Erin Hazel Gantz || 17 || June 5th || Sapiosexual || Baltimore, Maryland
"I don't want to draw unnecessary attention."
Everest Hill Prep is a school known for its elitism and wealth- it is structured in such a way to make it very difficult to earn a scholarship in, and therefore there are very few students who can say that they have gotten in on scholarship. That being said, there has been a history of scholarship students being looked down upon due to their lack of a wealthy background, something that Erin knew about when she entered the school. She wants to be successful, and that means peacefully finishing her school year here with good grades and no problems. Thus, she tries to fly under the radar as much as possible, because life will be easier that way until she can get out of the school and into a successful university where wealth is optional, not expected. Besides this, she also writes essays, makes projects, and does homework for others- for a fee. Knowledge of this could risk her scholarship, but she needs the money.
SciFi
Superheroes
STEM fields
Feeling Successful
Studying
Parties
Sarcasm
Literature
Basketball
Trivia
Warmth
Respect
Control
Pranks
Swimming
Insects
Jazz Music
Skating
Pity
Gossip
Laziness
Winters
Print (Handwriting)
Chocolate
Expensive Clothing
Nosiness
Weak Minds/Wills
Excuses
Morning Classes
Halloween
Hunger
Florida
Attention
Bad Grades
Self-Entitled People
Tight Pants
Fears
Being Caught || The Dark || Losing Her Scholarship || Having No Future
Erin Gantz makes point a point of being the sort of person that flies just under the radar of the school, the sort who you can't pick out in a crowd unless you are specifically trying to find her. She makes herself UN-extraordinary as possible, wearing dull clothing and talking enough to get by without being noticed. She doesn't do this because she is shy, in fact Erin is constantly restraining herself from speaking out against things or acting out in general, but because she thinks that it is a lot easier to be a nobody in a school where rumors are living creatures that feed off of the noticeable and the outcasts. If people think as they want her to, they just see a girl with good grades who is on the basketball team. They don't see anything special beyond that, because that is exactly how she wants to be seen- dull, not worth the time. Perhaps that makes her pitiful, to some extent, but it also allows her to go on her way without worrying about being targeted or having to dart around people. Secrets are very easy to keep when no one gives a damn about who you are, after all, and she's had enough experience as an outcast to know that going unseen has its advantages. There is an exception to her normally unnoticeable act, and that would be on the basketball court. Erin is able to attend this school with no fees because she gained both an academic and athletic scholarship- because she had the athletic, she didn't need to be at the very top of her class, second being suitable enough.
When she's playing basketball, the young woman allows herself to cut loose from the self-made constraints, because if she were to hold herself in while playing, she never would have gained an athletic scholarship. Basketball is one of her favorite things, and she will often sneak off to the gym after school when she thinks that no one else is around. On the court, she is talented and powerful, but it is her ability to go unnoticed that makes her very good- people don't even realize that she exists until she is on the other side of the court dunking the ball. She can run as fast as she wants, move with all of her strength, and show that she is somebody, even if she spends the rest of the school day ensuring that she is exactly the opposite of that. She is very passionate about basketball, as she is about all of the things she cares very much about, and perhaps the best way for someone to glimpse her personality, something typically difficult because she keeps herself neutral, is to engage her in a conversation about something she really cares about that. Do this, and all of her self restraint vanishes as she begins speaking animatedly- she can talk for a while before realizing that she had stopped keeping herself in check, at which point she immediately shuts herself back down once more.
After all, she puts a lot of effort into being a nobody, and hates the idea of letting herself lose that because she got carried away talking about Doctor Who or Basketball or something along those lines. She is usually able to think very much before she speaks, often not realizing that she had said the answer in her head, but never out loud, because she has trained herself so carefully in remaining neutral. She comes across as very reserved because of this, forgiving aforementioned exceptions, and most people think that she is quiet because she is in her own little world, or because she is snobby or something. In actuality, she is very much aware of her surroundings, perhaps more so because she spends more time listening and watching than she does speaking. She might know the birthday, name, and aspirations of every single classmate, while they are perhaps familiar with her name, but nothing else. She expect nothing else than this, though, and quietly accepts the fact that her name is often rare knowledge, though in weaker moments she has wished that she could be more than a name and a basketball jersey number. These moments are followed by a self-scolding for being stupid, because to be noticed is to be targeted, or to have people wonder about you- and she prefers that this not be the case.
Naturally, the girl is very intelligent, and her general lack of social life certainly aids in her ability to spend plenty of time studying and the like. She did get in on an academic scholarship, after all, and has high ambitions that she is constantly running towards to fuel her studying and absorption of knowledge. Learning is something that has always come easily to her, at least in her Science and Math courses, and she is the type who will do calculus problems as a break between essays and the like. The girl is quite proud of her intelligence, actually, and pride is perhaps her major flaw, as she can be very vain about her work both on the court and in the classroom. It's probably the reason for her being so irritated when, upon finally having a class in which she was able to beat Natalie Meade, the aforementioned girl rose ahead of her once more. That being said, her intelligence is the reason for her arriving to the conclusion that going unnoticed is the wisest decision, and is how she comforts herself when reaching second place only. She has a cynical view on people, expecting to be judged and for people to act cruelly towards each other, and therefore being far more tolerant of such things. She doesn't expect things to be fair, or even just, even when she sorely wishes for it to be. The world can be terrible, time screws people over, and to be flawed is to be human- she recognizes these things.
While she may appear as completely harmless on the outside, behind Erin's carefully apathetic gaze and sealed mouth lies a sharp-witted mind that is the carrier of a constant stream of retorts, dry observations, and sharp comments that go unheard by everyone else. Her mind is constantly in motion, as she is seemingly incapable of reaching an idle-minded state, and this does run the risk of her being slightly awkward in conversations, for she has to quickly come up with things outside of her actual thoughts so that she may continue to live in the quasi-peaceful rank of an in-betweener.
Calculating || Unnoticeable || Passionate || Careful || Intelligent || Hardworking || Reserved || Cynical || Ambitious || Proud || Observant || Competitive
"Home was the hum of an engine and the stained cloth on the backseat."
Erin has only ever lived in one house, but this is not because her parents were rooted into one spot, or because she had some sort of consistency in her childhood. Rather, she lived in one house before constantly moving around, living in motels and camps hidden away in the forests outside of small towns. She was born in a small apartment in Baltimore, Maryland, that had been the home of her grandparents, Lilian and Joseph Gantz. As her mother had been a young mother, and she the child of her thirteen year old mother's rapist, Erin was at first raised to be her mother's sister and her grandparents children, living in a poor neighborhood where most of the homes had boards over the windows, and crime was not an uncommon scene. It was the only home she had ever known, but it was gone before she had matured, as her grandparents died in a car crash when she was only four years old, just before the end of her mother's junior year. There were no other relatives, none close, anyway, and so Jessamine, Erin's mother, decided to reject college and focus on raising the child that her parents had taken care of for the first period of her life. So, they stole away before a social services worker could stop them.
The only thing they received after the death of Lilian and Joseph was a beat up ford, as everything else was sold to pay debts and so that a proper funeral could be held. Erin was only four years old, and couldn't understand at first, confused and terrified as they lowered mommy and daddy into a hole, but she eventually came to understand. Still, she couldn't feel the same overcoming devastation that her mother, who still wore the guise of her sister, did, and took over the position oft trying to comfort Jessamine- an action which only broke her down bore, but at the same time strengthened Jessamine's resolve to raise her confused and terrified daughter. Taking all they had left, the beat up ford, and enough money to pay for two weeks of groceries and a few tanks of gas, they went out on the road. Baltimore was Erin's hometown, but her home became that beatup Ford, and the motels where the duo would stay whenever they stopped in town long enough to work short jobs. The first year was difficult, because Jessamine could only take work that wouldn't question how old she was, or would easily accept a lie. Erin spent a lot of those days by herself, occupying her time in a motel room or in a little campsite hidden away from the public. Sometimes she would go to a playground or something and meet other children, but her connections never lasted long, and when she told them about her 'house', the kids would laugh at her. Over the years, she learned that silence was a better option.
"Are we just background noise to a song stuck on repeat, when people say things like 'Kids can be cruel'?"
Life was not kind to Erin, especially not in childhood, but she never saw a reason to complain because she saw how hard her sister was working, and placed her on a pedestal as a role model and the sort of person that she could admire always. She thought her sister was a superhero, and was so proud that she would boast to the other children in the other schools, as she was a serial student who was constantly switching school like the world switches seasons, about how strong her sister was. About how hard she worked, and how beautiful she was beneath the callouses and the bags hanging under her eyes. But people didn't see her mother the way that she did, and the laughed and mocked her for having no parents, as the rest of them did, and for living in strange places, while they all had some sort of consistency. She saw the shame on her sister's face when Jessamine caught her boasting, and was crestfallen when her sister asked her to please stop bragging, because for all of her beauty and her strength, she remained crushed by society's expectations, and by the knowledge that she could not give her daughter everything that she had been given growing up. Her sister asked her to be quiet, and the children told her to shut up, and eventually, Erin fell silent.
Even with this silence, she was still the new kid, the one who had no place to be and nothing to do after school. In fourth grade, she proudly wore a new shirt to school, one that had her favorite superhero, Batman, on it. A boy in her class saw a hole on the side of it, and realized that this was a shirt his mother had taken to donate, and informed the class of this. They thought it rather funny that she was wearing a boy's donated clothing, and called her hand-me-down from then on. Of course, she was only there for a few months before getting into her car and continuing on, where there would be a different town, a different place. She couldn't stay in the schools for too long anyway, because you needed the right shots, the right address, proof of residence, etc. So they kept moving, because Jessamine didn't have the time to teach Erin, and she needed to go to school. Long term jobs were out of the question, and they usually followed the seasons, taking work that would end soon. She lived in the keys once, when her mother worked at a hotel. She spent a lot of time in florida while her mother picked fruit, and grew to hate that particular state. Erin began to look forward to moving, though, because it meant another chance.
"Eating under the bleachers is still somehow better than eating alone out in the open."
Erin managed to vanish, the only thing she ever really did to stand out was study and play basketball. Many thought this to be all that she did- study, play basketball. She didn't seem to exist out of these two activities, something perceived beginning at some point in elementary school. Her mother had bought her a little purple basketball when she was in third grade, after all, and the girl played with it happily every day, though often on her own. It was something that she could be good at- the girl could be picked first for basketball, if people remembered that she was good, and she could get good grades in class, even if no one noticed it because she never said a word. She thought that being good at these things would help her to find some sort of place, and her mother ensured that they could be in a school long enough each year to be on the basketball team in middle school. Teachers loved her, of course, but somehow this only separated her from her peers further. Erin didn't mind, though. She had decided to focus on those two things, the things she could be good at, and that she didn't need to be noticed or liked to be happy. She was lying to herself, but if you tell yourself something enough, it can seem a bit less of a lie.
In the end, there was a benefit to her single-mindedness for those two things, though. An eighth grade teacher recommended she apply for a school nearby, as they had been living in Massachusetts at the time, and so she did. She even made it in on an Athletic scholarship, her mother renting an apartment for a year so that she could be in one middle school long enough to maybe plant roots, as she had gotten a job that held the possibility of success- besides, moving around so much had become more of a habit, at some point, as Jessamine had grown old enough for no one to question her raising her 'younger sister.' She did well enough on the testing later to get an academic scholarship as well, meaning that she would actually be able to go to the school, not needing to pay for the lofty fees. Even a fraction of them would have been too much, but with this, she could go. She could have the chance to be successful, as Everest Hill was known for breeding success. This was her big shot.
Even though she had thought of it as a time for change, Erin found herself acting as she always had. It was her nature, at this point, to try and slip by unnoticed, and a big part of that was to keep her scholarship student status under wraps. So she is unknown, except for her basketball number, 13, and her first name- not many have bothered to delve further, and she is okay with this. Anonymity suits her, apparently. It also means that less people care enough to tell that she sells school work for money.