Madison had always been pretty. As a child everyone had told her how pretty she was, but it wasn't until the eighth grade that she knew it for sure. She was a touch of a late bloomer, but when puberty finally hit, Madison blossomed like a magnificent orchid. After that her status as a pretty girl was evidenced by the amount of male attention Madison received and Madison, after an awkward adjustment phase, decided that male attention was one of her favorite things in the world. She enjoyed the way the boys flocked to her and got nervous around her. And she enjoyed the secret feelings she got when boys she liked came around. Armed with self-confidence in her looks, it didn't take long for Madison to become the most popular girl in her junior high school.
The next year she went to high school and joined the cheer squad. The number of guys around her grew exponentially, and Madison found herself included in the most exclusive social cliques of her high school. She never had to worry about dates to the dances, or invitations to the parties. She never had to pay for alcohol or drugs and if one guy bored her or didn't live up to her social standards, she simply got another guy. All this came because it was universally accepted that Madison was the prettiest girl in the school by the start of her sophomore year.
Madison always had a ride to or from school and never had to pay for her morning lattes from Starbucks. If a guy wanted Madison to ride to school in his car, her latte was the toll they paid. When she turned sixteen, her father bought her a car so she could rush into school just before the first bell and make a grand entrance. Even the teachers, especially the male teachers, went out of their way for Madison. High School life for Madison was mostly fun and enjoyable.
Unfortunately, along with the heady upside of high status and popularity came an unexpected downside. Madison had to quickly accept that, while it stunk, it came with the territory. Pretty Madison evoked a lot of reaction from both girls and boys. The girls were a constant source of social pressure. More than half of the girls were overtly catty around her, and most of the rest were, if not overt, at least covertly jealous.
On the other hand, the boys exerted a constant pressure of sexual energy. Every single one of them that approached her had the idea that somehow, he could have sex with Madison, and that was definitely not the case. Madison's list of possible recipients of her virginity was extremely exclusive, and even with that very short list available to her, Madison had kept her virtue intact until her senior year of high school, despite the persistent rumors to the contrary. Madison's status also brought a steady undercurrent of baseless rumors of her sexual promiscuity, usually spread by jealous female rivals, or jilted male suitors.
Everyone also proceeded under the assumption that Madison had a head full of feathers and couldn't appreciate anything except makeup, clothes, and parties. To those who didn't know her, Madison appeared to be a character from "Clueless" that somehow escaped the screen.
However, when it came to the downside of high status and popularity, all the other negatives paled in comparison to the weight of everyone's expectations. Because she was popular, everyone in the school, especially her friends, had a specific set of inflexible expectations of her, and everyone in Madison's life, from her parents to the people she never met that somehow knew her, shared those same inflexible expectations. The first and highest of those expectations was that she would date the right kind of boys, namely boys who played football. Football was king at Madison's high school and as a member of the cheer leading squad, Madison was expected to keep up appearances and date players from the football team. It was an open joke that a girl "earned" her varsity letter for Cheer when she took possession of her boyfriend's football fleece. As the prettiest girl in school, Madison was expected to date the best-looking guy in the school, and that was Miles the quarterback.
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A Beauteous Flower
RomanceMadison is a professional dancer and a professional dater with an eye towards a professional husband until a Romeo reminds her that she is a romantic at heart.
