GATES, Lulu Evelyn

[lulu evelyn gates]

LULU EVELYN GATES

FULL NAME: Lulu Evelyn Gates.
NICKNAMES: Lou
AGE: 24
GENDER: female
SEXUALITY: Straight.
STATUS: Single.
GROUP: Citizen.
GRADE: N/A.
MAJOR: N/A.
JOB OCCUPATION: Aspiring singer/songwriter. The bills are paid by waiting on tables at Hal’s Diner.

HAIR: Dark blonde, down to her chest and she usually wears it in waves if it’s down. The waves are a result of the messy updos she throws it in for work or general chores and errand life.
EYES: blue.
SCARS/BIRTHMARKS: A few from her past, but they all tell a great love story in her mind.
TATTOOS: None. She can never settle on the right design.
PIERCINGS: Just her ears once.
PLAY-BY: Rosie Tupper!

LIKES: singing, her guitar, being barefoot outside, summer, writing, her campervan, days off with Jack, mornings on her terrace, fresh coffee, performing her own songs, rice dishes, new notebooks, and her old notebooks, cherry pie, clean nails, white t-shirts, earrings, photo albums, her carnival won teddy bear from Journey.
DISLIKES: Being a disappointment, feeling like a coward, working and missing Jack, disgusting customers at Hal’s, winter, checking her accounts before payday, artificial plants, breaking Journey's heart, silence, getting drunk (she talks too much), sleeping in make-up, headaches, struggling, cold food that should be hot, missed calls, chocolate cake.
FEARS: Jack finding out how she fucked up, never seeing Journey again ever, not having her dreams become a reality.
SECRETS: Where to begin? Lulu has so many secrets it’s unreal. They’re just secrets from different people. There are people who don’t know about Jack, there are others who don’t know that she left her fiancée without warning or reason and ran away. Most of all, no one knows how ashamed she is of the last few years. Well, they might know if they read between the lines of her songs and performances when she gets a small paying gig somewhere in the city. All of her material is about Journey, and the mistakes she’s made.
PERSONALITY: On the surface, people look at Lulu and see a hardworking single mother. They see her dedication and love to her little boy, but they don’t get to see what brought her there and how it still shapes her. Lulu is ashamed of the woman she is, and would give anything to change the last two to three years of her life. She’s musical, so all of her heartache is poured into that, giving her an outlet for her pain and hatred of herself. Lulu is definitely driven, but she’s not the type to be tied down in one spot. She’s always had the free spirit vibe that her mother instilled in her. Jack is the only thing that brought stability to her life. If motherhood hadn’t beckoned to her, she’d give in a lot more to the spontaneous side of her personality. Instead she forces the sensible thoughts and does her best to behave so that he has a good role model in his life. Lulu sees herself full of cowardice, despite how easily she can get up on a stage and pour her feelings into her songs of guilt and heartbreak to a crowd of strangers. She’s left her heart in pieces between New York and Ohio, and is too scared to go back and face up to her actions. She doesn’t think that there will be anyone else to put it back together. Nevertheless, in the beginning there were a few who warmed her bed, before she realised Jack was in the picture. However, she’s tried dating and she can’t commit to it. Her heart isn’t in New York – at least not romantically. In every other sense she’s there, but not for love and romance. There’s a fierceness in her that has been temporarily dimmed, but it just needs something to ignite it once more and Lulu can be an unstoppable force. The girl is broken, damaged, but not irreparable.

MOTHER: Rosie Anne Gates, deceased.
FATHER: Sam Gates, deceased.
SIBLINGS: Johnny Ryan Gates, 27.
OTHERS: Journey Melvin Fells, 27.
Jack Melvin Fells, 2, son.
Moira. Just Moira. Could be eternal for all Lulu knows.
PETS: None!
HOMETOWN: Columbus, Ohio.
HISTORY: Rosie and Sam met at a concert, which was no surprise to their friends given that the pair of them were always going to see some band or another play. It didn’t matter if they were a national hit or some local unknown group. Both of they were huge music lovers and eventually they crossed paths while getting drinks at the bar of one of the venues in the city. They hit it off, and after realising that they had tickets to the same concert the coming weekend, made plans to go together. They soon fell in love, married while out of town at a festival one summer, and then they moved into a small apartment together. A little while later they had their first child, a son, and then a few years later came their daughter, Lulu.

Like their parents, the children both loved music. Lulu was far more passionate about it than her brother Johnny. She was the one who pushed for guitar lessons and who would put on concerts in the small apartment they called home. She pursued it in school, forming a girl group when she was running around in tutus, and later it morphed into a band in high school. The band only fell apart because the bassist kept trying to seduce everything that came within breathing distance of him.

Lulu was always a wild child, free spirit who bothered her teachers with big dreams and a lack of attention. Musicians didn’t need algebra or history classes. They had their stages and their tour buses. Her parents didn’t think to scold her, because they knew her little mind was determined to put her talent to good use in the years to come. They were still as loving but unreliable as ever. They saw no harm in letting their kids skip classes for a concert. They were a little lax on the discipline, but both Jonny and Lulu had a decent head on their shoulders. There was trouble, but it was small, petty stuff that most kids got into growing up.

Lulu was just out of high school, working her first job when she met Journey. College wasn’t for her. She wanted to pursue her musical dreams without wasting too much time. Her plan was to work on enough songs for an EP and then aim to get someone’s attention to impress. They had to be just the right songs though. Journey was her inspiration as their romance bloomed. It was a whirlwind of emotions and love. She had never been happier. There had been boys before him, awkward fumbles in back seats and boys who wanted more than they wanted to give in return. Journey was different though. He supported her, and she was completely swept up in him. She could spend days in the sheets with him. Her parents had gifted her the campervan for her 18th birthday and she loved driving them both out to the middle of nowhere and just pretending they were the only people in the world for a little while. If they didn’t move for a weekend apart from to touch the guitar or scribble lyrics in a notebook she was content.

Journey proposed to her out of the blue when she was twenty. Lulu said yes immediately. She wanted her life with him. What she didn’t think would happen was the spiral that followed. It was like someone swept her dreams into a dustpan and opened a box of new dreams she never asked for. Their families were planning a wedding before she knew about it. Originally, she thought they would have a long engagement, just take it as it came, live spontaneously like they had been doing for the last two years with their sudden weekend trips in her camper, nights with friends when it suited them, days together in bed…but it all changed. There were people talking to her constantly about wedding ideas, dresses, invites and things she didn’t even know existed. On top of that, friends were quickly assuming they were busy with the wedding to hang out all the time, and then Journey was offered a job that would see him into the career he wanted. They had keys to their own place all of a sudden and everything felt so final and grown up.

Lulu panicked. As much as she loved Journey, she couldn’t do this. She wasn’t ready to settle down, to be a wife, to live the perfect family life. She had dreams to fulfil, and a world to see. It was after a dress fitting in a dress she couldn’t even remember trying on let alone choosing, that she ran. She scribbled a note explaining that she couldn’t marry him, couldn’t stay. Life was suffocating her all of a sudden. Lulu could feel her heart breaking and falling apart as she grabbed her things and shoved them into bags, loading up the camper and hitting the road immediately before anyone had the chance to realise she was gone.

She drove for a long time. During that time she did stuff she wasn’t proud of with a few guys whose names she didn’t remember or care to get. She wanted something to numb the pain of breaking her own heart. There was the temptation to go back, but she couldn’t face everyone. She didn’t want to have to explain to Journey that it wasn’t him she was running from, not at all, but rather the idea of their future being this neat little cut out that was just too neat. She didn’t want to have to see him family or hers realise that she wasn’t this perfect wife and daughter. The more she drove the more she hated herself. She was sick, museless, and crying constantly. She wanted Journey, but at the same time just wanted to stop thinking about him. Eventually, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she went to a doctor to get something to help. She thought there had to be something to ease everything; a pill or something. It was then that she was told that she was pregnant. When given the due dates and sent for a scan, Lulu knew that the baby was Journey’s. There had been enough of a gap between the few guys she hooked up with and him for her to be completely confident in that. She wasn’t bed jumping the moment she left Columbus, but she had been too broken hearted and hurt to realise that something more was afoot.

Now was the time to go home. But she didn’t. She kept driving, and wound up in New York City. It was there that she stopped. And that was only because she was too sore to drive as much by then. Her belly was big, her back ached and the nausea and exhaustion did not approve of a bed in the back of a camper or a cheap motel. She ended up in a run down place that needed more repairs than she needed harsh words. However, the landlady, Moira, was willing to give it to her rent free if she fixed up the place, which was what Lulu had offered to do the moment she saw it. She knew she couldn’t afford a place in New York City without work, but she was ready to pop a baby out in the coming months. This was the best solution she had, and she was a practical girl. She had been raised that way by parents who were strong believers in making it yourself. So she did what she could and Moira helped her in places. She was a tough woman, but she had raised three boys after her cheating husband had left with a girl half his age. Moira wasn’t going to leave a pregnant girl to fix complicated plumbing problems. She even got Lulu a few secondhand baby bits for when the baby came.

Moira didn’t pry, knowing that a lot of her tenants had their reasons for not talking. In her mind, she just saw a very young girl with no man around to claim responsibility for the kid he’d put in her. Lulu never spoke about NAME, and while she thought about going back, she couldn’t imagine breaking his heart all over again and revealing the bombshell of a baby. Would it make people try and force that perfect family life on them? Would he even want a baby with her now after all this? He had every right to be furious with her. Lulu still loved him with all of her heart and maybe the thought of discovering he’d never take her back was what really kept her away. Instead she just kept telling herself that everyone was better off without her.

What she didn’t know, was that six months after she left, her parents died in a head on road collision with another vehicle. No one knew where Lulu was or how to contact her. So she missed the funeral, missed the last moments of their lives, and all the things she had left in Columbus were boxed up in storage in case she did have the courage or sense to show up there again. In the end it was Christmas when Lulu found out. She had decided to snoop on social media at everyone after too many Christmas movies. All it brought was heartache, a call to Journey from an unknown number and tears into the voicemail before blocking his number from calling back, and then three days of ignoring the world.

Moira dragged her out of it in the end by telling her that she had a baby relying on her now, and for the first real time of it, Lulu came to understand what the baby was. He was her second chance. She had fucked up everything back home, but he was innocent and pure and a chance to prove that she could do everything she had once set out to do and be someone to be proud of. She would be a mother a child was happy to call mom, and hug every morning and night. She’d do it even if it killed her. She wanted her child to know that his dreams were obtainable, even if teachers told him they weren’t (like hers did), and she couldn’t do that by moping around a half finished apartment.

With Moira’s help, they finished the place up to a liveable standard. Furniture was salvaged from various places and picked up secondhand, and soon Lulu felt like she had the starts of a home. If only she knew her son would demand to make his entrance on the living room rug. He came quickly, and in the middle of a February blizzard. She was lucky Moira was in the building at the time because the ambulance couldn’t get through the city quick enough because of an accident and the weather. By the time the EMT’s got to the apartment, Moira had delivered the baby (citing her own experience and claiming it was like Thanksgiving dinner in reverse when you weren’t the one pushing). It was a healthy baby boy and Lulu named him something special between her and Melvin; Jack Melvin. Simple, but she knew it was more.

As she adjusted to motherhood, she looked to the future. First she picked up a few open mic leaflets which turned into shows which turned into performance slots in the city once or twice a month. After that, Jack was older and Lulu was able to look for work. She landed herself at Hal’s waiting on tables just for a few hours in the morning three days a week. It wasn’t much but it was enough to keep food on their table and the heat on in the winter. When she was working Moira sometimes looked after Jack or she had a babysitter in one of the upstairs teenagers.

Jack turned two on a day just as cold and blizzardly as his birth. They cuddled on the couch eating cake and watching his favourite things, while he played with his new toys and Lulu wrote it all into a song about how she wished NAME could be there to see it. Everything was still full of him, even after nearly three years. She regrets running away, but at the same time she knows she would have regretted staying and going through with the wedding that wasn’t hers. She wishes she could have been braver, done things differently, but now she has Jack to focus on, and a dream to make a reality, one way or another.

YOUR ALIAS: Kim.
RULE WORDS: kidnappedbykim.
WHERE YOU FOUND US: Let’s not talk about it.
SAMPLE:

Hi!

[kim]