Kealani “Lani” Salder

[CoreyImperia*]

Name: Salder, Kealani "Lani"
Gender: Female
Age: Sixteen
Grade: Junior
School: Cochise High School
Hobbies and Interests: Dance, gardening, social media, and swimming

Appearance: Lani stands at 5'5" and weighs around 144 pounds. She is stocky, having muscle mostly in her arms and legs, while a thin layer of fat enwraps her abdomen. She is of a tan almost caramel complexion, reminiscent of her Polynesian descent. Her skin is generally clear, though there is a large crescent-shaped birthmark on her right shoulder. She has an oval-shaped face creating prominent cheekbones and a larger forehead, a feature she abhors. Her nose is of an average-size; it is not obtrusive and its tip is comparatively flat. Lani has upturned eyes, with irises of deep chocolate. Her eyebrows are kempt, albeit they are naturally robust. They form a natural arc that peaks closest to the sides of her face, mirroring the eye shape. Lani's lips are a slight pink, and thin for her origins. Her smiles are often closed hiding the small gap between her top two front teeth and their off-white colour; her smile, as such, rebels against Lani's ideology of western beauty. Her ears are round and unassuming; the left is generally hidden by her hair parting. The lobes are unattached and pierced.

Her hair drapes down the sides of her face and falls just above her shoulders. Its particular parting provides a fringe the crosses the left side of her forehead, which reduces the impression of its size. The part in her hair creates the occasional stray strand in an otherwise straight head of hair. It is hazelnut in colour with a few natural streaks of a lighter caramel, accenting her complexion. Lani incorporates basic makeup into her daily routine. It is understated and subtle, but primarily used to give her eyes more prominence. A simple black eyeliner is her staple, though she sometimes employs brown. Eyeshadows are also common; she selects colours that are complimentary to her clothing. Lani owns eyeshadow in many colours. She carries with her a simple vanilla scented lip-gloss.

Lani prefers free-flowing clothing, which also help hide her stomach and her insecurities surrounding it. She prefers brighter colours, especially in summer. Sundresses, or any dresses really, are her favourites. A casual day's attire for Lani typically consists of one of her many lightly coloured dresses, with flats, a messenger bag, and the occasional cardigan. Tights are common in winter, and she tends to use muted colours in this weather. Lani often carries leggings and an oversized t-shirt with her, as well as her favourite pair of Flyknit Nike shoes, coloured lime green with accents of cerulean to change into for hip-hop. Lani is privy to accessorising as well, using them to make her outfits pop. Small silver studs in her pierced ears and a silver bangle than wraps her left wrist are most common. Her right ear will sometimes have a beautifully coloured flower sitting atop it, reflecting her gardening hobby and descent. On the day of the abduction, Lani was wearing a mint sundress with an unbuttoned ice blue cardigan, a thin cement-coloured belt that helped create extra plumage above it to conceal her stomach, and matching flats. Black eyeliner and vanilla lip-gloss was her makeup combination of choice. Her silver studded earrings with false emeralds featured, as did a silver bangle on her left wrist, and a white elegant zinnia sat above her right ear. She also has her scoria necklace with her, but tied around her right wrist instead.

Biography: Kealani "Lani" Feleti was born February 4th 1999 in Hanga Roa city on Rapa Nui. Aisi Feleti, her father, is native to Hanga Roa, the major settlement and capital of Rapa Nui. As a teenager, he entered the tourism business as a bellhop at Hotel Hangaroa, situated near Avenue Pont. Kealani's mother, Flannery Salder, hailed from the metropolitan Sydney, in New South Wales, Australia. Flannery travelled to Rapa Nui following the conclusion of her Bachelor of Arts with Honours majoring in Development Studies and Cultural Change, with a minor in Spanish and Latin American Culture from Macquarie University. The Polynesian triangle informed a large part of her Honours dissertation, and she dreamed of exploring them first-hand. She found the sheer beauty of Rapa Nui almost spoke to her, and decided she had to visit the island.

While staying at Hotel Hangaroa, she met Aisi the bellhop. Flannery ended up extending her stay there, prompting Aisi's courage to ask her to dinner. It was set to be a summer fling but it bloomed into much more very rapidly. After returning home and gravely missing her love, Flannery bought a one-way ticket to Rapa Nui. After establishing a home and a marriage, Flannery used her degree to help the development of smaller cultural sites located across the island. The pair took tourists around the island and helped envelop them in the island's culture, history, and beauty. A profitable business soon ensued; the business donated thirty-percent of its profits back to the island as a thank you for all the help they received.

Kealani's parents lived in a modestly sized home, just accommodating the four children they eventually ended up having. She is the third child of four, having an elder brother of twenty, Maipe Feleti, and younger twin sisters of eleven, Nassai Feleti and Peikonu "Peyton" Feleti. Growing up when it was just her, her brother, and her parents, Maipe received much more attention for being the first-born son. Aisi and Maipe spent a lot of time developing the glorified father-son relationship through hunting and fishing. How proud Aisi was of his son and neglected he made Kealani feel in turn seriously hurt the relationship between the father and the daughter. Neither party has ever attempted to repair this rift; she knows she will always take a backseat to her brother in her eyes. This was something that Flannery noticed, and while it saddened her to see this happen, the subject was taboo and even when Flannery tried to spark a change in her husband, it was met with negation, resistance, and deaf ears.

When Kealani was four, her and her mother went to see the first annual Tapati Rapa Nui Festival Kealani ever saw. It is a large event where two families of the island embark in a cultural competition to crown the festival's queen for the year. Kealani loved the cultural garb the dancers wore, and noticing the fire in her daughter's eyes, Flannery hurriedly found a group of Kari Kari dancers willing to teach the art to Kealani. She practiced the traditional dance form for eight-and-a-half years. The pair also continued to go each year, with her younger sisters accompanying them when they also turned four.

Flannery continued to keep Kealani involved within the arts and culture of the island, taking her on many trips to see the Moai statues located along Rapa Nui's coastline. On her tenth birthday, Flannery arranged a small but beautiful necklace for Kealani that was crafted out of vermilion scoria, a porous volcanic mineral found on the island; she still has it this very day. It is detailed simply because of the material; it mimics that of the Moai statues. She wears it on occasion and not for extended periods because of the mineral's density.

Whilst Kealani was thirteen, Flannery was headhunted to fulfil an opening in Kingman, Arizona, as a social impact analyst and researcher. Representatives from Kingman's Tourism Development Commission and Economic Development and Marketing Commission took a visit to the island during a holiday, and partook in the tourism venture Flannery and Aisi had founded. After experiencing Flannery's efforts in Rapa Nui, they knew she would be perfect for such a position. It would therefore be her job to explore, theorise, and quantify changes and developments of the society in response to the economy, tourism, and its ever-changing culture; she would also need to report potential issues when they arose. It was a dream career and happened to come with a salary infinitesimally better than what Flannery earned as a tourist adviser on the island. It would however, mean a move to a new city and country at a crucial point in Kealani's life in particular.

While the financial bolster was surely tempting, the family could not afford to send six people to the United States. After much deliberation, Aisi and Flannery decided that the girls would leave to settle in their new home, leaving Aisi and Maipe to look after their tourism business until the family could afford to bring them over. This was a decision Kealani was not happy about; she was moving so far away from the island that she knew and loved to a land of mystery and ‘newness'. The concept frightened her. She did not want to be coined as different. She did not want to surrender her cultural endeavours. She did not want to say goodbye; it was comfortable on the island.

Her first few weeks upon the family's arrival to Kingman were spent sightseeing the surrounding area, and when they were not doing this, Kealani tried to get used to her new home. Kingman and Hanga Roa were very different; 6,941 kilometres (or 4,313 miles) of separation lay between them, the former is of a cold, semi-arid climate while the latter is of a tropical climate, and they not only exist in different countries but different hemispheres too. The family travelled around the city, seeing the Grand Canyon, using shoreline for swimming, and embarking in many outdoor activities including hiking; they stood out like tourists, which made Kealani feel very uncomfortable. It placed her in a spotlight that she generally attempted to avoid. She had never been one for wanting all the attention, and the emblematic ‘those bloody tourists' looks she noticed pushed her further inside a shell. This is what truly began her need to be just like everyone else.

Kealani and her sisters were quickly enrolled in schools: Kealani going to Cochise High School, and her twin sisters going to the Kingman Academy of Learning Intermediate School. This was an incredibly new venture for the daughters, as Flannery opted to home school her children prior. Kealani never had to deal with the pressures of peers and social normalities before, and while scary in theory, after she overcame her initial resistance to the new social and cultural sphere, she openly welcomed the challenge. Her enthusiasm for schooling evaporated quickly however; she was pinned as an outcast from the outset. The kicker was more than a few initial mispronunciations of her name; she grew increasingly tired of having to correct others, even if just in their initial meeting. In the following year, she decided that she would go by her nickname "Lani" from now, to skip the unnecessary confusion.

As a sophomore, Lani underwent a few changes in order to sate her hunger and need for blending into this new society. She strived to become westernised; it was an obsession, manic was her appetite. That year for her birthday, after much debate with her mother, she agreed that she would receive her first cell phone. This was a big deal for her; after living on a remote island for twelve-and-a-half years, it provided Lani with an avenue to connectivity. Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat all followed swiftly as she began to establish herself in the virtual realm of social media. This was a massive step forward in her plans to become your average, everyday American teenager.

Her social media usage has become a hobby of hers only through her extensive study and practise. It is a means to an end: a gateway to normality. Lani actually really enjoys using social media platforms; it gives her not only a form of expression, but provides her with the social validation she scours for from her peers. While she by no means wishes to be the centre of any attention, being a validated member of her social sphere just like everyone else is her endgame.

Lani maintained a yearning for traditional dancing, albeit there was no one to help further her form. She had received around eight years of training in the art, and was quite apt with its style by now; she trains her dancing only in surreptitious solitude or at home with Nassai and occasionally Peyton. This helped her develop a reserved persona, opposing the façade of frivolity and ‘openness' expressed by her online character.

As a reticent and emotionally restrained person, Lani keeps mostly to herself, which helps her to blend into crowds and norms. She knows a fair amount of people that go to her school, but this is relatively surface as they are friends only through her social media. Lani has a few good friends at the school, whom she eats lunch with on a regular basis and spends some of her free time with when not doing so alone. This sees a change in the girl that lived in Hanga Roa, who prided herself on being friends with many other children.

As such, Flannery encouraged Lani to become more involved in extracurricular activities and clubs to open more possibilities for friendships. Doting on it, and realising she should broaden her interests, Lani began exploring other dance styles; while a total neophyte in the form, she joined the hip-hop dance club. She took time to get used to the different style, but the fast-paced movements typically involved are also present in Kari Kari, making some portions of the transition smoother, as did the welcoming nature of the club's other members.

Flannery insisted that Lani consider team sports as a methodology to making friends, and that if she wishes to study at a tertiary-level, it generally improves her chances of admission and scholarships. Reluctantly, Lani joined the swim team. Having lived on a remote island surrounded by water, she was already a relatively competent swimmer. Her best strokes competitively are freestyle and butterfly. She enjoyed the act of swimming more than competing in events, but did so anyway. Her performance has declined slightly over the last year or so because of an emphasis on her studies, but she still makes an effort to attend swim team and enjoys swimming recreationally.

Lani has adopted social codes and behaviours she sees in her peers and especially the older girls at her high school. This makes her highly susceptible to new trends and peer pressure; at age fifteen, she attended a party hosted by one of the older girls at her high school, who had gotten her older sister to buy alcohol for the event. Many of the older cohort attended, and she was one of the few sophomores present. This was Lani's first encounter with alcohol. After being pressured into drinking copiously, she began vomiting excessively and an ambulance was called. Lani had almost given herself alcohol poisoning. Flannery was called to the hospital, and was sitting beside Lani as she awoke. Flannery was disappointed and worried, but sympathetic too; Lani promised her that she would not indulge in alcohol again until she was legally allowed to, and in honesty, Lani disliked its taste. However, she continues to attend parties and drink when offered however, because of her fear of exclusion.

Lani has never been in a relationship; not through disinterest in the matter, but through a paralytic fear of rejection prompted by her adoption of social codes. She has certainly had innocent crushes, but only ever acted upon one of them. During her sophomore year, she coddled in a secret romantic fling with a Hawaiian girl, Keone, she met one day whilst shopping for a new brightly coloured sundress. Keone was visiting the city with her family for a couple of weeks. It was never anything serious; the pair did not mind that. They simply enjoyed one another's company. It was with Keone that Lani had her first kiss, and while no one else knows, it is a memory she holds dear in her heart. They have not seen each other since. While unafraid of her mother's reaction because of their liberality, Lani has kept any details of romance hidden. Despite an interest romantically and sexually in both men and women, Lani prefers not to label this, again for fear of standing out.

At the conclusion of Lani's sophomore year at high school, her mother announced to the daughters that she had left Aisi. This had been theorised in Lani's mind for quite some time: it had been two years, what other reasons would there be for her father and brother not to have moved over from the island yet? During Flannery's last visit to Rapa Nui, about six months ago, she found the tourism business they had built in shambles. Maipe had moved to Chile, while Aisi had squandered the money she had been sending him regularly on prostitutes and his alcoholism. The argument the pair had was explosive; when Flannery said she would be leaving him, Aisi lashed out. The bruising her mother returned with at that moment made sense, firing a protectiveness and reservation in Lani; she would never allow a partner to do the same thing to her. The split seemingly had little effect on Lani, as her relationship with her father was abysmal at best; however, Lani subdues the ordeal, not wanting to think about her father, the circumstances of the break-up, or his treatment of her mother at all. With Flannery's permission, Lani legally changed her surname to Salder, her mother's maiden name; she wanted little if anything to do with her father ever again.

Scholastically, Lani is a hardworking and independently driven student who is consistent in her grades. Her grade-point-average steadily treads around 3.70. She excels particularly in biology, which is her favourite subject; though, she is squeamish, making dissection a less desired activity. She favours ecology and plant systems as fields within biology. Lani also greatly enjoys studying Spanish, as she finds both the language and culture of it intriguing, likely her mother's influence. Lani struggles with maths particularly; the many formulae required confuse her, and she has a habit of using them in the incorrect contexts. She clandestinely receives tutoring for the subject by junior vice-president Joshua Bracewell, as she does not want this struggle to ruin the average she is trying desperately to maintain.

With a want to do well and impress her academic mother, educational pressures easily get to Lani; because of this, she has had to search for methods to alleviate the stress created by studying and worrying about her grades. Her sister, Nassai, introduced her to gardening, something that serves as inspiration for Nassai's paintings. Lani found this very therapeutic, and even has her own gardening space at their family home where it is her sole responsibility to look after. She does not see it as such however, using it as a nice pause from her habitual studying routine. She has developed a good friendship with Ty Yazzie, whose family owns the gardening store she frequents. As part of her latest gardening project, she has begun growing elegant zinnia in a myriad of colours including pure white, white-violet, and white-seafoam.

Advantages: Regular exercise through swimming and dancing have left Lani nimble and with excellent reflexes. She is of a good height-weight ratio for her age, and with the muscle she has, Lani is not so easily overpowered.  Lani also has a more reserved personality, those around her are less likely to pin her as a threat or target; others might therefore find it easier confiding in or allying with her.
Disadvantages: An indomitable need to blend in makes Lani highly susceptible to peer pressure; she is therefore both gullible and easily manipulated. She struggles to handle sudden change, taking time to get used to new places and to accept change. This could cause her stress and annoy others. Her obsession with normality has presented a reliance on her cell phone, which developed her social media addiction: the sudden withdrawal from it would heighten stress and weaken her typically restrained emotionality. Lani also dislikes the sight of blood; it tends to make her feel nauseous, which is rather unfortunate in such an environment.