ABOUT THE CHARACTER.

                               ABOUT THE CHARACTER.

★ ━  ( alisha boe,   cis-female,   she/her )  ━ ★   just to be clear, ya didn’t get this information from me.   The person you’re lookin’ for is   LAUREL JANE WALKER (NEÉ MATLIND)..  also known as   LJ.    Last I heard she was born on   JUNE 29TH, 1995   in    BALTIMORE, MARYLAND,   but she’s been livin’ in   RICHMOND,    for about    FIVE YEARS.    Word around the districts is, this doll,   LJ  can be    ALOOF,   IMPATIENT,   &   QUICK-TEMPERED,   but i gotta tell, ya, alls I seen is good things, like the fact that she’s   LOYAL,   SELF-SUFFICIENT,    &     RESOURCEFUL.   I guess that depends on how well ya know ‘em, though.   the last thing ya need to know is that she works as an    ASSISTANT MANAGER   @   CROSSROADS MUSIC & BOOKS.  I don’t know much about what that’s all about but I do know that’s all I can tell ya the rest you gotta find out on ya, own.    ━     ( ooc:  lia,   pst,   23,   she/her )

                          BIOGRAPHICALLY SPEAKING…

growing up she was exposed to;

White picket fences and a two-story house in the suburbs with trees crowning the roads like an archway. A picture-perfect life! They had a personal chef because both parents were too busy working to cook dinner, but they thought it would be better for the family to eat around the table as if it would make the meal more intimate. Serious conversations to build any semblance of shallow-less connections were absent.

all about the family & their relationships;

Laurel’s parents had always been involved. Maybe a little too involved in the wrong way and not involved in the ways that mattered. In today’s world, they would be considered helicopter parents the way they hounded her about grades and making sure to get accepted to John Hopkins University on a scholarship to study pre-med. Yes, of course, they wanted her to be a doctor! Much like both of her parents are. Her mother, a neurosurgeon, and her father, a physical therapist. Not to mention they always compared Laurel to her older sister, Mikayla, who studied at John Hopkins pre-med and then got into Harvard Medical School. The pressure to be perfect had built so much that she was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. It wasn’t until a major life decision caused a rift so large that she hasn’t spoken to her parents in over five years.

the road to portland starts with;

LJ had a secret boyfriend in high school who she kept from her family for the reason that romance is a mere distraction from what really mattered: her education. Which in some regard, yes, is correct but at the expense of her own daughter’s happiness and sanity it was a little too much. The day after graduation, without care nor regard to her parents’ concern, Laurel and her boyfriend (along with a couple of witnesses), young and in love and full of hormones and adrenaline, escaped the masses and traveled across the country to the Oregon Coast to elope as they read it was one of the most beautiful places to host a secret wedding.

Breaking the news to her parents went less than stellar as they berated her over the phone and cut her out of their will and trust. Laurel told her it was love and it was real and that it was more than a puppy, high school romance. Her boyfriend believed differently. A month into their so-called marriage, he packed up his belongings from their small studio apartment in Portland and left without so much a letter.

Heartbroken, and feeling stupid, it took Laurel a year to get over this betrayal, and even as she begged to come home her parents were having none of it. During that year, since she could no longer afford the apartment on her own, she got a part-time job at Crossroads and took a few temp positions just to make rent. As time progressed, she really made a name for herself at the music store, getting to know the locals, finding her ‘spots’. She had her favorite coffee shop, her favorite bar, favorite clothing boutique… Portland, despite the sadness that came in the beginning, became her home. LJ is now out here living her best life, although she misses her parents and wished they’d pick up the phone when she called. Not to mention, she hopes that her husband… who, yes, is still legally her husband, will come back.

her occupational perspective;

For the most part, Laurel does enjoy working at Crossroads but it doesn’t pay the bills. On the side, she’s an independent esthetician… without a license. But what she charges isn’t as much as licensed cosmetologists and estheticians do so she does have clients. She has to get charged under the table for the reason that what she’s doing isn’t exactly legal.