They Called Me Beautiful

One: Madeleine Proctor

There was always something not-quite-right about Madeleine Proctor. It wasn’t anything you could see or even identify. It’s just who she was.

Too likable, too perfect, too . . . powerful. That’s the only way to describe it. When she was with you, the world was hers, and you were blessed to be granted even a small part in that world.

I had a larger part than most. I was her best friend, after all.

I’m not sure how it happened, whether she chose me or I chose her, but knowing Maddie, it was the former. Maybe she liked me because I wasn’t a threat. I was too quiet and mousy to be intimidating.

And that’s one thing I knew about Madeleine Proctor that no one else did. Beneath that perfection, beneath that power, she was afraid.

“Pretend,” she’d tell me, over and over again. “Pretend you’re beautiful. Pretend you’re confident. And someday you will be.”

It never worked for me. But she shone. To anyone looking on, she was the brightest star of us all. She was the one the guys couldn’t keep their eyes off of. She was the center of every party, the reason for the laughter that bound the “in” group together.

But it wasn’t only the cool people who liked her. Everyone did. She reached out and touched people, not with her hands and sometimes not even with her eyes, but with her words and her kindness.

I’d watch her sometimes, watch her from my castaway corner. She was so radiant, and even I struggled to match that effortless personality with the girl I called my best friend. The girl who’d confided to me that inwardly she was just like me, lost and cold and lonely. Afraid.

It was hard to believe, unless of course she was hunched on the steps beside me, blinking away the tears that would have helped me understand her. She didn’t seem to realize that I could never view her as I viewed myself. No matter what she said, I still saw in her that brilliant angel soul, that glorious angel light.

But she never did. She hated herself.

That was one thing I couldn’t understand. To me, she was so beautiful. I didn’t know why or even how she felt the same way I did. But sometimes she’d whisper it to me, and every time she did, my blood would run cold.

“I’m so dark, Kate. So dark.”

Like a devil trapped in an angel’s body, Madeleine Proctor was never what she seemed. Looking back now, I wonder if her coming to me, her being my best friend, was really her way of screaming out for help. But she didn’t scream loud enough. Or long enough.

She could never let herself go that far.

She was so proud and cold, even when she was smiling. Even her kindnesses were delivered as if from the hand of a seraph. She gave and gave and gave, yet not once would she allow herself to be given to. Maybe it would have lessened herself even more in her own eyes.

I’m the only one she allowed inside. We’d talk for hours sometimes, she mostly listening while I divulged tale after tale of my sad life. And in the middle of my monologue, she’d let it slip, let the cracks in her façade widen until I saw who she really was.

I’ve never forgiven her for that. It’d be easier now if I’d never known her, if I’d always thought of her as everyone else did.

They saw her every day, certainly enough to know someone. But they never knew her. To them, she was spotless. Entertaining. Confident.

Everything I wasn’t. And how I envied her.

Even her name was elegant. Madeleine Rae Proctor. We’d talk sometimes, about our names. I always hated mine, but she loved hers. “It’s just too long,” she’d say. “And I hate being called Maddie.”

So she changed it. Just like that. Everyone started calling her Lane. To this day, I don’t know how she did it. Even when I tried just changing the spelling of mine, Kate to Cate, it never caught on. No one remembered to replace that ugly K with a C.

But everyone remembered to call Maddie Lane. She was powerful like that.

But I’m the one they called beautiful. I had that above her, if nothing else. It doesn’t seem like much now. But back then, it was all I had.