Sidney "Sid" Gallo

Little Boy* · #1

Name: Sidney “Sid” Gallo
Gender: Female
Age: 18
School: Whittree Secondary School
Hobbies and Interests: Pop punk, tattoo art, competitive swimming

Appearance: Sidney stands 5'8 and weighs roughly 140 lbs. She has rather muscular legs and arms for a girl her age due to years of competitive swimming, a fact of which she is rather proud of.

Her skin is naturally a light brown and blemish free, a gift from her mother, along with a rather sharp and defined nose. Her eyes are hazel and her teeth, straight finally after several years of braces, are a polished white that stands in stark contrast to her skin. In similar fashion, Sidney has a very noticeable swimmer's tan that seems to persist the full year round.

Sidney's hair once feature a streak of blue, but due to spending almost all the summer months coming in and out of the water it has since turned a rather sickly swampy green. Sidney has not gotten around to correcting this. Her hair is currently a mess in general- it's black and cut relatively short, just past her ears in length, but Sidney has let her bangs grow to roughly this length as well. She is prone to sweeping her bangs back behind her ears and then keeping them in place with a snapback hat; more often than not, Sidney is seen with her trademark Houston Astros hat, a gift from her mother, who was raised in Houston.

Sidney currently has two tattoos, both on her right arm. At her wrist she has the words, “Fui sobre agua edificada, mis muros de fuego son”. (These words are the motto of Madrid, Spain, where her mother's family immigrated from). In addition to this she has Hank the Pigeon tattooed on her right bicep, the mascot of the band The Wonder Years, Sidney's favourite band.

Sidney was wearing a black, loose-fitting, sleeveless shirt on the day of casting, the logo on it from one of her favourite bands, All Time Low. The shirt was actually an XL men's when Sidney bought it; she cut off the sleeves herself, as well as a generous portion around the neck and side. She was wearing a black sports bra underneath, as well as a pair of ripped blue jeans, and black converse. In addition she was also wearing her Houston Astros snapback.

Biography: Sidney was born in Houston, Texas to Frank and Maria Gallo, a newly married couple with no other family living in America. Frank, a teller at a local bank, had lost his parents when he was in his early twenties in a car accident. One day he took up a coworkers suggestion to chat with Maria, a frequent customer. The pair hit it off instantly and eloped in only five months. Maria, a first-generation immigrant from Madrid, Spain, had come to America to pursue a job in journalism abroad several years ago, and had actually just received her green card several weeks before meeting Frank.

While the couple were thoroughly in love and happy to welcome Sidney into the world, they were soon beset by economic difficulty. It was difficult for Maria to find consistent work; after unsuccessfully applying at several local newspapers, Maria had to take a job as a waiter to help support the family. When Sidney was seven years old, Frank lost his job at the bank and after much searching, got in contact with a school friend who had had much success in Whittree, Oklahoma as an editor for the local newspaper. Always willing to help, this friend managed to secure Maria a permanent position at the newspaper, and the family moved to Oklahoma.

For Sidney, this all came as a shock. Her parents had always done their best to hide their financial difficulties from Sidney, and coupled with the sudden loss of contact from all her school friends, Sidney became very distraught. From an early age she learned to hate the town she called home, and found herself having a difficult time relating to other kids and the “country” lifestyle.

Faced with their daughter's unhappiness, Frank, always resourceful, took it upon himself to run several hobbies by Sidney. After unsuccessful summer camps for baseball, dancing, and soccer, Frank and Maria enrolled their daughter in swimming lessons and discovered that she was a natural. A quick learner, and incredibly fast in the water, Sidney breezed through her lessons and was enrolled in competitive swimming as soon as she was able to. While not Olympic material by any means, Sidney is no slouch and has frequently placed highly in regional competitions, even going so far as to win first at state one year in the 400 m freestyle. Sidney is a very well-rounded swimmer but she most excels in her chosen events, the 400 m freestyle, 1500 m freestyle, and the 100 m breaststroke.

Sidney's relationship in recent years with her parents have been rather rocky, but throughout her childhood and early high-school life she got along extremely well with both her parents, especially her mother. Sidney loved to hear stories of Maria's early life in Madrid, and with the advancement of technology, skype's rather frequently with her distant relatives there. Sidney speaks fluent Spanish, but does not know how to write in the language. Sidney has from an early age admired tattoo art, and while she is by no means an adept artist herself, she has often toyed with the notion of learning the trade and pursuing a career as a tattoo artist. This stems mainly from Maria, who has a rather elaborate tattoo that depicts the Running of the Bulls, a Madrid-based event that she had watched yearly with her family when in Spain, and had come close to participating in once. For her 18th birthday Sidney was given permission by her mother to have the phrase, “Fui sobre agua edificada, mis muros de fuego son” meaning, “On water I was built, my walls are made of fire”, tattooed on her wrist. Several months later Sidney had Hank the Pigeon tattooed on her right arm, the mascot of her favourite band, The Wonder Years. While she has been squabbling with her mother recently, oddly enough Maria is not opposed to Sidney's tattoos or her intent to get more.

Sidney, a naturally confident and ambitious girl, rebounded quickly from her early troubles at school and didn't find it hard to make friends when she reached Whittree Secondary. But despite this she always thought there was something missing. While Sidney was quick to spot friends and classmates who were content with life in sleepy and slow Whittree, she couldn't find many friends who wanted anything more, and on some level, this terrified her.

As is typical for a teenager, Sidney looked toward her interests for a way of escaping her troubles. She soon became an avid fan of pop-punk, becoming somewhat of a music snob when it comes to the genre. Sidney soon began to see her life through the lens of a typical pop-punk song; she hates her town, but she loves her friends, her parents are keeping her down and her escape was somewhere different from Whittree. As odd as it seemed at first, Sidney felt this was a perfect explanation for everything she had been experiencing and the reason why as hard as she tried, and as happy as she was with her friends, she didn't “fit in” with the average Whittree kid. Sidney soon began to tout the fact that she was born in Houston at every opportunity. This quickly grew old; while Sidney did live in Houston, she moved when she was seven and has very little stories to tell. As such, whenever Sidney brings up the subject, it feels forced.

Sidney soon began to identify the big cities as a place to escape to, and as early as tenth grade she was already looking around at collages and universities. While initially Frank and Maria were warm to this idea, as the threat of Sidney leaving to a distant state for collage approached they grew increasingly hesitant. Money-wise, Sidney was fine; Frank was even promoted to a Bank Manager in Whittree, and Sidney's swimming was enough to net her several minor scholarships. But as time dragged on, Sidney's anticipation and impatience grew to a fever-pitch, and she began to view the city as an escape from every possible distraction, from bad grades, from worry, from everything. As such, Sidney has grown slack in the past several years, prone to procrastination in almost every subject but her swimming, her excuse being that once she moves to the city “everything will change, so it doesn't matter anyway”. As Sidney has become increasingly more impatient and short-tempered, she often uses this as an excuse to dismiss and end arguments as well.

Frank and Maria privately began to fear that Sidney could not truly handle city living, and potentially fall in with a bad crowd. Tensions reached a high in the Gallo household when after discovering that Sidney had bummed smokes off a senior at Whittree High, Maria slapped Sidney across the face. Sidney, having always had a strong relationship with her mother and idolized her for travelling to America from Spain, was so shocked by this turn of events that for the first time in years, she actually broke down in tears.

Since then, Frank and Maria have been pushing their daughter to attend a local Oklahoma collage and forgo her plan to attend Boston College (the university farthest from Whittree that Sidney applied to). This has driven a wedge between the once happy family, and Sidney is currently on bad terms with both her parents, not even speaking to her mother, a fact that has caused her no end of grief.

Advantages: Sidney is potentially one of the most physically fit girls in the entirety of Whittree Secondary, and one of the strongest swimmers by far. She possesses great stamina, strength and agility and is generally well-liked by her friends and classmates; she is confident and ambitious.
Disadvantages: Sidney possess no survival skills and has never gone camping before. Recently she has become increasingly impatient and short-tempered due to problems at home, and while she has always been courteous and nice to her fellow classmates, some may take offence to her often disparaging remarks about Whittree and those who would chose to live there the rest of their lives.