Character in Three Words: Discount Favor Purveyor.
- [+] Five Dollar Biography
- Colloquially known around school as a guy who'll do just about anything for five dollars (ten, if it's a particularly big ask), Dave makes a hobby of granting interesting favors for his classmates. Dressed in an immaculate white collared shirt and black tie, a sharp contrast with his messy red hair and slouchy posture, Danger Dave hangs out his shingle in the lunchroom each day. Need answers to next week's history text? For five dollars, Dave will talk to people who took the test last year and hunt you down a copy. Didn't get invited to the biggest house party? For a fiver, Dave will create a distraction so you can sneak in. Pissed off at another student? Dave will punch them in the back of the head and take detention so you don't have to. And the best part is, discretion is guaranteed. Some days he's busy, some days he's not. Depends on who needs what. All of the money goes into an account for his college tuition, since that's more or less the only way he'll be going.
It'd be fair to say that Dave probably has a pretty good working knowledge of the school, or at least whatever he's required to know for his clients. He's frequently in and out of detention and therefore not likely to participate in extracurricular activities, but is a fairly average student outside that. When engaging with clients, Dave tends to be amicable and engaged, and he's always a consummate classy professional while conducting a job; he'll punch you in the head for five dollars and then offer to help you up afterwards. In most other situations, though, Dave comes off as an archetypical slacker, lounging in his seat or staring out the window. He doesn't readily volunteer information about himself, and often dodges questions about his home life. He lives with his grandmother instead of his parents, an arrangement which benefits everybody. Dave's father is free to focus on the new Mrs. Cooper without awkward reminders of his first marriage, and Dave's grandmother has a classical "boys will be boys" mentality which keeps her from getting concerned about his ever-climbing stack of detention slips.
- [+] Relationships Wanted
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Looking for:
- CUSTOMERS! Anybody who could conceivably use a favor for any reason at all!
- Fellow detention sufferers. Perhaps we can take
- At least one friend. I think it'd be kind of cute if someone paid Dave $5 to be their friend and he's just been their friend ever since.
- Angry recipients of Dave's Punch-o-gram service.
- [+] Relationships Established
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- Isaiah: "I punched him once, he punched me back, it was a good time."
- Beffica: "You owe me $25 in soda money, with interest."
- Ren: "A valued customer. Be sure to keep my number for any pranking-related needs you may have in the future."
- Max: "Five-dollar drug delivery, no questions asked."
- Matt: "If he keeps asking me to babysit for him, I'm gonna have to raise my prices."
- Indie: "Best five-dollar friend a guy could have."
- Dani: "She's hot, but way out of my league."
- California: "We have a strictly business relationship, and we both like it that way."
Juanita Reid
Character in Three Words: Former Athlete, Involuntarily
- [+] These Are The Breaks
- Juanita's mother and father, second and third-generation lily-white Irish respectively, ventured out of Massachusetts exactly one time. They booked a week in Mexico, and took only one day to decide that the beach was too hot, the tours too expensive, and the streets too crowded. Thus, they retreated to the relative safety of their cheap hotel room, and spent the remainder of the week ordering room service from a concierge named Juanita, and they liked the name so much they decided to bequeath it to their one and only daughter.
Juanita resents the name for a few reasons. First, it's hard to spell. Second, it smacks embarrassingly of cultural appropriation. Third, someone nicknamed her "Juan" when she was in middle school, and some of her friends use it as a term of endearment. For a girl with short, cropped hair and a slightly boyish face, being called a boy's name raises a lot of questions that she'd really rather not deal with. It doesn't help that her body went entirely the opposite route. She's chestier than her narrow frame should permit, and it's a major pain in the... lower back. Not only is it a major hindrance while running or doing anything athletic, but it opens her up to all kinds of personal problems. Boys rarely look her in the eye, and girls have spread some pretty nasty rumors about her - she stuffs, she's a skank, she's trying to get people's attention, she's compensating for that face.
Up until last year, Juanita took most of these frustrations out on the lacrosse field - she'd always been a gifted athlete and a tough competitor, and lacrosse was her game of choice. She was hoping to play in college, and see where it went from there. Coaches praised her laser-focus on the game, a skill honed from years of extensive practice ignoring her supremely embarrassing parents in the audience. Then, one day, she put a foot wrong while trying to intercept a toss, and heard the distinctive "pop" that every athlete dreads, half a second before she collapsed into the grass with a torn ACL.
Even with a partial reconstruction it's more or less impossible for her to get full use of the knee back, since her parents don't make nearly enough money to qualify for good insurance or physiotherapy. Any dreams she had of going to college on a scholarship are toast, and her grades aren't good enough to get her into anything useful. Despite being a churchgoer, Juanita's seen enough not to bank on divine favors. She's pretty upset with God for derailing her entire life, and nowadays she's trying to figure out what a post-lacrosse her is going to look like. She's tried one or two club activities, but rarely sticks around - committing to any one thing will be a tacit acknowledgement that sports are over, and she's not sure she can handle that kind of transition. She's been invited to watch games from the team's bench, but she can't handle that emotionally, and always turns it down.
- [+] Relationships Wanted
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Looking for:
- Former teammates or fellow athletes, people she'd have been close to before the incident. She'd probably still retain the friendships, but she'd always decline to participate in anything athletic with them. Could also be people who didn't like her.
- Clubs that she might have tried but couldn't stick it out with - these would likely be passing acquaintances.
- Non-athletic friends, girls she could just hang out with.
- Catty girls willing to say or think mean things about her.
- Creepy boys? I dunno.
- [+] Relationships Established
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- Max: "He's a difficult guy to be friends with, but God wants me to love everyone, so there it is."
- Benji: "They're really nice! I can learn a lot from them."
- Isaiah: "We're both mad at God."
- Spuds: "We were great friends on the lacrosse team, but things are kinda awkward now..."
- Robbie: "I don't think I could ever do what she does.. .Honestly, she makes me feel like I'm making a big deal out of nothing sometimes..."
- Teddie: "We went on one or two dates, but things got kinda... you know..."
Rebekah Hayes
Character in Three Words: Friendly Lawn-mowing Cheerleader
- [+] Grass Clippings and Pompoms
- Rebekah's a Caucasian girl, on the short side of average height. She's got dark hair long enough to brush against her shoulders, but almost always wears it pulled into a loose ponytail with a scrunchie. It doesn't take long for a few hairs to slip free, giving her a slightly disheveled look. Her favorite colors are dark blue and purple. She doesn't have much in the way of fashion sense, usually wears light plaid or flannel pattern button-up shirts over a dark t-shirt and grass-stained jeans. All of her jeans are grass-stained on the knees and around the cuffs. She has better organizational skills than her appearance would suggest, and often keeps a bag of essentials in car so she'll be prepared for any situation.
The daughter of divorced parents who split up when she was five or six (she doesn't remember and doesn't want to probe into it), Rebekah's always felt like she's had a foot in two different worlds, but a foundation in neither. Her mother's a real-estate agent, living a more upscale life, while her father works for the Parks service, primarily caring for the Salem Woods and surrounding areas. They were high school sweethearts who couldn't make the magic last, and having a child together didn't help things the way that they'd hoped. Rebekah currently lives on an "every third week" schedule, spending two weeks with her father in his duplex and then one with her mother in her apartment. The arrangement is supposed to avoid upheaving her life, but having two bedrooms, two sets of clothes, two of every holiday... it's hard for her to feel like she belongs entirely in one or the other.
Rebekah primarily takes after her father, and inherited his love of the outdoors, or at least as much of it as can be found in Salem. She likes to hike in the Salem Woods, and sometimes spends lazy weekend afternoons watching the groundskeepers cut the grass at Olde Salem Greens golf course. For the last two summer she's worked at a local cemetery trimming the grass around the gravestones, saving up enough that she could afford a car of her own. Truth be told, she likes driving the mower more than she likes driving the car. It's very relaxing to just hop on, put on some music (she listens to an eclectic range, everything from country western to heavy metal), and spend the afternoon clipping grass. Rebekah also finds it important to connect with her mother, who's a very detail-oriented person and often quite critical of Rebekah's appearance and grade. Rebekah joined the cheerleading squad at her behest. It's definitely not something she'd have gravitated towards on her own, but she likes it more than she thought she would, and likes having an excuse to be more fit. She enjoys having a "team" to belong to, and doesn't mind pitching in with extra tasks where she can, to show support for the squad.
Rebekah's hardly a wallflower, but she doesn't like to draw attention to herself. She's not someone who initiates conversation easily, but she'll happily talk to anybody who talks to her. Rebekah occasionally contributes anonymous poetry to the school paper. Most of her poems are based on things she's seen while hiking, or sentiments that she's read on gravestones at the cemetery. She tries to maintain a live-and-let-live sort of mindset, and tries to have a fairly level-headed perspective in most things. She's more agnostic than anything else, and feels like everything happens for a reason, even if that reason isn't necessarily God. She's an average student, better at English and Phys Ed than anything else, and pretty bad at math or science - even biology, which is a source of personal disappointment for her. She purposely holds back on poetry assignments because she doesn't want people to know she puts them in the paper. In the pocket of her shirt she often carries a small notebook and pen, to jot down poem ideas or just doodle when she's bored. Her doodles are often seen on test papers and handouts, too.
She's familiar with things being out of her control, and will often go along to get along. She would rather ignore the source of a conflict than deal with the fallout of discussing it. She doesn't like to get involved in disagreements, or risk escalating things worse than they are. Rebekah is quite loyal to her friends, though it takes her a while to trust them, and she struggles to express affection verbally. One clear sign that you've earned her trust is that only her closest friends are ever allowed to call her Bekah. It's Rebekah to everyone else, always.
Because of her loyal nature, Rebekah can often be talked into doing things she wouldn't otherwise do. She also hates feeling caught between people. She won't intervene in spats between friends, but she will back them up if an outsider starts something. Rebekah's also a fairly independent person, and doesn't like depending on others or asking for things, but she deeply appreciates any assistance or gifts she is given. She's kept every birthday card and present she has ever received. On the other side of that coin, if she feels betrayed or unwanted, it affects her deeply. She's pretty forgiving so it's hard to get on her bad side, but if you wind up there you're gonna be there forever. She also strongly dislikes cruelty towards animals or hunting for sport.
She's not aromantic, and has a pretty healthy interest in the finer points of the male form, but she's not particularly enthusiastic about getting into a relationship. She's seen enough breakup drama around the school not to want to get any of that on her.
She isn't sure what she wants to be when she grows up, but knows she wants to work outside.
- [+] Relationships Wanted
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Looking for:
- Friends! Slumber-party friends, people she could trust and form close friendships with.
- Fellow cheerleaders or athletic people who'd have participated in fundraisers, etceter.
- Someone else who maybe worked at the cemetery?
- Other outdoorsy people who she might have run into while hiking?
- I'd entertain the idea of a guy she could have a low-key crush on, but she'd probably never act on it.
- [+] Relationships Established
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Althea: "When I'm out hiking, I always make sure not to disturb the local werewolf sanctuary."
Dani: "I'm definitely glad to have her in my life. Fashion... cheerleading... how does she make that stuff all look so easy?"
Jessica: "Climbing is tricky, but it's definitely more fun when you're doing it with a friend!"
Ara: "We've had some really good times together! I've never been a really urban person, but she makes it interesting."
Randolph: "He and I trade birdwatching tips sometimes. He's a really sweet guy, and it's a shame how people treat him..."
Spuds: "I'd be flunking biology if it wasn't for her."
Karin Min-Hye Han
Character in Three Words: Korean Bitch-Face Girl
- [+] Close Encounters of the Karin Kind
- Karin is a Korean girl, standing an even five feet tall if she cranes her neck a little. She has jet-black hair which she usually keeps in a loose ponytail. If she's feeling adventurous, she'll wear her hair long, with part of it braided. Most of her clothes are hand-me-downs from her older sister; they were fashionable when they were new, but are now slightly out of date. Karin has a severe case of Resting Bitch Face, and often appears to be 150% done with the shenanigans of everybody around her. She's frequently seen giving side-eye or making unimpressed facial reactions at people for being dumb.
Karin's mother and father are first- and second-generation Korean, respectively. Karin's mother was often self-conscious, and strived to forge a distinctly American identity for herself and her two daughters. The Han girls were to be bold, fearless, uncompromising. Everything good about America. Karin's older sister, Charlotte, was a staggering success: well-behaved, studious, and outgoing. Karin, on the other hand, was a mischievous and fiercely independent child with a stubborn streak a mile wide. She was easily bored and liked to wander off. And, as is the case with most children whose brain activity outpaces their age, she had trouble sleeping.
It happened when she was seven. Karin used to lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Eventually that got boring, so she crawled over to the window, and slipped her head under the dark cloth her mother had hung over it to block out the city lights. She liked to wonder about the wide world she saw out there, all the millions and millions of interesting things that seemed so, so much more interesting than lying in the dark and listening to her sister snore. That was good enough for a month or so, but it wasn't long before looking wasn't enough. Karin wasn't supposed to know how to unlatch the window, but she'd seen her father do it enough times to work it out. She slid it up carefully, so Charlotte wouldn't hear.
That first night, she was only outside for five minutes before she realized how much trouble she'd get in, and climbed back inside. It was two weeks before she'd feel bold enough to try again. She walked around in her bare feet, marveling at how different the neighborhood looked in the dark. The next time, she brought shoes, and walked to the end of the block. This continued a while. She only went out once a week, sometimes less if Charlotte was sleeping fitfully. She never went very far. She was only a few blocks from her house when she was abducted. She'd been walking down an alleyway - she liked the dark spaces best, the gaps in between lights where she didn't have to worry about getting caught. But when the lights came on, the darkness was chased away, and there was nowhere to hide.
Karin believes that what happened next was an alien abduction. It was a perfectly valid conclusion, for a seven-year-old. She saw bright lights, blinding her. She was pulled up off the ground, by something she couldn't see. Then she found herself imprisoned, surrounded by metal, and heard a distant engine firing up. She was taken away and examined by a strange figure who spoke words she didn't understand. Eventually, she spotted her chance and escaped through a metal door, whereupon she tripped and fell to the very distant ground, fracturing her arm. She ran until she couldn't run anymore, and then she hid, sobbing, until daylight. There are perfectly terrestrial reasons why all of this might happen, of course. Perhaps it was a helpful stranger, speaking a foreign language that Karin couldn't comprehend, who only wanted to help a lost child and terrified her by mistake. Perhaps it was the exact opposite of that, an abduction of the non-alien sort. As far as Karin was, is, and ever will be concerned, it was aliens. That's what she told the police who found her sobbing in a park ten blocks from her house. That's what she told her parents. That's what she told the therapists, too.
Karin's family obviously don't believe that she was abducted by aliens, and they have no idea what to do with her. They've sent her for as much therapy as they can afford, but even after ten years, she still has occasional nightmares about being taken by aliens and a paralyzing fear of bright lights. Karin knows that her family doesn't believe her, and neither did the therapists, or the kids at school, or the teachers. She changed schools in sixth grade, after punching a girl who'd been calling her the Crazy Alien Girl. Her mother screamed at her for that. At her new school, she stayed quiet. She didn't talk about the aliens, or much of anything else.
Karin's therapists remarked on her rapid improvement throughout middle school, but cautioned that it wasn't good for her to be so withdrawn. When she got to high school, they recommended that she try out some school activities, coax her partway out of her shell. She went out for drama. It didn't seem like it'd be much work, and she'd had good grades in it throughout middle school - chalk that up to a lot of experience pretending to be something she wasn't. It was an excellent fit - right up until the first time Karin had to step into a spotlight, panicked, and threw up. She managed to convince everybody that it was just stage fright, that she wasn't ready to be onstage yet. Ever since then, she only ever auditions for one role: The Narrator. It keeps her offstage, safe in the darkness of the wings. Everybody's much happier.
Karin isn't particularly good in school, and often has to study hard just to keep up with everybody else. She often tries to take a lot of notes so she can share them with Soo-Bin and go over them later. This leads her to become easily frustrated with people who slack off during class, goof around and interrupt her note-taking, or seem full of themselves. She'll hate anybody like that. She's often quite judgmental of the people around her, and enjoys people-watching and making snarky comments with Soo-Bin. She's picked up a bit of ASL in order to communicate with her, but she's definitely not fluent. She mostly knows phrases like "What an idiot," and "Ew, that hair," things like that. She is fiercely loyal to Soo-Bin in particular, but may have other friends. She is fiercely loyal to those she does have, and friendly enough to the other drama kids. She'll absolutely tear a strip off of anybody who's mean to Soo-Bin, especially in drama. She'd probably also be friendly to the conspiracy theorist kids.
- [+] Relationships Wanted
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Looking for:
- Fellow drama kids
- Conspiracy theorist friendos
- Anything else you can think of
- [+] Relationships Established
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- Soo-Bin: *communicating exclusively in facial expressions and ASL*
- Medea: "That girl keeps glaring at us. What's her deal?"
- Alex: "What a poser. He's clearly making up the whole alien thing, trust me, I'd know."
- Dani: "Little miss perfect. How much you wanna bet she's bulimic?"
- Daryl: "I'm gonna sprain my eye-rolling muscles if I spend another day around him."
- Teddie: "Cyclops? No, he's Cyclesticle. Cycnuts? Cyclotum?"
- Randolph: "Totally creepy fish guy. You wouldn't believe what I've heard about him..."
