stareliza
Starry-eyed Girl
marinette lianne tremblay, "mari"
female
sixteen years of age
born of a one-night-stand and raised alongside her younger half-sister chantal by their physically and emotionally abusive mother gaelle, marinette has spent the entirety of her life being downtrodden. although she is an exceptionally bright and sweet girl who longs to form strong bonds with her peers, she's had it drilled into her mind that she is not worthy of even the poor life she lives, and thus doesn't reach out to others because she doesn't believe she has earned anyone's friendship. she lets herself be pushed around for much the same reason: she thinks that she deserves any mistreatment inflicted on her because she believes she's nothing but an inconvenience to all of those around her. the only pure, genuine relationship she has is with chantal, who she is exceptionally close with and very protective of.
female
sixteen years of age
in her adult life, marinette would only continue to spiral downward. lacking the funds for college and doubting her ability to earn a scholarship, marinette would move out of her mother's home with chantal as soon as she turned eighteen, finding them a small apartment and working small jobs to try and make ends meet. chantal would eventually find a husband and move out, and though she tried to provide for marinette, her elder sister would refuse all her attempts at aid because of her lack of self-worth forever telling her that she didn't deserve chantal's help. no longer needing to protect and provide for chantal, which she considered to be her purpose, and now feeling like a burden on the younger sister she so adored without any other meaningful connections, marinette would eventually take her own life through hanging.
however, her fate is not set in stone. a previously negative force in her life has seemingly had a change of heart, and if provided with the support she needed in youth, marinette may be able to turn her life around before it's too late.
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Jessica "JJ" James
sixteen
junior
Jessica was born into a very destructive family to put it lightly, born into a family of criminals, druggies, and other things society would consider rotten and not good. Everything about her life was aggressive even when at home. She slowly learned how to defend herself from attacks and assaults from her father and brothers. More and more as JJ became a teenager, she would sleep at other peoples houses or find another way to be away from home. Her aggression on other students gave her some power when she had none until she was 18 and could legally leave. JJ was an alright student in school since for her she knew that it was the only way out.
Jessica "JJ" James
sixteen
junior
Once she managed to get into college, she worked her ass off to make good grades and land a good job that could help her finically from the hole that she had always lived in and to move into the middle class. Years after college everything started to go wrong, and she checked into therapy. She found power in hearing people she used to bully tell her that she appreciated that she finally apologized and tried to explain herself to her unforgivable actions. Then she found out that Mari was dead and it was apparent that JJ had played a role in that death.
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It was pitch black when the small flip phone started to buzz playing a ringtone that JJ knew from forever ago. She pulled her hand over and instinctually flipped it open and typed in her old passcode deactivating the alarm. Then it hit her, that buzz, that sound, that flip, it couldn't be, right? She put the phone down and rubbed her eyes; she must have been hearing and seeing things there was no other reasonable explanation for why her old flip phone was beside her. Why was her pillow so hard? She groaned and sat up and realized she had slept on a couch. The time was six A.M., and the room was dark, but she could make out the living room of one of her old friends from seemingly a lifetime ago. She glanced down at the phone, and it hadn't turned back to her iPhone. She groaned and found a paper and scribbled "thx" on it before getting her bag that was by her head and slid outside. This situation had to be a bad dream. She followed her instincts to the school where if this dream were like her old life then a coach that would typically hold some sporting thing would let her in because of a deal she had with the school to use the showers and freshen up there.
So far she had been playing to this 'dream' and following along though something seemed seriously wrong. Sure enough, a coach stood by the door and crossed her arms. "Welcome back, James," she said spitefully for being forced awake this early to accommodate a student. JJ sighed and slipped into the girl's locker room and got her locker assignment. It was a reasonably big locker since the school did everything they could to help her succeed. The school would just parade JJ around once she had graduated to prove that anyone could, even a girl from a broken home. Jessica didn't mind; she would be done by then. She finally trudged over to the mirror and saw her reddish pink hair from so long ago. In her dreams, she couldn't make out details in a mirror. So she flipped to the phone and unlocked it and started reading messages that were written in English. This wasn't a dream. She was awake. Holy shit. What the actual fuck. She was sixteen again based on the date on the phone. That meant all of her victims where alive. That meant her filthy father and couple of her brothers weren't in jail or dead yet. What was this hand that fate delt her?
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She was supposed to jump. The rope would have snapped straight, and it would have been over, just like that. It'd all happen in an instant. She just had to jump, and Chanti wouldn't have to worry about her anymore. She just had to jump, and she'd never again have to waste her evenings in that awful bar, pouring drinks for drunkards who sneered and called her rude names, and earn barely enough to live for it. She just had to jump, and she could leave the whole rotten world behind. She was supposed to jump--but she slipped. She slipped and then she was dangling, the rope constricting painfully around her throat, and she panicked. She kicked out frantically, trying to find the chair, trying to rip the rope from her throat, but she knocked the chair over and her bloody fingers slipped off the ropes and she couldn't breathe, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't breathe--
Marinette awoke with a gasp, eyes shooting open and hands flying to her throat. It was bare, and there wasn't so much as a rough patch of skin to indicate that there had ever been a rope around it. It was just a dream. Marinette let out a long, shaky breath, pressing her eyes closed until her heart stopped pounding in her chest, and then glanced over at the clock. Her alarm was set to go off in ten minutes, but it was almost better that it didn't get the chance to. With a deep breath to brace herself for the cold, Marinette pushed off her blankets, got to her feet, and dressed quickly. Her clothes were basic and cheap, but familiar, and their plainness allowed her to fade into the background more than anything high fashion ever would have. Marinette could always use the relative invisibility that modest clothes got her.
Getting Chantel up and ready was a cinch, as it always was. She was an endearingly precocious girl, remarkably bright for her age, and more aware of their situation than Marinette wanted her to be--none of Marinette's attempts to shield her from the truth of their mother's mistreatment had been successful, it seemed. All the same, Marinette awoke her with a whisper of "time to play the quiet game, Chanti," as she always did when they were fortunate enough to have their mother still be sleeping when they got up. Their mornings adhered so closely to the same script every morning that Marinette could run through it almost on autopilot, operating so fully on instinct that she breezed through it without a thought. Step one, pour Chanti cereal. Step two, pack her lunch while she gets dressed, and three, grab a personal lunch while she puts on her shoes. Step four, leave the house by 7:15 and meet Chanti's school bus. Step six, kiss her head, see her off, and wait ten minutes for her own bus. Here it comes.
She stepped off the bus and onto the sidewalk in front of the school twenty minutes later, gripping the straps of her backpack tightly and making her way up the front steps, face carefully neutral. Gym first, which was never an enjoyable experience, but considering she'd had it for the entirety of the year so far, she'd gotten used to it. She drifted down into the locker room just a little behind the group of girls that comprised the rest of the class--yet another group she'd failed to find a place in. She watched from the doorway as they split off into smaller groups within the locker room, some heading to change by their lockers, others making their way towards the showers, and a few beelining for the three stalls that granted privacy to change. With a soft sigh, Marinette took up her usual place beside the stall nearest the door, leaning against the wall and waiting placidly for one to free up. After all, with the marks of her mother's hatred all over her skin, she couldn't exactly strip in front of the other girls.
