CASSIDY HARPER ➝ THIRD SIBLING
❖ FULL NAME: Cassidy Grace Harper.
❖ PRONOUNS: She/Her.
❖ AGE: 22. (November 5th).
❖ BIRTH ORDER: Third. Triplet to First & Second Harper.
❖ GRADE: Junior.
❖ MAJOR: Dance.
❖ SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Closeted Bisexual.
❖ ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Closeted Biromantic.
❖ FACECLAIM: Demi Lovato.
I'LL FOLLOW YOU UNTIL YOU LOVE ME
To the world, Mary and Michael Harper were the picture perfect couple. They lived a lavish lifestyle, and were one of those Hollywood love stories that everybody envied and adored all at once. When the triplets came along, both Mary and Michael’s perfect love story became only more intriguing, and the two milked it for all it was worth. Before they’d even been born, one of their sonogram pictures had been used in a diaper commercial, and their newborn pictures found their way into pretty much every magazine the moment they’d taken their first breath. It would be unfair to say the Harper’s didn’t love their children, but they didn’t love them in the normal, conventional way most parents did. They were far more concerned with their image, and the attention their children could bring them than they were with showing actual affection for them. To Cassidy, the last born of their triplets, this was something she never questioned. Why would she, when she’d never known anything different?
Because she’d been the last to make her entrance into the world, mixed with something to do with her positioning in the womb, Cassidy was always a little smaller than her siblings, in both height and weight. In fact, there was concern about just how tiny she was at first. No one is saying Mary and Michael weren’t worried about their daughter’s health, but they definitely enjoyed the extra attention it brought to them. Not only did they have their own, naturally conceived triplets to flaunt, but one of them looked sick. Of course they were going to grab themselves all of the attention and coverage that brought with it. In herself, though, Cassidy was perfectly healthy. No, maybe she couldn’t run quite as fast as her sisters, and sure, she had to wear a smaller clothing size than the others, but that didn’t matter. Cassidy was enrolled in the same dance classes that her siblings were, and allowed to do all of the same activities. In fact, her baby face gave her that extra little edge, and Mary and Michael decided to use that to their advantage, too. Being who they were and knowing the people they knew, it took no effort for them to thrust their little girl into the world of child modeling. She was a Harper, after all. The shoots available to her were plenty, and her parents had her do every last one of them.
It could’ve been to do with the stress of being a working girl at only four years old that started it, but Cassidy, who should’ve really been eating more than her siblings were to make up for her size, developed something of an aversion to food. To begin with, she’d claim she was full after only eating half of her lunch, though it quickly progressed to her refusing to even entertain any kind of meal that was put in front of her. It had nothing to do with her wanting to manage her weight—she was four; her appearance meant nothing to her. She just didn’t enjoy eating, that was all. It got to a point where Cassidy was losing scary amounts of weight, her cheekbones and elbows practically sticking out of her skin, and the media definitely took note of it. Rather than ridicule her parents, though, they felt sorry for them. Mary and Michael were good at twisting things to paint them in the best light, and were all too happy to update their devoted public on their daughter’s health issues. They met with multiple specialists, who all concluded that Cassidy’s food aversion was a psychological thing, and gave the Harper’s various concoctions to put into what little food she would eat to make sure she was getting everything she needed, and told them she would grow out of it. That was enough for Mary and Michael. Until she eventually did grow out of it, of course.
Cassidy’s eating habits remained pretty much the same for the next few years, with her becoming the face of children with eating disorders, and how they could still be beautiful and otherwise healthy. Against her own will, of course. Being so young, though, she had no say in it, nor did she care to have. She was seven years old before anything begun to change, with Cassidy slowly beginning to open up to the idea of eating a little more. Very, very gradually, her thin face began to fill out a little bit, until the changes started to become noticeable. Any other parents would’ve been thrilled, but not Cassidy’s. How could their daughter continue to bring them the attention she did for being a ‘sick kid’ if she wasn’t sick anymore? Rather than risk losing the recognition they got for it, they made quick but sly work of putting things into their daughter’s mind about falsely negative things that could happen if she started eating more, and began to decrease the amount of food they would give her, until she’d regressed right the way back again. At seven years old, Cassidy didn’t question it, nor did she tell anyone. She was about nine, and really beginning to develop her own mind, when she realized something was wrong.
Having grown more strong willed and sassier in recent years, Cassidy confronted them, and in front of her siblings. She’d been hungry and wanted a snack. Her siblings were all eating cookies, while Cassidy wasn’t allowed any. All it took was hearing their daughter tell them she knew they were starving her for them to realize that what they were doing had to stop. Not because they felt bad, or because they realized how wrong it was, but because Cassidy had caught onto what they were doing, and they knew that all it would take would be for her to tell a teacher or a friend’s parent, and they’d wind up with social services on their doorstep. Although they tried to convince all of their children that that wasn’t what had been happening, they changed their ways immediately, even handing her a whole bag of cookies to herself right there and then. They begun spoiling her with gifts, snacks and false affection to keep her quiet, but Cassidy had already begun to pull away, to the point of wanting nothing to do with them. They were her parents, they weren’t supposed to screw with her health like they had been. It wasn’t right.
As a little girl, Cassidy had practically idolized her mother. She’d beam with pride whenever she saw her face on television, and loved letting her friends in her private schools know exactly whose daughter she was. She pretty much hated them now, though. Throughout everything, fortunately she still had her siblings. They started to become the people she ran to, rather than Michael or Mary, who had always at least pretended to be her biggest fans, and everything just seemed to turn upside down for her. Cassidy begun to act out in school, and relied much more heavily on her friends than she had ever done before. She had always enjoyed modeling, but she didn’t want to do it anymore. Not knowing the lengths her parents had been going to to give her this weirdly desirable look that everybody had known her for. The only other constant in Cassidy’s life was dance, something she’d loved ever since her first ballet class as a toddler, and one of the only things she continued to take seriously.
By the time she started high school, Cassidy would’ve liked to have said her parents had no impact on her anymore, though she couldn’t. Home had once been her safe haven, but after her horrifying realization, she did everything she could to stay out of there wherever possible, and from the tender age of fourteen, she was already a frequent face at the many parties thrown by her much older friends. Fourteen year olds just didn’t understand life through her eyes, and she felt that she fit much better with the older kids. By the time she turned fifteen, Cassidy already had a favorite alcoholic drink, smoked cigarettes, and had tried weed on more occasions than she would’ve liked to admit. She was always careful about her antics at first, trying to keep from getting caught, but after a while, the paparazzi became more difficult to get rid of, and the public attention caught her parents’ attention, too. They’d try to act all concerned, especially where the media were involved, telling sob stories about how they wanted their daughter to start taking herself and her life more seriously, and how they didn’t know where they’d gone wrong with her. While she could’ve very easily spoken out herself and let the world know what they’d done to her, she decided not to. The less she had to do with Mary and Michael, the better. Avoiding them was the easiest option.
However, pissing them off became something Cassidy couldn’t help but be inclined to do pretty often, even when she’d outgrown having to live in their home and gone off to college. That was one of her main motivators, as well as the fact that it’d give her another excuse to dance, for her applying for a job at a local strip club. It was one of LA’s biggest and best known, so all of the people working there had to be great at what they did. Naturally, Cassidy sailed through the audition, the boss’s eyes on her butt the whole time, and was anything but quiet about it once she learned she’d landed the job. Her parents made a point of pretending to care for her safety, but Cassidy knew they were only annoyed by it because it made them seem like they had no control over her anymore. Which they didn’t. Whatever the reason, though, it bugged them, so it had had the desired effect. Even more so, Cassidy really did enjoy it, as well as the positive attention it brought her. The negative side, however, was how she always wanted to be looking her best. Maybe that’s not such a problem for most people, but for a girl with a past heavily impacted by an eating disorder? That can only spell trouble.
Given the fact that Cassidy practically refuses to eat again now, it’s safe to say it did. She’s worse than ever before now, in fact. But she’s trying her damned hardest to keep it to herself, despite her rapidly more sickly looking appearance. Fake it ‘til you make it is practically her mantra as far as her ED goes these days, but it’s consuming her all over again. She could try to deny it to herself, but there’d be no point. So, she’s faking her way through, and probably convincing precisely no one. She’ll just lash out at anybody who dares to question her, though. But, that’s just Cassidy Harper all over. Really, she’s not a very nice person. She can accept that, if nothing else.
BABY, THERE'S NO OTHER SUPERSTAR
Standing a whole inch shorter than her sisters, and with more of a baby face, it’s generally easy to distinguish which triplet Cassidy is. Her natural hair is pretty short, not quite shoulder length, and dark brown. Though, she often wears extensions that reach to just below her boobs, which she usually curls or at least waves. Cassidy tends to wear makeup at pretty much all times, as well as heels to compensate for her petite size. Though, she does own a few pairs of Converse, which she’ll usually wear for casual outings. Her style varies between anything from dresses to jeans to oversized sweaters, and she rarely leaves the house without at least a pair of earrings in. Cassidy also has a nose piercing, though she doesn’t always wear it. As for tattoos, she’s pretty much covered in them, though she likes to think they’re all tasteful, and can easily be covered up. From a flock of birds on her forearm to a large dreamcatcher on the side of her ribs, along with all of the positive quotes she has dotted around, she adores each one of them, and definitely isn’t done adding to her collection.
YOU KNOW THAT I'LL BE YOUR PAPARAZZI
Michael and Mary (nee, Martinez) were quite famous in their day. Some would say they could rival Brangelina, both career wise and romantically. The two famous actors met while working on a movie, where they fell in love and shortly started a family. The pair stopped working to raise their family. Now, with their kids off to college, they’re starring in movies once again.
