YOUNG, Ellis Keirsten

[ellis kiersten young]

ELLIS KIERSTEN YOUNG

FULL NAME: Ellisia Kiersten Young.
NICKNAMES: Ellis – always Ellis.
AGE: Twenty-six
GENDER: Female
SEXUALITY: Straight.
STATUS: Single.
GROUP: Citizen.
GRADE: N/A.
MAJOR: N/A.
JOB OCCUPATION: Cab driver.

HAIR: Blonde, medium to long really, but she usually wears it down because keeping it up or braided reminds her of her childhood and gives her a headache. The gym is the only exception and that’s only so it doesn’t get in her eyes, blind her, and make her fall off the treadmill.
EYES: Blue.
SCARS/BIRTHMARKS: None.
TATTOOS: She has two full sleeves that extend to her hands, a chest piece that goes up her neck, a stomach piece, a back piece of a woman cradling a bird before a flower, ‘Drop Dead’ across the back of her thighs, a ram’s head on her left hip/thigh, ‘Loose Lips, Sink Ships’ across her ribs, a woman’s face and skull on her left thigh, a mermaid on her left calf with a demon, another devil on her right calf, an all seeing eye tattoo on her right shin, along with a demon head, ‘Lone Wolf’ on the sides of her hands, a crescent moon on the back of her right calf, wolves on her inner left thigh, a broken link above her left knee, girl above her right ankle, flower on her right knee, a gypsy woman on her right thigh, message in a bottle on her right foot, butterfly on her left side, moth on right calf, another figure on her left foot, and a tiny dagger above her left eyebrow..
PIERCINGS: Both sides of her nose, and her ears just once. Used to have her septum pierced, too, but she swapped that for the double piercing.
PLAY-BY: Madison Skye!

LIKES: Linguistics, universal words, New York traffic, colouring books, tattoo parlours, dark red, autumn days, hot chocolate, being independent, Cheetos, mountain climbing, roses, salted pretzels, Beauty and The Beast, amber, night clubs, bird watching, talking to strangers, dark lipsticks, Febreeze, muscly men, globes, mindfulness guides, late night radio shows, cool nights, lime soda.
DISLIKES: Talking about her family – specifically her parents, pastel shades, causing a scene in traffic, pigeons, eight o’clock, cold mornings, being stuck in the car for a ridiculously long time, thunderstorms, salty fries, going home, forgetting to brush her teeth before bed, dirty mirrors, salmon, anxiety attacks, dark rooms, giving too much away about herself.
FEARS: Thunderstorms, pigeons, having another breakdown.
SECRETS: Whilst she considers her breakdown the worst and best thing that ever happened to her, Ellis blames her parents for how it came about, and still there is great tension there. So much so that going home fills her with anxiety, and she deliberately ignores their calls. It’s a complicated story, and even more complicated relationship. It’s for this convoluted reason that no one knows she’s taking online courses to complete her college education.
PERSONALITY: Ellis comes across as a complete chatterbox who will talk to every person who clambers in the back of her cab, but it’s actually a nervous habit. She does enjoy conversations with people she’s never met before, but Ellis is a very anxious person, and babbling on keeps her calm. She’s intelligent, but tends to keep that hidden these days because of her past and how the pressure to be so smart broke her once before. Friendly, Ellis enjoys being out in her cab, meeting new people and hearing their stories while they’re confined to the backseat. She’s made some friends that way, though she knows that there have been plenty of people equally keen to get out. Ellis has come into her own in recent years, finding an outgoing side to herself that is nothing like the old her, but is also a little scatterbrained and loud. She used to be a pushover in the past, but now she won’t budge an inch if she thinks someone is trying to take advantage of her or someone near and dear to her. Ellis tries to be strong, but like everyone she has her weaknesses; her family. She’s distanced herself from them for a reason, and they are the only people left who can make her feel six inches tall. They can take what she is and crush it. She’s secretive about them, and apprehensive about having a family of her own because of what doubts and complications they have caused in her life so far. When she’s at her low points she can be questioning and full of doubts, which has harmed plenty of relationships in her past – both platonic and romantic. She’s sweet, and despite what people might think, Ellis is looking for her Prince Charming to make everything okay again. She likes that ideal of someone riding in and chasing her monsters away.

MOTHER: Yvonne Olivia Young, 58
FATHER: Warden Foster Young, 61.
SIBLINGS: Natalie Paulette Young-Harrow, 32.
Gunner Harding Young, 29
OTHERS: Martin Liam Harrow, 35, brother-in-law.
PETS: Hamlet, crested Gecko!
HOMETOWN: Auburn, New York.
HISTORY: What made Yvonne and Warden bad parents – in Ellis’ eyes – was that they were too smart. Both of them met at a pharmaceutical research facility. Yvonne worked in psychiatric research, whereas Warden was purely about chemistry. They were both top experts in their fields of study, but it meant they approached everything purely with a methodical way of thinking. Their wedding was at city hall with very few guests and their honeymoon involved two science conferences. It was their life, and while they were happy with it, they pushed it onto their children when they came along. They had three; two daughters and a son. Ellisia was the youngest child, and as such any mistakes they made with Natalie and Gunner’s former years would not be repeated with her.

They pushed all three of their children down a purely academic route. Bad grades and bad behaviour was punished according and somewhat severely. They needed shining stars and brilliant minds. All of their children made excellent grades and were told that there was no such thing as too much work. It was all they knew, so they couldn’t complain. Their curfews were strict, there were plenty of things they weren’t allowed; like video games, junk food, and to spend weekends at the mall with friends for starters. Yvonne and Warden pushed them completely to be the best they could be, assigning them extra tests and work to ensure they were better than the other children their age, scoring higher than average in every area of their studies. In some ways, they treated their own children like a science experiment to see what would make them the best, and what made them bad. If a new gift had been bestowed to one and in the following weeks a test score was slightly lower, that gift was taken away from them and never seen again. Ellis recalls losing more presents than she received growing up, just because of that logic. It couldn’t ever be that they were sick that day; no Young child was ever sick enough to flunk a test, or fluff a few questions.

Ellis had no friends whatsoever. Her siblings had come before her and built up the reputation of the untouchable nerds. Untouchable in the sense that everyone knew that they would never be at a birthday party, or come round for play dates, so no one bothered going near her when she started school. Bullies later teased and taunted her for being a walking robot of straight A’s and nothing more. It was all Ellis was allowed to be. She wasn’t allowed friends to drag her down, and there was no need for school activities like sports and clubs because they would get her nowhere at all after she graduated. So her childhood was nothing but textbooks and study. She knew nothing about fashion, make up or dating, but that was all a waste of time and if a magazine was even found in her room there would be hell to pay. The pressure her parents put on her was astounding, because she was their last child and their final shot at producing that brain baby. It didn’t matter to them that all three of their children were straight A kids because of the ridiculous house they ran. Ellis was constantly reminded that they would accept nothing but the best from her.

Ellis was accepted by Ivy Leagues across the country, but she chose to go to Brown University. There she would be studying Linguistics with the intention (from her parents) to go on to achieve her doctorate and be a professor of Linguistics after a few years of working with Speech Therapy and having an edge in the medical field. Her sister was already working in Biology research, and her brother was making his way to becoming a Chemical Engineer. She was halfway through her sophomore year and struggling hard. Of course, at Brown she wasn’t the smartest kid, but a face in a crowd of smart kids. It was a bit of a shock and her parents just wanted to keep pushing her to the top, pressing her harder and harder to stay at the library longer, find more interesting source references for her essays, and to not slack off – which she must have been doing – because they wouldn’t be impressed if she came home for the holidays outside of the top 10% of her class. And that was them apparently being lenient at 10%. She was burnt out, but that didn’t mean she could stop. Eventually she had a breakdown. It was Gunner who went to check on her, and he was the one who had the sense to take her to see a doctor. She was prescribed anxiolytics and referred to a mental health team for therapy and CBT treatment. Gunner had always been close to Ellis, but again, closeness was not something their parents had allowed time for. So he was the one who offered to break the news to them that she was taking a leave of absence from her studies to focus on her wellbeing. Brown supported her, but her parents did not. Ellis only listened to the voicemail, but the word ‘disappointment’ and its variants were there several times. It was then that she started doing her best to ignore them, but eventually she had to go home. She had no income supporting her and she couldn’t stay in student dorms when she was temporarily not a student. Her parents hounded her though. It was endlessly questioning her about what she was spending her days doing, and when she would be returning to her studies. Even her mother, who worked in the study of psychiatry, seemed oblivious to Ellis’ struggle.

In the end it was Gunner who offered to take her to New York City. He lived there and commuted to Columbia where he was studying for his doctorate. Ellis leapt at the chance, and especially his encouragement to be lazy as she wanted to be until her mind felt up to things again. He had seen how she had been pushed so much harder than he or Natalie. He knew it was unfair, but at the same time he didn’t want the family to fall apart. He was forever trying to build that bridge between Ellis and their parents, but it’s never lasted since, but Gunner hasn’t given up. Ellis, while in the city, began group therapy. She found a nervous disposition where she could talk openly with strangers and from there things seemed to grow for her. She started to make friends within the group, and then outside it with their friends, and though eventually they drifted apart that nervous habit stayed and helped her in a very strange way. How she ended up driving a yellow cab was another strange story. She landed it through a friend after she decided she wasn’t ready to go back to studying after two years had lapsed, and a long conversation led to them concluding it was a good job for her since she was chatty, could listen to people, and had an odd liking for New York traffic, while still being able to shout at someone cutting her off at the lights. Gunner was who she told and though he asked if she was having another breakdown, he accepted it. The very thought of school was terrifying to her, and led to many panic attacks and Ellis just knew that she couldn’t go ahead with her studies now, and maybe not ever again. She also didn’t want to be her brother’s tag along for the rest of her life.

It was that turning point that helped Ellis become the person she is today. Her first tattoo was tiny and is now lost amidst the rest, but it was an addiction for her. Gunner, too, was shocked by that, but he considers it a rebellion against their parents and just says that he’s happy as long as she is, and then asks if she’s doing okay. She’s still finding herself, fighting through awkward phases she feels she ought to have gone through ten years ago, but with that she found the confidence to start taking her college classes online. The idea of a classroom still makes her chest tight, but Ellis knows she wants to finish what she started and see if that changes anything for her now. Yvonne and Warden are still very disappointed in her, and Ellis has a million things and a whole speech prepared for them, but she can never say it. They make her feel like a little girl who got a B instead of an A all over again and it kills her to come away from them without so much as opening her mouth and letting rip, letting them know that they are the reason she suffered and still suffers. Instead she just ignores them as best as she can and only sees or talks to them when Gunner begs her to. He’s the only one who can hold that sway and she understands why he wants some semblance of that family unit. If they have it then they’re at least one step closer to normal and not quite the scientific freak show the bullies taunted them about being.

YOUR ALIAS: Kim.
RULE WORDS: kidnappedbykim.
WHERE YOU FOUND US: You don’t want to know.
SAMPLE:

I don’t answer to you.

[kim]