Lia Haines*

[Cherry*]

Name: Amelia ‘Lia' Hannah Haines
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior; 12th.
School: Bayview Secondary
Hobbies and Interests: Lia loves wordplay and anagramming, although this does not extend to creative writing, and has a decided interest in other languages, which she sees as a puzzle to be solved. Growing up in Nova Scotia surrounded by Acadians, Lia learned French from her Francophone friends and is currently working on Italian.

Books with ridiculous amounts of subtext are her favourites—for example, she never goes on trips without her dog-eared, fraying copy of House of Leaves. She has a soft spot for comics and graphic novels. Lia tends to listen to acoustic indie, not for the words or ideas but just the sounds.

Appearance: Lia's father is of Kenyan stock; her mother is Irish. As a result she is somewhere awkward between the two extremes; clear, middling-dark skin, straight and coarse black hair, hazel eyes, a ski-hill nose and full lips. She keeps her hair in a simple shoulder-length cut with her fringe just long enough to obscure her eyebrows and ties it into a ponytail or pigtails occasionally. Although her light eyes might be striking with the right cosmetics, Lia doesn't wear cosmetics and they just end up looking out of place.

She has a pear-shaped, curvy, compact build, with wide shoulders and hips and a C-cup which her butt somewhat outbalances. Although the form is out of style to begin with, she's only 5'2" and completely lacking in feminine grace. Her face is similarly built—a short, square jaw and high cheekbones.

Lia puts as little work into her wardrobe as possible, favouring comfortable boys's hoodies and sweatpants, track pants or baggy jeans. Lia will protest dressing up as long as she possibly can, and loudly. She pays fastidious attention to her hygiene and often Lias a bottle of hand sanitizer in her pocket to use when she's nervous so she can look like she's doing something.

Biography: Nobody knows Lia very well. It isn't because she's brooding and mysterious—she's as far from that as possible--but because she never really talks to anybody. Her parents, both social butterflies, despair of her. If she can help it, she won't interact with anybody else in the room, and if they talk to her she's wary and suspicious of them. She's the kind of paranoid person who, if she was asked out on a date by a hot guy, would instantly turn it down, convinced he was tricking her into humiliation.

However, she was loyal and thoughtful to her friends back home in Canada and is likely to be the same to any friends she makes at Bayview. The problem is that she is convinced nobody would want to be her friend—she doesn't seem to fit in anywhere among the cliques. Lia isn't daring enough to take a chance on somebody who might let her down later. Although she'd love a friend, this person would have to be a near-saint to make her feel completely safe with them. The smallest cutting comments can convince her of somebody's insincerity.

Like many teenagers, Lia suffers from a crippling lack of self-esteem. This is at least partly her own fault. Lia is a die-hard cynic who believes in nothing except what she can see and sometimes thinks the world is inherently bad. Part of this worldview is the idea that nobody really likes anybody else unless they're perfect, thus decidedly excluding her from the liked-people.

When she can, she thinks things through before she does them, but that principle goes out the window when she's in trouble. She will either fall into useless indecision or do something completely spontaeneous and foolish.

Under pressure Lia can completely explode with anger, sadness or fear. Although she usually tries not to show these emotions, there is a breaking point which it doesn't take long for her to reach.

Lia has her flashes of genius; she's a lateral thinker and academically gifted, but cracks easily under pressure, hence her poor test scores.

She had a perfectly functional childhood—her parents are happy and still together, and the only source of discord in their family was Alexandrah, Lia's sister, four years older. Although up until she was about nineteen she was the wonder child of the family, whom Lia admired and looked up to, when she was twenty she finally cracked under the expectations of her parents, had a huge fight with Lia—who Alex had a low opinion of—and left home. She hasn't been heard from since. Shortly after this, the Haines moved to Bayview from Nova Scotia, and Lia became the new girl, interrupting her brief period of trying to live up to Alex. Her loss of a hero, along a fairly frosty mid-semester reception, brought her paranoid, cynical tendencies to the forefront.

The rest of their family still has a solid relationship. Lia's dad, Darren Haines, is a child psychologist, a booming, outgoing man who is always dragging the rest of his family to functions, ceremonies, and parties to do with his job. Her mother, Sandra, stays at home and sells a painting or two when the family needs a little extra money-- although usually they're fairly well-off with Darren's salary. Lia considers life without Alex lonely, but her parents have apparently smoothed it over and forgotten about it; they try very hard to act normal even when the subject comes up. If anything, they're even more enthusiastic about socializing Lia, always asking her who she ate with at lunch, who she hangs out with, and whether she wants to visit anybody on the weekends.

Lia still has contact with most of her good friends in Nova Scotia and talks with them on MSN and by e-mail.

She hopes, this year, to do well on her senior exams, and is already panicking a little over it. She'd love to be accepted by her classmates, but considers it very unlikely. In the future Lia wants to attend university, perhaps become a cryptographer or a doctor, and has tentative, private fantasies of meeting The One and having children and a beautiful house.

Advantages: She isn't particularly close to any of the other players, and is unlikely to become so soon on any deep level. It'd also be hard to trick her into anything; Lia has enough trust issues already without everyone actually bring out to get her. She's naturally strong thanks to her compact frame and this could work to her advantage. When she can bring herself to calm down she's a good puzzle-solver.
Disadvantages: Lia panics in dangerous situations. It's very hard for her to keep a cool head and she's likely to start dithering rather than do anything to protect herself or any others. She isn't athletic in any way other than inherent strength, and could easily be overpowered by most men and athletic or taller girls. Lia doesn't like to take risks, either. Her antisocial tendencies may prove to be bad for her. As a minor note, she rarely watches TV and is nearly clueless about Survival of the Fittest, which may put her at a disadvantage to other players.