Name: Guadelupe Marciette Iglesias
Nickname: Lupe, Sirenita (means mermaid, a pet name among her family, particularly her grandparents)
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual (though very much in the closet.)
Relationship Status: Single (but happy to change that!)
In-Depth Appearance: With warmly tan skin, though less from sun than from her Latina heritage, Lupe stands at about five-three, with a petite but curvy body, hidden by layers of conservative button-ups, sweaters, and long skirts. By her family’s demands, Lupe keeps herself dressed in extremely modest clothing, to such a degree that a one-piece swimsuit is the most skin she’s shown. Few people have any idea of her curvy figure, and that looks unlikely to change, so long as she’s in school that is.
Lupe is blessed with long, sleek black hair that goes nearly to her waist, and though she sports a lovely little tattoo of a mermaid above her left hip, she has no other tattoos, and hasn’t even had her ears pierced.
Habits: Lupe has the unfortunate nervous tic of apologizing for her nervousness, which makes her more nervous, which makes her apologize more, which… Well, you get the idea. She also has trouble maintaining eye contact for too long, almost as though she fears someone will see through her, to who she wishes she could be. On a less deep note, she chews on her bottom lip when she’s thinking, and tends to very carefully avoid speaking Spanish, or presenting any accent when at school, due to bullying as a middle-schooler.
Hobbies: Her absolute favorite is dancing, particularly the salsa, which her grandmother compelled her to learn as a child. Eventually, she took up the practice herself, as it was her one chance to really be the person she envisioned herself to be, although her parents tended to be a bit scandalized by the sort of dresses she tended to choose.
Swimming is a close second, though due to her impulsive choice to get a tattoo above her hip, it has become increasingly fortunate that her family required her to wear one-piece swimsuits. Lupe is a proficient swimmer, and was even on the school’s swim team for her freshman and sophomore year, until her family decided that it interfered too much with school (and showed too much skin).
Lastly, she can’t get enough of cheesy romance books. Dime-a-dozen paperbacks were her primary vice during high school, and it would shock her teachers to know that demure little Miss Iglesias wrote some surprisingly sizzling fiction of her own, inspired by these novels.
Likes: Swimming, and anything else that gets her outside with the sun on her skin.
Reading, and writing romance.
Old movies
Old Music (she has a weakness for Billy Joel and the Eagles especially.)
Outgoing people, who do the work of socializing for her, and let her open up a bit and be who she wants to be.
Quiet moments with people she cares about.
Dislikes:Church (Lupe is Catholic, and unapologetic, but at the same time, why does church have to be so boring? And so restrictive…)
Skeezy guys. The few times that she has dressed in anything other than her usual conservative clothing, Lupe has received comments neither welcome nor polite.
Artificial sweeteners
Extreme anger/ verbal abuse or conflict.
Sweaters. She’s just so tired of them.
Secrets: Lupe, in a moment of rebellion, had a tattoo of a stylized mermaid above her left hip. Even more scandalous, in her mind, is the fact that she’d really like to get another tattoo someday, maybe something floral?
Fears: More than anything else, Lupe fears disappointing her parents and grandparents. They love her dearly, and she loves them, and she fears jeopardizing that in any way.
Unfortunately, her other greatest fear is missing out on life, something that adhering to her parents’ wishes has made more and more of a reality. At 18, Lupe has never kissed anyone, and though she has harbored crushes, and even hints of love for classmates, she has been unable to act, due to her family’s demanding moral code.
Less metaphorically, Lupe also fears extreme expressions of anger, and has difficulty processing such extreme emotions.
Personality: Lupe Is lively at heart, but constrained by a strictly Catholic upbringing. She loves the idea of partying, of living it up with friends and strangers alike, of losing herself to the allure of company and music and the fever of a dance. Unfortunately, she has little actual idea of what this would look like. To the other students of Park Crossing High, she would seem like a shy, hardworking girl; likable, even friendly, but always very carefully removed from close connection with anyone. Despite several crushes, Lupe has never acted on any, due to very clear expectations set by her family.
Beneath the surface, Lupe is wild at heart. She wants to dance, to drink deep of live (and perhaps alcohol, for the first time in her life!) She wants to love, to break hearts and have her own broken, whatever it takes to live life at its peak. She wants to dress less conservatively, to speak without thinking, to kiss someone on the first date, hell, to have a first date in the first place!
In a more concrete way, Lupe is a sweet, friendly girl who is careful to always be exactly who her parents and grandparents expect her to be. She sees this summer as her last chance to be someone other than “that quiet, dull little Iglesias girl.”
Hometown: Born in Washington Heights, Lupe moved to Brooklyn in the last year, in part because of the loss of business in the area, which hurt her family financially and forced them to move from the area that had been their home for three generations.
Background: Lupe was born to Lucas and Mariana Iglesias, in Washington Heights, New York. She lived with her parents and her maternal grandparents for her entire childhood, a childhood that was happy, if a bit lacking in excitement. Lupe grew up with the prime goal in her life to be to live up to her parents’ and grandparents’ expectations. Her family never had much money, so the expectation was that she would graduate school with high marks, then go on to pay her way through college, likely by taking on multiple jobs and earning several scholarships. That and praying real hard.
As time went on, Lupe began to realize that just being the perfect little girl that her parents expected her to be, while easy enough, wasn’t fulfilling. this wasn’t her, it was a caricature of her. All of the people at her school seemed to have their images together, to have matured and grown over their years together, but she was still plain, drab little Lupe, never to be loved in any meaningful way. This hurt, but what could she do about it?
To compound this, her family was eventually forced to move out of Washington Heights, to Brooklyn, where she had no friends, not even the few acquaintances she’d had back in the Heights. For two years, she lived with the frustration that she couldn’t muster up the courage to change her image, to become the lively, vivacious person that she felt that she could be, if only she were on her own, instead of under her parents’ wing.
It took incredible amounts of convincing, but eventually, her family agreed to let her go on this trip, this final vacation. Packing her bags with clothing she was used to but tired of, Lupe headed to a summer that she prayed fervently would be the chance she had so desperately sought out.
1x Thank
