Dawson Demarke

[ZombiexCreame†]

Name: Dawson Demarke
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior, [12th]
School: Aurora High School
Hobbies and Interests: Science, reading magazines, lab work, shopping, mathematics, and movies [sci-fi].

Appearance: Dawson Demarke is petite and thin, possessing no curves whatsoever on her person. Despite her fairly small stature, she isn't very short, coming up to about 5'6 or 5'7, and her weight, a fair one-hundred and nineteen. She has fairly long legs, but no muscle mass to speak of. Her skin is very light and fair with pink undertones and a heavy dusting of freckles underneath her eyes and across the bridge of her nose. They plague her forehead much worse, resulting in a fairly dark area underneath her bangs, something Dawson would rather not have on her face, but what can she do? Freckles are freckles. Her face constantly sports a friendly look with a happy, slightly smug smile (but smug in a 'I'm happier than you' type of way), and her warm cheeks are dimpled and smooth, free from any pocks of acne. With a narrow nose and lips that appear just a tiny bit thinner than the norm, Dawson's face is cutesy yet simple, usually free from foundation or powders.

Her eyes are perky and wide-eyed in appearance, the orbs a clear grey color, mixed with just a smattering of light blue. And right above them, well-defined auburn eyebrows that she waxes bi-weekly. As for her hair, it's probably Dawson's favorite feature. Naturally auburn in color (it's one of those colors you'd simply never dye over), it hangs just below her shoulders in super fine, ringlet curls. Like natural little corkscrews in her hair, Dawson usually never has to spend much effort to maintain the curls, just a few careful brushings and a squirt of hair gel to keep it all in place. On days when her hair isn't quite behaving, she'll wear it in a simple braid or pigtails. Curly bangs brush just above her eyebrows.

As far as clothing goes, Dawson is one of those girls who spends way too much time thinking about what they're going to wear to school the next day. She owns an array of overly-elaborate clothing that looks like it should belong at a fancy dinner party, not an average day at Aurora High. Cuffed boots, riding pants, lace blouses, ruffled frocks, ornate scarves, flowery sun dresses, and pearls galore are just a few items that litter Dawson's personal fashion show. She's not really the best dresser although she tries, and most of her peers consider her clothing more old lady-like in fashion than edgy and in-style. At the time of her abduction, she's wearing a nude pair of capri's, yellow ballet flats, a fairy-pink button-up top with lace edging, a black neck scarf, and, finally, settled upon her head is a simple pair of aviator sunglasses.

Biography: Dawson Demarke was born a few years after the successful marriage between Frederick Demarke and Jessica Helvetti. The two love-birds met in college, both pursuing the similar career paths of chemical engineering. Frederick and Jessica were scientists and at the time of Dawson's birth, they had gone through quite a few science-related jobs. Chemical engineering was both their passions, but they frolicked within the realms of aeronautics, computer science, biochemistry, and more. This meant a lot of schooling and a lot less funds that could go into the family, so as Dawson was born, Frederick and Jessica decided to settle into career paths that fit them both. Frederick became a high school chemistry teacher, and Jessica became a chemical technician for a pharmaceutical enterprise. They were simply intelligent people, and it was no real surprise when Dawson developed the same interests in science.

At the ripe age of four, she would rather play with spaceships than dolls. At five, she would rather add numbers than learn to read (although the mathematical concept behind adding didn't quite click until a few years later), and at six, she would rather watch shows and movies about aliens rather than a talking purple dinosaur. In elementary school, Dawson excelled in science and math but seriously struggled in English and history. Grammar and spelling? Forget about it. It was just a foreign concept to her, and she would much rather learn about liquids, solids, and gases. At the age of nine, Dawson said this very line that has pretty much defined her entire education experience, "Reading is just a bunch of words on a page that tell you about things. But science is different. It's not about telling you stuff... It's about making things happen. And you can blow up stuff. That's cool too."

Nine was an important age for Dawson. It was a year that she reflects fondly upon, even now, and when things get rough, she likes to imagine herself back at that age, experimenting in her tree fortress or racing the family dog Scrappy around the garden. It was the year she realized she was different than other children. Other kids liked kissing and cooties and toys and sports... Dawson liked science and numbers. She had some friends, sure, but as she got older, she found it harder and harder to relate with her peers. Nine was also the year her younger brother, Donald 'Donnie' Demarke was born. Dawson was a bit hesitant at first at the birth of this stranger, as she was used to being an only child and definitely fond of all the attention, but as Donnie grew older, she fell in love with the little brat. Donnie was exactly like Dawson in almost every way. Funny, light-hearted, kind, and with a mean penchant for science... even though he was quite a lot younger, especially at the age of nine. He didn't become something of an interesting character until Dawson became about sixteen years old. Donnie was Dawson's little friend when she didn't have many others.

Middle school was the breaking point for Dawson. Fellow students began to realize that she was a smarty-pants and while they didn't exactly tease or ignore her, she received a different kind of attention. People wanted to borrow her notes, people wanted help on homework, people wanted Dawson for something other than her funny sense of humor or her fun-loving demeanor. They wanted her to do their homework for them. That wasn't friendship. And so she alienated herself from people, becoming brusque and anti-social, obsessively working on science fair projects in the bits of free time that she acquired. For a middle school kid, she managed to keep herself very busy. Losing her friends and losing her sense of self, Dawson felt lost. Her only passion was keeping her from maintaining a normal life. It frustrated her, and thirteen-year-old Dawson cursed her parents for ever instilling her with the values of science instead of dolls and makeup and fairy-princess playtime.

At the start of high school, things weren't looking too promising. She was faced with all sorts of choices, such as Honors Chemistry or AP Physics, and it just sounded so absolutely enticing. Statistics and Trigonometry too! Dawson was basically drooling over all the math and science classes that she could take, and take them she did. She filled her days with science far beyond her ninth grade level, but she still didn't feel complete. She heard the hushed whispers in the corridor. She saw the prying eyes as she sat in the cafeteria, doing her physics homework. It was killing her, and mid-way through her freshman year in high school, she had something of a breakdown. Sitting in her room on her bed, sobbing into her copy of Science Weekly, she decided to stop this nonsense. She was not living a high school existence. She was living a sad existence filled with overly-difficult AP classes that consumed her free time with labs and homework (although she secretly quite enjoyed the labs). The very next day, Dawson dropped her AP science and math classes and went into... Algebra I and Earth Science. It was an earth-shattering decision that shocked the entire class as Dawson walked in and took a seat, half-listening as she teacher discussed right-angles and Pythagorean theorem. It was kid stuff to Dawson, but she wouldn't complain. She was making a change.

As she grew older and rose in grade, Dawson blossomed into a completely different person. She took general education classes, nothing too fancy or difficult at all. Her passion never went away, no, but she simply never showed it to others. If she knew an answer to a question in class, she would simply bite her lip and say nothing, although the urge to raise her hand and wave it obnoxiously was ever present. Science fairs were replaced by trips to the mall to shop for new clothing, and her beloved Science Weekly mag was replaced with Vogue and a dog-eared copy of Twilight that Dawson keeps around but never actually reads. She realized that friends were filtering back into her life and her social life was restored, hanging with her new friends almost daily and hitting the occasional 'party' on the weekend. By party, we're talking a couple kids sipping contraband beer on the back porch of someone's friend's cousin's trailer.

As senior year grew closer, Dawson departed further and further from the person that she used to be. She was unrecognizable to her parents, and it was a tad bit embarrassing for them to watch. With her friends, Dawson dumbs herself down to appear unintelligent and crude, lacking the common sense that she obviously has but never uses. She began to hide her intelligence with bad life choices: shoplifting and drug-use on the occasion, cheating on tests, (although she admits to never cheating on science and math tests. that would be ludicrous) and casual sex pepper her life. She goes through boys like wild fire: She'll date someone she considers 'the one' but she'll into an argument the next day and break up almost instantly. Dawson lives life fast, and her usually terrible choices are proof of it.

In Dawson's senior year, her demeanor hasn't changed much. She's still the same goofy gal, kind and friendly as all hell, but seriously off-the-rails once you get to know her. She comes off as almost unnatural which is... natural, seeing how much of herself she hides from the world. She's a bit of a hellion, skipping class whenever she fancies and smoking on campus just to feel the thrill of possibly getting caught. Her behavior isn't tolerated much to her own chagrin, as teachers see right through her gossamer-thin mask: She's an intelligent girl trying to fool people into thinking she's a bimbo because she doesn't want to be lonely. Dawson's entire existence is something of a cry for help, but she would refuse to recognize that anything was wrong. Because Dawson is happy. Genuinely happy? It's debatable, but Dawson is Dawson deep, deep inside. There's still a part of her that enjoys science and math, her old Science Weekly mags that she'd NEVER show to anyone, and old sci-fi films on TV still make her gleeful.

Relationships at home are decent. She loves her parents, and her parents love Dawson, trusting that things will work out with their daughter in due time. They still see Dawson as that science-crazed nine-year-old, playing with her chemistry set in the backyard, and they're sure that by the time Dawson becomes a bit older, her passions will come back to the forefront of her life. As long as Dawson is not hurt or in trouble, they tend to let their daughter do whatever she wants. They know that she's responsible, even if Dawson presents herself as kind of the furthest thing from responsibility in this side of Seattle. Donnie, unlike Dawson, is still quite interested in math and science. He's a spitting-image of Dawson at that age, fun-loving and friendly, uncaring that he's considered a bit different by his own peers. He looks up to his sister and wants to be just like her, but he'll never know that Dawson looks up to him more than anything. She wants nothing more than to embrace who she is, show the world that she has smarts and a personality, but she's afraid. She's not strong like her younger brother. She's Dawson Demarke, and while she may not be true to herself half the time, there's real potential somewhere inside. She'll discover it one day.

Advantages: Her friendly and non-judgmental personality ensures that she has no real known enemies at Aurora High, so she could virtually band up with anyone and have no problem with it. She's intelligent and clever, thinking of solutions to problems that most students wouldn't fathom. Her quirky sense of humor would at least keep her and others spirits up.
Disadvantages: While Dawson is intelligent, her endless supply of science and chemistry knowledge isn't going to keep her unharmed on an island of murderous high schoolers. She's wiry and thin, unable to lift hardly anything, and her only outdoor experience is playing in her own backyard. And then there's the whole 'can't-make-a-good-choice-to-save-her-life' thing and how it sharply contrasts with the intelligence she hides from others. The outcome of that can't be a good one in such a dire situation. She most likely won't be able to handle many weapons unless chemistry and exploding are involved somehow.