Holly Cummings

HOLLY MADELIENE CUMMINGS

i wanna wake up in your arms, i wanna set off your alarms
i wanna break into your car, and i wanna take out the back seat

| B A S I C S |
Name Holly Madeleine Cummings
Nicknames None, really. Holly’s short enough.
PB Susan Coffey
Age 23
Sex female
Year sophomore
Major business
Minor english
Occupation She is a beautician at a salon all the days that she isn’t in class.
Hometown Miami, Florida

| P E R S O N A L I T Y |

Holly Cummings would never say that she has low self-esteem—she just hates herself. She grew up in a family of critics with no other siblings to take the heat off of her and has become a critic herself, always happy to point out the flaws in others so that she doesn’t dwell on the flaws she feels she has. She’s very jolly about the fact that she thinks she sucks and will be the first person to laugh—or drink—it off, but the fact of the matter is that Holly just doesn’t see the positives in her personality. This is what has led her to be obsessed with physical beauty—she does like the way she looks, though she is adamant about keeping her appearance regulated. She diets and exercises to keep herself slim and is always happy to dole out advice about how other people can starve and exhaust themselves to make sure they look like models.

It should come as no surprise that Holly is particularly self-conscious. Where most people would ask questions when they want to know something, especially by the time they’re adults presumably with common sense, Holly tends to treat most situations as though she were fifteen with no idea of how things work. Relationships never work out for her if she likes someone because she is perpetually worried that something will go wrong—thus, she has the tendency to stalk information out of people. A lot of relationships end because she went through the phone, the bag, or even the locked safe of a partner and she has had more than one restraining order threat--though none have ever gone through--and plenty of arrests for vandalism. She's impulsive when it comes to acting on her feelings and rarely thinks these things through--she also doesn't have many friends that can tell her not to do crazy things and actually be able to convince her.

She's impulsive, critical, self-deprecating, and has the tendency to drink her problems away and avoid them at all costs. She's very pessimistic and doesn't really ever see the positive in a situation unless it's pointed out to her and, even then, she can be blind to it. For the most part, she doesn't try new things because she doesn't think she'll be good at them, but when she does, she is very motivated. Her life hasn't been ideal and, though she wouldn't change anything, she knows she doesn't have the best track record for success. Still, she wants to be a winner, and so she can reach for things when she puts her mind to it. It's rare that she's ever motivated, though, and other motivated people make her cranky, so she has the tendency to try and cut everyone down. She can be very negative and snide, which both endears her to people and makes people hate her. Even though it's largely her insanity that pushes people away, she doesn't necessarily see this and so has a hard time trusting people because she assumes they will leave her without provocation. She can be self-aware enough to know it's her fault and in those cases, she does try to be sneaky, but she's a terrible liar.

Eventually, Holly would like to settle down and have a family--probably. Right now, she kind of hates children, but she doesn't necessarily mind taking care of people. She's not very good at it--much like her own mother, she's not particularly nurturing--but she likes to think that she at least knows what not to do. Her problem with finding a person to be with is that she is insane and as soon as she feels attached to someone, she gets paranoid. She's good at flirting and saying things when she wants to, but if real feelings are involved, she gets too nervous to wait for any questioning. She had been known to sneak into therapists' offices and read files, dig through private areas, call mothers, and all sorts of things that terrify boyfriends--and sometimes friends--away. She has sort of realized that she is the problem, but she is also of the opinion that if people were just more open, she wouldn't have to be insane and they could be together.

Talents & Skills: The one thing that Holly knows she's good at is making people as beautiful as they can be. Give her styling tools and makeup and she can turn anyone into a beauty queen. She can't sew or do any technical artistic-type things, but she can put outfits together well and for people's body types. She has a lot of self-control when it comes to keeping herself thin, though her methods may be a bit unhealthy. She is also very good at damaging cars to the point where they are ridiculous looking, but still perfectly drivable.

Weaknesses: She's not very good at making friends. She tries to be friendly, but a lot of times, she ends up just being awkward. She has low self-esteem, which makes it very easy for people to get her into bed and she never really understands that she's going to be a one-night stand. If she does, she refuses to believe it and ends up being disappointed anyway. She also has some violent tendencies, including, but not limited to: vandalism, stalking, and bitch-slapping.

Likes:

• shoes
  
• glamorousness
  
• telling people what’s wrong with them and how they can fix it
  
• boys
  
• showing off her legs
  
• wine. All wine—cheap, expensive, red, white, pink, questionable.
  
• also most other alcohol.
  
• chocolate—particularly white chocolate.
  
• buying dresses
  
• romantic comedies
  
• dogs

Dislikes:

• people prettier than her
  
• bikini waxing
  
• man waxing
  
• short men—they’re just weird and she can’t deal with it. She’s only 5’3—is it really that much to ask that her men be taller than her?
  
• horror movies—not because she’s afraid of them [which she obviously isn’t], but because they’re stupid and illogical.
  
• rollercoasters
  
• carbs
  
• most pet rodents, with the exception of hamster-types with no gross tails and rabbits.

| H I S T O R Y |
Elaine Mulligan married Frank Cummings to get back at her own mother for being a controlling critical freak. She would have kept her own last name to further get back at her, but having a daughter with such an atrocious last name was punishment enough and so Elaine Mulligan became Elaine Cummings and started a pleasantly unhappy life with her new husband when she was twenty-two. They liked each other enough, though there was no real drive to spend the rest of their lives together, and so after a year or so, they were pretty much ready to be done. They’d made a commitment, though, and Elaine’s sister was in a pleasantly happy marriage and so she was determined to make it work.

To do this, they decided to have a child—although Frank didn’t have too much say in this. One day, Elaine surprised him with a pregnancy and that was that—their lives would be forever different. Holly was born nine months later, cursed with her unfortunate last name so that Elaine’s mother could be further spited. Elaine wasn't good at being a mother, though she did try. Sort of. She knew how to do all of the basic things, like feeding and cleaning and potty-training, but once she deemed Holly old enough, Holly was sort of on her own. She learned how to do things by being told how not to do them, usually while her mother had a wine glass in her hand, and this was also how she learned to solve her problems with the bottle.

By the time she was twelve, she could easily take care of herself, which was good because her mother was having a mid-life crisis and had begun to suspect that her husband was having an affair with a twenty year old. She tried to covertly get Holly to spy on her father, but it didn't work out so well and Elaine spent most of her time trying to follow her husband or dig through his personal life. In the end, he was not having an affair--at this particular time, at least--but Elaine continued to be suspicious throughout their marriage, especially when she herself started up her own affair.

It was no surprise, really, that by the time she was sixteen, she was no stranger to alcohol and staying out late to make bad decisions. She dated all number of horrible influences, lost her virginity in the back of a pick-up truck, and then found a guy she thought was steady and stable when she was seventeen. His name was Alex and he was a sophomore at FIU. He came with the promise of a steady income, an active social life, and no drug addiction. Holly was blissfully happy, for once. Sure, she was still probably making bad decisions and having sex and alcohol when it was inappropriate, but she was doing it all with the same guy, the guy she loved, and that made it a thousand times better.

One day, Alex brought her to a coffee shop, sat her down, and told her that his girlfriend was pregnant. At first, Holly thought this was a strange thing to say--there was no way that he would know that she was pregnant before she did, if she indeed was pregnant. It took about half a minute of them staring at each other, Holly confused and Alex resigned, for her to realize that he meant a different girlfriend, a girlfriend that wasn't her, a girlfriend that he had at college. After he dropped her off at home, she started thinking about all the signs that this mysterious other girlfriend had existed. In truth, Alex had been pretty good about hiding her. She worked nights and so his nights were usually free and Holly had never questioned when he said he had to do a 'college thing,' too pleased that she was dating a college student to deny him this pleasure. Holly, however, found fault with everything he did--he had been twitching his lip suspiciously for weeks, his car sometimes was just a bit too clean, his shirt a bit too washed-smelling.

Holly's next boyfriend--because she had to have one immediately--was a high school dropout who worked at Dunkin' Donuts, but made his money selling weed to teenagers. By dating him, she got hers for free, but that relationship and her weed habit didn't last very long because he was a busy guy--and a jerk--and replaced her within a few weeks. Luckily, it was her senior year by then and she was almost ready to get out of high school and the hell that was her house, in which her mother was continuously trying to prove insane things about her father and drinking wine.

The problem with her being a senior and wanting to move out was that Holly did not have particularly exceptional grades, nor did she like school in the slightest. Going to college was something her parents wanted for her, but not something she particularly cared about. She already had the freedom to party and do what she wanted--she just wanted to live somewhere else. While her mother was useless in most areas, she could, when she wanted, provide a good shoulder and she and Holly managed to sit and have a talk about futures--during which Elaine poured each of them a glass of pinot noir to get them through it. It was fine for her to take a year or two off before college--she wasn't in line for any major scholarships and they had a prepaid program that would stay for awhile.

So that was what she did. She had to live at home, but she did manage to get a job at Sephora so that she would have the capability to save up and move out at the first opportunity. It was there that she decided that she wanted to go to beauty school. She had always had a knack for pointing out and correcting physical flaws and so, when she was 19, she enrolled. During this time, she dated a few people, one of which ended with a smashed windshield and court-mandated trash collecting, but mostly she was busy learning the ins and outs of how to style hair, wax bodies, and paint nails. After graduation, she got a job in a hair salon in Boca, but found that it was much cheaper to live on Orange Island and commute than it was to live near her workplace.

As much as she loved what she did, she hated her job. Her boss was a drama queen and tyrant and she hated Holly for being young and relatively successful. Because Holly was used to hating people in power, it never occurred to her that there could ever be a boss that she wouldn't hate. This realization may have been pessimistic, but it did give Holly her first bout of real motivation in a long time. What she needed to do was open her own business--but she was horribly unskilled in the realm of practical tasks that weren't domestic. Her father finally came in handy because he was a manager and he suggested some business classes. Her mother, who didn't approve of Holly working in a cheap salon, saw her opportunity to push college and Holly this time was receptive.

She applied to OIU and got in and immediately started looking for a job, any job, on the island. She found one at a nail salon where she has mostly become a waxer, something for which she is not happy, but at least her associates are nice and young and don't want to kill her for being just out of beauty school. Now that she's there, however, and living life successfully, her mother has started pushing marriage.

| E X T R A S |

mmmnope


| S K I L L S |
I gotchoo

| P L A Y E R |

Name uhmmm
Age maybe
Gender iiiidk
How you found us i didn't.
Who else do you play? no one. everyone. idk. who do YOU play? ;|