Madison's Code

[Sophie ♥]

Um.. this story is pretty personal to me.  I wrote it for my girlfriend last year when we first started dating to help her understand all this little stuff.  It's really not like my stories with Pudding.  It's sort of boring.  And I don't really know why I'm putting it on DD at all.  Except... maybe someone else out there needs a story like this?  A story that explains the little stuff in a simple, relatable way.  Or maybe someone's partner needs it.

*nods..*

Anyway.  If you don't mind, please like or comment.  These trivial things are very inspiring to me.  Enjoy the story.

~Sophie

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Madison's Code
by Sophie

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Pin 1: Smile

One.

    “Which color is this?”

    “Green.”

    The only thing that annoyed me more than Madison Bell was her colorblindness.  I know that sounds terrible, but when everyone in the eleventh grade plays the “what color is this” game every fifteen minutes it gets old fast.  And who by chance would I get stuck with for my poster presentation?

    “This one?” she asked, holding up a colored pencil.

    “Blue.”

    She hesitated, the tip of the pencil hovering over the poster.  Then she looked at me again.

    “Do blue and green go well together?” she asked.

    “Does it matter?”

    “I want it to look nice.”

    But when it was clear that I wasn’t going to answer her stupid questions anymore, she went back to coloring without intervention.  I used my expert penmanship to write out our hypothesis on an index card.  Long, flourished letters.

    “I love your handwriting,” she told me, watching me over my shoulder. “I mean, girls handwriting is always better than boys, eye, em, oh.  But yours is even better than all the other girls too!  There should be a tournament or something for handwriting.  You could place first, I bet.”

    Kill me.

    “This one?” she asked, holding up another colored pencil.

    When the bell rang, Madison followed me out of the library.  My legs were long and toned, and hers a chubby mess.  Still, she kept pace.

    “Would you want to come over tonight and we can finish our poster?  I have stickers that I think could really help it pop.  And I got this boarder from the store for last year’s poster and I bet I still have some.”

    “I would rather do just about anything else,” I said honestly.  There was no illusion here: Madison Bell annoyed me and Madison Bell knew it. “Finish it yourself and I’ll bring the cards tomorrow.”

    “Oh.”

    When I turned around, a few paces down the hall, she had stopped following me.  I thought, for a second, she was upset with what I’d said.  Something about the way her eyes caught the light.  But the next second, she looped arms with Amanda Simmons and started telling her about our experiment.

    Annoying.

[Sophie ♥]

Two.

    “How’s your poster?” Polly asked, sitting down next to me on the bus ride home.  Polly was my next-door neighbor, venting confidant, and – by default – best friend.  She wore her hair in low pigtails every day for ten years, about the time it went out of style, and loved bubble gum for exactly fifteen seconds a piece.

    “Tedious.”

    “How’s the ball of sunshine?” she asked with a grin.

    I thought back to Madison. “Tedious.”

    “I don’t see your problem with her, honestly.” Polly unwound the headphones from around her iPod. “She seems nice to me.”

    “That’s my problem,” I said sourly, leaning into the window. “Nobody has a single bad thing to say about her.  She’s always so damn peppy.  Like, isn’t that irritating?”

    “I think you’re jealous.”

    “What do I have to be jealous over?”

    “She’s happy?” Polly put in one earbud.

    “She’s naïve.”

    “Well then who better than Jamie Lawson to show her the cruelty of the world?”

    “Don’t patronize me,” I said, but Polly had already put the second earbud in her ear.  I slouched down in the bus bench and sighed.  I needed a nap.

    And napping was exactly what I did.  I had the same dream I always had, with the mirrors and the staircase.  This time, I woke up freezing.  Mom had started turning off the heat at night.  Honestly, we couldn’t afford it.

    I was well rested for school, which was a feeling as pleasant as it was unexpected.  I finished my math homework in class and caught up on the English reading.  But with twenty minutes before Biology, my mind began to wander.  Madison.  I didn’t have the energy to put up with her today.  But at least this was the day of presentations; after today, our interactions could return to the superficial.

    Oh fuck.  The presentations were today!

    I fumbled through my backpack, knocking my English books off my desk.  When I pulled out the index cards, some of the students were looking back at me.  But I didn’t have time to worry about them: I hadn’t finished our cards!

    The beauty of my handwriting quickly made way for time management.  I scrawled down the methods the best I could remember them; I didn’t have time to copy them from my notes.  The results were vague, without numbers, and I swear the correlations went in the other direction.  The bell rang.  I swore under my breath and ran out of the classroom toward the Biology lab.

    “Hey Jamie!” Madison was actually sitting at my desk, but she jumped to her feet the second she saw me walk through the door.  Beside her, on my desk, was the poster.  It was beautifully decorated with stickers and a thin shining boarder.  I sat down in front of it.

    “I know I went overboard with the coloring,” Madison went on, “but I figured we could tape your index cards over the top of it and it would really give it that ‘pop’ you know?  Then we don’t have to do extra work either.  Just tape the cards you made.  Did you get them done?”

    “Uh, yeah, I did.” I still had the stack of cards in my hand.  I passed them to her.  I watched her eyes gloss over the words, over my less-than-perfect handwriting, over my abysmal explanations.  My chest hurt.  I didn’t care what this girl thought of me, not really, but I wasn’t a bad student.  Honestly.

    “These are okay,” she said with almost no confidence, and then again, louder and more certain. “These are good!  I swear, I’ll never understand how you can write so pretty.  And the interpretations are almost poetic.”

    And with that, she went to work setting the cards on the poster.  Maybe I felt guilty, or maybe I was trying to do my part, but I helped her.  She stuck the Hypothesis card to the top, and I tried to line up the three Methods cards in a row.  We both reached for the Conclusion, but my hand landed on top of hers.

    Like lightning, she snapped her hand back to her chest.  She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, staring at the final index card, and then in my eyes.  She let out a breath, her lips flat and unturned.  It was strange, seeing her without a smile. “You go ahead,” she told me.

    “Sure.” So I taped the Conclusion card in place and turned up the poster for the both of us to see.  At least it looked gorgeous…

    “Jamie, Madison?” Mrs. Hancock called. “Are you both ready?”

    We presented first.  It must have been quite the disparity, seeing us up at the front of the room.  Madison – only a few inches shorter than me, with her wavy blonde hair and her summer dress in the middle of winter – spoke most of the presentation.  Meanwhile I – donned in just a black hoodie and blue jeans, long brown hair tied to the side in a ponytail – pretended like I had contributed even half the efforts she had.  I hated group projects.

    Afterward, we were told to sit down and the next presentation began.  At the end of the hour, before the bell, Mrs. Hancock passed out a slip of paper to each group.  Madison got ours.

    “So?” I asked.  But she was staring intently at the slip, like she had forgotten how to read.  Her eyebrows tightened and her lips parted, softly, just enough to breathe.  Then they closed again and turned up in a smile. 

    “C Plus!  Not too shabby!”

    “A C?  What?  Gimme that.” I snatched the paper out from her hands and looked it over.  Nice presentation.  Lacked information.  No definable variables.  No graphics on poster.  I read it twice.  Fuck…

    “I’m sorry,” I said flatly, staring at the letter grade like it might change, at the comments like they might transform.  Maybe into something that wasn’t my fault.

    “What?  No, it’s fine!” Madison waved her arms around like a lunatic, but it sure got my attention. “It was completely my bad.  I probably used the wrong colors – my parents were busy and I didn’t want to bother them with little things like that.  Honestly, I should have known better than to jeopardize your grade like that.”

    “What are you talking about?” I asked, irritation rising in my voice. “I fucked up the cards!”

    Madison winced.  I… hadn’t expected that…

    “I’m really sorry,” she said again, but without the energy, without the smile.  She zipped up her backpack, slung it over her shoulder, and was out the door even before the bell had rung.

[Wannatripbaby]

Whoa! Slow down! How am I supposed to comment on every chapter if you upload the 2nd one 12 minutes after the first? 

[Sophie ♥]

3 minutes ago, Wannatripbaby said:

Whoa! Slow down! How am I supposed to comment on every chapter if you upload the 2nd one 12 minutes after the first? 

Sorry.  I thought the first chapter was rather short, so..

[Wannatripbaby]

3 minutes ago, Sophie ♥ said:

Sorry.  I thought the first chapter was rather short, so..

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Give me a few minutes and I'll have my thoughts on the first 2 chapters.

[ELLIE52]

Hmmm.... not sure who is the Little yet.  This will be interesting to follow.

[Wannatripbaby]

Now THIS story is a bit more my speed than ELC!

I'm not quite sure which direction you're gonna take it. Madison is obviously some kind of Little. The only question is: what will Jamie become? Will Madison make her into a Little? Will Jamie become her CG for... some reason? In either case I'm excited!

[Pudding]

I love this story so much, and I am so in support of you sharing it!

[Sophie ♥]

19 minutes ago, Pudding said:

I love this story so much, and I am so in support of you sharing it!

 Thanks hun.  I hope other people like it too.

[Wannatripbaby]

5 minutes ago, Sophie ♥ said:

 Thanks hun.  I hope other people like it too.

I like it! ?

[Guilend]

Amazing, ok, I have no idea who's who and what's what, but that makes it way more interesting to read.

[Sophie ♥]

34 minutes ago, Wannatripbaby said:

I like it! ?

 

29 minutes ago, Aries said:

Amazing, ok, I have no idea who's who and what's what, but that makes it way more interesting to read.

Thanks guys.  

I'll put another chapter up tomorrow.  Maybe two.  I don't know how fast I'm going to post this story.

[bbykimmy]

A sweet start.  Madison obviously likes Jamie a great deal, possibly a secret crush she's been harboring for a while?  That doesn't bode well, despite Jamie's guilt at flubbing the project.  Poor Madison is self-deprecating and her cheerful exterior is likely hiding a very large fear of rejection... and I think that Jamie is going to step on that landmine before too long.

Jamie's guilt regarding the project will likely lead her to be kind to Madison and perhaps inadvertently feed that secret crush... but it won't last and Jamie's true colors will show and poor Madison will be destroyed.

Just my prediction:  a lot of sad in the very near future.

It's well written (as always) - I'm looking forward to learning more about these characters.  Thank you for sharing a story that's close to your heart, I know how scary that can be.

[Sophie ♥]

9 hours ago, bbykimmy said:

It's well written (as always) - I'm looking forward to learning more about these characters.  Thank you for sharing a story that's close to your heart, I know how scary that can be.

Ahhh Kimmy, thank you for such a in-depth analysis of your first impressions.  I'll get everyone a new chapter in the next few hours.  Thank you for all the support.

[Sophie ♥]

Three.

    “Here, I made you these.” Madison Bell handed me a disposable tray of six brightly frosted cupcakes, her arms outstretched. “I know they won’t make up for our grade yesterday, but everyone loves cupcakes.  Right?  Next time I promise to try harder.”

    I’d spent the evening wondering about Madison.  Did she sincerely think the poster was her fault?  I had the grading rubric folded in my backpack: almost everything nicked was my responsibility.  Was she stupid, or dense?  Was she simply trying to take the pressure off me?  I didn’t know.  Either way, I took the tray from her and she skipped off to her seat.

    That was the story of Madison Bell and Jamie Lawson.  With the end of our project came the end of our tenuous friendship.  Or so I thought.

    The weekend came and went and I had stopped thinking about Madison entirely.  Polly and I took a trip upstate to a publishing conference.  I was a junior editor in the Writing Workshop at school.  Polly wrote Charmed fan fiction.  I’d never seen an episode of Charmed, but I edited her stories all the same.  She had a knack for romance, in my opinion.

    I didn’t have my future planned out.  I wasn’t interested in anything, not really, and my mom would never be able to afford for me to go to college anyway.  But I knew what I was good at.  The rules of the English language always came easily to me.  I’d read so many books, so many sample works, and so many essays that I could find the strengths and weaknesses of each sentence.  I wondered if professional editors needed a college degree…

    I spent a lot of time in panels, learning about what publishers liked and didn’t like.  I picked up samples from some of the stalls to take home and read through in my leisure.  A few times, I’d even called or emailed the writer and asked for more chapters!  They were always so generous.  But that’s what people do when they don’t have talent: they admire the people who do.

    Monday, at school, I brought two stories from the conference to read at lunch.  I always spent my lunch period in the Writing Workshop, in case a student needed help.  No one ever did.  Why come in during lunch when you could ask for a pass in fourth period?

    I was on page eighteen of a fantasy novel when Madison Bell walked in.

    “Jamie?” Her voice brought me out of the paragraph - a much too-detailed description of a woman’s hair.  I looked up. “I didn’t know you worked in here!  That’s so great!  I didn’t think anyone would be in here at lunch time, but I thought I just had to check.  You know?”

    “Uh huh.”

    “Am I bothering you?”

    “No,” I lied, closing the stack of papers. “Did you need something?”

    “Yes, actually…” She pulled out a stapled set of papers and pushed it across the table toward me, a nervous smile on her lips. “I have this essay due on Friday for my composition class, and… well it’s just really no good.”

    “I’ll be the judge of that.”

    I read through the first two lines.  It was really no good.

    “I can’t organize it right.  I tried doing an outline like Mr. Snyder told me, but it’s not working.  I know what I want to say.  I just can’t say it.”

    “It’s about dolphins?”

    “Marine life in general, I guess.  I really want to be a marine biologist.  Or a watch maker.  But I think those are out of style nowadays.” 

    “Those are some pretty diverse interests.” I kept reading through her opening paragraph.  It was a wonder she spoke English…

    “I get new hobbies all the time.  Right now it’s watches.  I took my dad’s apart and tried to put it back together, but it’s not going very well.”

    Was she good at anything?  I sighed and turned the page.

    “Can you help?”

    “I’ll try,” I told her.

    She sat down, holding the edges of her chair and kicking her feet.  I took a deep breath.

    “So you tried making an outline?” I asked.

    “Yes.”

    “Did you try doing it in reverse?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Well, when writing essays, you should always write your introduction last.  That way you already have everything written down.”

    She nodded, her eyebrows tilted together in… concentration maybe.  She was really trying to listen.  I inched my chair closer to hers and took out a pen.

    “What’s this paragraph about?” I asked.

    “Pollution.”  I wrote ‘Pollution’ next to the paragraph.

    “This one?”

    “Laws about the ocean and stuff.”

    “So the whole paper is an environmentalist view on marine life.”

    “I think so.”

    I put a few notes in the margins.

    “So these are your three talking points,” I told her. “You need to put the topic in the first sentence of each paragraph.  Don’t make lists like this.”

    “But Mr. Snyder said…”

    “He probably meant the first sentence of the introduction. Don’t do that with the body paragraphs.  Actually, don’t use any commas at all for the opening sentences of the body.  Make them clean and to the point.”

    “Okay,” she mumbled.

    “You look overwhelmed.”

    Madison blinked, looking up from the paper for the first time since she’d sat down.  Overwhelmed didn’t describe her.  She seemed… bewildered.

    “Do you understand this?”

    “Of course,” she said with a smile.  I was beginning to recognize her smiles.  This one didn’t wrinkle the skin under her eyes or show her incisors.  I’d seen this smile before, but I couldn’t remember when…

    “It’s okay if you don’t understand it.  That’s why I’m here.”

    The smile trickled off Madison’s face like raindrops off a window on a misty day.  But she didn’t look sad, not at all.  Her milky brown eyes were soft behind her glasses and her mouth parted like she had a word hanging off the tip of her tongue.

    “Let’s go over it again,” I told her.  Without protest, she nodded.

[bbykimmy]

Poor Madison, she wants Jamie to like her so much.  She has so little self-confidence.  She's the girl who sits at home in her room going over all the things she did wrong during the day and calling herself stupid.

My heart breaks for her.

[Sophie ♥]

Kimmy - I absolutely love your interpretations after only three chapters.   I'll get another chapter in a little bit.

[Wannatripbaby]

I am absolutely loving this story! 

[Sophie ♥]

Four.

    “Do you want to get Taco Bell or something?” Polly asked. “I’m so over cafeteria food.”

    “I’m busy today,” I told her, packing up my bag.

    “Writing Workshop?  I thought no one came in during lunch.”

    “Yeah, that’s usually the truth.” I slung my backpack over my shoulder and leaned against the desk.  Madison was supposed to meet with me again. “Madison Bell needs help with an English paper.”

    “The ball of sunshine you despise?”

    “I don’t despise her,” I admitted. “She annoys me.”

    “But you’re helping her with her project now?” Polly sounded accusatory.  That annoyed me too.

    “It’s my job.  I’m not going to turn her away because she bothers me.”

    “Look at you.  A pillar of ethicality.”

    I rolled my eyes. “I gotta go.  See you after school?”

    “Have fun with Sunshine!”

    I’d spent about an hour the night before pouring over Madison’s paper.  Beyond the structural issues, there were a ton of grammar mistakes.  But before Biology had begun - the last class before lunch and the only one she and I shared - Madison was already at my desk pushing her new draft into my hands.

    “I totally reworked it!” She was almost jumping with excitement. “It’s so much better now, just read it.  I took all your advice.  It’s definitely an A paper!”

    “You meant to use a colon here,” I said, pointing to the first sentence, “not a comma.”

    I could see the air rush out of her, like a deflating balloon.  She stopped rocking on her heels and her shoulders fell two inches down.  She scrambled to pick up the paper, reading the first sentence over and over, until the bell rang.  Finally and slowly she made her way over to her desk and took a seat.  She never took her eyes off the paper.

    I sighed.

    Twenty minutes into class, a note appeared on my desk.  I looked around the room, but nobody was staring at me.  I had been paying attention to Mrs. Hancock and hadn’t noticed how it got there.  With trepidation, I opened it up to find in familiar handwriting and sparkly blue ink:

    “What’s the difference between a colon and a comma?”

    I looked toward the window, where Madison was clearly paying no attention to the teacher.  I thought her cheeks might be a little more red than before…

    “Google it,” I wrote on the same piece of paper and passed it to my left.  I told Ellen to pass it up to Madison.  She did.

    I watched Madison unwrap the note under the desk and read it.  For two words, it took her an awful long time to read, though.  Finally, she pulled out her pen and wrote back.  A minute later, the note was on my desk again.

    “Okay sorry.”

    I rubbed my eyes and pulled out a fresh piece of paper, tearing off a scrap from the corner.  She was so annoying.

    “A comma is a pause in a sentence, usually connecting two thoughts.  Colons are for lists and explanations.”

    I handed the note to Ellen. She knew what to do.  After another few minutes of listening to Mrs. Hancock go on about the reproductive system of reptiles, the same paper was on my desk again.

    “Thank you ♥”

    …oh.

    I folded the paper up and tucked it into my backpack, just beside the grading rubric from our poster presentation.  One mistake and one good deed, side by side.  Is that what redemption is?

    It was a week later, on Monday, when Madison Bell slammed her paper down on my desk in Biology.  Maybe she couldn’t wait until lunch to tell me.  The paper in front of me, printed in red at the top: A.  Great arguments.  Much improvement.

    “That’s amazing,” I said with a genuine smile.  But it paled in comparison to hers.  Her eyes were bright and wrinkled, her teeth showing in full between glossy, shining lips.  And before I knew what was happening, she wrapped her arms around me and pushed her cheek against my own.  Either I could hear both of our heartbeats, or mine beat at twice the speed.  I could feel blood rushing through me so quickly it made me dizzy.  Stars filled up my eyes.

    “Thank you so, so much!  I couldn’t have done this without you!”

    Somewhere in the midst of it all, I’d forgotten how to breathe.  The mechanism was zapped away from my brain by the heat of her body.  But just when I thought I might faint, the memory came rushing back.  A lot of things came rushing back.  She pulled away and skipped off to her seat in a way that only Madison Bell could do.  

    After class, while I was packing up my books, I could hear voices outside the door, voices I only barely recognized.  Maybe someone from class.

    “She’s so stuck up.  She always thinks she’s better than everyone else.  Why?  Because apathy and depression is so trendy now?”

    “And you see what she wears, right?  I swear I saw that shirt at Walmart.”

    “She’s friends with that girl in the yearbook club, with the nose piercing.”

    “What were you even doing hugging her, anyway?”

    Then I heard a voice I very much recognized.  Definitely someone from class.

    “I dunno,” Madison said. “I like her.  I think she’s cool.”

    “You like everybody,” one of the girls laughed.

    “Well,” Madison spoke up, “I really like her in particular.”

[ELLIE52]

Ha!  Now what?

[Wannatripbaby]

I am so invested in these characters' relationship! Whether it becomes romantic or stays platonic doesn't really concern me. Jamie needs a Madison in her life. 

[bbykimmy]

Madison being a "popular girl" is a surprise to me - I didn't see that coming.  She has the markings of a fragile "weird kid", but it makes sense that other people like being around her because she's happy and sunny.  I wonder if her friends laugh about her behind her back because while she's sunny... she's not too bright.

I was identifying with her pretty hard when her balloon of pride was callously - but unintentionally - popped by Jamie.  I'm betting Madison has a really difficult home life, where her parental figures don't or didn't give her the love and appreciation she needed to blossom.

I still expect a great deal of sadness for poor Madison, either at the hands of her friends, or at the hands of Jamie, or both.

[Sophie ♥]

Thanks for all the nice words.  These characters really mean a lot to me - they each represent important parts of who I am and I've put a lot of my soul into this one... um.  Madison being "popular" wasn't so much a decision as a happenstance.  She just gets along with everyone so easily, the rest fell into place.  But it's high school, so I'm sure people make fun of her behind her back.  You know, like Jaime!

Anyway.  I dunno about tomorrow - I have a dentist appointment - but I'll get more chapters up on Friday.

[bbykimmy]

5 minutes ago, Sophie ♥ said:

Thanks for all the nice words.  These characters really mean a lot to me - they each represent important parts of who I am and I've put a lot of my soul into this one... um.  Madison being "popular" wasn't so much a decision as a happenstance.  She just gets along with everyone so easily, the rest fell into place.  But it's high school, so I'm sure people make fun of her behind her back.  You know, like Jaime!

Anyway.  I dunno about tomorrow - I have a dentist appointment - but I'll get more chapters up on Friday.

If I ever hurt your feelings with my analysis/predictions, please let me know.  I'm projecting some of my own pain onto Madison, and if your pain is similar to my pain, that could touch a nerve.

Thank you for sharing this story with us.

[Sophie ♥]

10 minutes ago, bbykimmy said:

If I ever hurt your feelings with my analysis/predictions, please let me know.  I'm projecting some of my own pain onto Madison, and if your pain is similar to my pain, that could touch a nerve.

Thank you for sharing this story with us.

On the contrary, your analyses are really fun to read.  And pretty accurate in most cases.