Biography: Meredith Levine

Meredith Levine

Meredith Levine was born to parents Roger and Andrea Levine, joining her older brother Michael who was two years older. Her father is a manager at a corporation, and her mother a schoolteacher. As a young child, she idolized her brother, and the two were reportedly close.

Meredith was very bright and made friends easily; her best friend, Nastasya Fyodorevna, she has known since second grade. She also showed musical aptitude, and at the age of eight requested oboe lessons. Her teachers responded to her brightness and aptitude, and at the age of twelve she was tapped to skip eighth grade and move directly into high school. While Meredith was excited, she would later look upon this decision as the start of the darkest period of her life.

Meredith's parents, like any good parents, were concerned for the lives of their children and the futures they would face. However, they decided to take a more hands-on approach—in fact, rather a dictatorial one—to making sure their children were prepared to become adults. While Meredith would later be grateful for her parents' insistence that she mature and take on as much as she could handle, at the time she found it deeply stifling. She had just been thrust into unfamiliar classrooms, without the benefit of her existing friendships, and (what seemed like) much harder classes. Her brother, though one grade closer to her now, was becoming more and more erratic, due to what was eventually revealed to be an addiction to cocaine. Just before Christmas during her sophomore year, when Meredith was fourteen, she attempted to kill herself.

The Mount Hill administration had learned from the mistakes made after Brandon Chambers' attempt. Where Brandon's plight had been announced to the school at large (in a well-intentioned but ultimately futile attempt to create a warmer welcome for his return), Meredith's was kept quiet; for over a year, only five people in the whole world knew. The sixth was Brandon Chambers.

Meredith met Brandon when he became one of the unwilling participants in the founding of the Naked In School Program at Mount Hill High. Brandon was notorious for his own suicide attempt, of course, but other than that, Meredith (like most people) barely knew him. She began to learn about him as the week passed: talking to him for the first time, hearing his story. Her attraction to him became clearer and clearer to her, but she was nervous about saying anything: he was already seeing someone, and Meredith didn't want to be a home-wrecker (such as it was). The best she could do was try to be his friend, and hope a moment would come when he was free and clear. One did—that very week, as a matter of fact—and less than twenty-four hours later, the two began to court.

The non-existent gap between Brandon's break-up with Jane and his taking-up with Meredith worried her for a while (and would have repercussions later), but soon both of them had more important things to worry about. They became lovers within a week, and said "I love you" for the first time shortly after; though neither would admit it until years later, by the end of their first month of dating both of them were convinced that they had found the person they would marry. Through Brandon Meredith made new friends, particularly Christa Sternbacher who would eventually be as close to her as a sister. And, on a warm day in May, in the privacy of their own company, the two pledged their troth and, in their hearts, became married.

That week was notable for a number of reasons. Meredith was in The Program that week, and plagued with an extremely awkward and hostile nerd for a Program Partner. Her brother Michael returned from rehab that week and immediately began to return to his old ways. And Brandon's parents, those ever-absent emmissaries of the political process, returned to Mount Hill for one of their rare week-long sojourns, putting Brandon and Meredith's relationship under direct pressure for the first time.

Brandon and Meredith learned a great deal about each other that week. Not all of it was pleasant. Meredith found that Brandon would sometimes fall back on anger as an answer to a loss of control. And she found that Brandon was mystified by her insistence that she give Michael a chance to prove himself a civilized member of society—especially since it turned out that he had no interest in doing so. Meredith was suddenly beginning to wonder if this was really the right person for her—he was kind and loving most of the time, but when his moods came upon him he frightened her. She didn't know it, but he was starting to feel the same way.

There was never officially a break-up, or anything like it; they simply drifted apart for the summer, with nothing resolved and fear in their hearts. Brandon's ex-girlfriend Jane was going through a rough time, and he focused his efforts on helping her cope; Meredith, away at music camp, fell into the arms of another man. It was one of the biggest mistakes of her life. She regretted it almost as soon as it began, she knew it would jeopardize things with Brandon, and Rick Downing (to be frank) was not a very good lover.

Once school began, Meredith found herself avoiding her friends, because doing so was the only way to stay clear of Brandon. Fortunately (or not) for her, her friends weren't stupid; Stasya, Zach and Christa, working both independently and together, organized a reconciliation, and she and Brandon agreed to give it another try—perhaps realizing that, really, there was no other choice; they loved each other too much to walk away.

Meredith decided to attend Greenfield University with Zach, Christa and (of course) Brandon, about a hundred miles from Mount Hill. There she chose to major in French, flexing linguistic muscles and her love of words. She and her friends eventually decided to take an apartment together for their senior year. Whether by destiny or coincidence, the very next day it became clear that she was pregnant. Her birth-control pills had expired, rendering them completely ineffective; the baby was due at the end of the year.

Brandon and Meredith formalized their marriage that summer, with all their friends in attendance. Everyone knew that it was just that, a formality; while Brandon had technically roomed with Zach, and Christa with Meredith, during their years in the dorms, the couples spent more nights together than did the roommates. And on December 23rd, Laurelyn Adriana Chambers was born. Meredith Chambers, nineteen years old, was a mother.

Since then the Chamberses have been struggling to make ends meet. Brandon was forced to drop out of college once funds ran dry; Meredith was able to complete her degree, and humorously asked if her French-language diploma could be issued as a Bachelor-of-Sciences degree. While both Brandon and Meredith work themselves to exhaustion, however, their efforts seem to be bearing fruit: Laurelyn is a delightful girl, well-loved by all who know her. Meredith, with her husband at her side, looks forward to the future with a hopeful heart.

Meredith was inspired by a real person, whom (when I first met her) I thought was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. It has been difficult to find pictures that suit her due to a variety of circumstances, primarily relating to her unique personal fashion sense. The following are the best I can do:

• Meredith, but with a rather insipid expression
• Meredith, but with the wrong color of hair
• A Brandon's-eye view. I have only once seen the real "Meredith" with straightened hair, and that was her wedding day; let us assume that the character did likewise. (For those who are wondering: yes, she was indeed the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen—though that might have been due to that whole walking-down-the-aisle-to-meet-her-husband thing. He is a very lucky man.)