[coming sometime] The Despicable Doings of Maddie N. Ziegler || mnz

Chapter 1

"Mum. It's like two hundred degrees outside."

"Don't exaggerate, Sweetie."

"Muuuuuuum." Maddie made to move towards the front door as her mum called from the kitchen, the tone of her voice rapidly changing from teasing to instructive and strict.

"Maddie, you are not going outside dressed like that! Go get changed."

"Why?" Maddie questioned looking down at her current outfit, the one that had caused this argument in the first place. "Everyone else's parents let them wear stuff like this,"

"Yes, but I'm not everyone else's parents, Madison," Melissa told her, walking into the front room, bowl of cookie batter or whatever under an arm. "And you are getting changed,"

"Why?" Maddie repeated, her voice slightly raising in pitch. Her mum always did shit like this - oh that outfits not appropriate, you can't go out wearing that, blah blah blah.

"Because I say so. Either you get changed into something that covers more of you, or you don't go out at all,"

Maddie groaned, dumping her small shoulder bag on the floor as she raced back upstairs to get changed. She was supposed to be meeting her friends soon, no, she realised, checking the clock, she was supposed to meet them five minutes ago. Stupid mum.

She grabbed a t-shirt from her cupboard, one that there was no way Melissa could find fault with - it covered her entire chest, shoulders and the tops of arms, and grabbed a pair of blue denim shorts. There really was noting wrong with her current outfit; a pale blue lace skirt that Maddie supposed could be a bit longer, but was nothing scandalous and did manage to cover her butt (unlike a lot of the skirts Maddie's peers wore), and a white singlet, one without a large swooping neckline or anything.

Groaning, she pulled on her new, much more appropriate outfit, before racing down the stairs again. Her mother gave a nod of approval, and headed back to the kitchen, and Maddie picked up her bag, and started the walk to the pier, where she was going to meet her friends - if they hadn't already left without her that was.

While the beach-side town of Sunnydale (God, Maddie had always had to hold back a gag when she heard the name) definitely wasn't the hottest place in summer, it did get extremely hot - and Maddie was soon boiling in her t-shirt, and wishing for her light singlet back.

Luckily, her house wasn't too far of a walk from the pier, and it soon came into her view. It was already swarming with people, though it was only about ten, as Sunnydale was quite a popular tourist destination, with large hotels built almost right on the beach, which was almost always perfect. It was coming to the end of summer though, so the tourists were clearing out a bit, and the shops that predominately relied on them for cash would be having sales - which was why Maddie and her friends were going to the pier, a spot they usually tried to avoid in the summer.

Maddie fumbled in her bag for a few seconds, searching for her phone to text one of her friends, and ask them where they were, before remembering her mum had taken it off her. She didn't even remember why it had been taken; probably another one of Melissa's stupid tics. So, she was on her own, looking for her friends in the crowd. They hadn't decided on a definite meeting spot, and even if they had, Maddie doubted they would still be there. She was at least ten minutes late, and her friends were a very impatient bunch.

Sighing and directing a string of curse words in her head towards her mother, Maddie pushed into the crowd of tourists, hoping to find he friends in one of the many small trinket shops that were dotted along the pier. The tourists seemed to be doing the best they could to get in the way - couples were taking photos in the middle of the pier walkway, baby strollers were parked in completely inconvenient places, people kept stopping to check their phones, and it took all Maddie's willpower not to shove the, out of the way.

She'd had it with tourists this summer holiday - the stupid, annoying idiots. Once Maddie's family had come home from a day out to find a group of backpackers from some remote place in Europe sitting in their living room, and it had taken hours (and lots of google translate) to get through the language barrier and convince them that this was not a hotel Bungalow or something.

Half an hour later, Maddie's friends were nowhere to be found, and she was hot, bothered and tired. Not even the new bracelets that adorned her wrist that she'd gotten for seventy-five percent off could help her mood. The Sunnydale pier was extremely large - there was actually four separate piers, but they all joined together to form one big one, and Maddie doubted she was ever going to find her friends that day.

She decided to grab an ice cream before heading home, seeing as Fidello's, the best ice cream parlour in town was just to her left. Fidello's, while not too popular among tourists, who seemed to prefer the other two large parlours (which were no where near as good, in Maddie's mind), had a large range of sometimes exotic flavours, which seemed to change almost everyday of the summer. It was run by Mr and Mrs Marsden, an elderly couple who had set the shop up back in the sixties. They were a very friendly pair, and knew almost everybody native to the town. They were basically the adopted grandparents of everyone under the age of twenty-five, another set of parents for anyone over that, and regularly volunteered and were involved int things around the town.

"Hello, Maddie!" Mrs Marsden waved from behind the counter as she stepped inside. It was air conditioned, though not overwhelmingly.

"Hi Bettie!" Maddie called back as she walked over, calling the old woman by her preferred name. The shop wasn't too busy, a few younger families that lived local, and only one or two tourists sitting in the lounges provided inside.

"What brings you down to the pier today?" Bettie asked, getting a waffle cone out, assuming Maddie wanted her usual order.

"I was going to hang out with the others, but they headed off without me because I was late, because mum made me change my outfit. Apparently it was 'inappropriate'." Maddie felt comfortable dishing her doings out to Bettie - she was so friendly and good to be around you couldn't not.

"Between you and me, Bettie said, leaning forward a bit, her grey hair dropping out of its bun, "Your mother needs to loosen up,"

"Can you tell her that?" Maddie asked, in all seriousness as Bettie shovelled ice cream into Maddie's cone.

Bettie laughed. "Sorry, no can do kiddo, you know I don't interfere."

"I wish you would, though."

"You going back to that boarding school for the semester again?" Asked Bettie, changing the subject. "I don't understand why you can't just go to the high school here, with the other kids."

"Unfortunately," Maddie told her, answering her question. "And me neither, but dad went there, and he thinks it'll get me into a better college, better connections and all of that. I wish you hadn't reminded me - I was trying to get through the summer without thinking about going back,"

"Aw, you'll be fine," Bettie reassured, handing over Maddie's ice cream, as Maddie placed her cash on the counter.

"Hopefully. Maybe I can get expelled or something," Taking her ice cream, Maddie didn't realise the foreshadowing of the words she'd just uttered.

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okay so first: no, this is not being started yet, so don't expect regular updates, I just go into the mood for writing a chapter.
idk if this was good or not, and it's just the first chapter, introducing Maddie. None of the people mentioned in this (aka Bettie, random tourists) are main characters, and the main part of the story isn't set in Sunnydale (wtf is that name???)