Post by Shelby on Jan 12, 2018 21:46:51 GMT
Basics
Name || Hope Lynette. No middle name, so don't ask. No, she doesn't go by any nicknames, and no she doesn't know why her mother names her Hope. Every time she's asks, her mother blows it off with a laugh and takes a drag of her cigarette. Just call her Hope, and leave it be.
Age/Year/School || Hope is a fifteen-years-old freshman attending Salem High School.
Gender || Female
Sexuality || Questioning and trying to figure it out. She's not apposed to males or females, each being equally as attractive to her. She just doesn't know which she considers more, or what she should identify herself as.
Health Issues || She's been smoking cigarettes since she was thirteen and been in a smoking environment most of her life and though no real health issues have come from it, she does have asthma. The fact that she smokes causes it to become irritated at times, which is why she always keeps her inhaler on her, but she doesn't stop. She can breath fine. She can run if she wants. It's just a fluke, she says. Besides, the doctors haven't found anything anyway that's life threatening, and she refuses to go back to those quacks so that they can question her and try to take her mom away from her.
Quirks/Bad habits || She smokes, a lot of the time by herself somewhere around town, other times around the back of the trailer with her mom sitting in the old folding chairs they own. Hope drinks occasionally as well, though not as often, and only to get a good buzz to drown away any bad feeling she has. She doesn't particularly like the taste of any alcohol, so will usually try other means of "rightening" herself before turning to liquor.
Eating Diet || Nothing strange in particular. She'll eat what's put in front of her, never having been that picky. She doesn't eat much though, leaving her on the more skinny side of the spectrum.
School/Social Life
Job || Hope has no job on account of her being too young to get into the work force. Just one more year...
Reputation || People around school, and around the trailer park, call her a stoner, which they wouldn't be completely wrong about, but she doesn't hardly smoke weed, nor does she ever do hard drugs. She's seen what it's done to people and don't want to end up in a ditch dead somewhere. People try to avoid her or make fun of her, calling her poor, saying that she got the bad draw in the gene pool in terms of who she was born from and the life she has to lead now from it. It doesn't bother her; people can say what they want about her and her mom because she knows who they really are. Not as bad as everyone things. Not as 'dirty' as everyone things. Just because she has dreads doesn't mean that she doesn't shower, doesn't mean that she doesn't wash her hair. She does all of that, but people just want to stick with their own judgmental beliefs. The school even tried to get her to cut her hair and to get rid of her piercings on account of them being a distraction, but they came to a deal: she has to keep it in a bun when at school to not get kicked out. She hates it, and only half the time listens to the rules. And she won't take her piercings out.
Grades ||
Though Hope very well could easily make straight A's, she makes low B's, mostly C's. Grades don't measure up to how smart anyone is, and she's not about to conform to the education system that tries to fit people into a certain mold that they shouldn't be stuck in. It's so stupid.
Relationships || Open!
Relationship Status || Single, and not really looking to be in a relationship with anyone. It's too restricting, and she needs to keep finding herself.
Clubs and Organizations || None. If she doesn't like the organization of the education at school, she sure as hell isn't going to join any extracurricular activities.
Appearance
Height/Weight/Body Type || Hope is five feet, two inches tall with room to still grow. She is slightly underweight, with not many curves to her body, and her breast haven't come in completely yet.
Hair color/style || She has brown hair that's been looked in dreads for as long as she can remember, but her own choice. After discovering the hair style she decided that she wanted to have that done to her hair, and luckily her mom was nice and encouraging enough to actually allow her to go through with it. After it grew to a good length Hope decided to dye the ends of it blonde, leaving the top of her head her natural brown color. Usually she keeps her hair down, but at times she will pull it up into a bun, or even less likely a ponytail.
Eye color/makeup preferences || Hope has brown eyes, and she loves makeup! She doesn't like flashy colors, or makeup that'll make her face looked caked in it. She likes to wear thick eyeliner and applies makeup that enhances her features. She loves red lipstick though, and will often be seen wearing some shade of it that pops across her lips.
Clothing Style || Hope loves to wear big jackets, jackets that cover her hands and arms completely, that she can snuggle up in and feel safe and protected. Underneath she likes to wear either tight fitted clothing or baggy clothing. What ever her mom can get her hands on, and what ever she can get away with stealing at some of the more low end stores since they don't care to beef up security in their places. It's only their fault if there stuff goes missing!
Ethnicity || Caucasian
Playby || Zhavia
Personality
Likes || Music, art, smoking, makeup and doing it, adrenaline rushes, climbing trees,
Dislikes || Cops, CPS, judgmental people, the education system,
Nervous Habits || When Hope is nervous she grits her teeth and clenches her jaw and starts scratching at her neck.
Hobbies || Hanging out with the "bad seeds" of Salem. Smoking. Stealing. Sitting outside in the reclining chairs with her mom, just talking about life and the injustices that the woman has had to face in her life.
Personality || She can be standoffish and cold, a person that seems unapproachable upon first glance. And generally speaking, she is so unless you're within the crowd that she hangs around with. The "rejects" of the town. The people who are known for doing fucked up things but never caring about it in the long run. In a way, she's grown hard from it. She's carefree of worries, or tries her best to be. Stubborn and, to a point... and to loyal for her own good. When she latches on to a person, she latches on, and will follow them almost blindly despite what they've done. She always finds a way to forgive them, or a way to look differently at them. She is most certainly like that with her mother.
History
Family ||
Evelyn Lynette || Mother || Cleaner at the local hotel || Evelyn is the only real relationship Hope has with anyone in the family. Her father, as far as Evelyn has told her, was never in the picture. She says that she got pregnant and afterwards the guy never came back in their lives and that she's fine with it. They don't need a man in their lives, in their house. It can just be the girls. This has has allowed an almost inseparable bond to develop between the two, even if she hasn't been the best mother around. But Hope doesn't know any better. She looks up to her mother because of her no nonsense attitude, because of the way she stands up to people, and because of the way she allows her to express herself. What ever Hope wants to do to her hair, Evelyn will allow it. If she wants to smoke in the house or drink with her mother? Evelyn will allow it.
Hope doesn't know any better. Inherently she knows that these actions are wrong, but she's doing them with her mother. These actions make each of them feel better, make each of them momentarily forget about the poverty that they live in, make them forget about the CPS cases that have been called against her mother for no reason. It's fun. It's something that they have in common. And it's nothing bad. That's what Hope thinks. If it was bad, her mom would stop her, and she doesn't.
And Evelyn know that she isn't doing the best by her daughter. Not getting her the best clothes, encouraging her to steal, to drink, to smoke, to go out and party... But why not? They're each in a fucked up situation, and she doesn't want her daughter to suffer in the sadness that she feels herself burdened down with. So let her smoke. Let her steal. She's not killing anyone. She's not hurting anyone. She's being a teenager living her life, and who is she to stop that? She did it when she was that age, and look at her now. She was alive and well.
Evelyn has a drinking problem, often coming home after work and passing out on the floor or couch, or on those few times actually being able to make it to her bed, but she won't admit it. Doesn't like for Hope to see it, but she can't help it. Drinking, smoking, makes her feel better. Makes her feel whole again.
Backstory ||
Hope was an accident baby--or at least that is what Evelyn tells everybody, but that's not the case. Far from it. She was assaulted... Physically, mentally, and then ended up pregnant. And nine months later she had a baby girl, who she names Hope because she believed that the baby would be a sense of Hope for her. And she was. Having a baby was enjoyable, it was fun. But at times it was hard. It was suffocating. It was terrifying, especially when every time she looked into her baby girl's eyes and she saw that man; that hateful man, that bastard.
The two of them hadn't always lived in the trailer park at Salem; for a while they were moving from shelter to shelter, barely able to make it by. Evelyn stole cigarettes and stowed away the baby formula shelters gave her for the baby. She had been on that stuff for so long, longer than any baby should be, but she couldn't hardly afford food for herself, much less for herself and a baby. So why not use the formula? Why not do the best that she could. Occasionally she would leave little Hope at the shelter by herself to try and find a job, money, turning to prostitution in the worst cases.
This went on for a while, her leaving little Hope at the shelter safe while she went to do her dirty work until the CPS was called. Afterwards, before they could find her, Evelyn took her baby and ran, without looking back. For a while things had been bad. There was a time when she thought about giving Hope away, when she thought about leaving her on a street and hope that someone would pick her up and take her home, to love and care for her, but every time she looked into the toddler's eyes she knew she couldn't give her away. It was selfish. She was a terrible mother. But she made it through.
They made it to a place called Salem in California, where things started looking up. The two were placed in a shelter for a few months until Evelyn finally found a job. When she got her first paycheck, she cashed it in, ran to the shelter for Hope, and showed her the green paper. "Look, baby," she said with shaking hands, "Money. Things are getting better." Months of saving allowed for Evelyn to buy a small trailer, and since then the two have been living there.
They have still never been rich, but they get by. Hope doesn't know any better, and she doesn't care. She loves her life, loves her mother, and doesn't believe in the least bit that her mother is a bad person, that she's a bad mother. Not even when her mother started giving her cigarettes. Not when she allowed her to drink. She wanted to be like Mom anyway. It was fine. It was fun. This was her mom, and she would never do anything to hurt her.
Hope knew what people said about her mom, what they said about her, but they were wrong. Her mom wasn't white trash, an abusive, neglectful mother. She was the best. She was loving. There may not always be food in the house because of the alcohol her mom buys, but that's okay. It's okay. Hope can find her own way for food anyway. But one thing she will not allow for people to do is disrespect her mom. She's gotten into fights at school over it, and over people calling her dirty and white trash. She's not. She loves herself. She loves her mother. Only a few people understand. She's doing less harm than those people are doing. She's an actual good person.
By age 13 she started getting in with the bad crowd. Smoking heavily despite her asthma, drinking occasionally. It was fun! Those people understood her. And her mom didn't stop her. Didn't even hardly ask where she had been all throughout the night, or why she didn't come home until the early morning. She wasn't pushy like that. She actually trusted her daughter, or at least that was how Hope saw it. Since then, she's been in the bad crowd, but she thinks that they're good. That they're real.
But in all honesty, she's just too young to know any better. Too impressionable. Too sucked into the life that her mother has given her, and the life that those surrounding her have given her.
Once, in middle school, because of the days that Hope missed of school for skipping people in suits came to the house. When they announced themselves as the CPS agents, that's when she grew cold. Grew angry. I was after that case, after her mother wasn't taken away, after they said they were going to continue watching, Hope vowed that nothing would ever happen to her mother. Her mother would never go away, and she would never allow anyone to take her away.