character basics.
full name: maya bezerra
age & date of birth: 28 & february 9th
gender & pronouns: female - she/her
time living in covington: 5 years
occupation: bartender at heavy hitters & clerk at the lost page
positive traits: determined & courageous
negative traits: aloof & aimless
where do they live: downtown
sexuality: bisexual
relationship status: single
background.
trigger warnings: child abandonment
the journey to covington, georgia for maya bezerra began in são paulo, brazil. it was where she had been born to a single mother who made her income by waitressing. it was a pretty good life, the tips from tourists were really strong and made it fairly simple to afford a living for her and maya. most of her childhood was spent either at the ranch or at the beach whenever her mother was working. the company and caretaking came in the form of an “aunt” that was able to keep an eye on maya whenever her mother wasn’t capable. up until her mother’s disappearance she had always been a happy child that never really felt the emptiness of not having a father or her mother around constantly. even in youth she somehow understood that this was the best that could be done. then one day maya ended up never seeing her mother again, and never really worried or got scared until her “aunt” did. when she worried then maya worried, and when it was clear that her mother was never coming back maya ended up just staying with her “aunt” on the ranch.
life didn’t even really change that much. she went to school, spent her time helping out around the ranch and went to the beach whenever she could. the constant movement in the earlier years of her life had made her a gregarious teenager, maya had the ability to make friends almost anywhere and one of her favorites had been a clerk at a bookstore in the heart of são paulo who had introduced her to the world of fiction. the best thing her mother and “aunt” had done for her had been to teach maya english along with her native brazilian portuguese. since they had both worked in hospitality and tourism fields they deemed it to be necessary for success. and sure, it had certainly helped maya, especially when it came to getting jobs of her own, but it enabled her to read all the recommended books offered to her. the favorite genres ended up being horrors and thrillers, finding favorite writers in stephen king and agatha christie. she and her friend at the shop even made a challenge for each other; they had to read stephen and agatha’s entire catalog. it became an obsession and something maya took on as a side project in researching the stories, characters, locations, and anything she could find about the novels she’d grown to love. stephen king’s library, including his personal recommendations, had taken up a special place in her heart and something she never would’ve given much more thought to than fanfare if it hadn’t been for her mother.
in her late teens, the curiosity of what had happened to her mother came to the forefront and something maya could no longer ignore. she read too many mysteries and had become too obsessed with true crime to not become an amateur sleuth herself. at least when it came to her singular personal tragedy. after saving up a bunch of money from waitressing, just like her mother, the questions she had been asking around for more than a year led her to obtain her passport and leave her home for the first time ever. the common rumor had been that her mother had met someone and took off with him to the united states, where he was from. what was known and loosely remembered about the man her mother ran off with was that he was from georgia. for years maya had been wanting to visit the famous landmarks of america and now her quest would take her in that direction. there was a brief deviation in her plan, she didn’t want to go directly to georgia, there was still more information to try and gather. and, maya also wasn’t ready to face how she’d been so easy to leave behind. so, instead, she had tracked down her father and headed to portugal, where he had moved before he ever knew he was meant to be a father.
it was a great experience, meeting her father. he had an entire family and she not only got to meet them all, she spent the better part of a year getting to know her half siblings and the man that had wished he’d known about maya’s mother taking off much earlier. with him she learned where her love of fiction came from and they had many discussions over books and writers, he was actually a writer himself but more in a journalism vein. after portugal, maya and her father and one of her siblings traveled up to england to do a bit of an agatha christie tour. it was great but she couldn’t continue to put off her journey to america to see if she could track down her mother and find out what happened. maya wasn’t even sure she actually wanted to know, but she did want to look her in the eyes. when she made her way to covington, she ended up settling in town and looking for a job. preferably one working in hospitality, which she obtained, working as a bartender enabling her to interact with guests and people her mother might have come into contact with. she got wrapped up in the ghost stories and even sought them out herself whenever she was able to trace the footsteps of her mother. it wasn’t all fun and games for maya though, it took a long time before she was able to find traces of her mother. she had lived in atlanta for a few years and had been rumored to have moved out west to california or oregon. there was even some words about arizona. instead of chasing her down, maya, feeling the hold covington had on her, decided to wait it out because she had a feeling that her mother would be coming back. there was a young boy at the last known residence in atlanta.
