Claire McGowan

[ElTejon*]

Name: Claire McGowan
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior [12th]
School: Bayview Secondary School
Hobbies and Interests: Stage magic, iPods, John Woo films, pop punk music, and comic books.
Appearance: Claire is a very small girl, only 5'2" and typically weighs in the 108-113 range. She has bright red, shoulder-length hair that gives her a distinct look and frames her face in a very attractive way. She has small, almost pixie-like features, with a pert, thin nose, high cheekbones, a broad forehead that's hidden by her bangs, and a narrow jaw line marked by a slight dimple in her chin. Her skin is pale, with freckles dotting her nose and cheeks and a small, semicircular scar located just beneath her left earlobe that's all but faded away with age. She uses a minimal amount of makeup, favoring black eyeliner and light pink lipstick, and makes a point of staying indoors to maintain her fair complexion. Her eyes are large and pale blue in color, but she enjoys experimenting with colored lenses, with green being her favorite choice. Her body is fairly slender for the most part, with the sole exception of her 34C-sized bust line, which she's embarrassed of and tries to hide with loose-fitting shirts.

Although she doesn't consider herself one, Claire's taste in fashion tends to run towards the sort of attire typically favored by the "Emo" subculture. She styles her hair in a buoyant, asymmetrical fashion with bangs that are always parted to the left side of her face. She enjoys experimenting with different hair colors every once in a while, though she typically settles on accentuating her hair with purple highlights. Her daily outfit is an eclectic blend of Hot Topic apparel and vintage items bought from used clothing stores. She has multiple black studded piercings in both ears as well as a stainless steel ring that loops through the center of her lower lip, and no tattoos.

Biography: Although he didn't pass away until she was seven years old, Claire doesn't remember much about her father before he succumbed to lung cancer and left her and her mother to fend for themselves. Truthfully, the only father she feels she's ever known was her uncle Henry, an ex-carnival magician from Las Vegas who came to Minnesota to become a real estate agent. Her father's hospital bills left Claire's mother heavily in debt, forcing her to turn to her brother for help, and he agreed to take them under his roof while she took on a full-time schedule at work. Claire and her mother soon moved in with Henry, who watched after Claire while her mother spent her evenings working as an ER nurse, often coming home reeking of bodily fluids and chemicals and barely having the energy to muster a smile for her daughter before collapsing on the living room couch in exhaustion.

Life at her uncle's house was fairly uneventful, but the third week there was marked by the most terrifying moment of Claire's life. While her mother was away at work and her uncle was sound asleep in his study, Claire quickly grew bored and decided to explore her uncle's basement. The basement itself was dark and had become infested with spiders, and when Claire walked downstairs and began groping blindly in the room for a light switch, she accidentally walked into a spider's web. Her uncle woke to her bloodcurdling screams and ran downstairs, only to find Claire lying on her back, her body wracked with convulsions while her face began to swell and darken to a bruised purplish color. Her uncle carried her to his van and brought her to the hospital, where she recovered from her allergic reaction to the spider's bite. This experience left Claire with a pathological fear of spiders that continues to haunt her to this very day, and she'll often find herself compulsively searching the ceilings of her house for spiders whenever she comes home from school.

Living with her uncle in his isolated woodlands house left Claire and her uncle alone to keep each other company. Occasionally Henry would do a few magic tricks for his niece, who would sit in rapturous wonder as she watched her uncle perform for her. She soon developed an interest in magic, and worked up the courage to ask her uncle to teach her how to do magic tricks, to which her uncle happily agreed. For six months they practiced together, and over time Claire was soon able to perform sleight-of-hand tricks with a minimal difficulty, and began practicing her technique in front of the other girls at school. Eventually, after another seven months of practice, Claire was as proficient in sleight-of-hand as her uncle -- perhaps even more so -- and she began to take an interest in the art of stage magic. She began reading books on Harry Houdini, marveling at the amazing feats he accomplished in his lifetime and his willingness to place his life at danger for the sake of thrilling his audience. Even to this day she still hasn't lost her skill in sleight-of-hand, and often performs magic tricks to impress some of the other students at school. She's even uploaded a series of videos on YouTube that feature her demonstrating and explaining how to perform her techniques.

Claire enjoys listening to pop punk music bands such as Cobra Starship on her iPod Nano, and uses her talent for palming objects to smuggle it into school with her. She is also an avid reader of the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac comic book series, and has been caught reading it in class by her teachers on numerous occasions. While most people also take her for a Tim Burton fangirl, Claire's favorite director is actually John Woo, and she often surprises people with her detailed collection of all his films, from their VHS prints to the collector's edition DVDs. She's actually an action junkie, and while she loves John Woo's stylistic and flamboyant gun battles, she'll watch any action movie that she finds to be sufficiently over the top and violent enough to suit her tastes. She also doesn't enjoy shopping for new clothes very much, as she prefers her clothes to have a distressed, vintage appearance. Her time at Bayview has been fairly unremarkable, with her usually struggling in all classes except English and Art, and she still has no idea what major she'll declare once she enters college. She's a very sociable person who loves to meet new people and enjoys striking up conversations with people she doesn't know during lunch hour. A lot of people like her for her warm, chipper personality, but she also has the annoying habit of trying to dominate every conversation by talking over people and interrupting them with her own opinions on the topic at hand.

Advantages: Claire's a gifted amateur magician who loves to perform conjuring tricks, and like any halfway competent magician she knows that misdirection is key to a successful trick, so she's learned to mask her body language and knows several effective ways to distract someone from whatever secret maneuver she's pulling off. Her talent for making objects appear and disappear with a seemingly casual gesture could easily catch another student off guard in the midst of a confrontation, and she knows how to lift and palm objects without having anyone notice. These skills could also make her a fairly good pickpocket, and she's already done a few tricks on her friends that involve slipping things into their pockets, so it might not be too hard for her to take things out without being caught in the act.
Disadvantages: Claire's allergy to spider venom has left her with an intense fear of both spiders and enclosed, dark spaces. She wouldn't be able to handle being out in the forest after nightfall, and she has to struggle with the urge to constantly check ceilings and corners for spiders every time she enters a room, which could slow her down some and make it easier for someone to track her. She doesn't know how to fend for herself in the wilderness or how to read a compass, and could easily be seen wandering into an ambush or a danger zone if she isn't careful. Her constant need to be the center of attention can also be very irritating -- enough so for there to be people who'd enjoy seeing her taken down a notch or two before the contest is over.