tipsy_buttercup036
Maybelline Beauregard. Her name lands like a statement. It carries weight-the kind that makes people pause and form opinions before they've ever actually spoken to her.
Maybelline clawed her way up from nothing. Poverty that leaves calluses on your palms and scars that no filter can soften. She grew up in places where water didn't run from taps and survival wasn't metaphorical. She split firewood until her shoulders screamed. She learned to cook over charcoal before she learned calculus.
But she refused to stay there. Now she's the girl everyone knows without knowing her. A stunning blonde who dances with raw intensity that leaves audiences breathless. Millions of followers. Viral TikToks. The campus queen, right down to the script.
Except she refuses to play by it.
Maybelline possesses an intelligence that operates quietly, lethally. While other girls traffic in cruelty, she doesn't. She's building an identity that proves she's more than her face, more than her body, more than the typical stereotypes.
The problem is perception is a beast with teeth.
A series of misunderstandings has crystallized into a singular image in one particular person's mind. He's filed her under exactly what she's spent years trying not to be-a bitchy cheerleader, a vapid queen bee. Each time he retreats further, erects higher walls, decides she isn't worth understanding.
Most days, she wouldn't care. But something about his misjudgment has burrowed beneath her skin.
She tells herself it's about principle. The truth is probably messier-something to do with the way he looks at her like she's everything he's come to resent, and she cannot stand that.
So begins the collision between a girl determined to prove she's more than her reflection, and a guy equally determined to maintain the distance between them.
Life rarely directs us toward comfort. Sometimes it forces us directly toward the people who will either destroy us or make us stronger.
Which one will this be?