CHARACTER INFORMATION:
FULL NAME: Magdelena Rhodes
NICKNAMES: Del, Lena
PRONOUNS AND GENDER: Cis woman, she/her
SEXUALITY: Bisexual
OCCUPATION: Librarian
TL;DR:
TRIGGER WARNING(S): CAR ACCIDENT, DEATH Ā
kind of sad girl hours forever
from small town ohio, comes from a home where her parents loved her, but barely tolerated each other.
spent most of her life lying ā about her home, about her family. spent most of time reading and losing herself in fictional words that seemed a little better and a little easier.
she was really, truly honest with one person ā a kid named eric who moved in next door, and who she subsequently spent almost every waking moment with after.
her dad passed away suddenly when she was in high school, and eric was the only person who was able to pull her out of that grief. her mom was dealing with a lot of shit on her own, and had never really learned to parent, despite taking a somewhat passable run of it for all of delās life.
she and eric went off to college together, making all their dumb plans about the rest of their lives. she had loved him for most of the time theyād known each other, but she was waiting to say it. or maybe she wasnāt ā maybe she never intended to say it at all.
eric was killed in a car crash after their college graduation.
without eric, del didnāt know who she was. still doesnāt, in all the ways that matter.
there was no one to pull her out of this one. seeking anything, she joined a small online support group. but she joined the group with a different name, a different job, with a different relationship to the person sheād lost. it felt too vulnerable to enter that world as del rhodes, who lost her best friend. lena rivers who lost her fiancĆ© felt easier.
as lena, she made a friend. a real friend ā someone who really understood.
she had a lot of time to tell sam the truth. a lot of time, and even more opportunities. she hadnāt expect their late night talks to last for days, much less years.
after eight of them, she made the decision to finally meet up with him in person. she packed up her life in hilltop, and rented to first one bedroom apartment in philly.
personality wise, sheās a very lost person. she wants to be good, she wants to do the right thing, but her own insecurities keep her from it more often than not.
FUN DUMB STATS:
Birthday: June 30, 1992
Zodiac Sign: Cancer ā | Cancer ā½ | Libraā¶ Ā
MBTI: ISFP
Enneagram: Type 2
Temperament: Melancholic
Moral Alignment: True neutral
Element: Air
WANTED CONNECTIONS:
someone sheās actually honest with
new friends
coworkers
drinking buddies
absolutely anything
ESTABLISHED CONNECTIONS:
person sheās been catfishing for the past eight years - sam loftgren
FULL BIOGRAPHY:
Magdelena Rhodes is a true cautionary tale of parents staying together for their kid, only to the absolute detriment of everyone involved. Growing up, her whole life had been a sort of pretending ā a one-man show for an audience of none. She saw the life she wanted in classmates, saw the parents she wished for in the drop off and pick up zones. She was in the second grade when she started to pretend her life resembled the ones she was so jealous of. She had always been good at losing herself in another life.
Her parents did love her, she thought. They just had difficulty navigating that love in their hatred for each other. Theyād had her young, before they really had an understanding of themselves, much less before they understood each other. Desperate to do right by their burgeoning family, they got married and bought a doublewide they could barely afford. None of that changed the fact that they were just fundamentally different people. Her dad was a serious man ā stoic to the point of seeming unfriendly, and contemplative to the extent of nearly being mute until he found the right way to say what he meant. Her mother was the opposite ā she was a woman of extremes, flying so high some days that she seemed like the sun in the Rhodes household. Other days, she didnāt leave bed. Their daughter was their only common ground, but it wasnāt enough. It took Del nearly a lifetime to realize it never wouldāve been.
They tried, in their own ways. But they were just pretending, too. Her mom liked to take her to movies after school sometimes when her dad came home early ā a thinly-veiled gambit to spend less time with the man she married when she was newly eighteen years old. Her dad took her for ice cream whenever her mom was out later than either of them expected, and drove around until Magdelena fell asleep in the car. It wasnāt until she was older that she realized he was hoping she would be too tired by the time they got back to their double-wide to hear the subsequent argument through the paper thin walls. He wanted it to work so badly that del pretended it did.
She found real solace in a neighbor. Before his family had even finished unloading the moving van, Eric Atwater was in her yard with a baseball and asking if she wanted to play catch. For a second, she felt the itching self-consciousness that hadnāt left since the first sleepover she attended at another kidās house. She was too aware of the holes in the trailerās vinyl siding, the ground under her feet being more dirty and mud than grass, the old barely-running Astrovan in the front yard. But then she looked at Ericās house and saw the shattered window held together by duct tape that was older than either of them, the dry rotted wood of the two stairs by his front door. She decided to play catch after all.
Eric was the first person to tell a young Magdelena that her name sounded like an old lady, and declared that he was going to call her Del. She let him, and by the end of their first summer as friends, she barely answered to anything else from anyone. She saw him every single day that first summer, making up dumb games that they were both terrible at, especially because they both kept changing the rules. When school started, they were just as inseparable. They shoved their desks together in any classes they shared ā an act of short-lived rebellion that ended with them being seated all the way across the room from each other in almost every instance. Other kids came and went, their circle of friends growing and shrinking all the time, but Del and Eric remained.
Eric was her best friend, and sheād spent most of her life being in love with him. Del always thought he knew ā thought there would be a day when she finally worked up the courage to say it. He punched her first boyfriend when he caught him kissing another girl under the bleachers at their freshman year homecoming game. Del wrote every single paper he needed to get his AP English credit. They protected each other in the way only kids who had always been fending for themselves could.
When her dad died, Eric was the only one who was able to reach her. He took her for ice cream, ordering rum raisin ā a flavor sheād always hated as a kid, but had been her dadās favorite. When just the smell of it made Del break down, he asked what her dadās favorite song had been. They listened to that old Cat Stevens album on repeat, Eric squeezing her hand when Father and Son came on. Later, he drove them around until his car ran out of gas. Pushing the old Corolla up the hill was the first time Del laughed since he passed, tears streaming down her face until she was no longer sure what emotion was pouring out of her. It hadnāt been what she wanted in her grief ā but sheād needed it.
They went off to the same college, his U of O acceptance letter hanging on her wall, and hers on his. Everyone assumed they would end up together one day, even as they both protested. She wondered if her objections rang more hollow than his. Nothing had ever happened between them ā nothing more than holding hands in the way kids do on the playground with someone they met only moments ago. That was alright by Del. She suspected one day she would be the best man at his wedding, and when she smiled, she would mean it. Thatās how they worked.
But Eric left her, too. The summer after their college graduation, he was killed in a car accident. It was on impact, sheād been told ā like it was supposed to lessen her grief. Like there was anything inside her that could find comfort in a world without Eric.
He had been eleven days older, and by nature, eleven days wiser, heād insisted when they were kids. The twelfth day after he passed was the hardest ā the day Magdelena Rhodes became one day older than Eric would ever be. Ā She was just twenty-two, and the only person who had ever really known her was gone, and all she had left of him was a sweatshirt that was starting to smell more like her and less like him. She was, she thought, too young to understand her motherās blackout days.
It was on the twelfth day after he died that Del did something that would shape the rest of her life going forward. She found a support group online ā a tiny little forum where a group of lost people tried to navigate their grief together. She felt like a person outside of her body when she started to type ā watched herself build someone new in the hollow place Del had once filled. She watched as Lena rivers took shape, a photojournalist from Boulder who lost her fiancĆ©. She hadnāt expected to need her for long, this fictional woman who let her hide in her shadow. Someone who was brave enough to say everything sheād choked on. Someone who wasnāt afraid. Against her better judgment, in her clawing desperation, Del made a friend. Sam, whether he meant to or not, became her lifeline. It was after the first time they stayed up messaging back and forth all night that she shouldāve told the truth ā but she didnāt. Even as their IMs turned to texts, and texts turned to calls. Even when their messages were the only thing that got her out of bed some days ā even when they crawled out of their grief together.
Life was moving forward, and Del was finally moving with it. She got a job at the library back in Hilltop, and she pretended that she didnāt imagine Eric around every corner. That she didnāt still hear the echo of his laughter down long hallways. It wouldāve been worse if she didnāt, she thought. Feeling okay again felt like a betrayal, an act of treason she wasnāt sure she would ever find herself committing. But weeks turned to months, and months turned to years, and the quiet spaces found silence again. She still went to see him, though. She lost hours and sometimes entire days sitting with her back against his headstone, reading him books she knew he would like, and sometimes ones she knew he would hate in a childlike hope of him making good on his promise to haunt her if he died first.
She stopped telling people how much she went to see him, even when they asked. She hated the way the pity sheād already resented shifted into judgment. But she told Sam. Sam, who never made her feel like she was pathetic. Sam, who never made her feel like she was anything but understood. At least, Sam made Lena feel seen. Lena, who was a widow and still found adventures in her life. Not Del, who had come to feel like pretending her friendship with Eric had been anything more diminished it. Del, who only found adventures in books. That guilt started to eat away at the edges of her, chipping away any of her flimsy resolve that she would never have to come clean ā that her honesty would be worse for them both.
It took Del eight years to decide it was time for the truth. The kind of truth she owed Sam from the start, and had never found a way to say. In a moment of uncharacteristic boldness, she backed herself into a corner she couldnāt get out of. She quit her job at the library in Hilltop, letting the lease on her tiny, cluttered apartment run out. She couldnāt stay here forever ā sheād been telling herself that since Eric died. Even if theyād made a grade-school blood promise to never go where the other couldnāt follow. As she sat with him for what would be the last time for a long time, finger tracing along that jagged scar on her palm, she gently reminded him that he broke their promise first. Her car was already loaded, but at that moment, she felt herself wavering. She felt the weight of everything she was leaving behind, and the more crushing burden of everything she still had to do.
Still, she did it. The drive took days, and so many times she found herself doing the math of exactly how much time it would take her to get back. She wasnāt sure what sheād expected of Philadelphia ā who she expected herself to be in Pennsylvania. There was an undeniable edge of disappointment when sheād crossed so many state lines, and still carried Del Rhodes with her. Even as she signed a new lease ā three months, enough time to change her mind, if she needed to. She got a job at the library. She was, despite her protestations, putting down roots. Still, she hasnāt found the courage to send the āiām here, letās meet upā text. One step at a time.
VIBES:
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