Keisha Higgins-Bell

[Somersault]

Name: Keisha Briar Higgins-Bell
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Cheerleading, debate, gossip (celebrity or otherwise), journalism, partying, political activism, volleyball

Appearance: Standing at 5'7, Keisha stands a bit above the average height for girls her age. Weighing 135 pounds, her body has a bit of a pear shape to it, resulting in her being somewhat lean, but having the majority of her bodily fat centered around her hips and thighs, much to her mild discontent. Her skin is a very dark brown with cool undertones, owing to her African-American heritage. On the whole, her facial features are fairly appealing, if nothing out of the ordinary, with full and pouty lips, a broad nose, a square jaw, and upturned russet brown eyes. Overall, her face has somewhat of an oval shape to it. Her teeth are fairly straight due to braces she wore for two years. Her naturally kinky black hair is usually worn in intricate cornrow box braids pulled back into a ponytail, and she has currently dyed the tips a dark red.

Typically, Keisha's dress tends toward style as much as she can, as well as making sure her clothing can fit into her budget. Bright pinks, yellows, and reds dominate her wardrobe, and she tends to prefer jeans or shorts over skirts, feeling that they often restrict her movement. In terms of footwear, she hates wearing flats, and gravitates towards knee-high boots and heels, especially a pair of brown boots she got from H&M a year ago. She usually wears makeup to accentuate her features, typically putting on a shiny lip gloss and dark eyeshadow to bring out her eyes.

On the day of the abduction, Keisha was trying to dress fairly fashionably, wearing a bright pink denim jacket covered in rhinestones, a lemonade t-shirt in bright yellow, dark blue skinny jeans, as well as the aforementioned boots. In addition to this, she brought a pair of Raybans with her. She was also wearing a pair of hoop earrings. In terms of makeup, she was wearing light tangerine lip gloss, peacock blue eyeshadow, as well as mascara.

Biography: It was on November 22 that Keisha was born, to two teenage parents: Marlena Higgins and Tyrone Bell in Memphis, Tennessee. Neither of them were prepared for the challenges of raising a child, but with an offer from Marlena's parents (Beulah and Marcus Higgins) to help in raising their newborn daughter, they decided to try to raise their daughter in the best environment possible, despite both of them having come from lower-middle class backgrounds. However, this determined attitude from the both of them didn't last long, as Tyrone, a former member of the Grape Street Crips, ended up getting killed in a drive-by shooting when Keisha was only three months old. Since then, she has not had much contact with her paternal grandparents, only seeing them once or twice a year. She is the eldest of her mother's two children, as she has a sister who is six years her junior.

After Tyrone's death, Marlena was instantly brought in by authorities for questioning, as one of the people with the closest ties to him. While she told them of his former gang ties, she had no other information to offer them, and so she was promptly released. Still, due to her young age and the emotional trauma, she decided to move back in with her parents, giving her time to get her personal affairs in order. However, while this meant that Keisha had much contact with her maternal side of the family, relations with Tyrone's side were still quite strained, with both the Higgins and the Bells reeling from his murder, and blaming each other for what had happened. As they were already staying with the Higgins, she grew quite close to Beulah and Marcus, with the grandparents seeing themselves as the main providers for their young granddaughter. While there have been attempts to mend relations between the two extended families, Keisha and her mother are still treated with some disdain at family reunions to this day.

Keisha barely remembers her father, but she does share a close relationship with her mother, in part due to the relatively small age gap between them, and in part the fact that she is her only living parent. It was at the age of 5 when Keisha asked her mother why she only had a mom and not a dad, and so Marlena tried to give an honest explanation of Tyrone's death without delving too deep into any details, for both her and her daughter's peace of mind. It was only a few years after that she had found exactly what had happened to her father, and while she does not speak about it openly with her mother, she has tried to make peace with it as well, believing the only way to avoid the same fate would be to create a better life for herself. Her mother has always tried to protect her from falling into the more rebellious crowds at school, and at least in the early years of Keisha's childhood, seemed to have succeeded. However, this relationship has been strained at times due to the fact that Marlena was often out of the house during Keisha's early childhood, as she needed to work multiple jobs to pay the bills, and while they became much closer during her time in high school, allowing mother and daughter to have a bit more distance from each other, there are still sometimes arguments between the two, especially with the kind of company Keisha keeps. While Marlena isn't completely aware of Keisha's partying, she has witnessed her coming home drunk from time to time, although with her attempts to be a better role model for her younger sister, these confrontations have happened less and less.

Isabelle is Keisha's sister, and she has a different father from her. Isabelle's father, Terrence, still regularly sends child support, but Keisha and Isabelle only see him occasionally, such as on Christmas and Thanksgiving. While Keisha and Isabelle have a fairly large age gap between them, Keisha always tries to make time for her little sister, even if few of their interests to line up with another, the only one in common being a shared love of volleyball, the six-year difference means that she can mainly focus on just being a caring big sister figure, rather than a playmate.

In kindergarten and preschool, she was always an outgoing child, being the first to speak to new classmates and find out about them.  However, when she didn't get her way, such as if another classmate got a toy she wanted or she wasn't called on in class, she would often resort to tantrums to get her way, something that greatly concerned both her teachers and immediate family, although she was a fairly pleasant child outside of those incidents. To this day, Keisha often gets quite upset when something does not go her way, and while she has gotten better at controlling her emotions, it's still quite hard for her to hide her distaste about several things.

It was early on in her life that Keisha discovered the power that words could hold over others, which was a lesson she discovered through her grandparents forcing her to say things like please and thank you in order to get things, and this gradually grew into an interest with a written word, around third grade. While she then tried her hand at writing, she wasn't exactly the best at coming up with fantastical settings or deep characters, and so she largely found herself frustrated with her efforts.

Throughout most of her elementary school years, Keisha was largely raised by her maternal grandparents, as now along with her jobs, her mother was now taking nursing classes at night, trying to find a more lucrative profession to support her family. Beulah and Marcus were both quite devout Baptists, and so they regularly took their granddaughter to their local church, where she found herself engrossed in the concept of a higher power, and so became quite religious as well, at least until high school. Currently, Keisha still considers herself a Baptist, but recent crises with her faith have left her largely unsure of where she stands religion-wise.

As Keisha went into middle school, her mother, who was an avid volleyball player before she became pregnant with Keisha, was worried about the seeming lack of physical activity her daughter was getting, and soon signed her up for volleyball classes at the local YWCA. While initially a bit angry about being forced to participate, she quickly found herself enjoying the sport, and ended up joining her school's team in seventh grade, something she continued at George Hunter. While fairly athletic and speedy, she still often wants to be the center of attention during games, which has lead her to mostly be placed on the bench as the substitute wing spiker, a position which she feels suits her as it relies less on coordination with her team and more on individual skill.

It was also during this time that Keisha noticed that people were more often dividing themselves into cliques, and as someone who tended to think quite highly of herself, she found herself drawn to the popular girls, even if her economic background wasn't exactly ideal for being part of that group. However, in her efforts to join the upper echelon of the middle school social strata, she found a natural talent for putting others down, and she found herself enjoying it quite a bit, and this helped her to finally join the it crowd she had longed to be a part of. To this day, Keisha counts herself among the more popular kids at school, even though she is fairly worried that people will find out about her family's less than ideal financial situation, although it has stabilized in the past few years.

It was the summer between seventh and eighth grade when her mother announced to Keisha and her sister that they would be moving to Chattanooga just in time for eighth grade, as she had finally gotten a much higher-paying job as a trauma nurse at the Baptist Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga. Keisha did not take this news well, and spent three days with her grandparents refusing to speak to her mother, trying to protest the move. While she eventually relented, this remained a sore spot for her, although she largely recognizes why the move needed to be made, and so now the Higgins-Bells have a fairly stable middle-class existence, although the lack of a second income can make money a bit of a sore issue at times, especially when Marlena gets sick or is otherwise unable to work.

It was at the beginning of eighth grade that she joined the staff of the school newspaper on a whim, feeling isolated due to her recent move from Memphis, as well as a desire for another extracurricular other than volleyball. To her great surprise, Keisha found herself greatly enjoying the writing she was doing for the newspaper, and so her passion for writing was ignited once more, feeling as if she had finally found her calling focusing on news articles, finding them to be much more succinct and easier to write than stories, although it gave her a reason to work harder in her English classes. Her endeavors into journalism also helped foster in her a love of gossip, as she wanted to always be in the know about what was happening around the school, and while her work for the school newspaper did give her an avenue into that, she has gained a bit of a reputation who you probably shouldn't spill your secrets too, as she is fairly liable to using whatever people tell her and writing that up as her articles, although she does find it rewarding at times to find information out on her own.

This desire for knowledge about current events also meant that she wasn't just drawn to school gossip, she was also drawn to celebrity gossip as well, and so Keisha is an avid browser of sites like TMZ, and prides herself as almost always being up to date with the latest gossip happening, and is entirely too happy to go and share her knowledge with others.

It was in her freshman year of high school that she began to develop an interest in political activism, first because she was interested in investigating big political scandals like Watergate and juicy stories, but after that, she realized she agreed with many of the political positions the Democrats took, and proudly considers herself a progressive, as well as a supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. She also considers herself to be a feminist, and is especially interested in third-wave feminism, believing that intersectionality is a key concept that must be understood to know how women of color are treated in today's society. While she was disheartened by the recent election results, she still makes sure to make her voice heard and attends local rallies and protests whenever she has the time.

Due to her gossipy nature, Keisha often found herself getting into confrontations with others about the validity of her claims and political leanings, and trying to find a way to phrase her arguments more effectively, joined the debate team. While fairly decent at phrasing her arguments and expressing her point of view, Keisha's speeches also largely focus on trying to tear the opponent down through her words, which has left her in a bit of a middling position in the club, and her widely being known as someone generally unable to keep a secret has also left her with a not-unsubstantial amount of distrust within the club.

It was during the lead-up to sophomore year when Keisha discovered that she was a lesbian. It began when she realized she was starting to develop crushes on her female friends rather than the cute boys all her friends gossiped about, and while she played along at school, she was much more concerned at home. Today, knowing of the Baptist Church's fairly conservative views on homosexuality, only her very close friends know that she is a lesbian, and for the time being, she would like to keep it that way, as she is quite scared about how her family will react to the news, especially her grandparents, who she keeps in frequent contact with even if they are still in Memphis.

Still part of the popular crowd in high school, she tried out for the cheerleading squad because the rest of her friends were doing so as well, and it seemed fairly easy to get into at the time, but  she found it much more difficult than she expected. However, she also found it much more enjoyable than she expected it to be as well, and so, she has stuck with it for the rest of her high school life. While she would be loath to admit it, she truly enjoys helping pump up the crowd, and finds the the tumbles and stunts that are done to be quite thrilling. However, during cheerleading practice, she often gravitates to the other cheerleaders that she is already friends with, and doesn't make much of an effort to interact with the others, unless one of them initiates conversation first.

Other than being a cheerleader, other changes that Keisha made to fit in better with her group of friends included her going to parties more often, and with parties, came drinking. As someone with fairly poor impulse control, she found it fairly hard to resist drinking, and although she has recently tried to clean up her act as of late, both in preparation for college and to serve as a better role model for her sister, she retains much of her argumentative nature while drunk, and so she has gotten through a bit more than her share of drunken ranting. Throughout most of Junior year, this tended to happen every two weeks or so, as Keisha is a social drinker, who doesn't partake in alcohol outside of parties and other social gatherings. While rather irate at times, most of her arguments at parties do not escalate into physical confrontation, except for one incident halfway through junior year which left her with a bruised knee. When her mother found out, she was grounded for two weeks, and since then, Keisha has made sure to be much more careful at parties, in conjunction with her previous reasons for increased prudence.

Academically, she maintains a solid B average in most of her classes, primarily excelling in English, the subject that she feels most passionate about, as well as history, which she finds primarily interesting to discuss how society has changed over the course of time. Her worst subject in school is science, which she overall finds quite tedious, because at least in math, there is a concrete answer for most things, which she finds calming.

While Keisha has enjoyed her overall high school life, she is currently somewhat apprehensive about how her future will play out, recognizing that trying to keep in touch with all of her friends is probably an impossible task, and that she will be starting a new chapter of her life. She has already been accepted into Spelman College, a historically black all-women's college in Atlanta, on a financial need-based scholarship. Planning to major in journalism and media Studies, she hopes to be able to find herself at college, and after that, begin a career in the media as a journalist or a tabloid writer.

Advantages: Thanks to volleyball and cheerleading, Keisha is in fairly good shape, and can run quite quickly, at least for short distances. When she wants to, she can be fairly persuasive, and this can help her win people over. She has also cultivated a fairly large amount of friends, which she could use as potential allies, and her extensive gossip on people and debating skills could help her to dissuade other students from attacking her or considering any kind of hostile action against her. Somewhat selfish and self-centered, her high opinion of self means that she will likely prioritize her safety over that of others, which could save her in a risky situation.
Disadvantages: Mouthy and oftentimes confrontational, Keisha's abrasive personality could make it difficult for her to persuade new allies or even retain old ones. Her heightened opinion of herself makes it more likely to for her to undertake a risky course of action without understanding the dangers, and some of her internal conflicts may rise up on the island, causing further stress. Stubborn to a fault, she often disagrees with people simply because she doesn't like them, which could have deadly repercussions. In addition to this, she already has a reputation as a gossip and in general being quite argumentative, which could lead to people being wary of or not trusting her.