got your heart in a headlock

Whitney Amelia was the second child born to the Church family, only a few minutes before her twin sister, Melissa. Both healthy infants were permitted to leave for home with their parents right away where they soon met their older brother, Michael, already two years old. Frank and Yvonne Church didn't want to waste any time before having children, having married only five months before she discovered she was carrying their first. It had been a whirlwind romance between a fresh-faced California boy and a nomadic wildchild recently settled in the Southern California area with her military family. She liked his sincerity and the humble beginnings that had instilled a naive trust in the world, he loved her fearlessness and her insatiable craving for adventure.

Frank and Yvonne met during senior year of high school, shortly after the second half of the term had started, when Yvonne's father was abruptly restationed from Michigan. She felt lost and jaded from so many upheavals, with no intentions of attempting to make a connection with someone before she was inevitable ripped from any kind of familiarity. As a result, she came off as a trouble maker which wasn't helped by her innately defiant attitude toward her teachers. Yvonne had spent her life watching her father take orders, and consequently, she developed a vehement dislike in authority figures.

Thrown into a group project together, Frank was perhaps the first boy who approached her that wasn't interested purely in her body or where she could hook them up with a pack of cigarettes. He made her smile, and thus began a friendship that quickly became a relationship. Suddenly, Yvonne felt herself tethered to something and she feared she had fallen into the same trap that she promised she never would; if they were to be relocated again, she would have been devastated. However, by the time she reached eighteen, they had stayed put, and to her surprise, the family remained in place until Yvonne could graduate, at the side of Frank, just where she wanted to be.

Having had little experience with any kind of sensation of 'home', she was intoxicated by the thought of it. Frank and Yvonne moved into an apartment in the next city where she spent the time to make it their home, falling into a routine that she never would have believed she could. For years, she had wondered if her life would lead down a path of trouble, or nomadic shenanigans, but never quiet like it currently was. This didn't stop her from finding happiness in it. Approximately one year later, soon after they renewed their lease, Yvonne's adventurous spirit swelled into perspective and they spontaneously took a trip to vegas where they tied the knot in an intimate ceremony, witnessed by a wobbling drunk man they had paid to buy them booze. While it was every bit of a mess, something about it felt incredibly empowering.

Of course, when they returned home and announced to the family that she was no longer Yvonne Drake, but now Yvonne Church, none of their parents were very pleased. There was a second ceremony thrown by Frank's mother for close friends and family in their back yard, which seemed to bring everyone to the same page. Within three months, they, too, were parents to a little boy named after his grandfather, Michael. Fast forward to the birth of their twins, Whitney and Melissa two years later, and the Church family was complete.

While Michael took a more obedient approach, Whitney inherited every bit of her mother's adventurous spirit and made for a slightly hectic household. By the age of eight, she swore she could pick any lock and had tried smoking a cigarette once with one of her neighborhood friend's older brothers. She wanted to take life as it was and soak up every experience in her grasp, something that worried her mother who had already gone down this path. The pediatrician suggested a hobby, and soon, both Whitney and Melissa were enrolled in the Los Angeles Ballet School.