Kelly Nguyen

[Somersault]

Name: Kelly Thuy Nguyen
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12th
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Animals, archery, graphic design, photography, scrapbooking, vintage fashion, volunteering, yearbook, geriatric medicine

Appearance: At a fairly small 5'3" and 100 pounds, Kelly does not cut a very imposing figure. Overall, her body has slight curves to it especially around the waist, leading her to have a roughly hourglass-shaped figure. True to her Southeast Asian, specifically Vietnamese origins, she has almond-shaped eyes which are fairly wide-set, angular eyebrows, a rounded chin, as well as a short downturned nose, which she considers to be her least attractive facial feature. On the whole, she is considered fairly cute, if not anything extraordinary. Her skin naturally has a bit of a pale complexion to it, but she tans easily, leaving her with a light ocher tone. Her teeth are straight and white due to an extensive dental hygiene regimen, and the responsible use of braces. Kelly's hair is black and usually falls to her mid-back. It is naturally quite straight, and while she is thankful as this makes it easy to take care of, it also means it is quite hard to style. She tends to wear it loose, but accessorized with a bandanna or headband. When practicing archery, she ties it back into a loose ponytail with a brightly-colored scrunchie.

Kelly's usual dress tends to fall in with vintage fashions, especially clothing items that were popular during the 40s and 50s, and so polka dot dresses, as well as checkered shirts are something regularly found in her closet, although she takes great care not to wear anything too revealing. She isn't fond of wearing jeans, so instead she tends to wear knee-length dresses, skirts, or shorts with leggings. Kelly also doesn't use that much makeup, limiting it to some mascara and a nude lipstick so as to avoid being extravagant.

On the day of the abduction, Kelly was wearing a red and white polka-dotted dress that reached to her knee, capri denim leggings, as well as pink ballet flats with ribbons. She was also wearing a floral-patterned blazer, and used a simple black headband to keep her hair out of her face.

Biography: It was in the summer of 1993 that two scions of wealthy Vietnamese families, Thu and Dinh, met as first-year Economics students while studying at Cornell University. For both, it was love at first sight, with both having just recently immigrated to America from Hanoi in order to get a better education. It was a whirlwind romance, which finally ended up with them married just four years later, a month after their graduation from college. While both sets of parents would rather have had them come back and raise any potential children there, the newlyweds' promises of a yearly trip back to Vietnam were enough to ease their parents' suspicions, and so they gained their citizenship.

While both Thu and Dinh had some savings, they quickly realized that in order to continue to stay financially afloat, they would have to find jobs quickly. When Thu was approached with a job offer as a financial analyst for a healthcare company in Chattanooga, they packed up and moved to the city. While they initially wished to have moved out of Chattanooga, they gradually fell in love with it, and also believed that uprooting their family by moving would not be a prudent option.

While due to some residual family wealth the Nguyens were able to move into Frazier's Glen, Dinh also decided to take up a job as an actuary, knowing that having two income sources for her young family would help to stabilize them financially, with both Thu and Dinh agreeing that they would build up a solid base of finances before deciding to have any children. It was after three years of working, and steady saving, before their first and only child was born: Kelly Thuy Nguyen.

Kelly was given an English name as her first one to help ease her integration into the primarily black and white community of Chattanooga, but her parents also made sure to give her a Vietnamese middle name as well in order to honor their heritage. Due to the birth of a new grandchild, both sets of grandparents were overjoyed, and began to plan their own trips to Chattanooga, which ended up happening on a roughly bi-yearly basis, in a roughly alternating pattern. Due to this, she grew up in fairly frequent contact with her grandparents, if not her cousins and aunts and uncles.

The only child of her working parents, Kelly always had at least a decent relationship with her parents. While they were much closer when she was younger and they put in more effort to do more things together as a family, to this day they have maintained a friendly relationship, although Dinh and Kelly have always shared a closer relationship, her mother always making sure to have a monthly girls' night out of sorts, when they attempt to catch up on each others' lives, especially as Kelly grew older and began wanting some more independence. Thu, on the other hand, has always remained protective if somewhat distant towards Kelly, as he found it much easier to converse with her when she was younger and not a young woman about to live on her own for the first time in her life. Despite this, relations remained warm between all of them, and weekly family dinners at home were still a constant family tradition.

It was early on in her life that Kelly had become fascinated with all kinds of animals. A chance visit to the zoo when she was four introduced her to the wonders of the animal world, and she especially took a fondness to the smaller animals like bunnies and alpacas, due to her being less intimidated by them rather than the larger animals like the cougars and the bobcats that could also be found throughout the zoo. When they got back home, her repeated pleas for a pet of her own were answered, and so she was ale to get a pet goldfish, who was promptly named Nemo. He died after two years, and was buried in the backyard of their two-bedroom home.

Even as a child, Kelly was quite sociable. This pleased her parents greatly, who worried about how their daughter would interact with others, especially with a lack of nearby extended family. She was always up for speaking with her classmates, even the ones that were somewhat less social, and constantly made genuine attempts to get them to open up; this was now always successful, but she did quickly gain a reputation as someone up for speaking to anyone. When conflicts on the playground arose, especially between people she did not know all that well, she often tried to act as a mediator, trying to keep the peace between the opposing sides. However, when faced with a conflict between friends, she often became much more passive, trying to avoid picking a side in order to avoid hurting anyone's feelings.

While this passive behavior was somewhat of a concern for her parents, this was offset by their pleasure at her academic performance as well. While perhaps not gifted with a natural knack for numbers and calculations, she learned early on the importance of studying, helping propel herself to near the top of the class combined with a strong performance in more Science and English related subjects.

At this time, the family had still been keeping up their yearly trips to Vietnam in order to meet with extended family, and so Dinh, armed with a camera given to her as a Christmas gift from a friend, began creating a scrapbook on a whim, in order to help commemorate some of the memories during their gatherings. While Dinh, busy with work soon dropped this task from her daily routine, Kelly took it upon herself to complete these scrapbooks with gusto, cherishing them as time capsules themselves; her parents were somewhat confused by her new artistic passions, but encouraged them anyways, believing that having her grow to become well-rounded was something for her to strive for.

With this newfound love for scrapbooking, came an interest in photography. Combined with her interest in animals, this quickly meant that Kelly became enamoured with taking photos of any animal she could find, whether that be fish at the aquarium, birds in the trees, or her next door neighbors' dogs. Again, her parents tolerated this, as she was still managing to balance her social life, her academic work, and her hobbies.

Even throughout middle school, Kelly remained a bit of a floater throughout the social scene, being fairly popular but refusing to constrain herself to any particular social group, finding that she enjoyed the freedom of being able to speak to whoever she wanted to. Due to this, she became quite adept socially, being able to both act as a sounding board for others and a fairly sympathetic, if somewhat quick to tears shoulder to cry on, while also being capable of doing most of the heavy lifting in a conversation, jumping around from topic to topic before finding something of mutual interest. However, due to this, she also found that some people felt that her attempts to socialize with everyone seemed a bit clingy at times, in fact being told this to her face by one of her friends.

Needless to say, Kelly did not take this very well, but since that day, she has attempted to make her attempts at socialization with those she didn't know a bit less forceful, now preferring to give them a bit more space to breathe and feel their way out in a conversation. Still, she often wishes that most, if not all people liked her, even while recognizing how such a thing is logically impossible.

During middle school, Kelly ended up gaining two extracurriculars: archery and yearbook. While fairly fond of spending time outdoors, especially with animals, she was never fond of physical exertion, only doing it when absolutely forced to; while able to keep her slim figure through eating healthily, Thu and Dinh believed that a lack of any athletics was bad for one's life-long development, or at least for college applications, and so Kelly decided to take up archery, if only because it seemed like the easiest option, as well as a sport that relied more on finesse than raw power. As for yearbook, it was a natural extension of some of her existing interests, socializing and photography, and her work on it introduced her to another hobby: graphic design. Naturally organized by nature, she found it calming to design layouts for the various sections and place them in ways that were aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

While still not the biggest fan of archery, Kelly's natural propensity towards hard work has meant she has stuck with the sport, up to and including being part of the archery team at George Hunter. While she does put in the time to practice outside of school, knowing that it is the best way to hone her skills, she mainly still sees it as a way to beef up her resume for college applications. In lacking the passion for archery that drives some of her fellow team members, she has remained but unspectacular member of the team, consistently somewhat above-average if not managing to pull any major upsets at competitions. If nothing else, she tries to put in the time to raise the morale of the team, finding socializing with them to be the most enjoyable part of practice.

Still enthusiastic about animals, but not allowed by her parents to get any pets larger than a rabbit, Kelly took to volunteering at the local animal shelter. Caring for the various neglected animals and occasionally helping out with community vaccination clinics excited her greatly, and to this day, she considers herself a proud member of the Humane Educational Society of Chattanooga. Through this, she was exposed to the greater animal rights movement as a whole, and while she does disagree with PETA and some of their more egregious policies, she has found herself largely in favor of many of the principles espoused by the movement, and so she makes a conscious effort to avoid buying products from companies which use animal testing. For two months in middle school, she was also a vegetarian, but that was one of the few things in Kelly's life that she was unable to remain dedicated to.

As she grew older, Kelly realized that her grandparents in Vietnam were too, and it was during one of their yearly visits in which her maternal grandmother suffered a nasty fall and broke her hip. Luckily, nothing else was damaged, and after a short hospital stay, she was permitted to return home, but the memory still stuck with Kelly. While never exactly enthusiastic about medicine, the accident made her much more aware of the ailments that came with the progression of age, and so she began doing some of her own research into geriatric medicine, for her own peace of mind if nothing else. Due to this, she also became much more paranoid about her grandparents' wellbeing, making sure to contact them monthly; while none of them have died yet or been diagnosed with Alzheimers' or another neurodegenerative disease, Kelly is still paranoid of the day when that will happen.

Transferring to George Hunter, Kelly continued to be sociable, and found herself hovering between the top and the middle rungs in the social ladder. Still exceedingly friendly, she primarily bonded with those who were more artsy or part of the yearbook staff, sprinkled in with some people she either knew from the animal shelter or the archery team. She still tried to remain approachable, however, and tried to ensure that anyone, no matter who they were, didn't feel intimidated when speaking to her.

During her first year of high school, Kelly discovered vintage fashion, and quickly fell in love with it's aesthetic. Initially, she discovered it due to some of her friends who were ore into fashion, who recommended it to her on a whim. While she was first a bit skeptical, she grew to adore the whole vintage look, appreciating both it's fairly low cost and timeless appeal.

Academically, Kelly has continued to excel, although her best grades still come in more scientifically-focused subjects, with much of her studying and review time instead going towards math, which she still finds to be her overall weakest subject. Currently, however, she has managed to maintain her fairly rigorous study schedule, and has been able to make up her weaknesses through this and a strong work ethic, leaving her with an A-  average, and regularly making appearances on the honor roll.

While Kelly has usually been able to control her temper and ontnue to be calm and measured, it has become harder for her to do so recently, especially with college applications and graduation preparations coming up. For now, she has resorted to trying to internalize the emotions and keeping them on the inside so she does not end up getting angry at someone at an inopportune time, and also because she knows that would reflect poorly on both herself and her family as a whole.

As Kelly is fairly well-known around school, if not exactly popular, she has been invited to the occasional party, where she often is a social drinker, always taking care to not have enough to regret it the next morning. While she is sually more open with people, at parties she tends to come off as a bit more stilted than she does than in other social events, primarily because of her worry that her parents will find out.

Currently, Kelly is planning on following in her parents' footsteps and going to Cornell. She does want to major in Biology while taking a minor in Photography in order to become a veterinarian, and while her parents have not been the most enthused about their choice, they have been fairly tolerant of her decision. Having already been accepted on an Early Decision application, she is now just attempting to get all of her affairs in order before moving to Ithaca.

Advantages: Taking much time to get to know many of her classmates and become friendly with them, Kelly has cultivated quite a positive reputation among her classmates, and is quite likely to remember a few details about most of them. If given enough time, she is a fairly decent shot with a bow and arrow. Her optimistic attitude could help her stay focused on the island, and prevent any major breakdowns. Intelligent and hardworking, she would have little to no problem making and sticking to a plan. Due to her archery practice, she has above-average upper body strength than may be expected of someone her size, and it has also given her good stamina.
Disadvantages:  Some of her classmates may perceive her as a bit of a suck-up, and her generally idealistic attitude towards life may result in her trusting someone she shouldn't. She also generally has a habit of bottling up her concerns and negative emotions until it is too late, which could result in her blowing up at someone at the wrong time. When faced with conflict between two friends, she will often refuse to pick a side, something could have life-threatening consequences on the island. Additionally, her small size and low weight may mean that she will easily be overpowered in a struggle despite her fitness.