Autumn Cobb*

[Palhinuk*]

Name: Autumn Cobb
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12 (Senior)
School: Aurora High School
Hobbies and Interests: Drumming, coffee, music, sports (mostly Track), automotive repair

Appearance: Autumn is about an average height for a girl her age, topping out at 5‘6".  She is lithe and well-toned with a runner‘s build, including a fairly flat chest, which suits her just fine.  Her shoulder-length hair is a dark auburn and her eyes are nearly emerald green.  Her skin has become tan and freckled due to all of the time she has spent out in the sun.  Her cheeks are rounded and marked with distinctive freckles, while her eyes are slightly squinted, always looking as if the sun.  She generally disdains female fashion, preferring jeans or baggy shorts, band t-shirts, and a pair of running shades either around her forehead or around her neck, connected to a strap around the earpieces to keep them in place while running.  When running, she ties her hair back, and adopts a pair of running shorts and a tank top for functionality sake.

Biography: Autumn Marilyn Cobb was born in December 1994 to Valarie Cobb and Michael Morales.  Having Autumn out of wedlock while the two were in college at Seattle Pacific University, Michael wanted nothing to do with her.  He left Valarie when she was four-months pregnant, leaving her to care for Autumn by herself.  Fortunately for Valarie and Autumn, her uncle Joseph Cobb lived in town and was more than willing to help the two out.  A mechanic by trade, Joseph ran a fairly successful auto repair shop and had inherited the Cobb family home after his parents passed, giving him a decent amount of space to keep the two.

Times were a bit tough for Valerie after Autumn was born.  Balancing schoolwork for an Accounting degree, a job at a local restaurant and caring for Autumn was a tough schedule, but she never let any of the hard times keep her down, something she instilled in Autumn from an early age.  Eventually, she graduated with a Bachelor's in Accounting, and has been working as a CPA for the past ten years or so.  Autumn was always a bit of a ball of energy.  Taking interest in sports from an early age, she always strove to be the best at whatever she put her mind to.  Throughout her school years, she tried nearly every sport she could get her hands on.  She played soccer, basketball, baseball, even hockey for a brief period of time, before finally finding a simple pleasure in running.  She found that, without the other objectives of other sports to distract her, she could truly appreciate the simplicity in track.

Autumn and her mother have had a sort of symbiotic relationship ever since she could comprehend how much her mother worked.  The two motivated one another to work hard at whatever goals they set form themselves, Valarie due to a need to provide for her daughter, and Autumn to help lighten her mother's load.  Though they have had their tiffs on occasion, Autumn loves her mother and always works hard to help her.  Joseph and Autumn have been the best of friends, viewing him as a sort of surrogate brother/father figure.  Autumn had a certain fascination for his music in particular, finding the beat of drums in all of his metal and punk rocks captivating.  Since then, he took her to several concerts, where she grew to love all things rock.

On days during the summer, when Autumn was out of school and not running around, she would spend time in her uncle‘s garage, learning the ins and outs of cars and car repair through observation and trial and error.  Eventually, Joseph allowed her to help out around the shop for a small allowance.  Using the money she saved up on her own, she eventually bought her own drum set, which she has been using ever since.  Though several times she was offered the option of getting a set as a birthday/holiday gift, she adamantly refused, insisting that she work to pay it off on her own.

She loves her drums to death, finding heavy influence in the music her uncle played around the shop.  She prefers punk rock drum beats to most everything, preferring fast-tempo songs to slower beats for their challenge.  She admits to being a bit sloppy with her cymbal work and her floor tom, but her runner's legs give her a great advantage when it comes to bass kicks and hi-hat.  To avoid annoying her mother or their neighbors, her drum set is in her uncle's garage, where she practices after-hours on nights she's not working.  She has been looking to start a band up, though it's not necessarily a very pressing matter for her.  It's just a side project she's put on the back-burner until she finds a group willing band mates.

When it comes to schoolwork, Autumn is slightly above average, though not without a lot of work.  She often has issues with wrapping her head around concepts, but she pushes herself to understand through hard bouts of studying.  Her mother and uncle try their best to push Autumn to seek help from her teachers outside of school but, Autumn often refuses these suggestions, insisting that she can do it by herself.  In her mind, asking for help is burdening others when they have their own issues to deal with.

When she's at school during her off-periods, she is usually hanging with her friends.  She prefers to hang out with punk kids, disliking most of her fellow jocks and especially preppy girls, who tend to criticize her tomboy qualities.  She sticks up for her buddies and is not afraid to get defensive if she needs to.  When out of school, she is either working at her part-time job at the local coffee house or practicing drums at her uncle's shop.  Every morning she gets to school about an hour or so early to run the track, valuing the time and exercise she can get in before class.

Advantages: Autumn is in great physical shape.  Running has given her great stamina and endurance, as well as improved her reaction time a bit.  She is also fairly self-sufficient, relying mostly on herself to get by.
Disadvantages: Autumn refuses help from most people.  She does not like asking for assistance and if she can, will go out of the way to avoid admitting she needs or accepting help.