#but the girls are all so boring and flat and un feminist

[girlivealwaysbean]

i have done everything to make myself as tired as possible so i can sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow but im wide awake😭

[madistidious-blog]

looking for a way out | selfpara

WHO: Madison; mentions of the McFam and Madison’s Boys. WHAT: Practicality. WHERE: Lima’s local supermarket. WHEN: Wednesday, 5/3. WARNINGS: Nah. WC: 2.3k.

There’s something reassuring about supermarkets.

Grocery stores, Targets, Walmarts--they’ve alwasy been happy places for Madison, because even when they ware filled with screaming infants, exhausted mothers and bored clerks, they are filled with order, and she can sink in to the psuedo-anonymiity the luminescent ights and stained tile offer. She can hide behind the crooked cart wheels and the familiarity of her own handwriting on the shopping list, comprised of household staples and whatever her siblings put on the ‘Can We Have’ list that Madison stuck to the fridge five years ago.

It’s the timelessness, the sense of a miniature, bound eternity, that her mind can wander no further than the frozen food section, that the minivan in the parking lot sits and waits for her to trundle home.

It’s that here, she’s nobody. Normally, that concept terrifies her, it makes her want to shout, to be seen and heard, but it’s comforting. At least, until she is acutely aware of just how un-nobody she is--when the check-out lady greets her by name, asks abut Mickey and Mason, wonders where that strapping, sweet blond boy she comes in with is. Madison will reply that both her siblings are fine, that Sam had homework, and how are your grandchildren doing, Marcia?

She pushed those thoughts away, for the time being. She focused on nudging her sideways, tired little cart down the aisle; she liked that things are labelled, that if she were in a hurry, if she had a test tomorrow but there was no food in the house because last Wednesday she’d had to run lines with Mason for the play instead of going shopping, that she could run in, grab the essentials, and be out in twenty minutes flat. She’d done it before, and she was positive she’d do it again, but this was not one of those times. No, this was a meandering, a wandering.

Madison looked down at her list and chewed the edge of her lip, debating on where to begin. She knew, of course, that she would begin with vegetables, slide over to the bakery, grab the bottle of V8 that she and Mason would work her way through over the next two weeks, and the bottle of orange juice for Mickey, and from there it was dry goods and then fresh meat, with their (precious few) frozen items coming last on the list.

Some of Madison’s earliest memories came from being in this very supermarket. She had never been truly anonymous; she was One of Catherine McCarthy’s Kids. One of The-Girls-and-Mason. She could remember the times before Marcia was a grandmother, if she truly stopped to think about it.

Which she didn’t, given the insane number of things she did need to devote her thinking time to. The McCarthy household was not run by magic; it was run by Madison, by elbow-grease, by a chores list, and by a great deal of patience. It ran as well as, maybe better, than it would have if both of the elder McCarthys were actually there to live in it. She heard people at school complain about getting grounded, about their parents hogging the TV. In quieter corners, she heard whispers of divorce, of terrible arguments late at night.

The McCarthy house had none of that. In many respects, the McCarthy house had...nothing.

But it was home. Madison kept the place tidy but it was still well lived-in, a certain brand of controlled chaos that came from three people cohabitating nearly unchecked for nearly two decades. Madison knew where the fault lines were, knew the rules she had set in place, implied or otherwise, and took a great deal of comfort in them. Implicitly, their door was open to anyone who may have had a house but not a home. Explicitly, it was considered polite to at least let the other two know if you had a guest over, but given that the only people ever invited over were shrouded in the highest echelon of unanimous McCarthy trust, it hardly mattered.

At least, that had been the case. Until recently, the only people who ever came to visit were the Evans boys.

Their circle had expanded considerably.

Marley, first, then Spencer, and Elijah, although this last had yet to be actually acted upon. She wondered, dimly, if it ever would, or if perhaps the aura she projected to the rest of the school--the prude, the angry feminist, the overbearing hyperfocused cheerleader in her high-pony world, would keep him away, too, the way it had kept most people at bay for years..

Now, though, there was Carter. She recalled, sharply, the strange guilt that had accompanied his sleepover after his return from King’s Island; was she obligated to tell them that she had someone over? Was she obligated to tell them that she had a boy in her room, even though they’d done nothing to warrant even a PG-13 label?

Past Carter, was Crosby, who had fit into the shadows of the living room like he belonged there, like a hastily-made but beautiful modern sculpture that had been there, would always be there, blue-eyed and beer-bottlecap-braceleted. She’d claimed him, in a way, with that bracelet, and he’d walked out, but then just as easily walked her to the dance floor. Would he still fit the same way, if he ever came back?

Would Carter fit at all?

It was this last point that had her staring at her list, stalled out between the bagged lettuce and the fresh spinach. She’d told Mickey that she was inviting Carter to dinner, but had yet to actually follow through--she knew what he liked to eat, she’d made a point to ask ages ago, and the fixings were there on the list, but she was nervous.

Because, for all her Carter-Thomas, Carter-Joshua, Carter-Howard, Carter-Edward, he was Declan Carter Fabray, and she didn’t know how to have a boyfriend, or how to cook for one, or how to mediate a tenuous peace between the people she loved most in the world and someone who made her heart fall into triple-time. Such a thing hadn’t even been a blip on her radar during her brief flirtationship with Avery; he was the sort of boy who whisked her away to abandoned houses, explained the shadowy sides of himself as best he could, and then kissed her before he moved on to the Quinn Fabrays of the world.

Madison was glad he was with Quinn now, because she couldn’t imagine Avery Pearce anywhere in her home.

Carter Fabray was a peculiar sort of problem. She’d never been embarrassed of her home, the way they lived or anything about her life, but that was because the only people she allowed to see it either knew enough to know better, or were otherwise incapable of passing judgement, damning or otherwise. Carter, to his credit, had rejected the Fabrayness of his life in every way he could, but she couldn’t help but wonder what new sides of him she might discover at his place just twenty-four hours from now.

There’s a tiny thrill of excitement, there--the idea of baby pictures, or little stories told as an aside, delighted her. She was a curious soul, and she found herself wanting to know everything. She could only hope that if he was feeling the same way, he wouldn’t be disappointed with what he learned.

Her relationship with Carter was reassuringly straightforward; so far, all he knew about her was exactly what she wanted him to. For the most part, he was blissfully unaware of the uglier parts of her, the parts that got her called less-than-pleasant names in the hall. Madison could nearly hear Carter telling her that she had nothing to be afraid of, that no secret of hers could be worse than his, but she was not reassured. There were the parts of her that Crosby, somehow, had discovered first, utterly bypassing the many carefully constructed fronts she put in place.

How long could she put off the truth of standing there alone beneath the supermarket light? How long could she hide that part of her from Carter? The part that, in no way, lined up with the perfection she aimed so hard for. How long would she want to? For a brief, dangerous moment, she imagined him standing next to her, arm loosely around her shoulders, grabbing a bag of chips and tossing them into the bag, giving her a devilish little smirk. A silent little challenge--live a little, she’d tell herself, and she’d smile back.

And wasn’t what this all boiled down to? Marley, just today, telling her how proud she was that Madison was finally doing something for herself. It was intoxicatingly easy to imagine Carter as a permanent fixture in her life, but to do so was to ignore the rest of her life; namely, her siblings, and their future. If she got wrapped up in a boy and let them slack too far, who would correct their course? Who would make sure they got into college or got internships or did whatever it was that they’d want to do?

It was this sort of thinking that had kept her firmly out of the dating pool. By nearly every metric, she couldn’t afford the multitude of risks that accompanied someone in Carter’s position.

But by the other metrics, the most important ones, the ones that made her actually, physically ache when she thought about him smiling at her from across the cafeteria, like they had their own little secret, the ones that advised other epople to follow their heart and go with what felt good, the ones that were counting down the milliseconds, fear be danged, until she was at Fabray Central with him...

Madison sighed and brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. When her mother had been the one taking them shopping, Madison had been the only one allowed out of the cart, because she knew how to focus; she was calm, unlike Mason, and quiet, unlike Mickey, and it was for these reasons that she was allowed to walk next to her mother, and hold the list.

She could still remember her mother’s perfect, loopy handwriting, still distantly remember Catherine’s voice--not speaking to her, or her siblings, more just talking to hear her own voice. It had become nannies, further down the road, before Madison started riding her bike to the store to go herself, before she’d forged parental signatures on driving hours to get her license (the actual hours having been put in with a petrified Mason and then a only-slightly-less petrified Sam).

Suddenly, the silence seemed crushing, and the list she’d written out herself looked ugly, chicken-scratched. Messy. Like a little girl trying on her mother’s lipstick in the mirror.

Just like that, the structure of her life wavered, and she had to take three deep breaths to focus. To remind herself that the life they’d built--the life she had built for herself and her siblings--had nothing to do with their parents, and that it was a good life. Good enough. Good enough to get by.

She finished shopping. It was methodical, organized, and everything was where it should be. She bypassed the sugary goodness and tried to be as intelligent as she could be about the brands she bought--Mickey was always going on about being a conscientious consumer--but she didn’t get more than necessary. She never did.

Madison had, once. She’d brought the kids with her, and let them go absolutely hog wild. It had taken two carts. They’d bought every unhealthy thing they could find, and then Madison had just...waited.

The waiting had been the worst part.

She’d waited for a call from Christine, a what-did-you-spend-three-hundred-dollars-on call. She’d waited up for it, nearly made herself sick, but she’d been able to pass that off, given that her siblings had also made themselves sick from countless bags of gummybears and Lays.

It had never come.

After that, Madison had made a quiet promise to herself--she didn’t care how much money their parents had, she wouldn’t use it for petty, personal nonsense. She wouldn’t give them any more claim over her and her siblings than they had, especially when they clearly didn’t even want it. She wouldn’t give them ammunition in a fight they’d never have.

She swiped the card that their parents bequeathed them, and makes small talk with the cashier. She used to feel a cocktail of pride and shame, when she used that card, especially when Sam was with her--it was in her name, and as far as Madison was concerned, there was nothing it couldn’t buy, if she wanted it to.

But she didn’t want it to. And that allowed her some distance. It was just necessary. Like everything else she’d built--uncomfortable at times, sure, but necessary.

But there was more to life than what was necessary. Carter wasn’t necessary. Nor, by that definition, was any of the progress they’d made over the past couple of months.

As Madison loaded the groceries into the back of the McMinivan--the MadiVan--she couldn’t help but smile to herself.

She knew better, by now. This was necessary, and it made her happy. It was necessary because it made her happy.

And that wold be okay. It would all be okay. Dinner would go flawlessly, and as she pulled back out into the road, she contented herself with the usual fantasy--

Everything will be okay.