Growing up in Climax, KS was boring. In a town where there are only 64-70 people, everyone knows who you are and is generally all up in your business. So the only thing to do was to behave until you're old enough to get out of there.
This is something that Megan Brianne Braddock learned early in life. Her parents, Elisabeth and Warren, were very community oriented. They knew everyone and everything, and if they didn't know it? That's what church on Sundays was for. They rarely did their shopping outside of the small town, so it wasn't until she was 8 that Megan ever saw a city. When she did, she was astounded by how huge it was, and how lost she could get in it.
At ten, with her parent's blessing, she took up doing odd jobs in the community. Helping the elderly clean their homes, mowing lawns, doing garden work. Anything that would pay her even a little bit. Each and every penny was saved. Unlike the few other children in Climax, she wasn't saving for a shiny new bike, or a video game system.
After seeing the city, Megan was a girl with a dream. She was going to leave her small community as soon as it was legally possible for her to do so.
When she became twelve, her mother took her to see Judy Branson, an elderly woman who lived several houses down. Judy was the town's seamstress, though her eyesight was failing her. She took Megan in, teaching her everything she knew.
At first, she put up a fuss. When Mrs. Branson told her she'd be earning a wage for helping out with the small business, she quieted right up and became a very patient student. Each different stitching technique was soaked up, and soon the girl began not only doing better work than the older women who helped Mrs. Branson (more due to the small fingers than any actual skill), but she began taking what she was taught and applying it to her own clothing.
By the age of sixteen, she had already created a clothing line during her Home Economics class. These designs, and the prototypes she worked on for grades while in school were painstakingly packed away in garment bags, and boxes. Her drawn designs were stored in large hat boxes. Everything was ready for the day when she was going to leave.
She stayed for five months after her sixteenth birthday, and only due to the fact that her beloved Mrs. Branson fell ill and passed on. Surprisngly, Megan was left a hefty sum of money — hefty to her at any rate. It was enough to buy her a ticket to New York, get her a dumpy apartment in Brooklyn, and supply her with enough material so that she could "expand" her clothing line.
Within two months of this, she was living on the streets, working for a part-time Chinese seamstress shop. She still had her designs, but rather than selling them to a large Upper East Side designer like she hoped, she was wearing them for clothing.
Her break of luck came while on a delivery. One of the students at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC saw her outfit and offered to pay her money if she could use it in her class. Megan agreed, with the caveat that if the design did well, she'd tell the teacher where it came from.
The design, of course did well. After a bit of finagaling FIT allowed her to audit several of the classes. She couldn't actually sign up for them as she had no transcripts and she wasn't old enough to be classified a mature student.
Though she was driven to succeed, "true love" would whisk her away from the school shortly after she actually was able to enroll at the age of 19. She and her guy Hyde took to the roads when he ran away from New York. Their aimless wanderings brought them to Dallas.
Since then she's been working at Magnolia Boutique, trying to earn enough money so that she can open up a clothing line or shop of her own. Granted, she generally blows her money trying to get Hyde out of a bind every now and then, and she needs to rebuild her savings.
