TESSA BYRDE is 24 years old and lives in NORTH END. She is a FEMALE and works as an ER NURSE. She has been in Lanford for 24 YEARS and is portrayed by LAURA HARRIER.
Trigger Warning(s): Assault / Racism / Violence
Tessa was born and brought up in North End, Lanford. Her story was typical for that side of town — Born to a twenty-something, high school dropout who already had two kids with two different men before her, worked multiple jobs and struggled to make ends meet every month, Tessa’s life was nothing but underprivileged from the moment she took her first breath. From an outsider’s point of view, there was no reason to believe her dad’s relationship with her mom would be any different than the previous two, but as the years passed, patterns broke every time he didn’t turn out to be a deadbeat like her brother’s and sister’s dads. He brought stability to their humble home in North End instead, and worked hard to provide for everyone. He loved everyone Tessa deeply, but no more than he loved her siblings too. When she was two, he legally adopted both her brother and sister, completing the family her mom had always dreamed of having.
A younger brother was added to the mix, and life was, for all intents and purposes, pretty good. Money was tight with five mouths to feed, but they got by and all pitched in when they could. Both Tessa and her siblings showed great potential in school, and often brought home report cards lined with straight A’s, giving their parents hope that they wouldn’t have to struggle in their adult lives, like they had. Her brother graduated from high school with honours and got a full ride to a prestigious college while her sister showed signs of following right in his footsteps. In the summer between her brother’s junior and senior year, he came back home to spend it in Lanford with his family, when the summer took an unexpected turn for the worse.
The details are still a little fuzzy to Tessa, but her older sister and brother remember it like it was yesterday. Out of all the places in Lanford to feel unsafe, Kingsgate shouldn’t have been one of them, and yet that was exactly where Tessa’s sister found herself one night, walking home from a friend’s place just a couple of weeks before her senior year in high school, antagonised by two drunken frat boys who didn’t like the colour of her skin. They felt entitled to their behaviour because they believed whatever they did to her, was something “someone like her kind” would do to them anyway. They stole her wallet and the sparse jewellery she wore, only to push her down onto the ground where they shoved her face into the dirt until she passed out.
When she came to again, she went straight home and told her parents, ashamed and scared and unsure what to do. Her dad did the only thing he could think of, and went to the police, seeking justice for his daughter. When the allegations came from a black man from North End however, and against two guys from Kingsgate with influential parents no less, the case was shut down before it was even opened, and the local chief at the time filled Tessa’s dad with empty promises, saying whatever he wanted to hear, just to get rid of him.
When Tessa’s older brother found out the next morning though, he spent all day trying to get her sister to tell him who the two men were, and when they finally did work out their identities, he did the opposite of what his dad had done. In a rash decision, fuelled by anger, he sought out the two guys, concealing his face, and beat the shit out of them. When the police arrived at the Byrde house in North End the following morning, Tessa was the one who opened the door. Her older brother was in the living room with their dad. They’d been up all night, but Tessa and her younger brother had been deemed too young to be in the know. Her mom and sister were in the kitchen, trying not to cry in front of the small child.
Everyone in the household but the two youngest expected them to be looking for her older brother, but when the police looked Tessa right in the eye and asked her if her dad was home, her dad knew his plan would work. He took the fall for her older brother’s crime, believing wholeheartedly it was the only solution there was — Because he sure as hell wouldn’t let his 21 year old son with the bright future go to jail for defending his little sister. It was almost too easy for him to take the fall. The trial ended after only two weeks, after a jury (made up of mostly white people in their forties) found him guilty in attempted manslaughter on four counts, sentencing him to 16 years in prison.
❛❛ Sometimes you have to be your own hero… ❜❜
