Bio
Born to an unwed fifteen year old mother in one of the deeper parts of Alabama, Parker Alice Lachance spent the first five years of her life being shuffled from relative to relative, never staying for too long with any of them - they liked Parker well enough, for such a quiet slip of a thing, but her mother was a problem no one wanted to deal with, and Polly-Anne tended to show up where her daughter was sooner or later.
A little half-brother joined the shuffle when Parker was four, a pretty baby boy with curly blond hair named Mike. Mike’s father wasn’t like Parker’s - he stuck around to take care of his son and his girlfriend, raising enough money to put a down payment on a trailer and support his new family. He was less than enthused about Parker being a part of it, but she came along too - leaving her behind would’ve been the kind of cruel he wasn’t willing to try out.
Parker’d always been self-sufficient, to an extent, but her new circumstances lead to her taking up more responsibility than any five year old should have. Her brother’s father was usually working, and her mother was usually ‘sleepy’, but somebody had to look after Mike, and Parker decided it might as well be her. That’s what being a big sister is about.
The years went by, as they do, and Parker had picked up more little brothers and her first little sister by the time she was eleven - Johnny, Nate, and Phoebe. Phoebe being born entirely the wrong shade of skin to be related to any of Parker’s half-brothers was the final straw for her mother’s relationship with their father, but Parker didn’t mind that so much, even if it left them moving out of their house and into a trailer park owned by one of her uncles upstate. She got to go to a school with a better athletics program, which was good, because Parker damn well knew even at eleven that she was never going to be one of the straight A students no matter how hard she tried. If she wanted to make anything of herself, she needed something else.
Track was good. Parker liked track. Parker liked track a whole goddamn lot. When Parker wasn't looking after her family - siblings and cousins - she was either at work or running. She's 'damn quick', as her mother liked to say.
Nothing particularly special has ever happened to her, as far as she can tell, or no more special than anyone else. She knows how to cook with three cracked cups and two teaspoons, she can patch just about anything that still has enough fabric left on it to stick a needle in, and she knew how to break someone's wrist by the time she was fourteen. Easy, average stuff.
The only things that ever changed were her height, it felt like, up until the cough came around and left with most of her family, except for little four year old Phoebe.
Parker headed upstate a little farther, and when she found one of her aunts still living, she was overjoyed...until she was told Phoebe'd have to go off to stay elsewhere, because they were starting the human race over, divided as it was meant to be.
Parker stole her aunt's shotgun on the way out. It felt fair. She and Phoebe got back in their next-door neighbor's truck and kept driving. Parker was looking for her daddy, she figured, as least as far as that went...but the truth is she just didn't know where to go, but that there didn't seem to be any place to stop.
They ran into some trouble in Mississipi. Parker's got a scar down her left arm from that, but otherwise they pulled through that little mess all right. The people they were put in that trouble by didn't. It was self-defense, no doubt about it, so Parker doesn't let it eat at her too much.
So, they just kept on driving, right up until they ran into another little girl with no place she was headed.
Bridge brought her own set of problems, and just made it clearer that Parker had to find someplace for her and her kids to settle in. Spending your days on a roadtrip through the corpse of the good old USA is no way to live.
Wisconsin, once they got there, seemed pretty nice.
Parker figures she can learn about cows, if she needs to.
((This journal is an AU version of thepathofpins.))