BIOGRAPHY | MUSINGS
BASICS.
character name: poppy grace walker
nicknames: pop(s), walker, red
age & dob: december 18th, 1996 (26)
gender identity & pronouns: female, she/her/hers
sexual orientation & relationship status: bisexual, it’s complicated
residential area: outpost
occupation: owner of rattlesnake’s
length of time in salt flats: entire life up until eighteen, back for six months
faceclaim: abigail cowen
FAMILY.
mother: josie price (wc)
father: jimmy walker
cousins: wc
BIOGRAPHY.
cancer tw
It’d been Poppy and her dad for as long as she could remember.
Rumor had it that her mother had been a dancer at the local strip club that Salt Flats native Jimmy Walker had taken over. The two had fallen in love–or at least, fallen in lust–the result of which being two little lines on a white stick and a redheaded baby born not even nine full months later. Somewhere in that time, Poppy’s mother had decided she actually wasn’t cut out for motherhood, and promptly disappeared, leaving in a cloud of dust. When it settled, it was just Jimmy and Poppy left standing.
Jimmy Walker, on the other hand, had been made for fatherhood. It came to him as most things did–not naturally, but through trial and error, some elbow grease and his own handiwork, but was by far his most rewarding endeavor. It wasn’t the most conventional childhood, practically living in the backroom of Rattlesnake’s; doing her homework at the bar, falling asleep on the sofa in her dad’s office only to wake up tucked in her own bed, but it was the only one she’d ever known, and she wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
Despite a happy childhood, Poppy had always longed for more than what she felt Salt Flats–maybe even Texas in general–could offer her. Her dad said she took after her mother, that way, the only time he’d really even speak of her; smart as a whip, and too curious for her own good. He’d always known the day would come where she too would leave him, and all he could do was pray that he’d taught her all she needed to know before that day came.
And it did eventually, on the other side of high school graduation, through an acceptance letter to the University of Chicago. A whopping 1,395.9 miles, though it might as well have been a whole other world away. It was a little funny, how all she’d dreamed until that moment had been about getting out, and yet with the key to it finally in her hands, Poppy could only think about what (who) it was she was leaving behind.
It did not stop her from leaving, however.
To say Chicago was a culture shock would be an understatement. The undergraduate enrollment alone was nearly double the entire size of back home, and the quick pace of the city was more than she’d ever been equipped to handle. There was a period of time where she considered quitting, admitting that she was in way over her head, and needed to return to the world she knew…but everytime she thought about reaching for that phone, there was Jimmy’s voice in her head, reminding her that he hadn’t raised a quitter, and to just put a little more elbow grease into it.
One semester passed, then the next, and the next after that…she mastered the L train, was won over by deep dish pizza, even managed to catch a game at Wrigley Field. Slowly lost the southern twang (not completely, just enough that people stopped asking where she was from as soon as she opened her mouth), accustomed to the Chicago cold, graduated with a degree in Business. Before she knew it, the four years that’d once felt like they had no end in sight passed in a blink of an eye, and Poppy found herself once more itching for a new adventure.
It was how she’d ended up in Los Angeles to work on her master’s degree, soaking in the warm California sun, and allowing herself to plant down some roots. All the pieces in her life finally felt as if they were beginning to click into place…
And then Jimmy got sick.
Metastatic lung cancer. Mets in his brain, lungs, his liver; a phone call that’d turned Poppy’s entire world on its head. The weeks following it had been nothing but a blur–subletting her apartment, packing up what she could and booking the first plane ticket back home, planted right by his side for that first surgery. The odds were not in his favor, but they weren’t zero either, the doctor’s assured her, and with a proper support system in place they’d only grow stronger.
That was about six months ago, and Poppy has taken to her role as Jimmy’s caretaker (much to his chagrin), bouncing back and forth between checking on him and making sure Rattlesnake’s is running smoothly. If she thought about it for too long, if she allowed herself, she’d notice there was a certain disconnect she felt between herself and the place she called home…but lucky for Poppy, she doesn’t have much time to dwell on herself these days.
CURRENT CONNECTIONS.
@coltonwrights one that got away
WANTED CONNECTIONS.
friends from high school/childhood
frequent customers or employees of rattlesnake’s
neighbors
drinking buddies/someone that’ll help her let loose
cousins
people she could’ve met/reconnected with in either chicago or la
to be posted as a wc: the situationship (the complicated in it's complicated) she left behind in la who moved to texas to show her he's serious/wants a future with her
