Full Name: Isadora Grace Caldwell
Nickname: Izzy
Age: 17
Grade: High school junior, going into senior come summer's end.
Appearance: She takes after her mother with her chestnut hair (which is shorter around her face, longer in the back, and often kept up in a partial ponytail) and intensely green eyes, though hers are richer in color in both aspects. She has her father’s nose and chin. She is of a slim build and fairly fit, stands at about 5’4”, and her nails are usually painted a different color every week, or whenever she gets bored of their current color. She has contemplated dying her hair something neon, but, alas, her mother won’t allow it.
Personality: Izzy longs to escape her hometown. She yearns for adventure, for something to keep her mind occupied, whether she finds it in a forest she could not walk blindfolded, or the cluttered streets of a large city, even though she is an outdoorsy person, preferring the presence of trees and open spaces over walls or people. In the last few years, she has closed herself off to everyone, becoming a loner, and is fairly wary of the true motives of others. Though a dark cloud haunts her eyes, from the outside, she seems like a mostly content, yet bored senseless, teenager, despite the raging thoughts and emotions inside.
Ticks and Tags: Ticks: She is prone to picking at her nail polish, especially when bored, and her face is extremely expressive. Tags: She usually smells of a mix of the outdoors, and a spicy yet sweet scent courtesy of her favorite perfume.
Cherished Object: A walking stick her grandfather made her before he died when she was eleven. Five feet tall, it has an owl amidst the gnarled top, its wings outstretched. Its tail feathers wrap around then melt into the staff above a leather grip. It has a thin strip of bark left on it just beneath the grip that spirals down to the rubber-tipped bottom, and a small compass and a couple feathers dangle from leather cords attached beneath the grip.
Distinguishing Marks: A scar runs from near her elbow to a couple inches from her wrist on the outside of her left forearm.
Family: Parents: David and Sandra Caldwell. Siblings: Blake (age 12) and Zachary (age 13). Known Grandparents: Jack and Anna Caldwell (deceased).
Other: She hates being called her full name, and always introduces herself as Izzy, so pretty much the entire town calls her by her nickname. Sometimes, she even forgets that that is not her full name... at least until her mother calls her by Isadora, which usually means she is in trouble. She frequently wears a camo patterned jacket and always has on a pair of shoes good for walking. She has a fear of rivers and other rushing bodies of water.
Bio: Born in one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone, Izzy grew up with her loving parents--who serve as officers of the law and make up about a fifth of the town’s police task force--and her two younger brothers.
In such a small place, she also grew up with just about everyone she ever went to school with, from kindergarten to high school. Though she has a pretty good head on her shoulders, school could never really hold her attention, her mind often wandering into daydreams, which just managed to gain her only average marks.
She quickly discovered that many of the denizens of the town were only looking out for their own good, taking any opportunity to give themselves a good name. Because of this, throughout her life, she had very few close friends she fully trusted.
Alas, even those shattered shortly before her freshman year in high school.
On the warm, muggy Saturday evening in mid-August that marked their last weekend of freedom, she and her best friends, Lucas Hall--who was all but her boyfriend at the time--and Amber Jones, decided to head to the best (and only) ice cream shop in town, Coney’s Creamery, before it closed its doors for the fall. Lucas talked the two girls into taking a shortcut through a small wooded area, Izzy taking far less convincing. They soon came to the narrow river that cuts through the town.
A tree that had fallen at the highest and narrowest part of the embankment expanded over the river, its top worn smooth from the many feet that had used it as a bridge. Its trunk glistened in the sunlight from a recent drizzle. The river raged with an alarming ferocity about twenty feet below.
Amber suggested they head back and take the main road, but Lucas climbed onto the trunk and turned back to them, taunting her.
As always, Amber took the bait and determinedly followed after him. Not wanting to let her friends get too far ahead of her, Izzy made to follow, but she had scarcely stepped past the twisting roots when she heard Amber scream.
Izzy looked in time to see Amber hit the enraged waters. She shouted for her friend and jumped from the trunk, but the current had sucked Amber under. She resurfaced a few yards downstream, and grabbed onto a rock protruding from the river, the torrents threatening to tear her from her anchor.
Not far from where Amber clung on for dear life, Izzy noticed an area of the river’s walls embedded with rocks and exposed roots twisting down toward the angry stream, and ran toward it. It made a perfect route to the water.
Lucas tried to stop her, grabbing her arm and forcing her to a halt to keep her from the same fate as Amber, but Izzy pulled free. Without stopping, she grabbed a long branch from the ground, tucked it under her armpit, and all but jumped over the side of the river, a hand gripping one of the many tree roots. She slipped only once, a jagged stone gouging painfully down her forearm, but she ignored it as well as she could and hurried to the water’s edge with Lucas watching from above.
Despite her efforts, Amber could no longer hold on. She slipped off just as Izzy readied to extend the branch, and the undercurrents sucked Amber under once more.
Izzy stood there, her feet against a damp boulder, horrified. She waited for Amber to resurface again, but she never did.
Weeks later, the only thing search parties found was her tattered backpack caught on one of the rocks a couple miles downstream.
Izzy could not help but blame Lucas. If he had not baited Amber, had not tried to stop her from helping her friend... All she had needed was a precious moment more, and she could have saved Amber, but it had been squandered on Lucas.
Having lost one of the only people in the town she had felt close to, that she could actually, truly trust, to the cruelty of the river, and the other to the sickening feeling of betrayal, all she wanted was to get out of that wretched town more than ever.
She found herself distancing herself from everyone. She and Lucas rarely, if ever, spoke after the tragedy. Her mother had her seeing a therapist at least once a week in the nearby capital city.
Izzy hated the way people looked at her for the first couple months after Amber’s death, but even worse was when Amber’s family moved out of town and everything returned to its normal, boring self, Amber becoming little more than the topic of an occasional comment or a warning spoken to keep people away from the river.
Ever so slowly, Izzy began to act a bit more like her cheerful self again, save for the walls she put up, her number of friends dwindling to none. Which was exactly how she wanted it. All the same, she did her best to push the memory of what had happened to Amber to the back of her mind, like the rest of the town seemed to have done, but she still has the occasional nightmare about it, the scar on her arm a permanent reminder.
By the time the end of her junior year rolled around, the dullness of the town had long since crept back beneath her skin, the lack of anything interesting making it that much more difficult to get her mind on anything other than Amber, or the dismal, dreary fate promised her if she stayed in town.
That is, until a few new faces showed up in town for the first time in nearly a decade...