Thanks for the follows and favourites and review so far. It continues to write itself. It's a long time since I've felt that a character I've written has quite such a story to be told.
Bender's opinion mattered even more as they came up to a dead end barely an hour later. Madison's heart rate rose as they realised their illicit foray threw the hallways for dope of all things was in grave danger of being discovered. She could only imagine how many more Saturdays she'd lose for this.
'Shit!' Andrew spoke for all of them but with an added tinge of realising he'd caused this; it had been his idea to cut through the activities' hall.
'Great idea Jerk Off.'
'Fuck you!'
Madison inwardly groaned as it seemed Bender and Andrew were going to lock horns again.
Then Claire spoke. 'Fuck you! Why didn't you listen to John?' It was John now, Madison noted, unsure when the Princess had condescended to learn the Criminal's name. She was also unsure when she'd started caring; she thought she'd given up noticing what Claire Standish did years ago, and she wasn't aware she'd ever started caring what John Bender did. This was something new and she didn't much like it.
Brian summed up yet more of their feelings. 'We're dead.'
A brief pause. Then, 'No. Just me.'
Brian frowned. 'What do you mean?'
'Get back to the library. Keep your unit on this!' With that, Bender thrust his bag of dope down Brian's trousers, before turning and running away, singing loudly.
'What is he…?' Claire asked.
'He's saving us,' Madison said, surprising even herself by speaking. It was the first exchange she and Claire had had, even if it couldn't really be called a conversation. Then, frustrated by everybody's inaction, she added, 'Well, come on. No point us all getting fried.'
Bender's little trick worked. By the time he was pushed back into the library by Vernon, they were all seated again, Madison even having had time to grab another book on the way past. The vice-principal trotted out all of the usual insults and jibes at the boy's expense as he harassed him out of the door. Bender had regained his swagger in the face of the enemy and only left when he was good and ready. Madison had to admire that.
So now here they were, and it seemed it took Bender's absence for them all to realise that he had been the only thing which had glued them together. It was like they'd only just walked into the detention and hadn't already spent almost six hours together. Bender was all they'd had in common.
'So… so are you really doing that project?' Madison jerked herself back into the room as Brian turned around to ask her a question. So random a question was it that she was unable to respond until he added, 'The literature one.'
Stifling a smile, and wondering if that had been bothering him all day, she replied, 'Yeah. Why?'
'Oh, nothing.' He turned away again.
Andrew perched himself on his desk and turned his attention towards her. 'So you like English, huh?'
'Yeah.' Madison nodded and reflected upon how dull this conversation was. 'You?'
He shrugged. 'Nah. Not my thing.'
Madison nodded again as if she understood, which she didn't at all. She wondered when Claire would deign to speak to her, and dreaded it. There was nothing quite like the awkward conversation of former best friends.
Then the ceiling fell in and Bender came strolling down the stairs. In answer to their disbelieving stares he said, 'I forgot my pencil.'
And like that, they were a strange team again, protecting him from Vernon's latest outburst, even as Claire took exception to how the renegade looked up her skirt in the process. Madison reluctantly chalked up another reason for being jealous of the red-head: her disrespectful comments to the vice-principal were met only with idle threats. In comparison, Madison's own clutch of detentions seemed even more unfair.
She did, however, draw the line at Bender's next timetabled activity as he rescued his dope from Brian's underwear and everybody, even Andrew, practically fawned over him in order to share in the fun. When they all peeled off, Madison stayed where she was. It seemed her invisibility cloak was in full force again as nobody even asked if she was coming. It seemed they forgot about her instantly as soon as they took their first drag.
She spent the next half hour staring at the same page in her new book. She'd followed the advice in the back of her previous book that if she'd enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird she might like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, yet so far she was finding it much harder going. The laughter from elsewhere in the room wasn't helping, but ordinarily she could read anywhere, any time; noise wasn't usually a problem for her.
Nor was being left out normally an issue. Truth be told, she was used to it. In class, group projects were her worst nightmare as she was always forced to buddy up with somebody equally as unpopular as she was, somebody who usually seemed surprised she was even in their class. Her lab partner in chemistry had been calling her Marilyn for the past six months. Being overlooked was an everyday occurrence and she sometimes even encouraged it. It was definitely preferable to being acknowledged by Vernon. She didn't mind.
'Hey Twinkie.' She turned around so quickly she almost gave herself whiplash. Bender smirked as if he knew. 'You'll get eye strain.'
There was no following invitation, no request that she join them. Yet up she got and headed towards where they were all now slumped, the dope comedown beginning. Considering she hadn't minded being left out, she was surprised at how pleased she was to be included.
She arrived just as Andrew was asking, 'What would I do for a million bucks? Well, I guess I'd do as little as I had to.'
'That's boring,' Claire remarked, and Madison had to agree, though she was unsurprised by his guarded answer.
'Well, how am I supposed to answer?'
'The idea is to like search your mind for the absolute limit. Like, uh, would you drive to school naked?' It was slightly more adventurous than Madison would have expected from the Princess but one glance at Bender showed he was smirking at the tameness.
Andrew laughed. 'Um, would I have to get out of the car?'
'Of course.'
'In the spring or winter?'
'It doesn't matter,' Claire decided, before realising it probably did, and conceding, 'spring.'
'In front of the school or in the back of school?'
Madison refrained from urging the jock to live a little. Mind you, he had a status to uphold. If he turned up naked, people would notice.
'Either one.'
'Yes,' Andrew finally gave his answer.
'I'd do that!' Everybody jumped as Allison, the as-yet almost complete silent sixth detainee spoke. 'I'll do anything sexual,' she went on. 'I don't need a million dollars to do it either.'
The three guys remained silent, staring at her. Madison glanced at Claire who looked annoyed at having another female to compete with; Madison herself didn't seem to count so far. It was a familiar enough situation.
'You're lying,' the red-head declared.
'I already have,' Allison persisted. 'I've done just about everything there is except a few things that are illegal.' Way to blow their minds, Madison thought as she looked at the guys. 'I'm a nymphomaniac!'
'Lie.' Claire rolled her eyes.
Brian's complete innocence was almost charming to behold. 'Are your parents aware of this?'
'The only person I told was my shrink.'
'And what'd he do when you told him?' Andrew asked.
'He nailed me.'
'Very nice,' Claire remarked, looking disgusted.
'I don't think that from a legal standpoint what he did can be construed as rape since I paid him,' Allison mused aloud, and Madison realised she was enjoying this. The dark-haired girl had been even more overlooked than she had been today and was now basking in everybody's attention.
'He's an adult!' Claire exclaimed.
'Yeah. He's married too.'
Claire pulled a face of distaste. 'Do you have any idea how completely gross that is?'
'Well, the first few times…'
'First few times? You mean he did it more than once?'
'Sure.'
'Are you crazy?'
Brian spoke, destroying what had been a complete two-hander for the last few minutes. 'Obviously she's crazy if she's screwing her shrink.' It was the first truly funny thing he'd said all day and Madison smiled. Finally he was putting those brains to good use.
Allison wasn't willing to let go of the limelight just yet though. 'Have you ever done it?' she asked Claire, a wicked grin on her face, bringing the conversation back to where it had been hours ago. Madison felt Bender shift ever so slightly, becoming more interested. She couldn't deny it, she was interested too. The last time she and Claire had spoken much, sex had been simply a vague word on the edges of their consciousness. This was certainly not a situation she'd ever imagined.
'I don't even have a psychiatrist.' Smooth, Claire. Smooth, Madison thought, surprising herself by how bitter the voice in her head sounded. She thought she'd buried all of her resentment away long ago.
'Have you ever done it with a normal person?'
'Now, didn't we already cover this?' the Princess said carelessly.
'You never answered the question.' Bender fixed her with a curious gaze.
'Look, I'm not going to discuss my private life with total strangers.' Her eyes briefly glanced off of Madison's and she looked away.
'It's kind of a double-edged sword, isn't it?' Allison pressed on.
'A what?'
'Well, if you say you haven't… you're a prude. If you say you have, you're a slut. It's a trap. You want to but you can't but when you do, you wish you didn't, right?'
'Wrong.' Claire rolled her eyes and then sidestepped the whole conversation neatly. 'Anyway, what about her?' Suddenly all eyes were turned towards Madison as Claire pointed at her, keen to direct attention away from herself. 'You're not asking her.'
'Me?' The word came out as a squeak. Privately she could think of several other words to use, but somehow this was what she'd expected. Thinking back, Claire had always been good at deflecting unwanted attention onto someone else, even her best friend if necessary. You didn't get to be social royalty without having an excellent PR strategy.
'So it's not alright for you to discuss your private life with total strangers but it is okay for her?' Andrew said, unwilling to drop his lance just yet. 'Come on, Claire.'
'I'm just asking!' Claire raised her eyebrows at Madison. 'Did you ever do it?'
Madison looked around, uncomfortable being under everybody's scrutiny. What she'd really like to do was to call Claire out on her unfairness and general bitchfaceness. She wondered if the Princess was really interested, whether she still remembered enough of their giggled conversations to make this less an interrogation and more general curiosity. A pain she hadn't felt for years twisted inside of her; this wasn't a conversation they could have imagined having back then. This was the sort of information Claire would once have known about her. Finally, she responded, largely because Bender's attention was suddenly on her rather than the red-head. Perhaps they weren't so different after all.
'Yeah, I did it.' She glanced at the other's reactions. Brian, eyes wide, was fascinated by this entire subject, whilst she saw Andrew's opinion of her alter ever so slightly in his eyes; it seemed mainly positive. Allison, still enjoying the chaos she was causing, was watching her intently whilst Bender… his face was unreadable. And Claire stared back at her, eyes hard, as though she were angry for Madison for her answer. Like it was a competition, Madison thought. Two could easily play at that game
Pressing on, giving away far more than she usually did and not knowing why she was giving in to such pettiness, she said, 'It was one time, with my next door neighbour. He wasn't, like, an adult or anything. He was a kid, same as me.' God, it was ages since she'd even thought about Chris. To think he should be coming up in conversation today.
'I bet that wasn't awkward at all,' Andrew remarked. 'Afterwards I mean.'
She shrugged. 'He moved away. Neighbours don't tend to stay around long when you live on a trailer park.' Funny that it was this, rather than the admission of sexual activity, which made them all look surprised, even Bender. Madison had always had a feeling that she had a neon sign pointing at her announcing 'trailer trash', albeit one which everybody ignored out of politeness. Now it seemed apparent that it was just another thing about her that nobody had noticed. Claire, she noticed, had fallen ominously silent.
'A trailer park?' Brian repeated, as though she'd said she lived in Africa and commuted to Illinois every day. Bender's vision of the nerd's home life came back to her and only seemed more accurate.
'Yeah.' She gave a small giggle at their close to horrified looks. Apparently being beaten up by your dad was marginally more normal than living in a caravan. Wanting to explain a little further, she said, 'My dad walked out on us a few years ago. My mom couldn't afford the rent on her own and the guy who owns the trailer park is a sort of friend of hers.' It was only then that she realised she'd been speaking mainly to Claire, as though this was a private conversation between the two of them, one long overdue. It was the conversation they hadn't had when they were in seventh grade and life had become so difficult that they'd stopped speaking. Perhaps this was the moment it all changed.
'You did it in a trailer?'
You bitch. She looked at Claire incredulously, unable to believe that this was how the conversation was going to end. 'That's the most important part to you?' Momentarily almost choking on a sob which crept up on, she shook her head and said, 'For the record, no. It's only got two rooms. I share with my mom.' So fuck you.
'God, Cherry, for a virgin you're pretty sex-obsessed,' Bender groaned, and Madison retreated back into silence, privately agreeing with him.
'I'm not sex-obsessed!'
'Maybe she's a tease,' Allison put in.
'She's a tease,' Andrew concluded with a smile.
And so it went on for the next couple of minutes, only subsiding when they finally managed to make her admit she was a virgin. It was such a lot of energy wasted for nothing, Madison though. Most days she never even considered her sexual status: Chris was long gone, she hadn't seen him since she was a freshman. Girls like Claire were the ones who made the whole thing seem so important, so precious and secret. They made girls like Allison think they had to lie and make grand statements about the role of love in it all. Madison fiddled with her shoelaces to prevent herself from saying anything more. The truth was that she hadn't slept with Chris because she loved him or to gain respect. Sometimes she wondered if she'd even really liked him. She'd slept with him because it had been an awful day and she was lonely. It had been a really dumb mistake.
Still, at least her dumb mistake was hidden away in her memory and not something tangible like Andrew's. It seemed his shame at what he'd done to Larry Lester only grew as he shared it and Brian's face showed that much of the hero worship he'd directed towards the jock had vanished. Madison thought it was largely just further proof of a thing she'd realised long ago: sometimes beautiful people did dickish things. At least Andrew was aware of it, plus his father sounded awful. It didn't justify what he'd done, but it did go some way to revealing more to him than a bone-headed wrestler.
'I think your old man and my old man should get together and go bowling,' Bender said after Andrew had revealed all. 'And Madison's, if we could find him.'
She gave him a grim smile, her father's absence still nothing to joke about all these years later. At least she was being included.
The need to be included led Brian to inadvertently insult Bender as he complained about his inability to pass shop, and led Claire to get upset all over again as the Criminal mocked her for everything from her party piece to her wealth. Part of Madison began to feel sorry for the Princess; she didn't wholly deserve this. It wasn't her fault she was like she was, any more than it was really Bender's or Brian's. The other part of Madison hoped Claire Standish would soon fall spectacularly off of her pedestal. It was about all she deserved.
Andrew spoke in a horrified voice eventually. 'My God, are we gonna be like our parents?'
'Not me… ever…' Claire decided, as though it was a bad thing to do. Her earlier assertions that they were using her like a pawn in their game of divorce had come as somewhat of a revelation to Madison, but still couldn't quite elicit her sympathy. She doubted Mr Standish would leave his precious daughter to life on a trailer park.
'It's unavoidable. It's just happens,' Allison said now.
'What happens?'
'When you grow up, your heart dies.'
'Who cares?' Bender shrugged.
'I care.' Allison's eyes filled with tears. She was such a strange mix of innocence and obscenities that Madison wasn't quite sure what to make of her. What she did know was that she sort of liked her, and so she spoke out.
'I don't believe that.' She'd been silent so long that they'd almost forgotten her again and looked surprised when she spoke. 'I don't think you change when you grow up. Not always. And anyway, I mean, I wouldn't mind being like my mom. She's an amazing mom.' A quick glance at Claire softened her heart slightly as the red-head smiled. She remembered her mom. That meant something to Madison.
'She cut the crusts off your sandwiches?' Bender asked. He was still seething from his row with Claire and Madison knew she should probably have ignored him. It was her mom, though. People didn't get to say stuff like that about her mom, and her temper flared up again, red and hot and dangerous.
'No. She works really hard to put food on the table whilst her kid's sick with leukaemia in hospital.' She winced even as the last word left her mouth, unsure where this need to dump all of her crap onto everybody else had come from. It was embarrassing.
Everybody else looked equally as mortified by her statement, not least Bender, who was looking down at the ground now, unable to meet anybody's eye. As for Claire, she'd lost her composure completely, and Madison was able to spare a small amount of remorse upon her; she'd known Zach when he was little. This was hardly the way to break news, even ancient news, like that.
It was Allison who finally spoke. 'Your sister?'
'Brother.' Madison shook her head, surprised by how emotional she felt. Zach had been sick for the best part of five years, with a brief period of being in remission. His being ill had taken over a third of his life and a large chunk of hers. It was everyday life to her, yet sharing it with people was something different.
'Cancer?' Andrew put in now.
She resisted the urge to snap at him, remembering how her mom had explained it all to her when Zach was first diagnosed and she was certain to have asked some silly questions. Instead, she nodded.
'He's fifteen,' she explained now, fiddling with her shoelaces again. 'He was diagnosed when he was ten. My dad had left not long before.' With the smile she'd perfected over the years in the face of yet more bad news, she said, 'It was a really shit year.' She didn't need to look at Claire; the girl wasn't evil, she'd feel bad. That Madison didn't really care about that anymore was neither here nor there.
'I… I didn't know,' Brian stammered.
'Why would you?' Madison lifted her eyes to look at him and felt a twist of anger deep inside her; it was as though they'd wanted her to announce her brother was seriously ill as soon as she'd walked in that morning, as though it defined her. 'Until today, did any of you even know my name?' They all squirmed uncomfortably under her too-honest accusation, Claire doubly so. Four years they'd spent together, brushing up against each other in corridors and sitting through the same tedious study hall sessions, and they'd barely acknowledged her existence. It was rare it bothered her this much.
'So… is he having treatment or…?' Claire asked. The 'or' triggered Madison's anger again.
'He's not dying!'
'I don't think she meant it like that,' Andrew said kindly, shooting Claire a look. 'She's just… asking.'
Madison bit her lip, knowing she'd acted out of turn. This wasn't how she'd ever imagined Claire Standish finding out about Zach and it was thoughtless of her to think she wouldn't care; Claire was stupid and could be a bit of a bitch, but she wasn't outright nasty. Not for the first time, she wondered how differently life could have turned out if Zach hadn't got sick. Perhaps her mom would have been able to work their way off of the trailer park by now. Maybe Madison herself wouldn't be the invisible girl at school; maybe, just maybe, she and Claire would be friends again. It seemed unlikely, but she knew more than most people that life turned on a dime.
'He needs a bone marrow transplant,' she explained now, carefully avoiding looking at anybody again. 'He's needed one for a while and he's at the top of the waiting list now. My mom and I aren't compatible donors and my dad… well…' She shrugged. 'He's been in hospital a couple of weeks this time. They're hoping they can clear the cancer cells he's got so he can have the transplant.' It was as though she'd suddenly unstoppered all the words she'd hidden away for years. 'I try to see him on Sundays cause the rest of the week I'm at school or work. Mom visits him every day, sometimes stays overnight.' To her shame, she felt a tear roll down her cheek and hastily wiped it away with the cuff of her sweater, hiding her face behind her long hair.
'That must be… hard.' Brian then hastily added, 'That is… I mean…'
And Madison couldn't stand the sympathy any longer. Without another word, she scrambled to her feet and headed back to the detention tables, unable to believe what she'd done. School and work had always been an escape from home, and here she was letting the two collide spectacularly. She'd spent five years carefully compartmentalising her life, refusing her mom's offers to speak to her teachers when she flunked an assignment because Zach had been taken into hospital the night before, never inviting anybody back from school to their trailer. Things suddenly seemed horribly out of Madison's control.
