#calebbio

N A M E: Caleb Walsh A G E: Twenty-Three O C C U P A T I O N: Bartender at the Black Cat L O Y A L T Y: Sinclair Crime Family

                           SOME RISE BY SIN,                  AND SOME BY VIRTUE FALL.

Caleb Walsh was born into a family of criminals, so it was no surprise to anyone that he ended up working for the Sinclair’s. He had four older brothers and a younger sister, the latter the only of the brood that was too young to join in the family’s activities. Laura and James Walsh were careless in their youth, robbing stores and hopping from home to home, and as each child came along, they were dragged with them. They were constantly ducking the authorities, to the extent that there were months they’d lived out of motels, Caleb never feeling like he had a real home to go to at the end of the day.

He did his best to do well in school, to try and make something of himself, but when his parents refused to get a job they could report in their taxes and were always on the run, Caleb had no choice but to pick up odd jobs whenever he could. He didn’t have time to finish his homework or study for tests. Some days, he wouldn’t even show up, opting to pull a shift at the local convenience store or making sure his sister had someone to watch her. His brothers didn’t help aside from bringing in cash from their robberies and other assorted crimes. To Caleb, it seemed like they got off on it, just like his parents — that they thrived in this world. He couldn’t let that be the only kind of family his six-year-old sister, Lily, knew.

While making bullets had never been his occupation of choice, Caleb had learned how to manufacture them with his brothers when they were kids. His grandfather had been a huge gun nut, to the extent that he made a few himself, and his son, James, had found the trade useful in his line of work. He’d force the boys to stay up late hours, insisting it was to give them discipline, but Caleb knew it was really to keep them under his thumb; too busy, tired, and hungry to argue. Between robberies and petty theft, they made extra cash selling the ammo on the streets for cheaper, and without anything to trace them. It was difficult to make a real living out of it when there were competitors like the Sinclair’s in town. At least his father was smart enough to know not to step on their territory. Nothing was ever enough. They were never willing to try harder – not when it came to their kids.

Caleb had a level head, unlike his brothers whose tempers often took reign over logic. While it was them who introduced him to the Sinclair’s — Shiloh, to be exact — it was only Caleb who had the right mindset to get employed. He was willing to follow orders, willing to do what it took to rise in the ranks without undermining others; Caleb wanted, above all else, to provide for his sister and give her the best life she could have. He wanted more for her than what the rest of his family could give. The Sinclair’s seemed like the best route.

He hasn’t worked for the Sinclair’s for long, which is why he’s only a bartender at the Black Cat, for now. Caleb has higher aspirations. Perhaps some good that could come out of the mess he grew up in. He knew how to make ammo, and hell, he was great at it. He found it fun, when he wasn’t being forced into it. In his spare time, he’d make custom bullets, mostly for himself. Shooting them was how he spent a good portion of his free time, analyzing how they shot, how he could make them better; now, he stayed up late making them because he wanted to. That would be his in. He just had to prove himself, climb his way up the ladder, to making ammo and a better life. In the meantime, the Sinclair’s have kept him comfy enough, giving him the hours he needs to pay for his one-bedroom apartment he shares with his younger sister. His parents barely even noticed she was gone. Caleb intends to do whatever it takes to make sure she gets some portion of the childhood he never had.

                         CONNECTIONS:

— Relationship Status: Single

FC: Dacre Montgomery

THIS IS YOUR GAME

Name: Caleb Fournier Age: Nineteen Class Year: Sophomore Position: Goalkeeper, #34 Hometown: Freehold, New Jersey

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT

TW: drug abuse, addiction, abuse

Natura nihil frustra facit. Nature does nothing in vain. The words have been tattooed on Caleb Fournier’s body since he was fifteen years old, stupid enough to let a crusty tattoo artist ink the words into his skin. He believes that everything in his life happened for a reason.

An only child in what could have been a happy family, Caleb’s life had gone downhill in a matter of months. He was only nine months old when his father died in a car accident, one that he caused. Being driven to daycare was an everyday occurrence in his life: his dad drove him on his way to work, and his mother picked him up on her way home from work. It was a practiced routine, almost down to the minute. But one day, Caleb was playing with a toy and dropped it on the floor of the car, crying almost immediately. His father got distracted trying to pick it up and stop the wailing and lost sight of the road. His dad died on impact from the collision, but Caleb escaped with only minor injuries. Everything that could have been with his family went to down the drain—and it was all Caleb’s fault.

His mother, a once habitual drug user, fell back into old habits and had no time or mind to care for her infant son. She blamed him for his father’s death, something that would stick with Caleb for the rest of his life, it’s all your fucking fault said to him in a drunken slur. The words stayed with him, echoing in his over and over again. And he believed them, too—it was hard not to when the words had been ingrained in his head from before he could even speak. He started to believe that everything was his fault. His mother withheld food from him and he deserved it. She would hit him in frustration on the anniversary of his father’s death and he had it coming.

It was when he was eight that he was removed from his mother’s care when a teacher noticed a cigarette burn haphazardly hidden under his shirt sleeve and reported it to Child Services. And while the life he had before couldn’t be called exactly stable, it became decidedly less so as he bounced around from foster home to foster home. First, there were the Medinas, a family that held a great amount of love for performing arts, so Caleb learned how to play guitar to make then want to keep him. They got pregnant within six months and they didn’t have the money to support Caleb and their son, and so they chose the biological one. He had known they were going to from the moment they said they were going to have a baby. What he never saw was the late nights with the Medinas poring over their checking accounts and looking for any solution that wouldn’t involve them having to give Caleb up, and being unable to find one. Caleb just thought that he had done something wrong.

Next came the Houstons, with two sons older than Caleb and a younger daughter. He was a bit timid at first, but the boys quickly got him involved in their soccer practices and playing basketball in the driveway of their perfect little suburban house. They even got Caleb a guitar for his ninth birthday, something he treasured with all of his heart. He spent several years with them, happily following his foster brothers’ lead on everything, trusting their word and holding close to his chest whatever they told him. He honestly thought that this was going to be his forever home.

But Dominic, the eldest, had friends who were poisonous, who tainted everything they touched. Oliver had grown up with Dominic and didn’t have the same level of hero worship for him that Caleb did. So when Dominic started doing risky shit, it was Caleb who idolized him and who went right along in with whatever Dominic roped him into. It lead to Caleb taking the fall for robbing a convenience store entirely by himself. At fourteen, it was hard to believe that Caleb thought of it himself but Dominic was eighteen and would be tried as an adult, so he let everyone believe Caleb was the mastermind. They didn’t get far with the money, and Caleb never got in real legal trouble besides a couple hours of community service and a slap on the wrist. The Houstons, however, decided that they didn’t want a problem child in the house and so he was moved to a new family.

No one wanted a foster kid that was well past his prime age. They wanted little kids, unburdened by adult knowledge and that might eventually call them mom and dad. Fifteen years old with court-ordered community service and probation wasn’t the ideal kid. Caleb hated every last bit of it, but he still believed there was something guiding him to where he was meant to be—wherever that was. But his positive attitude alone wasn’t enough to improve his circumstances, nor was it enough to stop him from wondering what his mother saw in the drugs she had put into her veins for almost his entire life. It only took him a couple of times to get hooked on it, understanding why she loved it so much. It numbed the pain and the outside world that felt out to get him. The logical part of him knew that this was bad for him—but it was too small to get him to stop, and only getting smaller.

Foster home after foster home followed, a seemingly endless supply of them, but he found that he cared less and less. They never lasted long, but one lasted long enough for him to discover Exy and suddenly, Caleb knew what he had been waiting for. Everything in his life had been leading him up to this moment, to playing Exy. It was something he couldn’t believe, just how amazing he felt playing the game, and he never wanted it to stop. And the day he picked up a racquet for the first time was the same day he got the words natura nihil frustra facit tattooed on him.

SEIZE IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT

He wasn’t a great player, but he was good, though not good enough to land a spot on any of the best teams, or at least not good enough to make them overlook his upbringing. Caleb didn’t mind too much, though, holding onto the belief that, somehow, everything would work out for him—and, indeed, towards the end of his senior year Coach David Wymack showed up at his rec center with a list of Caleb’s stats and a five year contract to play for the Palmetto State Foxes. He signed it without so much as blinking. Five years to play Exy sounded like a dream come true.

The drugs never stopped though. Wymack never knew about him using, so he couldn’t put a stop to it. He could handle himself well enough while he was high, having had years of practice, and so he was able to escape the notice of even the shrewdest of eyes. And, with everything to lose, Caleb only got more creative when it came to hiding his bad habits. Palmetto was a home and the Foxes were a family, the first real one he’d had in a long time, and ruining it was unthinkable. But it didn’t stop him from using, didn’t stop his mother from having been right all along. But as far as anyone was concerned, as far as Caleb was concerned, he was brand new, his past life left in the dirt, never to be seen again. He purposely overlooked the fact that he was still using, that he needed to take the pain away somehow to feel new again, needed to take to take the pain away in order to breathe clearly—as long as no one knew, then that didn’t matter, because it didn’t matter to him.