The Supposed Life of Maggie Price

Quickly she was rescued from the grips of the fire breathing dragon by her knight in shinning armor. His arms around her tightly, he carried her away on his white steed and they watched the sunset. He looked deeply into her eyes and...

Knock-knock

Maggie opened her eyes and watched the white door swing open smoothly. She felt so annoyed that her fantasy had been ruined by someone actually daring to bother her.

“Maggie, you’re going to be late for piano.”

“Ma, I told you I don’t want ta’ go,” Maggie said with a bit of a whine in her voice.

“I signed you up for those lessons to better yourself, its for your own good.” Mrs. Price was now standing with her arms folded at the door looking very stern. As she was a very serious woman, Maggie never folded to her cold tone.

She rolled her eyes and put a pillow over her head. “I don’t wanna go, can’t I just lie here and practice the piano in my head?”

“Margaret Anne Price! Get your butt off that bed and get your coat on, you are going to that piano lesson and you are going now!” Mrs. Price was mad now, Maggie new it too. So she got up and slipped her shoes on.

“You know I hate it when you call me “Margaret”,” she said Margaret in a mocking type of voice.

“And you know that I hate it when you talk back to me and don’t do what I tell you, so come on lets go.” Her mother walked out of the room and jogged down the stairs, she always seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere, even when she had nowhere at all to be.

Maggie lagged behind to just take one glance out the window at the fall leaves gently floating around in the autumn breeze, finally making their way to the ground resting prettily in just the right place, as if it were exactly where they were supposed to be. It was like that was their purpose, to be pretty and fall just where at least one person would appreciate them.

Maggie was a firm believer in fate, she thought that life would seem a little pointless if we didn’t all have a purpose and a reason. How could one ever fulfill that purpose if fate hadn’t put them in the right place and the right time?

“MARGARET!”

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered aloud, tearing herself away from the window, she went downstairs and made her way to her piano lesson.


The keys moved easily under her fingers, they quivered a sound to her every touch. Playing was natural to Maggie, but it wasn’t something she enjoyed.

She closed her eyes, listening to her music and the scene changed. There she was, in a concert hall in 1850’s London. She was the center of everyone’s attention, all eyes were on her. Not a sound could be heard except the beautiful melody that she had created, her own work being admired by hundreds of people. Maggie thought that feeling was the best feeling in the world, but she couldn’t believe the pride and joy she took in when she finished the piece and the whole hall burst into applause and Maggie felt a balloon of confidence fill inside her.

Soon she started another piece, but she broke away from the notes written on the piece of music and just played away. She tapped the keys with such grace, she thought she was doing so well that the audience was cheering her name, but instead it was her instructor, yelling to her to quit her foolish play and get back to work.

She opened her eyes with gloom, her beautiful music no longer echoed in the room, a large crowd no longer stared and looked at her with admiration as if to say “beautiful, just beautiful! I wish I could be just like you!”.

Maggie sighed letting out a long, depressed sound.

“I am not hearing beautiful music,” the instructor called from the other room where he was drinking his coffee and reading a newspaper that was about three weeks old.

“Yeah, I’ll give you beautiful music,” Maggie muttered and pounded on the piano the notes that she read from her practice book.


Maggie’s mother picked her up and they made their way home, her mother made small talk with her in the car as they drove home, mostly about whether her little sister, (Angela, who was in a grade below her, eighth), would make it into the school play as the lead. Maggie hardly listened or cared. All she wanted to do was enjoy the darkness of her room so that she could explore her mind for a new adventure.

The late night finally came to her as she lied there in bed hardly sleepy. Witches and fairies raced through her head. Dark magic and princesses roamed her imagination. Her fantasy was her escape, her escape was her fantasy. She envisioned herself far away from the place she lived, her overbearing mother, her overshadowing sister, and father she never knew due to his absence, supposedly because he was ‘out finding himself’. Maggie wished that she could be out there ‘finding herself’.

Tonight Maggie was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, only she wasn’t lost and trying to find her way home. She was only lost inside and just ecstatic that she would have much trouble getting home. As Dorothy, Maggie made friends with all the munchkins and Glenda, the good witch, and lived happily there for many, many years. Not home sick for one second was she, only happy to be free.

As she lay there she never cried, she never let one tear drop fall from her eyes. Her mother had taught her that crying wasn’t okay because it made women look weak and weak women would not be tolerated in society. Deep in her mind and heart Maggie knew this was wrong, but had a hard time showing she knew this.

Maggie found it hard to live the life she did, found it hard as a fourteen year old girl to cope with the emotional baggage her mother stressed on her. Most importantly was the fact that Maggie’s mother often had money problems, Maggie sometimes had to wonder if she was going to get to eat when she got home from school. So, she would imagine she was a grocery store owner and that she could eat anything she wanted, whenever she wanted.

Maggie Price’s life was not all that easy and her mother didn’t make it any easier. Of course, she told herself that she couldn’t blame her mother for the problems she endured. Told herself that if she blamed the rest of the world for everything that was wrong, nothing would ever get fixed because she would feel the problem was elsewhere, somewhere she couldn’t touch and mend.

Maggie continued to daydream and imagine. Always the same theme, rescue and escape. Soon she began to believe in her daydreams, Maggie actually began to believe that she could live these lives. Every fairy godmother and wicked witch that she dreamt up was very real to her.

She never let anyone know she felt these things though, never let anyone know about her secret life, because her fictional friends would tell her the world would not understand, her mother would not understand, nobody would understand. Her friends told her she was different than the rest of the girls at school, she was special and they were bad.

Finally one day, her mother lashed out at her for forgetting to pick her sister up after school. Maggie slammed her door and fell away into her fairy tale world, only this time she never returned from her fictional escape.

Maggie finally found her escape and lived it. Now she would never have to return to her own variation of hell again. It was just too bad that she never got to live her reality with a smile on her face.