KESSLER, HAYLEY CAMERON

[Hayley Cameron Kessler]

HAYLEY KESSLER

full name Hayley Cameron Kessler
nicknames Hales
type Original
gender Female
age Seventeen
birthday December twenty-eight
group Popular
clique Cheerleader
grade Senior
sexuality Heterosexual
occupation Clothing salesgirl
face claim Candice Swanepoel
alias Nova

persona
Careful, detached, manipulative, selfish, determined, ambitious, perfectionist, stubborn, independent, athletic, driven, responsible, temperamental, manipulative, organised, pessimistic, logical, competitive, doubtful, cynical, ruthless.

life
To get a better understanding of Hayley Kessler, it's first important to take a look at the environment in which her parents had grown up in. Her grandparents had been a generation of immigrants, new to the reality that America wasn't the glistening gold staircase they had believed it to be. They lived under the impression that the American Dream would dictate a fair balance of hard work and consequential success and wealth. With set values in mind, they passed on a good work ethic and emphasis on the importance of determination and perseverance. Several decades later, they contemplated if perhaps life would have been easier back at home. Working hours and hours at odds and ends of jobs had simply placed them in the middle to lower class income bracket, and they died questioning if perhaps they had done something wrong.

When Noah and Grace met, they were pleased to find that they had similar ideals and backgrounds. They both came from poor families and worked their ways into colleges and universities that offered them scholarships and bright futures, and together they would raise a perfect child. The result of this union was bright-eyed baby with golden locks and deep blue eyes that one could find him or herself drowning in. With well-paying jobs that generated a family income that allowed for easy living, money was no issue and life was looking good.

During childhood, her rosy cheeks, pipe-curls, and heartwarming smile made her a shoo-in for being a child star. Her obedient nature earned her the reputation of being a pleasure to work with, and her success led her on the path to fame. However, prancing and posing in front of cameras and being blinded by flashing lights soon lost its appeal. At a young age, she came to realise that the people who surrounded her were phony and cruel, and it was easy to get trampled when being amongst would-be celebrities who would go to extremes to achieve their goals. Her parents took this as an early sign of laziness and readily pulled her back into a world of normality and quietude, hoping there was still time to instill proper ethics into her.

Life should have been easy to follow afterwards, but Hales received an unexpected bump in the road. A distrust springing from her short-lived time as a mini celebrity remained rooted deep inside her, and when she interacted with her peers, she naturally kept a subtle distance and remained detached as a means of protecting herself.

As an early bloomer, it was awkward and uncomfortable to be among girls her own age. She was often mistaken for being a little older than she was, and boys were more than glad to take advantage of a well-developed girl with a vulnerable mind and a myriad of insecurities. Learning from older mistakes was something that took her a little while to get the hang of. She was often used and dumped, and each time she'd happily go out with the next boy in line because in a world with such an enormous population of males, there had to be someone out there for her, right?

Meanwhile, her parents didn't seem to particularly mind her active love life, though they were wary and quick to often warn her about the dangers of becoming lazy. The goal to strive for was perfection, and she struggled with the delicate balance of studying, keeping up with fashions, sports, and dating. The latter soon proved to be her downfall.

Despite being young, Hales had quite a lengthy list of ex-boyfriends. At age fifteen, she met a boy who was slightly older, and he truly seemed to be her soul mate. No matter how she looked at and analysed their relationship, she could find no flaws. The future seemed promising, and before she knew it, she had slipped up. While the rest of the things she worked hard to achieve slipped out of her grasp in the face of "love", her mind was preoccupied with all sorts of silly scenarios of what their shared future would be like.

As fate would have it, her sixteenth birthday present from that special guy was the unveiling of a truth she could have lived without knowing. He had cheated, and the emotion between them was far from true love. She had made numerous fruitless attempts at love, and this final relationship only taught her one thing: love was a completely fabricated emotion that couldn't possibly exist in real life. Jaded and scorned, she retreated from the dating scene and went back to patching up the image of perfection she worked hard to construct.

The little trip-up in her life should have slowed her down, but Hales kept the beat. Good grades was an easy feat to achieve through a careful selection of classes and a constructed schedule of studying while maintaining free time for other activities. Popularity was an entirely different goal she had to achieve, and it didn't seem too difficult to reach. She hung out with the right people, wore the right clothes, and joined the cheerleading squad after taking gymnastics classes and going to cheerleading camp. Things naturally fell in place, and her job was to just go with the flow. She was graced with a sort of beauty that was typical but enviable, and as a cheerleader, her choice of wardrobe was fairly obvious and easy to pick.

Upon entering high school, the one notable skilled she honed upon becoming popular was the ability to act accordingly. Her distrust in others allowed her to develop a sense of independence, and both have their pros and cons in regards to her interactions with others. On one hand, she seems detached and difficult to approach, but on the other hand, cheerleaders are naturally meant to be a group of exclusive girls who are picky about the company the surrounds them. She learned that as long as she dressed like her fellow clique members, gossiped with them, acted the part of a teammate, and hounded victims that were chosen as targets, then all was well and she was accepted.

Personality-wise, she wasn't too far off from being an ideal cheerleader. She has a ruthless nature and will act when opportunities are given in order to benefit, which allows her to blend in rather well. Her policy is that her own well-being comes before others, and very rarely will she do anything unless she benefits from it. If there's something she wants, then she go to nearly any means to get it. In the past, she wanted popularity, and that came hand-in-hand with cheerleading. As far as she's concerned, anything is within reach as long as she strikes when an opportunity presents itself for her to advance.

roleplaying sample
To be honest, Bryce didn’t really give a damn about his classes. What was the point of wasting several hours each day to learn some useless pieces of knowledge in stuffy classrooms filled with deadbeat losers? Maybe he shouldn’t have been talking in such a way when he was stuck up the same creek as they were. He already managed to miraculously repeat senior year, though it wasn’t as if many people had a clear idea of this. Appearance wise, he fit in quite well. Sure, there were the occasional rumours that flew around, questioning exactly how stupid he must have been, but no one ever confronted him about them. Considering he was reputed to have a short temper and extremely violent tendencies, it was probably a good decision.

Unlike last year, he had enjoyed a fairly peaceful year thus far. He wasn’t plagued by constant fights that led him to a lovely seat in the principal’s office, though he still got into some trouble that took place. It was an improvement though. Abigail would be proud of him.

Speaking of her, the thought made him speed up his otherwise leisurely pace through the hallways, seeming almost as if he were looking forward to second period. But make no mistake about it, Bryce was no by any means interested in art class. It was another stupid elective he took just out of necessity to graduate. He hated the annoying messiness of it and the constant preaching for one to creatively express their emotions, and sometimes he hated Abigail as well. It wasn’t so much that she had ever done anything as much as it was his personality. He was naturally the type who loathed people for no reason, and though she had been nothing but sweet to him, he couldn’t help it.

Though Bryce typically shunned being around others, she was exempt from that. Week one of school had started shakily because her cheerful personality and happy smiles felt like a nuisance. It was as if there were an unintentional pressure for him to simply lighten up, and everyone knew that Bryce Linscott simply was not a happy person. Now that he’d had a couple months’ time to adjust, he was used to her chirpy greetings and friendly tones. The way he thought sounded terrible, but it was considerably nicer than the way he typically looked at others. She was just about the only teacher he deemed bearable, almost to the point where he might have considered her a friend.

It was easy to infer that he had very few friends, so his free periods used to be spent by himself. However, lately he found himself straying to her classroom, just lingering awkwardly as a silent presence. There was something calm and peaceful about her presence that made his rage quiet down, and though he by no means loved her, he was growing to love her company. Not that he would ever admit that.

With a sigh, he counted down the periods until he could get out of school and get home. Entering the classroom, he noted that a few other people had already arrived, though it was a little difficult to pay them much heed when there was a small, cheerful blonde waving at him. Offering an attempt at a smile that came out more as a grimace, he nodded an acknowledgement and grumbled, “Morning” as he passed by and sat down at his seat.