CLAIMED . GREEN, HAYDEN

MALE

DEMISEXUAL

EIGHTEEN

FEBRUARY 7TH 1994

AMERICAN

ENGLISH, FRENCH. NEVER LEARNED SPANISH DUE TO HOME SCHOOLING.

HAYHAY, UNLUCKY SWIMMER BOY

0.75

CIVILIAN

N/A

N/A

N/A

ROGUE

COLIN COX
QUENTIN CHOU
CALLUM SNOW

HIGH
MAKOTO TACHIBANA from FREE!

His family is loaded. However, Hayden is trying very hard to shed the image he once had of being a spoiled rich kid, to try to distance himself from his parents. As such, he is living in a studio apartment called the Met on his own in Los Angeles, using money that is in his name. Considering he's doing all of this on the trust fund that they gave him, he isn't exactly sure how truly independent he is. Hence why he is working at Herschel's-- some day, he would like to be completely liberated, and to not have to use any more of that. But for now, this will have to do.

Student at California Institute of Technology: He isn't actually a student yet, but Hayden drove down from San Diego to Los Angeles on the day of his high school graduation. He'll be one. Soon enough!

Candy Store Worker: After a short stint working at a cafe, Hayden ended up switching jobs to work in Herschel's candy store. He gets paid in tough love.

Internet meme: Unfortunately, he doesn't really get paid for this. At the age of fifteen, Hayden was participating in a swimming tourney when he dived in a little too excitedly and his Speedo ripped right down his behind. His best friend managed to get a photograph of him from a convenient angle, showcasing his glorious backside and his little... accident. This photo was promptly posted on Tumblr. This, and his newfound title of Unlucky Swimmer Boy, have since been immortalized in Internet history for the remainder of time, used to commemorate the mishaps, misfortunes, and just plain embarrassing events of people around the world. He's just glad his face remains anonymous. For now.

You know one of those models that you see hanging around Abercrombie and Fitch posing with bevies of ladies and getting paid per time they rip their shirt off? That would be Hayden, if he had thought of trying to get a job there and if he had any idea how attractive he could be if he tried. Instead, he spends his days as a mere mortal, shunning the possibility of being an Adonis of the masses with a combination of ignorance, youth, and a lack of the cool, calm confidence that a model would possess.

What strikes most people first about Hayden is his stature and poise-- he has a broad-shouldered swimmer's build, his back straight and chin up like his sister constantly reminded him when he was a child. However, this is counteracted by the bashful, almost embarrassed smile on thin lips, as though he is apologising for something he might have done, or even for his very existence. There is a certain nerviness to him, one that is not seen but more felt. Bright green eyes with flecks of hazel near the iris seem to tell a different story. Wide and questioning, darting around to take in the whole wide world, they only help to lend Hayden the effect of a small child in a body several sizes too mature for him.

This is not helped by his stature; standing at 6'0", Hayden towered over most of his peers in the later years of high school once his growth spurt had fully hit him, and this only serves to exacerbate the sense of his being too young for how he looks. Layered, russet hair tapers down to the nape of his neck, framing a square jawline with no hint of stubble. He was always told that it was best to be clean-shaven, after all, so you would make the right impression when dealing at the business table, and he makes sure to do so diligently. That, and he is a child, very much so-- but his appearance means that he is rarely treated like one, even if one would think that his expressions and his general gait would offset this.

Hayden dresses well, not because he is a fashion maven but because he has always been able to afford to. While gone are the days when a maid or his sister would pick out his clothing from day-to-day, he has managed to develop a sense of style, even if he does do his best to avoid showing off the brand-name clothes he owns. He wears plenty of polo tees and well-fitted jeans, with an army green or tan hooded parka in colder weather. When it is unbearably hot, he might resort to wearing board shorts and T-shirts inside the house. He dislikes wearing anything that might have a logo, or advertise a brand name, however: everything he owns is expensive, but he isn't going to go around screaming that. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the bevies of women? Because of how well put together he has been subconsciously trained to be, anything he wears is going to make him look like a million dollars.

He's like a princess who's finally been freed from his tower, only sans the frilly dresses and with much shorter hair. Hayden has all of the wide-eyed excitability that one would expect from an eighteen-year-old, simultaneously eager and afraid to face the adult world. Naturally curious and keen for adventure, he has to hold himself back from asking all the questions he wants to, to talk to people as much he would like, to learn their stories, their lives, their everything! He is a warm, sweet person after all, and extremely empathetic: he cares a lot, sometimes a bit too much for all the people he has met.

Newfound cynicism and his sister's constant warnings have taught him to not be taken advantage of, but he sometimes can't help but want to help, even if he knows he shouldn't. More often than not, he will not give in to those urges, though along with it then comes a guilt complex bigger than the Empire State Building. He had the means to do something-- he could have done something, should have, but didn't. Those with a keen eye might note the undercurrent of bitterness that plagues this young man, despite his smiling exterior, and it largely arises from his disenchantment with the real world. He has a love-hate relationship with reality, finding people both endlessly fascinating and being suspicious of them at the same time. He wants to trust most people, but he just knows he shouldn't.

His friends would call him self-conscious, especially when it comes to meeting others. Hayden is constantly afraid of offending someone or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, having been reproached for doing so many times in the past by his family. While he has managed to shed the awkwardness that he had as a young boy, his mind is constantly racing, wondering what the other person thinks, not wanting to get in their way or to be some sort of burden. Once he has shed his suspicions, he will put the other person's needs ahead of his own, becoming too eager to please someone who claims to trust him and whom he feels safe around. Perhaps his apprehensiveness towards people is more of an act, one that he puts on for himself so he can feel better about letting them into his trust when he almost inevitably does with perseverance. Once you know how to break down his barriers, it is incredibly easy to get him to have faith in you, and believe that you have his best interests in heart.

The key thing about Hayden is that he still maintains part of his faith in humanity. He wants people to be kind, wants everything to be wonderful like in the books and movies, wants each and every person out there to have a good side to them and a happy ending. He still believes in the best of people despite all common sense, and his sister's constant warnings not to do so, and wishes terribly, desperately that he didn't. All his cautiousness and internal questioning merely hides someone that is, at the very core, naive, and all too willing to trust someone who he has given his heart to and to do anything for them. He knows the world is scary, he really does... But maybe if he gives someone a hand, they'll be there for him, right? He won't be alone here, will he? Despite everything, Hayden is sincere, all too sincere for his own good. He will tell a lie only out of complete necessity, and never to the people he holds nearest and dearest to him.

At the end of the day, he's just a child who is trying to force himself to grow up. And down, oh-so-deep down, he wishes he didn't have to.

Early Life

Hayden John Green had expected to live a very unremarkable life as a child, thank you very much. After all, he had been born into an ordinary family, with parents who worked all the time but told him they loved him once a week when they weren't busy working, and an older sister, Hayley, who was twenty-three by the time he was born. A miracle kid, they'd called him, seeing as his mother had been over fifty when she had had him, but that was probably the only thing about him that was special. Never mind the really big house with a security guard in front. Never mind the fancy dinners every so often when they had to entertain guests, never mind the fact that he had maids and servants to serve him at his beck and call, never mind that Hayley told him that he shouldn't attend a normal elementary school or kindergarten, because a private tutor could teach him so much more and he would be so much smarter that way. He was a normal little boy...

Right?

As he grew older, Hayden started to realise that no, he wasn't exactly ordinary after all.

It all began at the age of seven or eight. In the seemingly constant absence of his parents his sister had taken primary care and control of Hayden, and had enrolled him at swimming and tennis lessons at the local country club. He had asked his sister whether she'd allow him to go to play dates with some buddies he'd met there, and she'd vehemently refused, saying that he had no idea where those kids came from and whether they could be trusted. So the rest of them had gotten closer, he'd slowly drifted apart from the group, and he'd ended up with a private coach at his own place because his sister "couldn't bear to see him so left out all the time", and that the children were probably just jealous. After all, Hayley told him, they were rich, and a lot of people weren't. Even if the other kids at the country club probably had some sort of money too, he was one of the heirs to Green Electronics, and it was probably for that reason that they didn't like him.

Rich. He'd always known that that word meant, but it was only from then on that he became acutely aware of the fact that not everyone had a lifestyle like his own. Books and television showed him of the horrible conditions that people lived in outside, and when his sister finally allowed him onto the Internet at the age of twelve, it was then when Hayden started really researching and reading about the world beyond his neighbourhood in sunny San Diego. He'd had play dates with the children of his parents' business contacts after the incident, but they had always been formal and supervised, and, if he were to admit it to himself, a lot of his older so-called friendships had always felt contrived.

His sister told him that it was for the best, that it was only so she could make sure that he never came to any harm. She just wanted him to make good friends and be in good company, and that he would register for his local private school when he was of high-school age so he could meet other children like him. But he was to be careful, she always said! People out there would use him and hurt him, and nobody would care for him the way she did. Even his parents were barely around, he came to realise, and his many attempts to text and call them never seemed to work. Yet it was one of those people out there that turned his boring life upside down, making sure that it was never the same again.

High School

The four heirs to the Cunningham estate and their parents came over for dinner one night when Hayden was fourteen, serving as both a business dealing for his sister and a play date of sorts for him. After all, the children were all just a little older than he was, ranging from sixteen to twenty-one, and they were left talking to one another while his sister was off with their parents. It was then when Hayden let slip of his background, and his sister's plans to send him to a private school, and one of them suggested that Hayden enroll in a public school instead to broaden his view of the world. A princess in a tower, he had been called, who needed to get out there and widen his horizons, because there was so much more to life than what he would see in a posh private institution.

His sister had of course protested. She didn't want him meeting people who would use him, she said, people who would be from vastly different backgrounds and who might have had some sort of agenda. But the children had exchanged numbers with him, and e-mails; they seemed to have taken a personal interest and friendship with the boy, and were determined that he should attend the public school that they did. Through their constant encouragement, and a fear of letting them down, he finally worked up the courage to go up to his parents himself when they were home one evening, an occurrence that seemed rarer and rarer with every passing year. He told them what he wanted and who had recommended it, and to his surprise and his sister's fury, they had agreed.

It wasn't anything big, but it was a start. He didn't have to do every single thing that Hayley wanted him to do. There were ways around it, and if he was going to go his own way in life, he needed to start rebelling, even if in small ways. With his parents' blessing, he snuck out of the house (got their chauffeur to send him) to the public school a district away, and soon he had found himself enrolled in Westside High School, where he would come to spend some of the best years of his life. Through a stroke of luck he became best friends with a girl with hippie parents, and the smartest boy he'd ever met who had eyes like ice.

They were all on the swim team together; in fact, the girl, Gabi, was responsible for turning him and his rear into an Internet meme, which he soon discovered wasn't all it was cracked up to be. People were laughing at him and rumours spread around the school like wildfire, but he couldn't hate her, no, not after she had done so much for him. She hadn't intended to hurt him, after all, and he learned to laugh it off, shrug, and retort with another butt pun. After all, he had hit rock bottom. How much worse could it be? Besides, things were starting to look good. Even if his parents were back home less and less, Hayley seemed to have loosened her iron grip even if just slightly. There was a boy in his life, which she seemed to approve of despite all his initial doubts, and while they weren't dating just yet Hayden had a feeling that they soon would be. Hayley was probably wrong, people weren't that bad, everything seemed to be going smoothly and maybe he could avoid the darker side of life if he strayed far enough--

He was sixteen when those days of innocence came to a grinding halt.

(They're getting a divorce they say, which is a funny word, considering they haven't been in the same house as one another for at least a good year. They seem to think it's funny too, or at least that's what they're trying to tell you, because ho ho ho you're just a naive little baby, the silly little boy that they left behind in that great big house so many years ago. Too bad that silly little boy's grown up now, morphed into someone who they barely see and barely know, judging by the fact that they think you believe them when they tell you that it won't matter because of course it fucking will.

You know you're being silly, you know you're still so young, you know you aren't supposed to know what real pain is but this alone is almost too much to bear. This sinking feeling in your chest, the churning of your gut, the sensation of invisible tendrils grabbing hold of your heart and wrenching the organ dry- it's not real, you tell yourself, and try to fight the voices that are singing in your head. What else can you do? So you smile and nod on the outside, and mouth the words it's all right, yet there's that nagging voice that tells you it's all just such a cliché. Because you aren't all right, you aren't okay, and nothing that anyone can say or do can drown out the voices of your suddenly-present parents or the pounding of your heart, the way it sounds when it's thumping against your ribcage, thumping through your throat. Where there was once emptiness there's now voice and shouting and chaos, and you've come to realise that you don't like it one bit, not at all.

But at last the house is quiet, the doors are locked. Nothing is awake except the glare of your computer screen, and the murmur of the night. So you double-check, triple-check that nobody is still up and walking, press your ear against the doorframe in search for the slightest voice. When you're greeted with nothing but silence you crawl under your bed sheets, curl into a ball, and allow fat teardrops to fall down your cheeks. There you lie, sobbing like the little baby you are, silently screaming into a pillow until the crack of dawn-- and that's when you realise the princess is out of his tower, and the beauty of the real world is naught more than an illusion.)

Aftermath

His friends had been there for him, of course. Even if he had ended things with his sweetheart of the time, the other boy had understood, and besides, he felt personally betrayed by his own parents-- what could have been worse? It was around then when Hayden started to realise that he was going to have to rebel once again, but this time, go further. His parents had barely been there for him, and had been nothing more than financial providers. They hadn't even remembered his birthday since he was ten, and after their divorce he was done with the illusion that they had truly cared like they always seemed to proclaim. Not because they had split up, no, but because they had just thrown him and his sister under the bus like that, into custody battles and slandering each other and using him like a pawn.

Hayley on the other hand did love him. And this made what he knew he had to do so much harder. She too had been shaken by their parents' split-- after all, they had been over sixty when they had done so, and neither Hayden or Hayley had truly seen it coming. But in her process of coping, it was as though Hayley had once again wrapped a leash around Hayden's neck.

Leon, his male best friend, said that it was an issue of control. That she couldn't control her familial situation, and that she probably remembered better days when their parents had actually been home and they had actually cared. And because she couldn't control her parents, she was trying to control him. But the longer it went on, the longer he couldn't take it-- the constant calling, the constant demanding for Hayden to report back to her about where he was, who he was with, what he was doing. She wanted him to stay in San Diego for college, even if he wanted to go to CalTech which was just two hours away. She told him she needed him. That he was all she had left.

But she wasn't all Hayden had left. He had tasted freedom in a mad world once, and while he was disillusioned with people and their intentions now he couldn't go back to being locked up in his tower once again. So he applied for colleges without her permission, sending forms through FedEx for his parents to sign wherever they were in the world. And as soon as he had been accepted into CalTech around March, he began packing, began planning. His trust fund had been released to him on his eighteenth birthday, and he could very well pay his tuition fees himself. So on the night of his high school graduation on the last day of April, he got into the green Volkswagen his sister had gotten him for his sweet sixteenth, leaving her a note of apology on her door but no address. He told security that he was just spending the night at Gabi's as usual, before driving off into the night.