S061 - Hawthorne, Alexander

#1

Name: Alexander Hawthorne
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: Senior
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Aviation, engineering, architectonics, reading books about math and science

Appearance: Alexander stands tall at 6'2", and he is noticeably underweight, measuring in at a mere 137 pounds; as a result, he has a heavily vertical and wiry frame. His complexion is pale, owing to his English heritage, but his skin is clear and free of blemishes, though he does burn heavily in the sunlight. His torso is slim, with little defined muscle, but still capable of taut strength when pushed; at the same time, it is possible to see his ribs without any manipulation of his body. His arms are longer than average for someone of his size and frame, and he has long, spindly fingers due to arachnodactyly. His legs, though, are of average size for someone of his height and build. His shoulders, torso, and hips line up, forming a linear, symmetrical body shape and appearance.

Alexander has an average-sized head and face, with high, prominent cheekbones, slim cheeks, and a slim jaw. His chin is neither strictly prominent nor recessive and lies between these two extremes; in addition, it has a rounded shape. He has a straight nose, which lies in the exact center of his face, and extends an inch outward. His mouth is small, as are his thin lips. He has a prominent brow, which causes his eyes to appear sunken. His eyes themselves are large and almond-shaped, brown in their coloration. His ears are large, and their lobes are attached.

Alexander has light brown hair, cut short; his hair in general and his bangs are the same lengths and are never longer than half an inch. It is styled in a formal side-part, always rightward. His eyebrows are thin and are the same color as his hair. He shaves daily, ensuring that he has no facial hair.

Alexander elects to wear formal clothing, even when more casual attire is preferred. In addition, he refuses to wear any clothing that is brightly colored or garish in design; he avoids neon hues, involved patterns, and the colors pink, orange, and yellow in particular. Alexander has a Casio G-Shock GA-140GB-1A1 analog-digital watch, which is black and gold. It was a gift from his father; he wears it everywhere and refuses to remove it, except when he showers. On the day of his abduction, Alexander dressed in his usual manner; a black greatcoat, a dark green button-up shirt, gray slacks, a black leather belt with a shiny, well-polished silver buckle, white ankle socks, black dress shoes, and his watch.

Biography: Alexander was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on January 13th, 2004, to Landon Hawthorne and Katrina Hawthorne (née Smith), a business executive for an automotive company and a registered nurse, respectively. He is the eldest of four children, with two sisters and one brother; Marissa and Nathan, sixteen, and Lena, fourteen. His childhood was comfortable, with a stable family and economic environment; his every need was satisfied and his wants fulfilled at a whim. His parents provided an exorbitant amount of money for their family, owing to their lucrative, highly-valued positions; as a result, the family was able to take frequent vacations during the summer months, including those that brought them outside of the country.

His earliest memory occurred en route to one of these vacations at Boston Logan International Airport. That was where he saw his first airplane; Alexander was mystified instantly by the machine and desperately wanted to discover how something so large and heavy could still be capable of flight. He bombarded his family with questions, and when his father said he did not know, Alexander suggested they take it apart and find out. His parents were pleasantly surprised at his early interest in engineering and sought to cultivate this curiosity; they bought him models of planes and LEGO sets to take apart and rebuild. He would construct them according to the manual's directions and then take them apart and use their pieces to create airplanes. This fascination would develop throughout his childhood, leading to his current interests in flight, engineering, and the deconstruction and reconstruction of mechanical objects. Alexander's dream is to build an airplane of his own and take it around on joyrides; he finds the thought of freedom and solitude in the air to be his utopia.

His father, in particular, fostered this passion and involved himself where he could; he often challenged his son to think bigger and better. For example, he would suggest that Alexander build the most structurally stable building he could, and his son would do so. Alexander excelled in these matters, and Landon's praise made him feel proud and instilled in him a desire to make engineering his life's work. Despite his frequent absences on business trips, Alexander was the closest to Landon emotionally; his father was a role model, an ideal by which he sought to model himself.

On the other hand, he was more distant from his mother and siblings; though he would speak with them and discuss his day-to-day life, he rarely interfaced with them on a deeper level, hesitating to discuss his experiences and emotions. As a result, his siblings preferred to spend time with one another rather than with Alexander; this caused them to grow apart and marked the start of a distant relationship. His mother would attempt to coax Alexander from his shell, but all of her attempts ended with harsh rebuttals from the boy. Eventually, she ceased to try, the circumstances forcing her to accept that she would never be close to her eldest child; a great rift formed between the two, and they rarely talked to one another.

Alexander entered kindergarten at age five and promptly fell in love with school; it tapped into his curiosity, and his inquisitive nature encouraged him to seek new knowledge from different sources. He asked his parents for a library card, and they were more than happy to oblige him; on his days off, Landon would take Alexander to the library, who would sit and read every book about airplanes he could find. However, the boy encountered an unexpected obstacle; Alexander did not understand some of the words in the books, with words such as canard, decalage, and dihedral escaping him. Defiant, he set out to expand his vocabulary as much as possible and did so with gusto, reading the dictionary and thesaurus front-to-back; his commitment achieved notable results, and by the time Alexander entered the second grade, he read at a sixth-grade level.

His overachievement in academics became the subject of praise by his teachers and intense ridicule by his peers; despite this, the taunts from his classmates did little to discourage him from his intellectual pursuits. Whenever his teacher asked the class to answer challenging questions, Alexander would always be the first to raise his hand and solve the problem with practiced ease; he always came home with spotless report cards, to the delight of his parents. Alexander basked in the praise and quickly developed an ego to match his intellect; he would become dismissive when questioned on his knowledge, assuming himself to be correct unless definitively proven otherwise. Because schoolwork was such a breeze for him, effortless and innate, Alexander failed to develop a strong studying habit or a proper work ethic. In addition, he became agitated and panicked when he could not understand something or filled with envy when another student grasped a concept quicker than him.

When Alexander was twelve, his father, Landon, was diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer, the outcome of a lifetime of smoking. The family was devastated, but Alexander was the most affected; he was exceptionally idealistic about his father's chances of survival and convinced himself that everything would turn out okay. He spent as much time with his father as possible, playing with him, building LEGO sets for him, and supported his father emotionally where he could; when his father felt low, he would smile brightly, and when his father cried, he would try to cheer him. Ultimately, however, it did not change the course of fate; after two years of struggle, Landon Hawthorne perished from his illness.

Alexander grieved for years. He tried to accomplish an impossible task and sought to rationalize his grief away, to make an incomprehensible loss something he could fathom. Eventually, Alexander came to a definitive conclusion and decided that, should he have coldly and meticulously analyzed his father's chances for survival rather than relying on naïve hope, it would have spared him from the pain he now felt. Thus, an irreparable change occurred in Alexander, who transformed from a cheery—if reserved—boy to a cold, emotionally-withdrawn person who analyzed everything with unfeeling logic. He became convinced that his erstwhile idealism was an unfortunate mistake at best and a source of madness at worst, and he disdained anything better. He believed that allowing his personal feelings and emotions to influence his decisions was harmful and that he needed to carefully consider the objective advantages and disadvantages of the decisions he made before he could take action. The process by which he made decisions slowed, but his conviction strengthened, and he took decisive action when he saw it necessary. It became nearly impossible to convince him to change courses once he had set one, as he considered his way the only way and his decisions to be the best in an objective, rather than subjective, manner. Though Alexander refuses to admit it—to others or himself—the crux of this personality change is fear; he fears the pain that a sense of hope once brought him. In this way, his personality change was an unconscious coping mechanism for his grief, a way to shield and insulate him from a reality that he felt was wrong.

Landon's death also had the additional effect of desensitizing his son to death; the concept was now firmly planted in Alexander's mind and became ever-present in his thinking. His rationalization led him to accept that death was a natural part of life and one that would occur for everyone; he realized that nobody, not even himself or the people he cared about, was immune to its effect. He began to believe that every death—even those not caused by natural causes—was a fact of life, unchanging and inevitable. This fatalistic perspective grew and took hold of Alexander and became a central tenet of how he viewed the world.

The family had burned through a large portion of their existing savings in the process of the treatment for Landon's illness, and the loss of the income he provided caused recovery to become even harder; as a result, the family entered a state of austerity and cut luxuries to offset costs. Ergo, Alexander's teenage years were more financially restrictive than his youth; his passion for engineering proved a particular target, and he was largely unable to engage in this hobby due to monetary constraints. His primary area of interest removed, Alexander became even more cold and hostile, his emotional state decreasing without a fixation with which to distract himself. He eventually took solace in reading, which was more accessible and less expensive, and found himself lost in books about science and mathematics; he would spend hours in the library at first, which would quickly turn to entire days. He also discovered a love of documentaries and shows about those topics, a convenient source of quick information; his unquestioned favorite is Mythbusters.

Alexander had a rocky start to middle school, worsened by the tragedy and the ensuing mental and emotional stress. He found that the schoolwork expected of him was far more challenging in comparison to that of elementary school, and he had yet to study anything he was required to know. Ultimately, Alexander reached his limit and could no longer handle the expectations previously set, slid into a state of academic apathy, and neglected his work. In English, which had always proven to be his worst subject, he did only the barest necessity to receive a passing grade; ultimately, he received a low C grade, the worst he had ever had. Soon, a pattern started to form in his education; when engaged and passionate about a subject, Alexander would excel and pass with flying colors, and he would otherwise barely manage to avoid failure.

This trend came to its zenith in eighth grade, the worst academic year of his life; Alexander had fallen out of love with learning and into a state of depression, and he could no longer invoke the energy to apply himself. He barely managed to pass any of his classes, even in the subjects he otherwise enjoyed; for the first time in his life, he had a report card without a single A grade. His mother was horrified and concerned for her son, and during the summer between eighth grade and ninth grade—his first year of high school—enrolled him into John Endecott Memorial Academy in the hopes that it would revive his passion for knowledge. Alexander, by this point almost entirely unresponsive, did not protest.

When the summer ended and the school year began, Alexander entered John Endecott Memorial Academy and quickly learned to loathe his new environment; the sole exception to this hatred was the Practical Workshop. He realized too late that none of his friends would be going to school with him, and a deep sense of isolation set in; he soon found himself crippled by the solitude. Alexander failed to make friends at the school, hardly helped by his caustic, guarded personality; with great—but unintentional—haste, Alexander alienated his peers with dysregulated outbursts and long stretches of cold silence. His academic performance did not recover, and he placed narrowly within the lower-middle section of the pack, far below his expectations and those of his mother.

His solitary existence ceased unexpectedly with the arrival of one Valentin Shulgin, a transfer student from Novosibirsk in the Russian Federation. Valentin was looking for friends and had decided to pick someone who seemed lonely; he saw Alexander eating lunch alone—while building a bridge out of toothpicks and marshmallows—and sat beside him, striking up a conversation. Alexander was naturally vicious and cold to Valentin and sought to drive him away with harsh words; Valentin refused to give up and complimented the bridge. Alexander, taken aback by the kindness shown, lowered his guard and began to talk at length about his love of engineering, taking the look of fascination on Valentin's face as a sign to continue. As he spoke, something changed within him, sparked by Valentin's presence; some of the ice surrounding Alexander's heart melted, and they quickly became friends. The two, since that day, have been inseparable; they frequently spend all their time together. Alexander even developed a respect and admiration for Valentin's interests, ones that had previously found his scorn—literature, drama, and poetry—though he still did not have a personal interest in doing them.

Encouraged by Valentin, Alexander gradually regained his lost zeal for education and began to develop proper studying habits; by the end of the eleventh grade, Alexander once more had straight A marks and had soared to the top percentiles of the class. Valentin's natural charisma and affinity for socialization helped Alexander build bridges—and, in many cases, rebuild the ones he'd previously burnt—with his classmates. Though Alexander remained far from universally beloved or even particularly liked, he shed his reputation as an outcast; still, whether or not any given student positively views him is a matter of random chance.

Alexander spends much of his free time in John Endecott Memorial Academy's Creativity Wing, specifically the Practical Workshop. He is content to tinker there for hours, whether to take things apart and rebuild them, construct stable structures from random materials, or manufacture something entirely new out of scraps from the trash heap. Alexander has even recently begun an ambitious personal project to construct a drone on school grounds—with the permission of the school's staff, of course—out of nothing but spare parts, pieces of junk from a multitude of sources, and other various odds and ends. He frequently becomes lost in his work, and it takes an inordinate amount of effort to grab his attention once otherwise occupied; he will single-mindedly focus on his projects until he is entirely satisfied with his accomplishments.

Alexander, for the most part, is a cold and distant person towards most people, with the notable exception of Valentin, to whom he is far more affectionate and emotionally open. He has few friends and is generally content with the company of one, intensely introverted as he is; at times, he can be rather harsh to his peers, but he does not intend malice towards them. This attitude has naturally pushed most of his classmates away from him, and even though Alexander—with the support and help of Valentin—has undertaken efforts to rebuild and forge connections with them, Alexander remains relatively asocial. He feels that he cannot count on anyone but Valentin to support him and does not trust anybody else; a part of Alexander believes that, should his decisions harm someone other than Valentin, he could live with it with little in the way of guilt. He has had no time or desire to begin a relationship with anyone; to complicate matters, he is not entirely sure of his romantic or sexual orientation, having never thought particular intensely about either subject. His familial relations, likewise, are strained, and Alexander tries to interact with his siblings and mother as little as possible; Alexander regards feelings of love towards them as an obligation rather than something to be celebrated. He plans to have as little interaction with them as possible when he is out of the house; the feeling, by all indications, is mutual.

Alexander, after his graduation, expects to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and enroll in their Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics—abbreviated to AeroAstro—where he seeks to work towards a master's degree in Aerospace Engineering. He plans to work in that field and use his disposable income to attend flight school and become a registered pilot; after that, he intends to use his training to fly the plane he aspires to construct in his spare time.

Advantages: Alexander has an analytical nature, which has allowed him a degree of control over his emotions; he can keep calm under most circumstances and will not be affected by attempts to get under his skin. His fatalistic perspective and desensitized attitude toward death will also help to preserve his mental state when faced with the horrors of the death game. Alexander is creative and a skilled engineer; he may be able to jury-rig tools or weapons from otherwise useless junk or scraps and tamper with environmental objects to shift situations or confrontations in his favor. His close relationship with Valentin may also prove advantageous; the two share a deep bond and will trust one another by default.
Disadvantages: Alexander has a bleak and hopeless view of the world, which takes an immense toll on his mental and emotional state; his relentless pessimism will restrict his imagination and ability to think creatively, as well as grate on the feelings of others. He has alienated his classmates over the years, and he remains somewhat unpopular, despite attempts to restore connections; few will sympathize with him, fewer will trust him, and nobody outside of Valentin truly knows him on a deeper level. Alexander is underweight and has neglected physical activities, culminating in a lack of strength, speed, or stamina; he will be at a disadvantage in competition with his more physically fit and agile classmates.

Designated Number: Student No. 061

---

Designated Weapon: Gerber Survival Knife

Conclusion: Analyze this: little baby boy, little baby knife, little to no chance. - Jim Greynolds