Hera Alosso

[TheLeakyFaucet*]

Name: Hera Alosso
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: Bayview Secondary School
Hobbies and Interests: Track team, writing, cooking

Appearance: Hera is a short eighteen-year old girl at 5'3 and her weight is average at 123 pounds. Immediately upon meeting her, the first that anybody notices is her hair. Although it is naturally brown, she has dyed it with purple highlights and fanned it to the side. Her hair curls up slightly in the back despite the many gels she uses in an attempt to straighten it. Hera's lips always seem to have a pursed look to them, partly because of the single, golden piercing she always wears on the left side of her lower lip. She has a heart-shaped Latina face and very dry skin that often looks like it is peeling. Many different products have also left her skin olive-toned and grainy-looking. She hides this under a large amount of make-up to hide this and her face often looks air-brushed under her mascara. Underneath all of her eyeliner, her eyes are a light hazel.

Photo reference:

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b112/wes...ndevon/Hera.jpg

Biography: Hera Alosso was born on July 15th, 1990 in Teapa, Mexico as the first and only child of Maria Giordano and Eduardo Alosso. Going back generations, her family was poor and could barely make end's meet. Her father worked in a nearby seaside town restoring boats and her mother stayed home with her all day. Quickly realizing they couldn't keep raising their child with the knowledge that she had no future, they decided to take a great risk: cross the border. Joining a small group of refugees, they began their long journey up to Texas by hopping from bus to bus. It was an odyssey that took two weeks with many close calls, but the Alossos finally arrived in Rialto, Texas to start a new life.

Hera only remembers brief snapshots of her entrance into the states. The most vivid memory is waiting inside a van at a gas station while her father talked to the attendant outside with a wad of cash in his hand. Realizing her past was something better off forgotten, she decided not to question her parents about these kind of things. Besides, she knew they were good people. They did their best to give her a structured home even if the neighborhood they lived in was awful. Her grades in elementary school were average, partly due to her poor English skills. She found a hobby in cooking. Hera often helped her mother in the kitchen as a young child. Aspiring to be a chef, she often stirred together everything she could find in the fridge together in a bowl.

Still, her culinary experiences were easily the most innocent part of her stressful childhood. Rialto was a very bad neighborhood with hookers at every corner and gang wars every night. She learned at a very early age that bad people were around every alleyway. Her parents usually forbid her to go out. However, every morning before school, her mother would go on a jog with her before school started. This was usually safe because the streets were empty. Hera always liked running; it gave her a sense of independance. When she ran in those early hours, she felt like the world was hers and nobody would ever hurt her. She was powerful. But still, those thoughts were short-lived. Her jogs would end and she usually wouldn't be let outside after school due to the serious dangers of the city they lived in. Hera would lay awake at night in her bed with the sound of gunshots and police sirens echoing down the alleyways outside.

But things did end up getting better. In sixth grade, Hera's father ended up getting a good job in St.Paul and moved his entire family out of Rialto. Middle school was an easier transition from city life than Hera had thought it would be. She'd been shell-shocked for awhile by the naivety and innocence of her classmates, but after awhile, she'd adjusted and even made a few friends. Unfortunately, she was never able to get very close to them and they became nothing more than faces with names to talk to in school. After learning English better and getting more motivation from better teachers, Hera went from an average student to being enrolled in advanced classes. Hera also became active in several sports. After failing to make the volleyball team due to poor coordination, she tried out for the track team and ended up outrunning their fastest runner. In no time, she had helped the team win several awards. Still, it wasn't fun. Back in Rialto, she'd run because it felt good. It was just something she did because she was good at it. Her attitude toward urban survival wasn't the only thing she carried into Bayview. There was still that ever-growing feeling of fear every time she looked at the smile on her classmate's faces. The world was dangerous. They all were. It was almost like the whole world was just disgusing itself for a short time, and soon, it would take off its mask and get her.

Hera immediately fell into the wrong crowd upon her arrival in high school. They often went out at night and got drunk in the elementary school parking lot. Sometimes they would even get so intoxicated that they vandalized the place. All of the girls that Hera talked to in school quickly distanced themselves from her and stopped speaking with her. Among the new crowd she found was notorious marijuana grower Ashley Drayton. From what Hera could gather, Ashley got weed from her cousin who grew it on a farm in the rural area of Minnesota. Ashley was looking for people to help sell the drugs and was willing to split the profits. One thing led to another after befriending the girl, and by mid-year, Hera was a well-known pot dealer. Knowing that drugs were drugs no matter what anyone said about them, she stayed away from actually using the weed and merely acted as a dealer. Along with getting a share of the profits from her customers, Ashley also paid her a good potion. It was perfect. Her parents questioned her attitude change and sudden increase in money, but she just shrugged them off.

Eventually, life caught up to her. Ashley stopped growing weed in an effort to, "straighten out her life". Furious that she no longer had any way to make money, Hera took oregano and catnip and blended them up into a plastic baggie. Walking to the mall that night, she tried to pass it off as pot and ended up selling it to a gullible sixth grader for fifty bucks. As it turned out, the sixth grader was the younger brother of an active steroids user who was the captain of the girl's softball team. A week later, Hera was cornered on her way home from school in the parking lot and had her right arm broken by the girl and three of her friends. In the hospital for the next two days, Hera finally realized that her life was going in the wrong direction. It was time for change.

Senior year was her last chance to really become a new person. Taking up a job at a local coffee shop as a new way to make money, Hera tried to be satisfied with going from successful pot dealer to minimum wage employee. Bored one day in the shop when no customers were around, Hera pulled out a sheet of paper from her backpack and took out a pen. With nothing else to do, she wrote, "The Story of Hera Alosso", on top and began writing. To her surprise, she actually had fun doing it. And to even more of a surprise, she turned out to be a decent writer. Writing became a great hobby to keep her away from the bad crowds until graduation. After finishing an autobiography, Hera went on to write romance novels. Although they were cliché, filled with Mary Sues and grammar errors, it was something she loved doing. Her writing improved as the year went on, and eventually, she worked up the courage to read a short story in the school talent show and win first prize.

Advantages: Hera is well-built and can run for long periods of time without giving out. Her jogging exercises during her childhood have continued into her teenage years. Determined to survive, she'll do whatever she can to stay alive.

Disadvantages: Hera isn't the most sociable of girls. She doesn't have many friends after her fall-out with the drug dealing crowd and will most likely be on her own.