Chapter Text
Bruise
Lauren sighed internally at the set of Madison’s back straight against the simple wooden chairs of the breakfast nook, she was going to rant about something and there would be no escaping it. Lauren went for the coffee first, using one of the large hand thrown stoneware mugs that Madison thinks look common, and choose a vegan cinnamon roll topped with cashew icing because the calories would distract Madison. The house was still full of treats. Sometimes Lauren thought she was lucky Madison hadn’t driven her to obesity, but Lauren was going to Stanford now. She loved her sister and cinnamon rolls more when she visits with them less. “Oh.” Lauren noticed Madison’s swollen nose, the black bruise around her bloodshot slit of an eye, purple with a red edge. “What happened?” Nothing would make Maddy angrier than messing with her face, not scratching her car or stealing her boyfriend. Lauren imagined thick squidgy hand drawn lines radiating from Madison. Lauren was an art major and someday she was going to do a cartoon of Madison when she was in one of her snits. But she wouldn’t want Maddy to know she made fun of her.
Madison drank the herbal cleansing tea she preferred in the morning and ate some of her fruit and yogurt in stiff, self-righteous silence. She sneered at the cinnamon roll and winced. “Lauren, you know better than to eat that stuff.”
“Maddy, what happened?”
Maddy muttered. “Just my mistake for thinking that loser could take a joke. Bitch. Do you think my nose job is ruined?”
“I don’t know about that.” To Madison that would be the worst, having a perfect nose was her prize accomplishment. She couldn’t turn her nose up at people if her nose was all common. Lauren rubbed her own nose. “It will be fine, Madison. You’re gorgeous, you know that.” Lauren took a deep gulp of coffee, her parents bought the good beans. “Who was it? Someone at the reunion?”
Madison snorted, accompanied by a high pitched whistle. “Veronica Mars. I don’t think you ever met her.”
“I did.” Said Lauren, turning the beginning of her smile to a frown when Madison glared, “not that we hung out or anything, just talked a couple of times when... And I heard about the Lilly Kane murder and stuff around Neptune High, you know.”
“I didn’t think she’d come to the reunion, but she did, with Logan, too.” Madison said bitterly. “And her usual crew.”
“Wow, Logan Echolls, that shows some nerve after the ...” Lauren suddenly remembered Maddy mooning over Logan. Whoops. She half wished she could have watched Maddy, sitting behind her table with her fairly gross (in Lauren’s opinion) group of friends, dealing with the unexpected. But she also knew the reunion had meant a lot to Maddy and she’d worked hard. “So, why would she hit you?” Lauren pushed her own hair from her face with the back of her hand, the part that wasn’t covered with sugar, then pushed back her chair and washed her hands and refilled her coffee. “Can I get you something, Tylenol?”
“You’ll get fat eating those things.” Madison sniped. “You gained weight at school.”
Lauren shrugged. “Why did she hit you, Maddy?” Madison was going to tell her but Lauren hoped she didn’t spend the whole morning getting to the point, and after another good look at Madison’s face, maybe Madison wasn’t going to tell her. It was probably something mean Madison had done, Lauren was familiar with that side of Madison. Lauren was a little mouse with her nose in a book while Maddy cut her swathe through highschool, she’d heard a lot. “You don’t have to tell me.” She saw the tension go out of Madison’s shoulders, just a little, and then tense up as their mother walked in.
“Hi, Maddy, I made you an appointment with Doctor Reingold, he’ll see you this afternoon, and I called Principal Clemmons. It’s a good thing Lauren ended up doing all of those fundraisers and roped me in, and we invited him to all of those parties here, so I can call him when I need to, although I figured when both of you were out of high school I was clear. He said you’d run a sex tape of this person at the reunion and that started a fight, he wasn’t really sure why she hit you but it sounds like nothing to go to the cops about, right honey, now that you’ve slept on it.?” She went over and touched Madison’s bruise gently. “ I said we’d donate a chunk of money to pay for the things that were water damaged when the sprinklers went off.”
Lauren was pretty sure that Madison wanted to do something to Veronica, press charges, but their Mom wouldn’t let her. Good enough. She got up and filled a mug of coffee for her mother and they chatted about a variety of things while Madison pouted. So the reunion Madison had hoped would bring back her glory days ended in a brawl for someone else. Poor Maddy. Not for the first time Lauren looked at her sister and committed herself to the future instead of the past. Also she’d send Maddy a gift, in a week or two. Maddie loved gifts.
A week later Madison drove into LA, to the apartment she shared with three other women. The bruise was a mottled yellow memory she could cover with makeup and made a good story if she left out some of the parts. That night she had too many sweet mixed drinks and sex with a guy whose name she forgot immediately. He had brown eyes and his brown hair was frosted and when she looked at him through her grasshopper goggles he reminded her of Logan Echolls.