Boniello, Jessica

[jessica]

BONIELLO, JESSICA MAY

Oceanic Flight 192 Ship Manifest - - - -
Ticket purchased for JESSICA MAY BONIELLO, at the age of NINETEEN YEARS OLD.

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[/i][/b][/color] [/font] Emma
How Did You Find Us?: I was here before.
Character Face-Claim: Candica Accola
Avatar Image: [/b]options: one, two, three, four
Estimated Level of Activity: very, except for the weekends that I’m away at mock trial tournaments without internet[/ul]

CHARACTER VISION:

I chose Jessica because she’s so different from characters I usually play, that I figured she’d be a challenge to do justice to, and I want to do my best to make her a deeply three-dimensional character, instead of the two-dimensional character that the ‘cheerleader’ types can sometimes become.

I feel like her obsessing over her looks and how others perceive her is tied to a deep-seeded perfectionism, and that Jessica has a lot of growing to do before she can start being useful on the island. Jessica has potential to grow and learn about herself in so many ways, in particular to realize that she isn’t actually at fault for all of the things she blames herself for. Her parents’ divorce, her mother’s abandonment of her, Brad’s beating her, none of those were things that she’s at fault for, and yet, all things she blames herself for. She’s more intelligent than she gives herself credit for, and she’s a hard worker—you don’t get to the top of the social food chain and become head cheerleader without hard work.

Once she starts accepting herself and changing, I think she’ll be able to be quite a perceptive young woman, in a good way. She’s always been perceptive and able to see flaws in herself and others, and then use those weak points against others, but once she finds her footing, I think she could start to use her new-found confidence to help people boost those weak points.

I want to explore her psyche, how she got to the top of the food chain at her school, and why the queen bee would get stuck in an abusive relationship: which came first, the inferiority complex, or the abuse? And then now that she’s on an island surrounded by strangers, how will she learn to cope in a world where social status and labels mean nothing, and survival-usefulness is everything?


To start answering a few of those, a bit of background on Miss Boniello.

Jessica Boniello was born in Raleigh, North Carolina to the head football coach at Duke University and his wife. Bubbly, blonde and blue-eyed, Jessica was a big hit with her parents’ friends, and as an only child, she became the sole receiver of her parents’ affection, criticism, and expectations. By the time she was ten years old, Jessica’s parents had divorced, and for a time, she was a child of twos. Two houses, two bedrooms, two sets of rules…When her mother decided to move to Florida with her new boyfriend, Jessica practically threw a fit. Switch schools? Was her mother insane?? Her father was then given sole custody, and Jessica learned the power of tears and complaints. Did it bother her that her mother chose a rich boyfriend over her own daughter? Ha. As if Jessica would ever admit that anything bothered her.

She started putting up walls around her emotions right then, and when her father started dating (and soon married) his much younger trophy wife, Jessica turned to her new stepmother for feminine advice, and Jessica was barely in junior high school when she started collecting lip gloss and wearing heels. Significantly spoiled, Jessica craved the attention that her always-working father rarely gave her. Always dressed to perfection, and more than willing to buy expensive presents for her ‘friends’, Jessica soon had girls flocking to her, practically begging to be her friend.

Loving a spotlight, Jessica joined the cheerleading team as soon as she entered high school, buddy-buddying her way into being best friends with the current head cheerleader, a senior who had the power to decide who next year’s head cheerleader would be. She also was cast as the star in the school’s yearly musical—a feat that she repeated all four years of high school. By sophomore year, Jessica was the head cheerleader. And boy, was Jessica the head cheerleader. Blonde, girly, always in the latest Gucci shoes, and with an entire makeup collection in her locker—along with two outfit changes, just in case—Jessica ruled her school. Ever seen Mean Girls or Clueless? Jessica was practically the spawn of Regina George and Cher Horowitz. Girls wanted to be her (or kill her), boys wanted to date her, and Jessica’s spot as Girl #1 in the school was sealed when Brad, the quarterback of the football team, asked her out.

Now, Jessica had harbored a secret crush on Brad since middle school, when he’d accidentally run into her, knocking her books all over the hallway. Of course, being a middle school boy at the time, he’d just called her a stupid girl with cooties and told her to watch where she was going, but no matter, Jessica was smitten.

So when Brad asked her out, Jessica skipped school the day of their first date (getting her stepmother to call her in sick) and spent the entire day planning out her outfit, getting her hair done, and doing then re-doing her makeup about five times. At first he was charming, and a perfect gentleman. He brought her Sheila's Perfume Floribunda Roses (Jessica’s favorite), bought her jewelry, listened to her bitch about the incompetent girls on the cheerleading team…. He gave her the attention she so desperately wanted, and, truth be told, Jessica fell in love with him.

Their relationship progressed quickly, and it seemed like the next day when they were king and queen of the school, and of the prom court. It was around then when their relationship took a turn that Jessica hadn’t forseen. While fooling around one night, she complained that she wasn’t in the mood, and wanted to just call it a night and go catch the late showing of the new rom-com in theaters with her cheerleading girls. Brad hit her, hard, throwing her up against the wall and telling her how every girl in the school would have killed to be his girlfriend, every girl in school would have killed to get to be with him, and how dare Jessica think she was too good to put out. He beat her until she apologized, sobbing, for being such a terrible girlfriend. Seeming to snap into ‘supportive boyfriend’ mode again, he held her while she cried, telling her it was okay, he knew she didn’t mean to be a spoiled tease, and saying he forgave her.

And from then on that seemed to be their twisted relationship. Jessica took to hiding bruises with clothes, accessories, or ditzy lies about how she’d fallen down the stairs, or making small, almost unnoticeable mistakes at cheerleading practice that made her balance slightly off and caused her base to drop her, then used those falls as explanation. This continued until the spring of her senior year, at which point Brad dumped her for a college girl, and Jessica was devastated by the break up.

Starting fresh the next year at Carnegie Mellon with a double major in theater and music (acting and vocal performance, more specifically), Jessica began showing signs of obsessing over things. A perfectionist, Jessica would literally burst into tears in her dorm after a performance went sub-par, and she constantly worked for perfection, wanting—needing—to feel good enough, to feel validated. Desperate to be popular, Jessica constantly obsessed over her looks and how others perceived her, yet at the same time doubting every compliment that was paid to her.

'WHO'S WHO?' BLURB:

Meet Jessica Boniello. Talented, gorgeous, and queen of the social ladder. Completely out of her element on this ‘hell on earth’ island, Jessica is often written off as vain and useless, and she tends to get in the way more than help. Used to never being good enough, Jessica is desperate to prove that she’s not just a ditzy cheerleader, but before she can prove that to anyone else, can she even prove it to herself?

WRITTEN AUDITION:

”...they’re making us turn off our phones now. Ugh, it’s so annoying you can’t be on your phone on planes. Like, what else is there to do for a billion hours? Anyway, whatever. this bitchy flight chick is bitching at me, I’ll text you later Liv. Kiss kiss!”

With that, Jessica hung up the phone, giving the flight attendant an annoyed look. “God, it’s off! Chill out.” She rolled her eyes, shoving the phone in the attendant’s face as though to prove that the blackened screen was indeed turned off. The blonde pulled a compact mirror out of her purse after the flight attendant left (clearly ignoring the ‘please stow all carry ons’ request), checking her perfectly coifed hair before re-applying her peach-colored lip gloss. Peach was so in this season, and Jessica, personally, was a huge fan; peach just happened to go perfectly with her coloring. Final make-up check complete, Jessica tucked her Chanel purse under the seat in front of her after pulling out her oversized black sunglasses. Most people might have questioned why she had sunglasses on an airplane, but Jessica had a thing about people watching her sleep, but wasn’t about to ruin her eye makeup with an eye mask, so always flew with a pair of sunglasses. She slipped them on, reclining her seat once it was announced that they were allowed to. The guy next to her gave her an odd look, and Jessica pushed the sunglasses down her nose, giving him a ‘you got a problem, dorky?’ look over the rim of her sunglasses, “What?” She asked with a touch of irritation in her voice. He shrugged and went back to minding his own business. Jessica shook her head and muttered something under her breath before shoving the sunglasses back up her nose, leaning back against the head rest and closing her eyes.

Sand. Sand, and a searing headache. Jessica groaned as she opened her eyes to sand, and a searing headache. Wait…what? She was lying on her stomach, face-first in the sand. Everything smelled like blood and smoke, and there were screams everywhere. Having no idea how she got from the plane to where she was now—or even any idea where the plane was—Jessica moved her hands through the sand up to rest under her shoulders, using her hands to push herself up into a sitting position. What the hell? Was this just some bad dream? She knew that watching Inception with Liv had been a bad idea… Damn movie made no sense, and now she was having weird dreams about it… She looked around a little, eyes coming to rest on a burning plane not more than five feet away from her. Burning plane…That wasn’t in Inception….And wait, couldn’t you not feel pain in a dream? Or maybe you could, Jessica couldn’t remember. She put a hand up to her head to brush a trickle of water off her forehead, felt pain, and stopped. Pulling her hand away from her head cautiously, Jessica saw her hand covered in blood, and did the only logical thing to do: started screaming.

Panicking, she scrambled to stand up, starting to run away from the plane. Dizzy from standing up too fast, Jessica only got a few steps before her foot caught on a broken piece of metal, and she fell over a broken-off part of the plane’s wing, the jagged edge of the metal catching on her jeans and ripping through the denim and flesh to leave a cut partway down Jessica’s right thigh. She landed in the sand on the other side of the wing, on top of what looked more like a dead body than anything she’d ever seen before. Screaming again, Jessica scrambled off of the body, crawling a little ways through the sand before standing up and half-running-half-limping away again, still screaming, until she got to where she figured was a far enough away place, not too far from a group of trees where some guy—who was clearly alive, thank god—was. Dropping down to sit in the sand, Jessica stopped screaming as a lungful of smoke turned her screams into coughs, before she managed to stop coughing and just sit there, wide-eyed, terrified, and in pain.

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