Survival Of The Fittest

Name: June Madison
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12th
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Cooking, politics, meditation, essay-writing

Appearance: June generally takes pride in her appearance, and keeps her face, in particular, well-maintained. Her skin has pinkish undertones and is dotted with freckles, especially around her cheeks, nape, and upper back. She tends to burn easily in the sun, thus necessitating daily application of sunscreen during the spring and summer months. In addition to this, she applies a daily skincare regimen consisting of facial cleanser, toner, serum, and acne cream, among other ingredients. This has been helpful in keeping her face and body relatively smooth and blemish-free.

As a result of this regimen, she also tends to avoid makeup, believing that it will cause her skin to break out, and also disliking the time applying it would add to her morning routine. She does, however, style her eyebrows by plucking them, changing their naturally bushy appearance to a smoother, rounder look.

She has a square jawline and puffy cheeks. She has a pudgy nose and plump, pale pink lips, usually glossy as a result of the lip balm she applies multiple times a day.

Her hair is golden-blonde and extends slightly past her shoulders. She uses a curling iron on her hair once or twice a week, giving it a moderately curly texture. She prefers wearing it down most days, slicking it back in the front and tucking it behind her ears, but she also likes experimenting with ponytails for special occasions such as dinners or birthdays, or alternatively when she needs to partake in physical activities.

June, at 5’11” and around 250 pounds, presents a bulky figure. She has been overweight since childhood, like the rest of her family, and while she has faced teasing from her fellow peers, she has learned by now to brush off most comments, and has been able to develop what most would consider a fashionable, if somewhat formal, wardrobe.

Her tops mostly consist of frilly, ruffled blouses, long and short-sleeved depending on the weather, in mostly neutral colors. She pairs these with either skirts or slacks, all at least below knee-length. For winter weather, she prefers wearing parkas or coats over her attire. As for shoes, she favors low-heeled ankle boots, switching to normal boots when the weather requires it.

June wears round gold-rimmed eyeglasses, a gift from her aunt, as a result of having been far-sighted since childhood. She also favors wearing golden hoop earrings most days to complement her glasses, as well as an array of golden bangles on her right wrist.

On the day of the abduction, she was wearing a firebrick coat over a floral-print blouse with an egg-colored background, along with a navy blue A-lined skirt, navy blue leggings and black ankle boots. In addition, she was wearing all her usual accessories.

Biography: June Madison, an only child, was born June 5, 2004 to Philip and Meredith Madison (née Garland). The Garland clan has resided in Salem, Massachusetts for generations, and has run an established diner (known as Gertude’s, after June’s grandmother) in the downtown area for the past 50 years. It was into this tradition that June was brought up.

From first grade, the family let her help out in the house kitchen. She showed a willingness to help out with cooking, becoming intimately familiar with the diner fare that Gertrude's specialized in, like omelettes and pancakes. This was something that was greeted with enthusiasm as it showed that someone from the next generation could possibly carry on the family tradition. June quickly became enamored by cooking; partially out of a genuine respect for the process, and because she liked getting to enjoy the fruits of her labor, but partially because cooking was an easy way to gain validation from her parents. Her parents tended to be gentle and encouraging with her in this field, as they believed raising a good chef could not be rushed, and also, cooking hastily would introduce several health and safety concerns for both June and potential customers.

This gentleness did not carry over into other aspects of June's childhood, however. The atmosphere in the kitchen of Gertude’s has long been chaotic and intense, an inevitable effect of working in an establishment with a constant flow of customers. This environment carried itself over to the Madison household, where orders were shouted rather than told, and disagreements were resolved with loud, hours-long arguments. This, too, carried over into Meredith’s parenting style, where refusals to eat vegetables or pick up after toys would immediately be greeted with scoldings, swift and ferocious in nature. It was Meredith’s belief that, in order to raise her child into a good, hard-working member of society, any sign of misbehavior had to be dealt with quickly. Philip, for his part, shared Meredith’s belief regarding parenting, and believed in maintaining a united front with his wife, so he too joined in on doling out discipline. This left little room for dissent on June’s part, and she quickly learned that it was easier and less painful to just follow along, rather than to express any disagreement.

While June adapted, and became a generally orderly, well-heeled child at home, this was not the case when she was enrolled into preschool. At home, she observed that you had to shout in order to make yourself heard, and put that into practice in the classroom.

June had disliked noisy environments her whole life, and would also be distressed by the idea of her teachers being mad at her and her classmates. As a result, she often tried to act as a school authority in her own right, attempting to shout down whatever rowdy behavior would occur in the classroom. This simultaneously made her fearsome and laughable among her classmates; the keenness with which she took to being a teacher’s pet was easily lampooned, but her impulsively volatile reactions also made any interactions with her somewhat risky.

She did eventually find a few friends in elementary school, meeting and bonding with Laci York, Savannah Adkins, Medea Parth, and Eric Peralta first. She happened to bond with them in various encounters over lunch and recess, enough so that they saw past her disagreeable behavior with other classmates and began to hang out with her regularly.

In the third grade, she witnessed a playground bully kicking at a girl’s toys. This immediately incensed June, so she confronted the aggressor and scared them off. This act earned her another friend in Clover Wilkinson-Crowheart, who also bonded with her over their shared love of reading, a hobby June partook in eagerly at the time, due to the large book collection that was present in June's home.

Over the course of the latter half of elementary school and middle school, June learned to regulate her own temper better. She made it a goal for herself not to shout or cry at school as much as possible, wishing not to get in trouble with her parents, or make her friends mad. Most of all, she simply hated seeing herself in such a state. So, she largely succeeded in this goal, and the rest of her elementary school went by uneventfully. She did well in academics, consistently making the honor roll, and would hang out with her friends quite often. In addition, her reputation among classmates improved as her temper diminished, and by the time she entered middle school, she came to be known by most as a pleasant, mostly unremarkable girl.

The 2016 election of Jarod Canon to the presidency had an effect on June's psyche as a young teenager. From a very early age, June had had an interest in national politics, spurred on by her parents who would spend many dinners attentively watching cable news and passionately discussing topical issues. This, paired with June’s hatred of anything she perceived as unjust, lent itself to June becoming invested in politics, and becoming invested in the Democratic Party, in particular.

The election of someone whose ideals seemed so counter to her own sparked anger within her, an emotion she had not felt with such intensity since elementary school. She felt powerless to deal with this anger as she was merely a student. While confiding her feelings in friends and family helped, she felt as if they didn't truly understand the depth of her emotions, and no matter what temporary relief she felt from venting, her agitation came back again and again.

Something that helped temporarily was following the results of worldwide elections. An account she followed on Twitter discussed the landslide defeat of a far-right presidential candidate in the 2017 French presidential election, and hearing about this gave her a sense of relief. It gave her hope and helped her believe, momentarily, that the rightward shift in global politics wasn't inexorable nor inevitable. So, she began looking into more election results, local and national, and also researching more about politics in general. Finding out about these events helped provide her a window into other parts of the world and, at the same time, it gave her a sense of control. She felt as if having more information about the current political climate would help her better combat these trends and help her understand what was going and why these political trends existed. Also, the immediate availability of info on the internet also helped quickly satiate her anxiety and restlessness in a way that talking to loved ones did not.

It grew into an obsession, however. If a center or center-left political force winning an election brought her relief, a center-right or right wing political force winning would bring her anger and fear. It became such that any upcoming major American election would make her very anxious for the results, to the point of making her nauseous. She realizes it is unhealthy to worry about every single political event so much, but she finds herself unable to stop, and is an avid follower of news websites and Twitter to this day.

In tenth grade, Meredith fell from a ladder and broke her leg. The accident left her incapacitated for months, and while she was still able to cook in the kitchen with the assistance of various other employees, she found herself lacking the energy to do as many chores as she used to. In addition, while Philip could help out around the house, he was responsible for running Gertrude's as a business, including taking care of the accounting and managing the employees. So, it mostly fell upon June to pick up the slack. She found her free time drastically reduced, with the afternoons and evenings she used to spend reading or going to the mall being spent instead washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and taking care of the house in general.

June began to feel overwhelmed, as the increased load of house-related tasks paired with the increased load of academic tasks that high school brought along, along with her more agitated state of mind following the 2016 elections. She found no way to ease up the load on herself. So, her mood began to suffer for it. She grew more impatient and snappy with her friends, and more moody and withdrawn around her family, but her friends were accustomed to seeing her get angry from time to time, and her parents simply didn't take notice. As such, no one checked in to see how she was doing until an incident near the end of 10th grade, where, in a sudden outburst during an argument, she broke her family's new flat-screen TV.

Following this incident, her parents brought her in to see a therapist. Their relationship is fairly positive, and their sessions have helped June develop effective coping mechanisms for her anger issues. Something June has taken a particular liking to is meditation, as she feels it helps center her and pull her from her anxiety spirals. She has developed quite an interest in this, buying books and taking online classes often related to mindfulness-based meditation, in her attempt to reach a state of calm.

However, June feels that she is simply treading water, rather than making any active progress towards lessening her anger issues. Even before the most recent incident, June had a history of outbursts in elementary school, and she continues to feel upwellings of anger within herself, albeit she has been able to suppress these feelings for the meantime. She lives in fear of another outburst like the one she had in tenth grade, and is, in particular, scared that another outburst would cause her to be ostracized by her friends and family. In effect, she feels that it is not a matter of if, but when she will lash out again, and so she views her hypothetical social downfall as an eventuality.

Something in particular that led her to this conclusion is an argument she had with Eric Peralta. While they were able to make up, Eric also shortly after announced his departure from Salem, owing to his parents getting a job in another state. They tried to maintain conversation online after he moved, but their discussions have become more stilted and sparse, leading June to the conclusion that he still resents her because of their argument. As such, she worries that if she enters into an argument with one of her friends, a similar outcome would occur.

As a senior, she is more introverted now than she used to be. Part of this is that she has developed a more sullen outlook in life. The pandemic, the continued polarization of American politics, and the rise of far-right conspiracy theories in America have caused her to have several episodes of catastrophization, wherein she feels the eventual collapse of society is inevitable. While she realizes that she is jumping to conclusions and is able to pull herself out of them, these episodes have been happening more often, and sometimes they envelop her for hours, causing her to lose sleep.

In addition, she does not speak out as often as she used to. For topics in which she used to vent, such as politics or drama happening among her school peers, she finds herself holding her tongue, trying to suppress any potential strong emotions. While she views this as preferable to having another outburst, she finds herself diminished and less passionate about things than she used to be. This worries her, but she does not know how to address it.

While her mother has since recovered from her injury, her mobility is still reduced. With June growing closer to becoming an adult, her parents have given her more responsibilities in Gertrude's, and she now cooks for them multiple days a week. While she is happy to cook for the patrons of the restaurant, she finds herself feeling trapped in a sense, and less satisfied with her main passion in life than usual. She ignores these feelings, however, as she does not have many other hobbies, nor does she have the time to partake in other hobbies. While the initial phases of the pandemic gave her plenty of free time, she found that she had lost the interest and focus necessary for reading fictional novels, and felt herself instead constantly compelled to look at the internet to check on current events.

For her life post-high school, she still plans on enrolling in culinary school, something her parents are also enthusiastic about. However, she secretly hopes to move away from her family and everyone else she knows to another state, in the hopes of moving away from all her problems and beginning fresh. As such, she has begun applying to far-away colleges to bring this plan to fruition.

She still does generally well in her academics, having mostly straight A's with a few A minuses. Her weak points are math and geography, subjects she views as largely useless to daily life, while her strong points are English and social studies. In these subjects in particular, she's taken a liking to writing essays since they give her the opportunity to sort out her passionate opinions into a coherent line of thoughts. The written nature of these tasks also allows her to express herself in a calm, measured manner without much risk of eliciting strong emotion, unlike other activities like debate or sport, for example. She has not made much effort to pursue this outside of class, however.

Since middle school, June has maintained a mildly positive reputation among the students of Endecott, having limited any lapses in behavior to take place among her friends and family. This is partly thanks to meditation techniques she learned from her therapist, and partly due to great striving on her end to restrain her emotions to avoid any potential ostracization from her peers. Her classmates would mostly know her from class or her family's restaurant, however. Since she has taken on more responsibilities in the family business, she does not partake in clubs, or extracurricular activities in general, as she feels she does not have enough free time.

June is heterosexual, and has dated a few boys starting from ninth grade onwards, but all her relationships have been limited to casual dates here and there. She leans traditional in her mores, and aspires towards the traditional ideal of a nuclear suburban family.

Advantages: Given June's wealth of knowledge in cooking, she will find it easier to stretch out her rations and develop meals for herself and any allies, given the necessary materials. She has also learned to make good use of meditation and de-escalation techniques to stay calm whenever she finds herself under duress, if she catches herself in time, or otherwise to step away from stressful situations if she finds her emotions coming to a boil.
Disadvantages: June has lately found herself stressed and more volatile in her disposition. This, paired with the inherent stress that comes with being on the island, may make some outbursts on her end unpreventable. This may result in instances where she snaps and acts impulsively, potentially alienating whatever allies she has, and aggravating whatever stressful situation she is in. She also does not partake in much physical activity, meaning she lacks stamina and strength needed for prolonged survival in a wilderness setting.

Designated Number: Student No. 050

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Designated Weapon: Roll of duct tape

Conclusion: Duct tape is so versatile. You can make a bowl! You can make a boat! You can make a coffin to bury yourself in! And hey if she starts going off someone can just slap some over her mouth too. Such a great tool. - Josie Knight