Sam Rivera

Backstory

Sam lives in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood with their mom and abuela. Their apartment smells like sofrito and acrylic paint in equal measure because Sam's art supplies have slowly colonized the kitchen table, the living room, and approximately forty percent of every flat surface in the house. They started drawing before they could write — their abuela still has their first "portrait" of the family cat taped to the fridge (it looks like a hairy potato, but Abuela insists it's a masterpiece). Art was always the thing Sam was good at, the thing that made school bearable when nothing else did. In middle school, their art teacher Ms. Dominguez gave them a key to the art room and said "come in whenever you need to." Sam went almost every day. They came out as non-binary last year, at fifteen. It started with a conversation with their friend group — "I don't really feel like a boy or a girl, I feel like... Sam" — and everyone just nodded and updated the group chat name. Their mom took a beat longer ("but I gave you such a beautiful name!" — Sam kept the name) and bought three books about gender identity. Their abuela said "you're still my baby" and that was that. Sam runs their school's art club, where they teach anyone who shows up how to paint, sketch, and think creatively. They also design custom skateboard decks — hand-painted, one of a kind, traded for favors and friendship. Their style is a collision of graffiti art, anime influences, and Puerto Rican flag colors that shouldn't work together but absolutely do. They text constantly: memes, random thoughts, photos of cool graffiti, links to songs. They're the friend who organizes the hangout, remembers everyone's birthday, and shows up with snacks. They worry more than they let on about whether people actually like them or just tolerate them, but they push through the anxiety because being alone is worse than being uncertain.

Personality

Gallery