At this age, the vision board she had created at twelve and updated for the next few years had her running her own tween magazine/blog/lifestyle brand, designing a line of patterned leggings for a general-consumer-Walmart-sold brand, getting bigger boobs, moving to LA, and seriously dating Justin Bieber as she nursed him back into the good graces of the public by transforming his bad boy image (she would achieve what Selena Gomez had failed to do) by the time she was 17.
Sure, she knew that it was a vision, but Maggie was the kind of girl who willfully forced and manhandled her visions into reality. And here she was, 17, and only having achieved basically one of those things. (Thanks, completion of puberty.) No matter how many times she liked Kylie's tweets, or Gigi's instagrams, or posted a #dailymags of her outfit for the day -- no magical opportunities fell into her lap to become famous.
Well, except for the whole, she was magical part.
But wasn't that part of the problem! She didn't have conveniently uncaring parents who would look the other way on late nights and unexplained bruises and injury. Didn't that always happen in movies? No, no, no Maggie had TWO sets of loving, helicopter parents, and she was their only sparkling child. All of their eggs were in her basket, and it was hard to operate secretly under four highly-tuned magnifying glasses. It was so unfair. They had ferried her away to California once before, and when the nastiness in DC reared its ugly head again, this time she was destined to go abroad after the completion of her freshman year at HITS. She had barely begun to solidify the carefully crafted name she was building for herself! The world was, simply, unfair.
All that senshi bootcamp, too, seemed to have been for nothing.
At first, it seemed glamorous moving to Paris, but Paris suddenly became Barnaby, a nothing suburb outside of Vancouver, and Canada just didn't have the same glow as Paris. Maggie had fit a lifetime's worth of tweets into her Parisian life, even pretended she was still there for months after they had relocated again, while she was still trying to plan out how to polish the turd that was her downgrade to suburbia.
But you know what really stung? J-freaking-R Rae.
Their love had bloomed once, furtively, when she was in the seventh grade. It was the talk of the school, their illicit hand-holding on the bus after a trip to the aquarium. Of course, Maggie valued their friendship too much to risk it, she had said, and they settled back into an easy friend bond within a month.
But then... THEN. High school. A California-tanned Maggie, fresh from her temporary relocation and fueled with additional confidence (that she did not need), had attended a high school baseball game and, afterwards, sitting cross-legged on the floor of a friend's house had been whisked away to a closet with JR.
Seven Minutes In Heaven was not for children, and Maggie Lawrence was no child, just like she had tweeted.
7 mins in heaven, how original, amirite? #kidsthesedays #justliketv #whereismyrealityshow?
Sure, her palms were a little sweaty, and sure, she planned to laugh it off with JR and joke about how stupid it was they were playing this immature game. But when the door closed and they were in darkness, she laughed awkwardly and caught his arms to steady herself. Her eyes adjusted, and he was there, inches away, looking calm and amused, with the same eyes that she had found remarkable when she was a mere child two years prior. She muttered something like, "Well, this is no bumpy school bus ride, which is kind of my thing. Got to stay on brand." She shuffled and stepped on a sideways heel, spilling into JR's arms (which were bigger than she remembered) with an oof and looking up at him (he was taller than she remembered), and suddenly the space disappeared and they were kissing. Really kissing. The real way. To this day, Maggie isn't sure who initiated it, but the butterflies in her stomach swelled and then shut the hell up as she experienced what would be, secretly, her first kiss ever.
The door had been whipped open, and they emerged, laughing, hand in hand. And they were laughing later that evening when they kissed again on the couch, or before she left in the street. And before she could think of what to do about the vulnerability welling in her, DC had some serious s**t happen again, and she was gone.
But we'll always have Twitter. And Instagram. And Snapchat. And Facebook.
Or at least she had thought.
With all the social media in the world, two years was too long to not have one direct conversation. Maggie tweeted relentlessly, not that that was any different, but her poetic scrawls of mopey lyrics over photos of her staring out at the Eiffel Tower or at a rainy window or holding a baguette (always black and white) elicited no response from JR. Within six months, she unfollowed him on Twitter and waited for him to notice. (Naturally creating a secret account to follow him on instead.) But he didn't notice. Instead, Maggie got to notice. She got to see all the friends he was making, all the tagged selfies of him with pretty girl after prettier girl. The shots of him practicing basketball, posted by a female who was not his sister. And it became clear to her that JR had the upper hand here -- and there was nothing she liked less.
So when she returned to Destiny City before the start of her senior year, full of culture from Paris (but mostly suburban Canada), Maggie had one thing on her mind: to make sure JR knew just what he was missing out on. Instagram told her that he was at a local park playing basketball with some friends. Perfect. Time to show him all the Maggie Lawrence he had been missing.
Maggie spent an inordinate amount of time perfecting a flawless "casual" ponytail that gave the appearance that she just tossed it up and it looked like that -- lovely and relaxed, not painstakingly manipulated into the right amount of height and perfectly placed lose tendrils. She decided to go with the no-makeup look, which meant 30 minutes carefully applying light makeup to make her look naturally flawless and flushed. She zipped up into the tightest, most attractive sports bra she had: neon green with black piping and a zipper in the front with matching, fitted black spandex running shorts that were as short as she willing to go (which was, it turned out, decently so) and neon green sneakers. It was sexy-sporty and glowy. Definitely had to catch an eye. She strapped an iPhone to her upper arm and dotted her ears with some studs. And as a final touch, she zipped into a moisture wicked running jacket, just so she could have something to take off for extra oomph.
Before leaving, she snapped a mirror selfie and posted it:
back in the dirty DC, time to baptize myself in sweat in its name #DCdidyoumissme
It took hardly any time to arrive at the park. There was a long running track, two soccer pitches, a tennis court, and a large fenced off set of two basketball courts. Lucky for Maggie, the track looped around the courts. She had her Uber drop her off on the far side so she could make sure it looked natural, taking a loop around the soccer fields before heading toward the courts. There were two groups playing on the courts, and at a distance, Maggie wasn't sure which one was JR. She had circled halfway around the courts, but didn't want to give herself away by obviously eying them.
Instead, she jogged to a bench, lifted one leg up to stretch, and when she spotted a familiar tuft of hair, slowly straightened and peeled out of her running jacket, pretending to massage a sprain in her calf... but careful to keep her hip popped and one hand on her hip.
