Who's Who in Snowden: The Darius Allen Detectives

Abbie’s arrival to Snowden was, of course, rooted in tragedy; the murder of her family (and nearly herself) by the escaped serial killer John Michael Walton, now almost a decade ago.  But the intervening years have grown her from a slight, damaged, frail little girl to a beautiful, poised, even formidable young woman of superhuman courage and soul-deep love for those she cares about.  She is Samurai-chan, black belt in taekwondo, student of kendo, shinkendo and iaido, and at barely sixteen years old, already the slayer of two malefactors; The Ringmaster’s evil assistant Johnny Dennison, and the suddenly-deranged actor Judah Rose (although she will tell you with perfect earnestness that it was in fact reincarnated serial killer Benjamin Russell she in fact killed)  Diminutive as she still is in stature, she is respected—sometimes even feared—by all who know her casually.

Those who know her well know the more profound Abbie.  The one who loves everyone in her family with almost painful intensity, especially her little nieces, nephews, and siblings Penny, Ella, Aidenn, Mia, and Mikey.  The young woman who loves her boyfriend Jaden Ross with a frightening depth for such a young woman.  The one who throws herself into her counselor work at Camp Evergreen out of simple love for the little girls in her charge.  The girl who loves both “Mom” Nancy Dwight Miyazaki and her eldest Dwight sister Abigail Giles as much as the Mommy she still misses poignantly.  The one who took a despondent Morgan Emrick under her wing and devotedly helped put her life back together.  The one who surrendered herself to her cousin Leslie’s abductors to save Leslie herself from harm.  There is a simple truth to Abbie; that love is her most powerful, potent attribute.

That said, Abbie is still a teenaged girl, with an interest in friends, social activities, clothes, and gossip.  And she is an eye-catching young lady withal, with a budding hourglass figure which sometimes frustrates the young warrior until she remembers that Jaden very much enjoys looking at her.  With her long, rich brown tresses, bright blue eyes, and fair complexion, she draws the attention of many more boys besides Jaden, but even if those boys weren’t intimidated by the Samurai-chan legend, her eyes are only for Jaden!

The love which is her most basic attribute infuses even her friendships.  Despite being two years older, Abbie has always taken time and effort to keep in contact with her first Allen County friend Aisha al-Fashir, and now that Abbie spends half her time at her sister Abigail’s house in Valleyview Estates, the friendship has only strengthened.  Of her peers, none is as close to her as Serenity Mabrey, a friendship forged in the first tumultuous Camp Evergreen session they shared as campers and now so much a part of her as to make Serenity practically a sister to her.  She started out not liking her cousin Leslie Morgan, but one particular adventure showed Leslie to her in a new light, and Abbie has been very protective of her ever since.  The same is true of Morgan Emrick; while most of their peers intensely disliked her, Abbie saw something sad and broken in her which Abbie took upon herself to heal, and has taken Morgan too into her heart.  That’s her way; the orphaned Abbie has grown to like taking in emotional or social orphans and adopting then in her own way…

Tall, lean, freckled, raven-haired Serenity has always been a natural athlete and a natural scholar, a fresh-air, energetic young lady caught somewhere between a tomboy and a brainiac: caught between an oddball-fashion-plate big sister and a sports-star little sister; and caught between being a regular, normal high-school sophomore and…well, that’s sort of where Joey  Housely comes in.

Joey Housely has been Serenity’s next-door neighbor literally all her life, having been brought in their baby bassinets home to Valleyview Estates literally within weeks of each other.  They had even been, for a short while in their toddler-hood, housemates after the first Mabrey home was destroyed in a house fire!  They’d been playmates growing up, so it seemed inevitable that they would be boyfriend and girlfriend when the age for romance came around, and for a while they had an idyllic little romance in their own strange way.  Until one night Serenity, upset over Joey’s jealousy, found herself kissing the wrong boy—Joey ditched her in a paroxysm of jealous mistrust, and for nearly a year Serenity wobbled between profound depression and near-suicidal despair, deprived not only of boyfriend but best friend.  Only the cataclysm at Camp Evergreen, in which she saved the campers by an act which she had clearly meant as a suicide attempt, did Joey realize what he had given up in Serenity, and how his own fault had blended with hers to wound them both.  They finally brought each other’s wounded hearts together again, leaving Serenity to put Joey’s happiness above all other things in her life.  She would rather literally face anything rather than lose him again!

Which has left ‘Ren in a strange place.  The top-shelf scholar and team-captain star athlete now seems to measure herself exclusively by how happy she keeps Joey; the natural leader has become so focused on making Joey happy that her  friends have worried that she’s turning into a “Stepford,” a girl whose identity is exclusively bound up in her boyfriend’s.  And speaking of bound…the events surrounding Camp Evergreen left her most embarrassing secret exposed.  All his life, Joey had pursued Serenity through games of cops-and-robbers and cowboys-and-indians with the sublime goal of getting to tie her up.  Unfortunately for Joey, for many years Serenity refused him the honor, never letting him catch her.  But after her abduction by Professor Newland some years ago to replace a dead daughter, Joey found himself able to catch and tie Serenity at will!  What had started as his own enjoyment grew into hers as well—until her secret was blown the night of the boys-versus-girls capture-the-flag game before the opening of Camp Evergreen!  The torment of her continued separation from Joey was only exacerbated by the sudden ceaseless torment of being known as “Serenity Mabrey, the Bondage Freak”; only her reconciliation with Joey, and sage advice from Ginger O’Day to “own it,” has allowed Serenity to live down the revelation of her secret.  Thus we see a Serenity in the process of reconstruction; even as she is still a star, team-captain athlete, still an excellent scholar with a burgeoning love of mysteries, she is also becoming more assertive about her “peculiarity,” and definitely more overt in her affections toward Joey.  Hence her kid sister Charity’s nickname—“Weirdo”…

Serenity Mabrey’s peculiarities are only recently becoming a part of her public persona, but Leslie Morgan has been known as the Darius Allen sophomore class’s resident “freak show” for quite some time now!  After her emotional crash a few years ago which led her to her own suicide attempt at Camp Evergreen, she emerged as the odd emo-scene-whatever creature she is now: her hair colored in a  variety of interesting bright-neon colors, but usually a shade of pink, earning her the nickname her friend Allie Lamm has bestowed upon her of “Pinky”; her unique assortment of neon-bright and baggy dark clothes, universally decorated in the skull theme she favors, right down to her earrings; a brilliant talent for writing which swerves into the macabre, if not the twisted; a gifted scholar and academic who is questioning the value of such pursuits even as she instinctively excels at them.

At the root of Leslie Morgan is the still-profound belief that she is somehow a “mistake,” a twisted human being who now revels in her “mistake-hood” to keep from destroying herself over it as she had once tried.  Even when she was a shy, conventionally-pretty little blonde girl and young lady, she tormented herself over what she saw in herself as twisted and perverted likes and interests, which she strove with—quite literally—all her might to conceal from the world.  What finally pushed her to her act of ultimate self-destruction, though, was the bisexuality which finally expressed itself in a remarkably chaste little romance with Cora Peabody which was ruthlessly exposed at that fateful camp by a hateful fellow junior counselor.  The contumely Leslie’s mom had poured down intemperately upon her was the proximate cause of the suicide attempt; thus,  even after Mom’s change of heart and fierce protection of Leslie and her relationship with Cora (Leslie also dates neighbor boy Jimmy Housely, which relationship Mrs. Morgan distrusts more than the one Leslie has with Cora), Leslie still retains some of her distrust of her.  Once her natural shy quietude—which is still very evident in her demeanor toward others—had failed to protect her from having her secrets exposed, she swung to the other extreme.  Hence, the quirky “Pinky” who is, ironically, finding acceptance as an oddball she never felt she had found as a so-called “normal” girl.  But her emotions and her still-simmering self-hate are dangers ever lurking…

If anyone is a living example of natural contradictions, it’s Cora Lee, as everyone close to her calls her. Her tastes and affections are everything stereotyped as extreme by the world around her—her profound artistic and musical talent, and her lesbian affections—but find themselves expressed in a conventionality which is startling to anyone whose ideas of the artistic temperament or the so-called “lesbian lifestyle” are gotten more from stereotypes than from real life.  No artistic lassitude here; she is an instinctive early-to-bed-early-to-rise hard worker with a pronounced tendency toward obsessive-compulsive neatness, who maintains a rigid schedule of work, art, music, and study which many an adult would find impossible to maintain.  Her affections are hardly expressed in any extravagant ways; her taste for conservative, quietly feminine attire is entirely natural to her and very much flatter the slim, trim, diminutive form and conservatively-coifed brunette tresses, and her demeanor is as quiet and self-contained as her outward presentation.

And yet another layer of contradiction—this quiet, hard-working artist and scholar carries deep and abiding passions inside her.  While she refuses to be a stereotypical “gay girl,” her amatory passions are still powerful enough to lead her astray at times.  While she is a quiet, self-contained young woman, she conceals in her nature a demonic temper inherited from her estranged father which, when provoked beyond the prodigious limits of her self-control, can be destructive not only in figurative, but in literally physical ways.  And so many of her personal traits are inherited from an estranged father she loves but cannot possibly ever live with.

And amid all these complications, Cora Lee fights to keep a few simple thoughts at the center of her life.  She wants to be worth the trouble of her existence.  She loves her Aunt Sandy with little-girl ardor and simplicity.  She treasures her friends beyond anything but her aunt.  She wants, in a profound way, to do good.  And she is a sufficiently strong-minded young lady enough to maintain these things even among the many complications of her life—complications which must only deepen as she matures into a woman…

Allie Lamm is content to let the world see nothing in her but a Dale-Junior-lovin’, jeans-and-tee-shirt, Redneck Girl.  Stocky and blustery, with long ash-blonde hair, Allie works hard to maintain her redneck persona!

As well she would, for there’s actually much more to Allie than her country-girl attitude.  While her public persona shows her country-music fandom, she’s also a secret fan of Broadway musicals.  Allie rarely is seen in anything other than her customary jeans and tee-shirts, yet occasionally enjoys dressing herself up.  She presents herself as someone brash and loud, but comfortably lets her boyfriend Trent Barker make decisions for her.  She likes to be seen being a leader, but nurses a streak of profound cowardice.

Very few people get to see this Allie, and most of them—such as her cousin Cora Peabody—are family.  Which perhaps explains why Allie has grown so close to her detective-club friends Abbie Dwight and Serenity Mabrey; both of them have seen and understand the non-public Allie, stood up to her bluster and bullying back when they were young enough to be Camp Evergreen campers instead of counselors, and as a result Allie seems to think of “Frankie”—derivative of a childish taunt directed at Abbie their first Camp Evergreen summer—and “Pepper,” her nickname for a be-freckled Serenity Mabrey, as family.  They know her and still like her, and to Allie, that’s plenty!

Many people have wondered what turned quiet, shy, petite little short-haired brunette Paula Ryan into the borderline goth she has become in her late teens, with the morbid turn of mind for which she’s well known in the Darius Allen High senior class.  Perhaps it can be settled with a date: October 30.  Many years ago, when Paula herself was still just a little girl, the day before Halloween was also the day her little sister Hesther died after a long battle with leukemia, and the loss has affected Paula to this day.  Naturally sensitive—not merely in terms of a thin emotional skin, but in a vivid perceptiveness of the strangenesses, absurdities, and ironies of life—the loss and its timing steered her into the dark channel in which she lives, mitigated by a natural, unaffected gentleness striking to those not close to her.

And that closeness is something not easily obtained, for her quietude and shyness remain her most profound traits.  She doesn’t make friends easily and is very content with her own company and that of her closest friends, in particular her lifelong classmate and (until recently) kindred spirit Kellie Kirk.  And a girl who has never been a favorite among the boys of her age had had little amatory experience because of her perceived standoffishness combined with her odd presentation—until someone about as opposite to Paula as is possible somehow crashed into her life.  Classmate Richie Dwight, big and burly and expansively friendly, a natural-born country-boy from his bearded head to his stomper-clad feet (but with his own odd taste for the art and science of being a theater technician), had, in fact, dumped his brassy, cheerleader girlfriend Devan Jensen in favor of mousy goth-lite Paula, and has a knack for opening up the innermost thoughts and feelings in her.  For her part, this effect Richie has on her has left her devoted to him with a certain childish ardor, a childishness which does not interfere with certain of their passions for each other…

Kellie Kirk is the sort that can be almost literally invisible in a crowd—to her quiet tastes a blessing, to her social development a curse, and to her turgid emotions a potential calamity!  Whereas her lifelong friend Paula is a shy young woman, Kellie is in fact a profound social phobic whose tumultuous childhood and home life have driven her inside herself with a fear-driven conviction.  Her parents are a pair of quarrelsome drunks.  Her two elder sisters are brazenly sluttish girls-about-town, both already with out-of-wedlock children.  Her two younger brothers are aggressive both physically and emotionally, with middle child Kellie their favorite target of abuse as she indeed is for her whole family, all of whom look down on her contemptuously.  Kellie herself is physically unprepossessing to an astounding degree; somewhat small of stature unlike her other family members, thin almost to the point of emaciation, a drawn and pensive, weak-chinned face framed by thin blonde tresses.  And somehow, in the midst of this profound dysfunction, quiet, studious, self-controlled Kellie was born and somehow managed to raise herself.  To the scolds and gossips of Wiltontown, Kellie is the one Kirk who isn’t a total screw-up.

But Kellie herself knows better.  Her self-control conceals desires and urges she herself knows are desperately wrong, even evil, and stems as much (if not more) from her physical inability to force her will on others as it does from any natural bent for propriety.  Already those desires have led her to amatory misadventures with Cora Peabody, Leslie Morgan, and Joey Housely, and have not yet taken her down even darker paths she feels branching out within her only by the hardest.  She sees no future for herself, knows that if all knew her as she did, she would be an outcast from all human society…