Jessica Hayles

Jessica has copper-colored hair and a very fair complexion, both of which contrast sharply with her brown eyes. Her eyebrows also appear brown, as one of the three 'real' cosmetics she is allowed to use is a brown eyebrow pencil to fill them in; her other two staples are a light pink lip gloss and matching light pink nail varnish. In warm weather, the same shade adorns her toenails; despite efforts by some to convince her that the fashion is for variation, she dislikes disorder and likes everything about her to match. Accordingly, much of her wardrobe tends toward pastels as well. Her skin is meticulously cared for, with soaps and washes picked to suit her skin type and sunscreen applied daily. She almost always carries a small handbag containing hand cream, her lip gloss, a compact mirror, a packet of tissues, a little tin of mints, a few pieces of peppermint candy, a pen, and a couple of tiny notebooks.

Jessica’s life has been in many ways defined by who her ancestors are and were, rather than who she is. Her great-grandmother, one Ariana Hayles, founded a cosmetics company and series of upscale salons in New York and was, as a result of Arvale’s success, already independently wealthy by the time she gained the right to vote. She passed on the company to her son Roy, who later chose to retire while still alive, passing the company down in turn to his son Arthur.

Jessica is the only child of Arthur Hayles and his wife, Rosalie. Her father's family is mainly concentrated in New York, where her grandpa Hayles was born before Arvale moved its headquarters to Atlanta when Arthur was a child, while her mother's is located in southern Georgia, grouped around the estate of her great-grandparents, a former governor and first lady of the state. The Groves family never quite came to terms with Ros - her father’s favorite among his four children - marrying someone whose father was born up north; Ros herself never offered any explanation beyond “the Louboutin allowance,” which most people assumed was facetious. An unacceptable in-law did not, however, prevent Ros’ father from becoming a powerful state senator, nor her brother Jason from entering the state House of Representatives, so Arthur is tolerated as a reliable source of money and PR.

Jessica grew up in an atmosphere of high privilege, but also of high expectations. As Arthur’s daughter, she was expected to start a business career in her teens, with her father planning to use her in social media campaigns to help promote Arvale to a younger audience and to “let the girl win her spurs” - by which he meant her first million - without a formal position at the company. Her mother, however, had different plans; she wanted Jessica to become one of the great Southern writers, and to get a degree from the Iowa Writers’s Workshop. Meanwhile, she was also expected to be continually up to date on current events and politics, and to achieve top marks at one of the most academically rigorous schools in Atlanta. From an early age, she spent almost all her time dancing as fast as she possibly could, to avoid disappointing anyone. During the small leftover gaps in her schedule, she found emotional outlets in two places. One was her poetry journals, accomplished by keeping one set that she put poems deemed worthy of public consumption in and one set where she vented any secret feelings. The other involved her relationships outside her public life, specifically the strong bonds of affection between her and her family driver Robert, her nanny Carmela, the housekeeper Mrs. Martinez, and her two half-sisters, Mara and Lola Morales, the daughters of Arthur Hayles and Carmela.

Growing up, Jessica never really thought much about the oddities of the arrangement. She had one home in the suburbs with Mommy and Daddy, and another, cozier one in Atlanta with Daddy and Carmela and her sisters. Lots of people had blended families, after all - here just didn’t involve her parents never staying under the same roof. As she got older, however, she began to think how unusual that was - and how her sisters had a different last name - and how Mara went to a different, somewhat less prestigious school than Jessica’s - and how she had always known that she was never to mention the fact she had sisters in public. Since she valued rule-following and her status quo too much to say anything, though, everything might have gone on indefinitely if Jessica had not turned out to be a witch.

Jessica struggled to settle into life at Sonora, and was near the point of open rebellion against the wizarding world (which she perceived as barbarous and backward) when she accidentally made her first-ever proper friend her own age, her yearmate Felipe De Matteo. This made it alarming to her when she utterly failed to make friends with his other friend, Zara Jackson, in her second year. She is also friendly with Johana Leonie Zauberhexen and Hilda Hexenmeister after the team challenges in her second year led to her starting to try to pick up German out of boredom over the midterm holidays, and hopes to pursue those relationships further.