AMERICAN HONEY

1. she grew up as the middle child of three siblings in a family that heavily valued music. her father is a jingle writer for several big-name brands and her mother was a high school band director. she was named after the eric clapton song, and both her siblings were named after different songs as well.

2. she knew that her dad was cheating on her mom for most of her childhood. she was eleven when she borrowed her dad’s phone to play a game on it, and saw the texts. it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. she never told her mom because she knew she wouldn’t be able to support their family on her salary from the school.

3. layla only 'grew into herself’ rather recently. up until she was about twenty two or twenty three, she was fairly overweight and her skin was poorly taken care of. she had thick glasses and headgear because her teeth were so crooked, and she was generally not found to be attractive to the general public. but once she graduated college got her job illustrating comics, she was happier and more motivated to work on herself. so she lost quite a bit of weight and generally just worked to look better. her biggest insecurity is that no matter how much she improves, she’ll still be looked at like she’s an ugly duckling.

4.  in high school, she dated a boy for almost two years. she was incredibly smitten with him, despite the fact that her small group of friends and her whole family warned her about him. the day of graduation, he revealed that the entire relationship was founded on a dare: his friends had bet that he couldn’t pretend to date her for that long. ever since then she’s been extremely hesitant to get into relationships, and has a tough time telling when someone is flirting with her versus just being friendly.

5.  she’s an artist. she’s always loved drawing and sketching, which is where her career stems from. but painting was a passion she never managed to tap into when she was a child, and now that she’s older she’s really delved into it and found that she adores it. she sells paintings on the side, but her main income is from illustrating comic books.