Madeline’s mother must have been one of those women who actually ate protein-fortified salads, didn’t drink, took vitamins, and did ‘light exercise’ during their pregnancy. Actually, considering Madeline’s ability to ace a math exam while she has a hangover and a pregnancy scare, her mom probably prayed a lot too.
You could say that Madeline was ‘multifaceted’; she was this little, gorgeous, size 2 bundle of everything. She had played 3 sports and 5 boys every year since grade 9. She could write, draw, and read a new book every 2.5 days. She had a music collection with 5000 songs, 20 of which were from the semi-professional, semi-successful (at least in our town) band that she sang and played the bass guitar for. She always had a 4.0 GPA and yet was always free to hang out. Apparently, she had broken into the hotel room of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s guitarist and made out with him. Plus, you know how most girls are all “oh, I’m not like most girls.” Well, Madeline didn’t say that, but everyone did certainly act like her personality was made out of stardust and angel hymns. However personally, I had gotten quite used to her perfection. Oh, another thing I forgot to mention; Madeline was hilariously sophisticated when she wanted to be. I mean, what did you expect; her name is Madeline. So, a week before her 18th birthday, she said to her small nation of friends (which yeah, included me), “alright my lovely exotic birds, for my birthday we’re going to go see Shakespeare at the Park. They’re doing a rendition of Taming of the Shrew. It is a bit sexist and repulsive but my uncle got us front row seats. Now, if you haven’t read the play, it would probably be for the better if you did-”
“Madeline,” I piped up, “are you seriously assigning homework for your birthday party?”
“No, the reading is strictly optional.” she said, sounding like a tenured professor.
“Is attendance optional too?” I muttered. The last thing I wanted was to spend my Friday night watching a bunch of dudes act ridiculous over a bunch of girls on stage. I wanted to go home, turn on Mad Men, and watch a bunch of dudes act over a bunch of girls on TV.
This guy standing next to me chucked. I turned my head around to look at him. I kind of knew him. From what I had heard, he had this ridiculously complicated biblical name but went by Tee, although no one knew why. At the time I thought it was probably because he wanted to perpetuate an aura of mystery. All of Madeline’s friends (besides me of course) were hipsters. I swear; they were as underground as Harriet Tubman was from 1852 to 1861. However the closest thing they had to a worthwhile cause was proving to everyone that it was their favorite indie band that had the most “raw” sound.
***
Anyways, because she was my friend and because I wanted to keep it that way, I showed up to the park on her birthday. When I got there I thought that I was early because there were only 5 other people there.
“Hey,” I said, “What’s going on? You said 7:30, right?”
“The key word in that sentence is ‘said,’ Joan darling.” Madeline smiled, “Past tense.”
“Madeline-“
“I told the rest of them that I wanted to be 17 for another year. They’re not coming tonight.”
“Then why are we here?” asked Tee rather impatiently.
“Because you people are my beloved friends. Those other people are just my responsibility.”
“Okay,” I said, “I have no idea what you’re-”
“We’re going to get into that new art exhibit at the Royal Gallery.” she said, “It’s around $100 per head and only for heads that are 19+.”
“You want us break into an art exhibit?” said Tee shaking his head, “You are the lamest badass I know.”
“Listen,” she said sounding angry now. That’s right, she sounded angry. “it’s supposed to be really cool with these really demented sculptures made of human blood and entrails. I heard it’s like looking inside the soul of a psycho.”
“Been there, done that.” I said, glaring at her.
Tee grinned. I never knew if he was genuinely amused by what I was saying or if he was amused by me.
Anyways, after that, I laid out a perfectly well-reasoned and sensible argument for why we couldn’t break into the art exhibit. I included moral, legal, and practical arguments, all well supported by case-studies, facts, and experts. I think I even quoted Gandhi at some point. In response, Madeline looked me in eyes and said with her tiny chin dribbling, “Joanie, it’s my 18th birthday.”
***
As we were walking down the hall of the Royal Gallery, Tee caught up to Madeline and me and whispered, “Hey, if you actually told me about this earlier, I could have had fake IDs made for all of us.”
“Oh please,” said Madeline rather loudly, like she wanted people to hear, “you think I need your help getting fake IDs made? I know about 20 perverts who would have given me fake IDs and a complementary foot massage for a whiff of my dirty laundry. I just didn’t know that I wanted to come until about 3 hours ago, and also I don’t want to pay.” The 7 of us went behind a plastic tree.
“So what now,” said a girl named Myra, “are we going to crawl through a vent?” She fiddled with the one behind her.
“Jesus Myra,” said Madeline, “we’re not in an animated kid’s show.”
“Um,” I said, “Madeline, we’re hiding behind a potted plant.”
“Whatever, does anyone have any ideas?” she said running her fingers through her hair in that distinct way that only a few girls can and do.
“I thought you did.” said Tee.
Madeline wasn’t listening any more. She was looking over at a couple of pages loading bourgeoisie-looking food into a cart. They were wearing the same red polka-dotted vests as the pages who were now walking into the exhibit. Without a word, Madeline started walking up to them.
“Mad-” I started, but she was too far gone. I saw her standing next to them, running her fingers through her hair and looking at them with her big, little girl eyes. After a few words and nods, they all went around the corner. I looked over at Tee. He had a defeated look on his face. We stood there for an indefinite amount of time. Finally, I saw her walking back towards us. It looked like she had run her fingers through her hair one too many times. The pages followed.
“We’re in,” she smiled.
“Come on,” said one of the pages. He led us down a long and narrow (I would argue narrowing) hallway to a black door. He took out his loop of infinite keys, and instinctively picked out the right one. It startled me how the one useful key looked like all those useless keys. He opened the door just enough.
“Alright, quick.” he motioned us in. In a matter of 20 seconds, we were all inside the “psycho’s soul.”
“Happy Birthday, Maddie.” I said to no one in particular.
***
To be honest, there was only one sculpture made of “human blood and entrails.” And by human blood and entrails I mean ketchup and pipe cleaners. We walked around a little bit and I’ll be honest, everything seemed to mean nothing. There was this painting made of a bunch of boxes and a box full of ripped up paintings. The only thing I liked was this paper tree; it made me think of Christ’s resurrection and zombies. Soon enough, the most interesting thing for Madeline was the free champagne and this kid’s leg. She kept rubbing it up and down. Then she asked, “Have you been working out Freddie?”
“My name is Nick.” the kid replied.
“Let’s get out of here Nick,” she giggled, “And you can come too Freddie.” The two of them followed her behind the blood and entrails sculpture. I remember looking at the sculpture and thinking how hard it tried to be scary but this effort just ended up making it look more pathetic than it was in the first place.
I wandered off to a spirally, brown piece.
Tee walked over to me with a glass of champagne in his hand. “Hey,” he said, “enjoying yourself?”
“Well, I’m kind of risking my parents trust, my spotless legal record, and my college placement so that I can stare at a bunch of art that I don’t understand and be surrounded by a bunch of champagne that I’m not old enough to drink, all for a friend whose probably hiding behind that sculpture giving out hand jobs like Halloween candy. So yeah, my life is an eternal party.”
“You want some?” he moved his glass towards me.
“Yes, I’ve been waving off the free champagne offered to me every 3 minutes in the hopes that you’ll ride in like a drunken knight in shining armor and offer me yours.”
A pause.
“Sorry.”
“Honestly, I asked a stupid question in a stupid place. It’s my fault.”
“Hey, can you answer me one thing.”
“Sure.”
“Is that a sculpture of s***?”
“Hm, that’s what it looks like, doesn’t it.”
“I don’t contemporary art deserves to be called art.”
“Well, I don’t know much about contemporary art or art or anything really. But, it seems to me that, among other things, a lot of contemporary art is in concerned with using outer reality to show inner reality. Like, it’s not interested in being literal or in capturing what’s on the surface, it’s interested in attempting to go beyond-“he kind of trailed off before remembering that he speaking to someone, “I don’t know, a lot of it tries to visually manifest ideas and emotions and other intangibles, or even inspire ideas and emotions and other intangibles in the viewer. Many contemporary art pieces are metaphors, I guess.”
“Well, then I say this sculpture is a metaphor for contemporary art.”
“Still don’t get it?”
“No, I get it, I just can’t condone it. Look, I have nothing against metaphors but I don’t like it when they’re used gratuitously or thoughtlessly. Like, is our society so bored that we have to complicate and encrypt everything just to feel a rush?”
“Well, we spend most of our lives trying to grapple with invisible things; love, hate, awkwardness, plans, concepts. We each have our own understanding of and experiences with these invisible things and want to share them with people around us probably. So it sort of makes sense that we try to connect these hot-mess invisible things to things are more familiar and/or tangible; shapes, items, pieces of s***, etc. This brings them down to earth a bit. The effort it directed towards simplifying, not complicating. Metaphors are bridges linking what we can’t explain to what we already know.”
“You just used a metaphor to describe a metaphor.”
“Although, not all metaphors are good metaphors.”
“Tee,” waved Madeline from the corner, “Come here you beautiful exotic bird.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
He left and I was right back to where I started; depressingly sober and feeling a lot like that sculpture. I looked around at all the “party-goers”; they were not so much excited by the fact that they were in the art exhibit as they were by the fact that they weren’t supposed to be. There was this weird disconnect between me and those kids; it felt almost like a generation gap. I felt that in my 17 years on this planet, I had aged 50 years and was now undergoing some kind of midlife crisis.
***
“Madeline,” I screamed over the noise, “where are we going?”
I don’t know how, but at some point in the night I found myself seated in a hellish red van in between Tee and Myra- who had somehow changed into a checkered jumpsuit and was loudly reciting Sylvia Plath’s poetry. Madeline was in the front trying to find a good radio station. I didn’t know the guy at the wheel but he looked like he should be in a car seat.
“The beach,” she said calmly, “Oh, I just found the Beatle’s Revolver album. Who wants to listen to this?”
The hipsters collectively let out a howl of approval.
“Okay Madeline, who is that kid and does he even have a goddamn license? Does he even know how to drive?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
“Jesus, Madeline, do you know how much trouble I’ll be in if we get into an accident and die!”
I heard Tee laugh next to me again. It was seriously pissing me off at this point.
“Oh, you think I’m kidding,” I said turning to him, “I’m a guilt machine, buddy. I feel guilty about everything. I feel guilty about things that other people do. When I was 8, after I finished watching Pocahontas, I wrote a letter of apology to the chief of the local Algonquin tribe. I’m going to spend the rest of eternity thinking about my parents’ crying faces and my lost future and how I should have consumed more cauliflower so that at least my body could have saved some kid with kidney cancer or something.”
“You might just become the world’s first haunted ghost.”
I stared at him for a while. Then I narrowed my eyes and quietly said, “I hate you all.”
“Relax,” he pulled down his window, “You’re alive right now, aren’t you?”
Checkered Sylvia Plath had moved on to brokenly quoting Lady Lazarus; “Dying is an art like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.”
“Not well enough,” I mumbled.
We started moving. The sky suddenly cracked open and shot out 3 bolts of lightning, one after the other. There was a low grumble in the air. I could smell the impending rain. Hell, I could feel it; my hair, skin, and clothes all felt damp and heavy.
“For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge-”

I love storms. They should make me feel weak and defenseless but I feel powerful watching the rain punch the pavement and the lightning fry the dead air. I feel powerful knowing that they could kill me but haven’t yet. I just watch all that water rushing down the street or bouncing off the rooftops, and think, “wow, I’m 70% that.” Anyways, this particular storm was heavy and quick. It started, brought down hell, and ended in about 10 minutes.
“For a word or touch or a bit of blood-“
I nudged Tee after it was over. “Hey,” I said, “I don’t really hate you all.”
“Too late, you’re name’s already on my hit list.
“So, how do you know Madeline?”
“Oh, um, we’re cousins actually.”
“Are you serious?”
“Well, either that or I’m playing the worst practical joke ever.”
“Well, she’s never mentioned you.”
“Should she have? I wasn’t aware that girls stay up late at night discussing their cousins.”
“Hm, it feels kind of odd to know that you guys are related. Although honestly, it feels odd to think anyone could be related to Madeline.”
“She’s not as unique and special as she lets on with her art-exhibit break-ins and her collection of boys’ broken hearts. She picks her nose and starts books she can’t finish just like everybody else.”
“Well, if what you say is true; the fact that she can be a relatively normal person and yet convince everyone that she’s some kind of magical pixie hand-crafted by Jesus is even impressive than her actually being that way.”
“You know I can hear you guys,” Madeline sang from the front.
“Yeah,” said Tee, “But you’re drunk and won’t remember this tomorrow.”
“Remember what?”
“Go to sleep Madeline, I’ll wake you up when we get there. Which should actually be any minute now.”
“I turn and burn. Don’t think I underestimate your great concern.”
“What’s your name again?” he asked, looking back at me.
“Why don’t you check your hit list?”
“Yeah, it just says ‘Pretty Girl Who Hates Everyone’.”
“Joan.”
“I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.”
The car stopped.
“WE’RE AT THE B****, BEACHES!” screamed Madeline.
***
I helped unload a tub of beer and some towels while Tee tried to start a fire with two sticks, a rock, and pure human determination. When he failed, Nick pulled out a lighter. Tee should have been annoyed but he just laughed. Madeline looked fascinated by the fire. There were two empty beer cans next to her feet.
Tee got up and clapped me on the back, “Help me with the couch will you.”
We walked back to the van, and indeed, inside the back there was an old couch. It looked like it must have been golden at some point, but downfall after downfall had turned it to a sad, mustard color. I took one side, Tee took the other and we pulled the befallen throne out of the van. It was all damp and smelt like old people. My hand touched a particularly wet spot.
“Jesus,” I groaned, “I swear I’m going to get herpes from this couch.”
Tee nodded in agreement but Nick looked me dead in the eyes and said, “Things have happened on that couch.”
***
Tee announced that he would be going to the grocery store to pick up some food. The rest of us went to the phone booth to call our parents and let them know that we would be “staying over at Madeline’s house.” The little guy who was driving had now vanished.
When I came back to the fire, the first thing I saw was the reflection of the embers burning Madeline’s irises. I took a seat in the sand next to her. She turned towards me, looking fazed.
“What are we celebrating, Joan?” she asked quietly.
“You’re birthday, Maddie.”
“Right, I made another lap around the sun. Whoopie.” she threw some beer into the fire and we watched it rise, sway, and then fall like a drunk.
“Yeah, and we’re glad you did and we’re glad we were there with you and we hope you’ll keep at it for a really long time. That’s what we’re celebrating.”
“Thing is Joan, with birthdays, I’m never sure if they are a tribute to the beginning or the end. And you can say that they’re a tribute to both, but that just seems stupid. You can’t do justice to one while you’re thinking about the other.”
It’s weird because she wasn’t singing her words or using ridiculous catch phrases. It was the most mortal I had ever seen her.
“You know Joan, I’m glad you’re my friend.”
“No, you’re drunk.”
“Hold up any number of fingers.”
I held up my five fingers.
“Five.” she said, “Again.”
I held up my index finger.
“One. Again.”
I held up both my hands and my weird, demented little toe.
“10 and a half.”
I held up my middle finger.
She laughed. I held up 7 fingers.
“Seven. I’m glad you’re my friend.”
***
Tee returned from the grocery store, bringing with him bacon, marshmallows, chocolates, and all other necessary ingredients for instant obesity. I helped him carry them over and after we were done distributing everyone their rations, we took a seat on the couch. Nick was also about to sit on it with us but then Madeline said to him, “Hey, let them have the loveseat. Come sit next to me, darling.”
Tee inched closer to me and whispered, “I think there’s something going on between Nick and Madeline.”
The rest of the night was all stars and fire and drunken laughs.