[h3][color=6ecff6][u]Emily Dawson[/u][/color][/h3]

	Emily Dawson talking about nothing and everything was as familiar to the students of Westcliffes one and only school as the morning bell. This time, she was one of the first, if not the first, student to arrive to class. Other times she would arrive quite late, having gotten distracted by one thing or another. 

	On this chilly october morning, the redhead with a chin length bob, died blonde halfway down, had become obsessed with basic arts and crafts. Extremely basic arts and crafts someone might see at an elementary school. Considering not even the youngest were excluded from Emily's conversational machinegun fire, she may have even learned something of it from one of them. And learning it from them had spiralled her gleefully into late night youtube binging.

	She had a stack of unsharped pencils six layers high. [color=6ecff6]"Now, the trick-"[/color] she said to no one in particular. [color=6ecff6]"Is to balance them on a flat surface. Sounds obvious, right? But this desk is actually a little unbalanced. So if it rolls, that's bad. That means you can't even get the pencil stack one pencil high. Then it's not a pencil stack- it's just a bunch of pencils. So that's why I put my history textbook under the chair. That way the desk is even. Took me a while to figure out it's center of gravity, though."[/color]

	Then she was using colored paper to make little paper kites. Diamond shapes constructions of paper with two triangles toward the bottom, making it look like a stubby legged cartoon figure. [color=6ecff6]"-and that's why a confederation of internet providers is actually a pretty good idea. A democratization of power among smaller local providers would encourage competition- maybe. Or it could just be smaller internets. I dunno! Wouldn't a Westcliffe Phone Company be so cool, though?"[/color] Before anyone could answer her, she held up one of her paper kites.

	She raised her voice so that people would pay attention to her. On some level even Emily realised the utter inanity of her words and kept them low, just above a 'talking to herself' voice. But when she thought she had something cool, she wanted to share it.[color=6ecff6]"Look, see? This one's Denise. That one's Henry, Delilah, and there's Eli."[/color] There were about fifteen paper kite figures on her desk she had made. Almost everyone in the class had them. 

	They were color coded with colors that Emily thought matched their personalities. And they all had cartoon faces, with big, expressive eyes, cute noses, and single lined mouths. 	The Denise one was purple. She had a mischevious smile, thick, furrowed eyebrows, and a bandaid on her cheek. The Violet one had make-up on. Her eyes were half-lidded, one perfect eyebrow raised, and she had a small smile on her face. 

	All of them were smiling, infact, just in different ways. The biggest smile was probably Ben's paper kite, his eyes closed and tilted up like he had just heard or told a hilarious joke. Eli's wasn't looking forward, he was looking off to the side. And his eyes had thin lines drawn under them, like he had just rolled out of bed. A good natured smirk tugged at the side of his lips nonetheless. Lowell's had a pitch perfect recreation of the teethless smile that usually rested on his sharp features. Said sharp features were represented by cheek lines. Emily herself had a light blue paper kite, eyes big, wide, and sparkling. The drawings were simple for Emily was no artist, but very expressive and accurate. At least, accurate to what people projected, not what was deep inside. There was a genuine earnestness in all the cartoon faces that may not match the person they were created for. In Emily's version of reality, though, everyone was themselves, and everyone was happy.

	Whenever one of the students got close enough, Emily would extend her hand outward to give them their kite figure. [color=6ecff6]"Basically Orson Welles convinced, like, a bajillion people that Martians really were attacking the Earth. People sure were easy to trick back then, huh? Does anyone wanna join the Journalism club? I'm still the only member so I'm looking for a club president. I don't really wanna be president but I could be vice president."[/color] Emily asked, not even looking up to see if anyone was responding. Her sharpie seemed to have run slightly dry. She shook it back and forth before studying the tip of the pen closely. She leaned down, sniffed it, and then blinked in rapid succession, recoiling. A few moments later she was back to drawing, this time attempting to capture the likeness of their teacher.