused as Butters was paired with Kyle Broflovski and she desperately scanned the class for anyone else who would be vaguely tolerable. Stan Marsh was out of the question as his girlfriend Wendy was jealous at another girl looking at him, let alone spending a long period of time raising a plant with him. Eric Cartman was out of the question for obvious reasons. She finally settled on Annie Knitts being the next best partner, she was a quiet girl yet popular enough to not be picked on.

Maddie watched as her name was written up on the board and held her breath as her partners name was written up next to it.

Kenneth McCormick.

Fuck.