Lucas Diaz

[MethodicalSlacker]

Name: Lucas Diaz
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: 12th (Senior)
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Reading, writing, poetry, drawing, visiting museums, urban exploration, photography, science.

Appearance: Lucas Diaz is half Ashkenazi Jewish through his mother and half Puerto Rican through his father. He has straight chestnut brown hair, cut short on the sides and in the back but kept long on top and in the front, enough to cover his eyes if he so chooses. His face is heart-shaped, with a forehead slightly larger than average and a narrow chin. Lucas stands at 5'8" and weighs about 135 pounds. He is thin, and little of his weight is muscle mass. He has relatively clear skin, with an occasional pimple usually occurring on his forehead or the side of his cheek. His eyes are the color hazel, though this is sometimes obscured by his thickly rimmed glasses that he wears due to an astigmatism in his left eye and nearsightedness in his right.

His nose is relatively small and turns up slightly at its tip. Despite the olive complexion of his father, Lucas is light skinned and passes for white in the eyes of those unfamiliar with his heritage. Vocally, Lucas tends to be harsher than he intends to be around most people, speaking in a steady monotone. Around people he's on better terms with, however, he displays an impressive range, speaking in a very animated tone.

Lucas tends to dress in an unremarkable way. During the colder months, he often wears a solid color t-shirt over a long-sleeved undershirt, jeans, and black leather Chuck Taylor shoes with white toes. Depending on the weather, he also wears a black coat and red mittens, though he avoids hats so that he may keep his hair in order. When it gets hot, he ditches the long sleeve shirts and jeans in favor of t-shirts and shorts, occasionally swapping out his sneakers for a pair of close-toed sandals.

Biography: Born in the year 2000, Lucas Diaz was brought into the world by Miguel and Miriam Diaz in Boston, Massachusetts, a sound engineer and photographer respectively. The couple had met three years prior in the city at a bar, and Lucas was born just five months after their wedding day. The family moved in with Miriam's grandmother Rosa a year after Lucas' birth, in New Jersey, where they spent the next two years. During that time frame, the Diaz family grew to include a younger brother for Lucas, named Milo. Due to financial troubles, the Diaz family had to move again, settling in Chattanooga, where they have remained to this day.

From a very early age, Lucas was a curious child, always taking the time to explore and investigate his surroundings. As soon as he learned to crawl, his parents had to put him in playpens and put safety gates around the house. From when he learned to walk going forward, he'd find ways past the security gates in clever, obscure ways. One example that nearly had disastrous consequences involved him climbing up and leaping off a dining room table into the pantry, from which he wandered into the kitchen. When his mother found him, he was in the middle of opening the drawer where the family kept their cleaning supplies and most importantly to Miriam, the rat poison. Shocked by the incident, Miriam made a point from then onwards to protect her son from any perceivable harm, and the earlier years of his life were spent under the sheltering eye of his mother.

When he was unable to explore his surroundings and have adventures within the confines of his own home, Lucas turned to books to take his mind elsewhere, to places he could only otherwise dream of. He was taught to read by his father at age three and was writing his own attempts at screenplays, page long drafts of crude childish humor segmented into speaking parts without any description of stage direction, by the age of five. One consequence of learning the basics of the English language so early was the fidelity of his handwriting, which has barely improved since the fourth grade. As a young adult, Lucas continues to pursue literature as both a consumer and a producer and isn't afraid to share his works online or with friends; however, he has an aversion to showing any writing to his parents, for fear that they'll dislike it and tell him to pursue another path in life.

As soon as he started school, teachers began to take note of Lucas for his relatively good behavior and quick thinking skills, and showered him with praise as he advanced through the grades. This, combined with his bookish habits, has earned him a reputation as one of the more academically apt kids at school. While mathematics was the one subject that never quite clicked with him, earning a 'B' average rather than the 'A' average he had in his other classes, his focus on discovery and exploration drew him to the sciences, where he excelled almost as well as he did in English class.

Miriam led an art-focused life when she was in college and high school, a background she brought with her when it came to raising Lucas and Milo. Art museums were common places to spend the day in the pair's formative years, and Lucas quickly used his abilities of fast learning to pick up trends and themes in paintings and photography, his mother's two chosen art forms. Milo strayed further into the realm of multimedia while Lucas was sucked down into the rabbit hole of thousands of years of visual art. Lucas has to keep himself from getting absorbed in drawing elaborate scenes and figures in order to remain on-task in his math and French classes, and is easily distracted. In addition, he has taken to frequenting art museums on his own, happily taking advantage of free days and events whenever he can. Lucas shares his photography and art on Instagram, as well as pieces by his brother with permission, one of his few outlets for his art of any kind.

In fourth grade, Lucas joined a youth soccer team. His father, Miguel, signed on to be the coach of the team after the man who was supposed to coach fell prey to a leg injury. Lucas played primarily defensively, and never came close to scoring a goal, a fact that he was comfortable with. For a while, this was the extent of his physical activity. Around the start of middle school, Miguel began to pressure Lucas into joining a sports team or doing some other physical activity. Lucas was decently opposed to this proposition and began to resent his father for insisting so persistently. Despite this resentment, he heeded this advice in his eighth-grade year, joining the school soccer team and playing the sport at lunch whenever he felt like it. The day of the tournament, however, he was benched for the entire game, an experience that humiliated him deeply. From then on, his aversion to sport only grew, and his ties with his father grew more distanced due in no small part to his continued input as to what Lucas should be doing with his time outside of school. After Lucas was diagnosed with depression, his father attempted to grow closer to Lucas by again suggesting physical exercise as a means of coping with his disorder, a plan that helped Miguel personally when he was Lucas' age. This only served to divide the two further, as Lucas still found the idea objectionable.

For his eleventh birthday, Miriam gave him one of her digital cameras. At first, Lucas would take the camera wherever he went, taking pictures of whatever interested him. Soon enough, he grew tired of the same settings and objects he found on his way to and from school and began to wander out into the city, looking for odd snapshots of everyday life to capture as they happened. This eventually led him to various abandoned and decaying structures and buildings around town, several of which became some of his favorite places to spend his days when he was feeling withdrawn from his peers or just needed some time to recharge. His favorite photographs are of abandoned structures and abstract patterns, and he rarely finds himself enjoying pictures with people as the primary subjects.

Lucas spends a lot of his free time reading and writing, indulging his passion for the English language frequently. Though he started as a writer interested in only science fiction, he has since branched out into styles including magical realism and historical fiction. In his junior year of high school, his english teacher persuaded him to try his hand at poetry for a local literary competition, a request that Lucas accepted partway in jest. However, after winning honorary mention in the contest, Lucas took more interest in the medium and now considers it a large portion of his writing repertoire. His favorite authors include Franz Kafka, Hermann Hesse, Sylvia Plath, Thomas Pynchon, and Yukio Mishima, among others.

In sixth grade, Lucas developed a crush on a girl in his homeroom. Throughout the year, the two grew closer and closer together, until eventually, their teachers began to pick up on it and place the two in separate groups for project, which led to them convening outside of school more frequently. At the start of seventh grade, while waiting for the school bus, Lucas finally confessed his feelings to her, and, to his surprise, she responded in kind. The pair dated as much as middle schoolers could, this time becoming the happiest and most blissful time of his life. With each other, they shared their first kisses, first dates, and first true pangs of love. In February of that school year, he bought her a box of chocolates but was surprised with a wool green scarf, handmade. Overjoyed, Lucas took the scarf home and cherished it over the following February break. The day after he returned, wearing the scarf proudly, his girlfriend dumped him, telling him that she wasn't ready to commit to a relationship, citing that they were too young.

Lucas has had similarly bittersweet experiences with relationships ever since. A few months' separation ended up in the two realizing they still had feelings for each other, and the pair tried out a relationship again. This time, the relationship's ending was brought about after just two months due to Lucas' girlfriend discovering that he had been courting other relationships on the side without her knowledge. This was due to his own boredom with the relationship, though he was afraid to admit it to her. Though this, for the most part, marked the end of direct conversation between the two, Milo and the sister of Lucas' first girlfriend would keep tabs on each other's siblings in order to make sure that things didn't get out of hand between the two, developing a loose friendship around their identical habits.

Around this time, Lucas started to show signs of being afflicted by persistent depressive disorder. He began to lose interest in writing and reading, and getting out of bed in the morning became harder and harder. Though his father had dealt with depression in his own youth, he was unable to see Lucas' developing dysthymia for what it actually was, writing it off as teenage angst. Lucas began to become paranoid about how other people thought of him and grew less confident in social situations. He became plagued by thoughts of suicide and running away from Chattanooga. Social interactions with anyone he wasn't already close with became hard to tolerate, and he began spending longer around the abandoned buildings and more run down parts of town because of the relative lack of people.

The last month of the eighth grade school year was spent dating a girl he had grown close to over academics, who broke up with him out of a realization that she was unable to maintain a relationship at this stage in her youth. The break-up deepened Lucas' depression to the point where he began to harm himself semi-regularly with a shaving razor. Fearful that he would be caught, he cut himself on his thighs and shoulders so that his clothing would cover the wounds. By High School, Lucas was aching for somebody to deliver him from his depression, chasing irrational thoughts and feelings until he developed feelings for an athletic girl he shared a gym class with, whom he admired for her strong nature. In his mind, he began to make her out to be some kind of 'light' to his 'dark', a mindset that led to his eventual confession and rejection by the girl, who cited the two's lack of prior communication and her knowledge of how his first relationship played out, as Lucas' first ex-girlfriend was a friend of hers, as a dealbreaker.

This would prove to be the straw that broke the camel's back. In the early hours of the next morning, he packed a bag and made a quick escape out the back door, running away to one of his most frequented abandoned buildings. He managed to stay in the building, undisturbed, for a full day. By what would be the second night, the police found him, tipped off by someone next door who had heard him walking around at night. Lucas was brought in to the local hospital's psychiatric ward, formally diagnosed with depression, and kept at the in-patient psych ward for seven days. When he left, he took with him a prescription for antidepressants and plans to meet with a social worker once a week. Though he would cease harming himself entirely by his sophomore year of high school, Lucas would turn to another outlet to ease his pain.

While initially reluctant to leave him alone at home after his attempt at running away, Lucas' parents resumed their usual day to day schedules several weeks after his hospitalization. Bored one night while alone in the house, Lucas began rooting through the kitchen cabinets when he discovered a bottle of cheap wine. He began to experiment with drinking that night, the occasional experiment turning into a habit as he grew older. Lucas takes alcohol frequently from his parents' reserve, though only enough at a time that they wouldn't notice. Miguel occasionally, though unknowingly, enabled these habits: when the pair are alone, Miguel would let Lucas have a can or two of beer under the assumption that it would be better for Lucas to test his limits under adult supervision rather than while out with friends. Although Lucas refuses to get entirely drunk at home, as the amount of alcohol required to get him into an altered state of consciousness would create a noticeable absence, he puts no such limit on himself when in a situation where he is allowed to drink.

The effects of his drinking are made worse by his antidepressants, which have led to deeper depressive episodes bordering on those he experienced before his attempt. While Lucas started drinking with wine, he has recently become more interested in harder liquor such as vodka and scotch, constantly on watch for an opportunity to push his limits further. In meetings with his social worker, he is careful to avoid the subject, aware of their status as a mandated reporter.

Though his first ex considers the relationship she had with Lucas over and done with, his second ex remains on speaking terms with him, and the two continue to struggle with their repressed feelings for one another. Lucas' first ex haunts his nightmares and mention of her tends to dredge up bad memories and violent feelings. Milo, however, remains in contact with her, unbeknownst to Lucas, and the two exchange word of his well-being semi-frequently. Due to his failures in the realm of romance, Lucas often questions his sexuality. Surface level attraction to several boys in some of his classes confuses him, even if he knows it isn't quite the same attraction he felt with his more involved relationships. These concerns have never been voiced to any of his confidants, and Lucas responds to accusations or suggestions that he is in any way something other than straight with hostility.

Classmates of Lucas are more likely to have sympathy for him than empathy. Many consider him their acquaintance, but he has a small and tightly knit collection of friends that he has come to consider his inner circle. This stems mostly from his depression and solitary hobbies, but a small part of Lucas prefers to have fewer friends that he knows he can count on as opposed to several people he enjoys being with but can't share in his thoughts and feelings. Though he still holds a disdain for the more popular crowd at school, viewing their personalities as mostly vapid and meaningless, he seeks to build friendships with some of the less aggravating in order to potentially gain access to any stores of alcohol their parents might have.

Lucas' relationship with his brother is mostly healthy, and the two get along fairly well. Despite the fact that they argue frequently over small matters, such as household chores and schoolwork, Lucas is unafraid to speak with Milo about the effects his depression has on his daily life. Milo is one of the few who knows about Lucas' drinking habits, though is not knowledgeable of their full extent. Though concerned, he elects not to try and intervene in Lucas' addiction because he worries about the repercussions that confronting Lucas about it could have on their friendship.

Since his diagnosis with depression, Lucas' relationship with his parents has grown more strained over time. In the months following the diagnosis, his mother attempted to take more control over his social life out of a fear that he'd relapse. This conflicted with Lucas' own desire to become more independent, and the two's relationship has been rocky ever since. He has had an easier time identifying with his father but has had similar falling outs with him over the course of his high school career. Though concerned, Miguel and Miriam often feel relegated to nothing more than a supportive role in their son's life. Lucas' social worker meets with them on a monthly basis in order to talk to them about possible signs of a relapse and things that they can do in order to help their child. Despite this, most efforts on their part to inquire about his personal safety result in Lucas accusing them of being patronizing and furthering the divide between parent and child. Generally, Milo is inclined to side with his brother should the argument escalate to a point where Lucas brings him into the discussion, but he worries for the health of his relationship with his parents because of this.

Lucas generally has liberal-leaning political views, informed partially by his tastes in contemporary literature. After he graduates high school, Lucas plans on going to a big-name college and reinventing his reputation and social standing, making memories and meeting people that he can truly connect with, in whatever shape or form that may take. However, he is deeply afraid that he will lose contact with the few close friends he currently has and is unsure how to incorporate them into his life going forward. Professionally, he aspires to be a novelist or to choose a profession that will let him pursue creative writing on the side.

Advantages: As an urban explorer, Lucas has some knowledge on proper safety while investigating abandoned structures, as well as what constitutes a good base camp and several styles of architecture that he has happened to encounter. He has little trouble spending short periods of time on his own and likely has some close allies in his inner circle of friends.
Disadvantages: Apart from excursions into the city, Lucas gets very little exercise and is somewhat sickly. Withdrawal from antidepressants could eventually shatter his emotional and mental state to an unhealthy and unsafe degree. His depression and introverted nature mean that he is less likely to approach potential allies that he does not know well and that he may spend unhealthy amounts of time alone. These feelings also carry along the possibility of crippling apathy and a lack of motivation to survive.