Labels || H.S. [#Wattys2020]

ONE

It's not easy fitting into a world that you just weren't made to be a part of. It sounds cliche and it sounds like typical teenage angst, but it's true. The world is drawn into categories, cliques, labels, and people who comply with them. People abide by these categorizations, follow them as rigidly as they can. They have been conditioned to believe that if they break the status quo, that something catastrophically wrong is going to happen, that it would be the end of the fucking world as they knew it. So when she looked into his face, his dreamy face, she knew that it was just that, a dream. As a size sixteen nobody, Reagan knew that she would never get to meet anyone like him. 

"Okay..." She mumbled looking up at the large billboard, "That's just unfair."

She stood in front of it, analyzing the four smiling faces back at her. There was, of course, a display of cheesy grins, but the one with the shirt unbuttoned just a button too low and the long hair had a cocky smirk. He had recently trimmed his curls and it looked as if he was forced to wear long sleeves to cover up the mass array of tattoos. The ad was massive, taking up the whole side of the street, and as she stood before it people paused and snickered. She had stood in front of the ad for much too long and upon realizing it snapped out of her daze and kept walking, one heel clacking in front of the other, hoping that no one had noticed her gawking.

It had been approximately six weeks since Reagan had applied for an internship at the label she had been directed to by her professor. An internship was exactly what she needed in order to come out ahead of her graduating class, and what better way than to apply to the only label that was actually looking for interns. So she took the semester off and dedicated it to her internship, it was practical, really.

Since she had received the job, she had spent the better part of her days toting coffee to and from the building, and if on an off chance some agent was too lazy to do some PR work, she picked up the slack. She was diligent, and she was hardworking, but in an unforgiving world, she was simply below par to her older colleagues.

She passed another billboard before entering the building and had to restrain herself from looking. The boys of One Direction had been recently signed to record at her label, a huge switch that the company was a buzz about. There were posters and billboards of them everywhere, and it felt as if their stare followed her with every step. She thought the marketing strategy was too creepy, as cute as the boys may be. They needed billboards that promoted them without leaving people feeling as if they were being stalked. She wanted to bring it up to the head of the department, but she quickly realized that along with One Direction came a change in management and staff.

Luckily, since they were only working for a few months, interns were allowed to stay. Hopping onto the elevator, without coffee for the first time in weeks, Raegan pushed the number 22 and is instantly transported to her floor. Though as soon as she gets out off, she is instantly nudged into a corner of what was the intern's former office and is stared at by the other college students. Some snickered, some tittered, but mostly she was ignored. She was grateful though, at her size, it was nearly impossible being ignored. She wanted to have fit within the small corner, but her hips would never have allowed it. Although Reagan knew being overweight isn't terrible unless of course, you're breaking into the business. Her round face and muffin top don't exactly scream "Glamour", thus she was stuck with working behind the scenes and under the radar, without the honor of meeting any of the huge names she worked for.

"Reagan Bailey?"

"That's me!" She yelled awkwardly, her hand shooting up in the air.

"Great." Said a tiny, bird-like woman at the front of the room, "Come with me."

"Okay." Reagan grabbed her bag and moved towards her. Her shoes dug into the back of her ankle, and she could already feel the skin rupturing. Silently she cursed herself for trying to look cute by wearing heels on the one day she had been expected to walk around.