wondering why i didn't call this story donner girls.

There was no one on earth quite like Delly Cartwright.

Before Madge had had enough time to figure out which paper had her schedule on first day at Chilton, the blonde was shoving a welcome basket, filled with muffins and miscellaneous school supplies, each with the Chilton insignia, into her arms, while demanding to know if she was planning on joining the Franklin. At the time she had no idea what or who the Franklin even was. (She later learned it was the school's newspaper.)

The two blondes happened to share every single class, except for gym, which Madge thanked any and all higher beings for. She wasn't sure that she would be able to survive a game of dodge ball with Delly, she could only imagine how good the taller blonde was at volleyball. And she didn't need a volleyball spiked to the face.

Delly returned to her locker at the end of the day, with note-filled binders, color-coded by unit. "It won't feel like winning with you starting out at such a disadvantage, so here are all of my notes. You're welcome."

That was a year ago and now they had managed a friendship. The girl was actually extremely kind when they weren't inside the walls of Chilton.

Madge had to hand it to her; Delly knew how to command a room. She was the editor of the Franklin, but even without the title Delly would have been able to rule her fellow students with an iron fist. They had started the year with twenty students on the newspaper staff, five of whom had stopped attending meetings when they caught wind that Delly was the editor this year.

Delly had called them weak. There was no way they were serious enough about journalism to be an integral member of the Franklin anyway.

"We're not competing against other schools! We're competing against the New York Times!" Madge rolled her eyes as her friend slammed newspapers onto the table. "The Washington Post! This is the work I want to hold ours up against! Do you understand?"

Everyone nodded, including herself.

She didn't need Delly in her face asking if she hadn't made herself clear. It wasn't that she was scared of her friend, but she was hungry and was in dire need of a cup of coffee.

xx

There was no one home when she arrived.

Her grandfather was visiting and her mother didn't have much of a relationship with either of her parents. Madge had always thought it was due to a lack of communication; they talked, but neither side ever listened to the other.

There was a lot of pain there, on both sides.

Her mother had gotten pregnant at sixteen. They had figured it out when her coming out dress was too small after being let out twice. It wasn't the dress; it was their daughter's growing body.

This realization had crushed all of their dreams for their intelligent but rebellious daughter. They dreamed of Ivy League universities and a six-figure career for her. But instead Madeline Donner had run from their home, Madge barely a month old at the time. Though they didn't move far. Stars Hollow was only a forty-minute drive from Hartford. Her mother's relationship with her parents went from bad to worse, but things seemed like they were getting better.

With the addition of Friday night dinners, her mother was mending the bridges she'd burned with her parents while Madge built some of her own. But then there were dinners where her mom's mending came to a pause due to the reoccurring lack of understanding and bad listening skills. It didn't help that Friday night dinners with her grandparents had not been her mother's idea. But upon hearing how much Chilton would cost, her mother had nowhere to go but to her parents, much to her own dismay. It was a world that she had never been comfortable in. She didn't want to go to cotillion or go to dinner parties with the high society lot. This was her parent's world and even as a child, when she was forbidden to get her blue taffeta dress dirty, she knew that this was not the world she wanted to raise her children in. So she ran.

But somehow her mother found her offspring tiptoeing into the world she'd run from. Madge could feel her mother's apprehension whenever she did something that involved her grandparents.

Chilton was a necessary evil. For as long as she could remember, Harvard was the goal. There was an entire section of her mother devoted to the university of their dreams. Stars Hollow high was not going to get her there, but a private school as prestigious as Chilton could give her a fighting chance.

And then she needed to learn a sport, which brought her to the country club her grandparents were members of. Her grandmother insisted that she learn golf since her grandfather spent most of his Sunday morning at the club. She'd spent the entire day with her grandfather, learning (and failing) to golf, and hearing the sordid details of the other members' lives. From barely an hour in the sauna, she knew who was sleeping with who, who was cheating on who, and how much money they were getting from the divorce. Her mother had assumed she was going to have a horrible time and when she discovered she had enjoyed herself; there was an undeniable look of disappointment in her eyes.

Then came her coming out. She had only gone to her grandparent's house to pick up a copy of A Mencken Chrestomathy and being the polite granddaughter she was, she made sure to say hello to her grandmother before she left. She'd just assumed she was having her afternoon tea outside by herself, but was surprised to find a table of ladies chatting outside with her. She gave them each a polite smile, but had gotten sucked into the discussion of her having a coming out party. Before she knew it she was trying on her mother's dress (which fit near perfectly). It wasn't exactly something she wanted to do, but she could see the glimmer in her grandmother's eye when she described it to her. It didn't mean much to her, but it meant so much to the matriarch Donner and that was why she had agreed. Her mother took it in stride, knowing that her parents weren't seeing Madge doing that ridiculous fan dance, but remembering how disappointed they had been sixteen years ago when they had been unable to see their own daughter do the same ridiculous dance in the same ridiculous dress.

It was not the best night for the Donners.

Madge constantly found herself straddling the line between the world her mother had built for her and the one her mother had grown up in. Where her mother found difficulty in establishing a relationship with her parents, Madge found ease. It wasn't hard to discuss literature or the contents of the Wall Street Journal with her grandfather or to ask about the many luncheons and banquets her grandmother was planning. It came far easier to her than it ever did for her mother.

xx

"Madge! Where are you? Madge! Come out here!" Her mother sounded like she was panicking.

"Hey," Madge peeked out of her room, adjusting her headband back on her head before hugging her grandfather. "Hey grandpa. How was your day? Did you see Mom in action?"

He gave her a soft smile. "It was great and yes I did. That's quite an inn she runs."

"It really is! You should see it when there's a wedding! It's beautiful!"

"You okay with Chinese for dinner?"

Madge nodded, "Chinese Palace?"

"That's what I was thinking. I'll make the list?"

"List?" Her grandfather asked his graying eyebrows furrowed.

"Madge, why don't you show your grandfather your room?"

"Do you want to see my room?" She knew it wasn't much. It was nowhere near as luxurious or heavily designed as the room she had at her grandparent's house, but it was hers.

"These are my books!"

She immediately noticed when her grandfather took a small leather-bound notebook from his pocket, jotting down something as he looked through a small section of her book collection. "What are you doing?"

"You've got some holes in your book collection that I plan to fill."

"Grandpa, this is not my entire collection!" She stepped back toward her bed, pulling up the edge of her comforter. Underneath her bed was another section; several small stacks of books were hiding underneath. Back beside her grandfather, she pulled open the top and then bottom drawer of her dresser, both of which were filled with books.

"Then maybe I should think about acquiring a proper bookcase for your collection."

"Oh no, I like it this way."

"A sort of organized chaos?"

She nodded, a grin on her lips. "Definitely."

"Is that the Harvard wall I've heard about?"

"Oh yeah! When Mom and me visited they were having a two for one sale on the pennants! Isn't it great?"

Her granfather gave her a smile, but she knew it wasn't genuine. He was a Yale man and it must have felt odd to see his granddaughter sporting crimson on her walls.

"Madge!" Her mother popped her head into her bedroom, one arm extended, notepad in hand. "How does it look?"

The younger blonde grabbed the notepad, glancing over the list. "I was thinking about the—"

"The cashew chicken. You read my mind, consider it on the list." She reached for the notepad. "I'll call. Do you know where the phone is?"

"Last time I saw it, it was in the living room." Madge went to the fridge to get a soda before heading back into her bedroom to study while her mother searched for the phone. It was probably between the couch cushions, but her mother could figure that much out.

The walls in their house weren't paper thin, but they weren't soundproof either. They were arguing. Madge heard the word gluttony and knew where the conversation went from there. Her grandfather had the best intentions in his critique of their life but to her mother it was the harshest of criticism on the way she had chosen to live her life. Her grandparents had a chef make them dinner every night, from frog legs to lamb to whatever her grandmother wanted that particular day. Neither Madge nor her mother cooked, but they could order food quicker than the best of them and were masters at the art of eating leftovers. It was something her grandparents could not comprehend. There was an art to the way the Donner girls lived.

Someone honked in their driveway. "Madge! Were you expecting someone?"

Madge drew her gaze away from her Pre-Calculus textbook, grabbing her jacket before opening the front door. It was Beau, as she had predicted, and he was grinning, his arms crossed in front of his chest as he leaned on a baby blue car, shined to perfection.

It was barely recognizable to the dirty, frame she'd sat in three months ago on their six-month anniversary. The driver's side door had fallen off when he had attempted to open it. 'It's yours.' He'd said, his eyes shining down at her. 'So you don't have to take the bus all the way to school.' After, he'd told her he loved her for the first time. It wasn't exactly the ending she had expected on their six-month anniversary. It shouldn't have been a surprise, but hearing those words come from his mouth. Madge had been unable to respond with anything other than 'thank you.' That was not the response he had been expecting. They fought and broke up. It didn't take though and they were back together in a couple of weeks, all the stronger for it.

"You're kidding me!" She drew her hands over her mouth, hiding her matching grin. "Is that it?"

"That all depends. How much do you love me?"

"A lot! Does it drive? Can I drive it?"

"She asks me, 'Does it drive?' Well I drove it all the way here."

She ran toward her boyfriend, jumping into his arms. "Oh my God! Thank you!" She kissed him. "Thank you!"

"Mom! Look what Beau made me!"

"Made her?" Her grandfather muttered.

"Isn't that amazing, Dad? It's amazing, Beau."

Her grandfather was shaking his head. "It's a very nice gesture, but she cannot accept this."

"What do you mean? Of course she can."

It wasn't the first time her grandfather and Beau had met. In fact, the first time had not gone over well. The Donner patriarch did not think that Beau Mellark was a suitable boyfriend for his only granddaughter. When he had grilled the young man, he didn't even know what he was going to do with his life after high school. Madge did not enjoy seeing her boyfriend attacked. It was the first fight she had ever had with her grandfather.

"A child is not supposed to build an automobile. That is certainly not safe enough for my granddaughter to drive. I won't allow it."

"But—" Beau started.

"Did you have the assistance of a certified mechanic when you built this?" "With all due respect Sir, my grandfather worked on cars all his life, my father worked on cars his entire life and so have I."

"So that's a no."

"Did you run the car by a certified mechanic once it was built?"

Beau huffed, clenching his teeth.

"I'm going to assume that is also a no."

"Alright, let's go to Cressida's. I'm sure she'll be glad to take your money for nothing. Should I drive or do you want to?"

Her grandfather shook his head. "I'll take the jag. Make sure to stay behind. I don't want any pieces of it to his the jag if it explodes."

Beau scoffed, no longer feeling the need to be so polite to her grandfather. "Make sure you electrical system can keep it together long enough to get there."

"Young man," her grandfather started, narrowing his eyes at her boyfriend. "The kinks in this car's electrical system have long since been worked out."

"Yeah, I'm sure." Beau looked to Madge and her mother. "We'll be back soon."

Both cars drove off, kicking up dust as they left.

Her mother draped her arm across her shoulders, pulling her into a hug. "I feel like one of us should have been between them waving a red flag. No?"

"It's a nice car though, isn't it?"

"Very cool."

xx

When her grandfather and Beau hadn't been back after a half hour, she'd been sent to retrieve the Chinese.

Bags in hand, she got distracted by the bookstore's display. Mindy Kaling's new book was out and Madge considered coming in early to buy it. Hopefully her car would be okayed by Cressida, and then it could become her lunch book and not her bus book.

"I hope all of that's not just for you."

Madge glanced toward the owner's of the voice's direction, though it wasn't necessary. She knew it was Gale. No one else had the same deep, gravely voice that he did. "Why? You want an egg roll."

Gale smirked, chuckling. "I love books more than the next person but they're not much to look at."

"I was just trying to decide if I wanted to buy another book or read what I already have."

"What's it between?"

"Kaling and Faulkner."

Gale laughed, his grey eyes lighting up as he smiled at her. "Oh, you're serious."

"I am!"

"Well, if you want to laugh then probably Mindy. I don't think Faulkner's much of a comedian, but then again he's a member of Oprah's book club. So he's got that on Mindy."

She chuckled at his arguments for both authors.

"Faulkner's been around for awhile. I think he can wait another week."

"Sound reasoning." He looked like he was about to say something else to her when his phone rang. He lifted his eyebrows, reaching into the pocket of his jacket. "I gotta take this. And you should probably get home with that."

"Hey," he grinned into his cell phone. "Wait, hold on a second," he turned toward Madge. "You owe me an egg roll!"

Madge smiled back, waving goodbye while shaking her head.

"Hey Pose. Shouldn't you be asleep?"

The thought of Gale having late night phone calls with his little sister was incredibly endearing. It completely shattered the bad boy image he'd created around town.

next chapter is the basket auction, so i hope you're as excited as me. (to those who have watched gilmore girls)