#wind gap

Sharp Objects (2018) Dir. Jean-Marc Vallée

Xóchitl Reyes She / her

"You’re right! It wasn’t my fault. It was the fae’s."

SPECIES: Human (Non-powered) OCCUPATION: Clinical Psychologist AGE: 31 Years Old PLAYED BY: Emily FC: Melissa Barrera

BIOGRAPHY:

TW: Child death

Losing your best friend when you’re eight really does something to a person.

Unfortunately for her, Xóchitl Reyes knew this both from textbooks and through firsthand experience. A playdate at a local park had ended in tragedy and catapulted her into a path she’d never asked to be on. (In fact, she tried asking the universe many times to take her back off of that path). She’d been born in Wicked’s Rest, but spent much of her life elsewhere – Boston and New York City — brief trips elsewhere to name a few. Except that no matter where she went her friend’s death (and life) clung to her, and she was unable to keep true focus on anything else, even while getting her Doctorate. The loss enveloped her in a way she didn’t quite think was even possible.

It wouldn’t have been fair to blame a long-dead girl for Xóchitl’s self-destructive tendencies, but in another world (a better, happier one – where things went right) she wouldn’t have been so reliant on other bodies and on drinking. On finding ways to do whatever she could do to forget that day at the park years ago. On doing everything she could to forget the unforgettable.

Going back to the beginning was some sort of saying, and she did just that. She returned to her hometown that wasn’t really her home, in desperate search for answers about what had happened to her best friend. She didn’t like not knowing things, and she thought that maybe, through finally figuring out what had happened to Mackenzie, she’d be able to put it to rest.

Unfortunately, though she was able to figure out what had happened to her best friend, it had the opposite effect on putting things to rest. It opened up a world that she previously believed only resided in storybooks, and it was somehow worse than she’d imagined. The monsters of her nightmares were called fae (leprechauns specifically had killed her friend) and they were everywhere. When someone is a child, most monsters can be shooed away through a quick check under the bed or in the closet, because monsters are supposed to be imaginary – manifestations of anxiety and fear. As it turned out, they were very real and even worse than she’d imagined as a child.

It was her job to help. She’d gone to years of schooling to become a psychologist after all, and she liked to think she did a pretty good job of it. It was her job to help make the world a better place than it had been for her. Not that her world had been all bad, but if she could prevent someone else from going through what she had gone through then she would have done her part to improve the world as it was.

Which might have meant that she sought out clients whose problems seemed a little more fae-adjacent and maybe she probed them a bit more than she should have, but it was all in the name of helping. She could get better, she could fix things — she was able to eat ice cream again, and maybe she’d be able to help rid the world of the nightmare monsters that were fae. Monsters were real, and fae were the worst of them.

She’d gone back to the beginning; now she knew she just needed to make sure that she had a say in the ending.

PERSONALITY:

Determined · Vengeful · Clever · Co-dependent · Charming · Bitter · Self-Destructive · Compassionate · Inquisitive 

OTHER INFO:

Xóchitl was officially diagnosed with PTSD when she was eight years old and after that her parents decided that getting her an emotional support animal might help her somewhat. The first one was a gray cat who she called Oso. Now she has a golden retriever named Esperanza.

She went to Ireland last year and met a real leprechaun. This catapulted the series of events that led her to properly discovering what happened to Mackenzie.

Xóchitl is still in fairly regular contact with her moms, but she doesn’t tell them nearly everything that happens. They know enough so that they don’t worry, but that’s about it.

Her home’s door knobs are iron now.

Xóchitl can play the piano quite well. She first learned when she was about three. This is a calming activity for her, but not always one that she advertises her skills in. She has a piano in her home, and it’s the same one she’s had all her life.