I feel closest to the angels when I’m in the middle of a thunderstorm; soaked to the skin, shook up by sound, waiting for my bones to become branches of white light.
Age: 31
Gender and pronouns: Female, She/Her
Occupation: Composer
Neighbourhood: Old Town
From the day she was born most would say Whittaker ‘Whit’ Sloane lived an exceedingly charmed life. She was blessed with two doting parents, both highly respected within the local community and within their chosen fields. Blessed with two older siblings who adored her, nurtured her, and never made her feel unwanted when she followed them and their friends to the park for the fourth day in a row. She had a stable childhood growing up in Eugene, Oregon. The embrace of her grandmother’s arms and the delight of her stories when, at age nine, the Sloane family moved to California.
For all intents and purposes she had what an unfortunate number of kids could only dream of, and yet… Whit can still remember the day Alyssa Harding put her to the challenge. The day she demanded, “Describe your life in one word.” It’d been a lazy afternoon; the kind spent with sandy thighs, melted slushies, and intermittent puffs of smoke from the joint they’d found behind the 7/11 and subsequently stole. She can still remember how she mulled it over, serious in the way only a fifteen year old could be whilst high and sun drunk, before answering: numb.
Because while most kids would’ve relished the sort of life she’d been provided, that level of normality - of predictability - for someone like Whit was downright deadly. She’d always been a fearless, spontaneous, greedy sort of girl. The kind who wanted adventure and passion. New experiences around every next bend until she knew quite knew what to expect next. She had a certain restlessness pacing beneath her skin that craved all things raw and real and felt constantly starved for more.
More joy. More heartbreak. Bigger failures. Greater success. Whit felt all the way to her bones that, if nothing changed, the repetitive monotony of what she had instead would slowly eat her alive.
Perhaps that’s why she did what she did next, regardless of whether it turned out to be the best or worst decision of her life.
Eighteen and bound for the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Whit found herself detouring to New York en route to her first semester of school. The Big Apple was about as far from her formerly quiet life as one could get, and she found herself addicted after that first bite. Young, untested, and ready to prove herself to the world, she bailed on college and instead attacked the city like it was her own personal battlefield.
She worked the front desk at a self-storage facility, borrowing an ornate mirror here, a chaise lounge there. She couch surfed with strangers, surviving off leftovers from their garden parties and gas station hot dogs. She got a tattoo; vacationed in Montauk and learned how to surf; blew lines of God knows what that made her brain run miles a minute, then chased pills with gin tonics to turn it real slow. She slept with two guys within the same night. Turned around and slept with a girl. She’d surprised herself with that one so she even tried it twice. When she inevitably ventured back to California she was damaged, defiled, and never prouder.
For the very first time, Whit felt unburdened by routine and responsibility. She felt free. She felt alive.
That reckless, ravenous, impulsivity with which she cannonballed through life didn’t always work in her favor, though. Whit was so caught up in each new thrill that she rarely took time to think about trivial things like consequences. Not once did she press pause, nor consider whether or not her choices were actually right.
Sure, she’d had a blast, and she’d dauntlessly chased down every last dream and random whim, but unlike her older brother, or even her older sister, Fliss, she had little else to show for thirty-some years around the Earth. Beyond selling a few compositions and busking on the street she had no career to speak of. Nothing but a string of doomed relationships to her name. She was the girl always there for a good time, not a long time, and Whit found herself feeling… lonely.
She loved her life, but she missed having somewhere with more permeance to call home. She missed being surrounded by familiar faces that, at one point so dull, had now become a novelty.
It wasn’t so much a choice as it was yet another fulfilled whim when she packed her bags in LA and moved back north to Eureka. Wasn’t so much a shift in dreams as a convenience when she accepted a job at Felicity’s store, Comic Relief. And now, for the first time in a long time, Whit - the girl who always flew by the seat of her pants - is ironically planning and figuring out what should come next.
WHITTAKER SLOANE has the face claim of REBECCA RITTENHOUSE and is played by KAYLA.