Profile
Personality
Tabatha has a tough and abrasive personality. Having been raised in an emotionally abusive household, she has a lot of self-loathing brought about by her father’s relentless pushing. She grew up never feeling good enough or worthy of love and this manifests in her lashing out at others, especially when she sees injustice or imbalance in the world. She hates feeling like others are getting something they didn’t work hard for and conversely empathizes with people who fight hard to get something but still fail, as she constantly feels like a failure herself.
She sees the world as unfair and unjust and often feels powerless to do anything about it. She wants more than anything to be loved but rarely feels deserving of it, even when someone shows her love.
Tabatha’s temper is often jokingly attributed to her red hair and the stereotype that’s attached to red-headed women with “fiery tempers.” She hates whenever anyone brings this up because she secretly hates being red-headed and sees it as another reason why she’s a failure.
Early Life
For as long as she could remember, Tabatha knew her father hated her. She never understood why, and he never said those words directly to her, but she knew he did. Her earliest memories of her father are of him looking at her with disgust in his eyes as if she’d done something wrong. She soon found out that it wasn’t that she’d done anything wrong, but that something about her was wrong. When she was five, she overheard her parents arguing in their room and Ken mentioned Tabatha’s hair, which was becoming more and more red as she got older, and how angry it made him. It was then that Tabatha developed a complex around her hair color.
Months later, it became apparent to her why her father hated her. It had to do with her cousin, Ashley, and how talented, skilled, and apparently perfect she was. Not only did the Summersons dote on the young girl, but it seemed all of her father’s friends did too. Everyone loved Ashley and when her father thought she couldn’t hear, he would often compare Tabatha to her older cousin. Because Tabatha was born a few weeks after the cutoff to start school, it meant that even though she and Ashley were close in age, Ashley would be a year ahead of her in school. This seemed to be a source of contention for Ken, and it was the catalyst for putting Tabatha in private school the following year.
For years, Tabatha felt like she was in competition with her cousin, one that she was losing despite constantly doing better than her in every measurable metric. Tabatha went to an all-girls academy in the nearby town of Blandale and worked hard to get straight As in all subjects and move to advanced classes, but nothing ever seemed to be enough.
Tabatha grew up jaded and put upon. She was constantly being compared to her cousin and resented Ashley for her freedom and her loving, carefree parents. As a result, she constantly taunted, teased, and bullied Ashley since she was bigger than her. She didn’t know why she had to be better than her cousin, she just knew that when she was, it made her father happy. This changed slightly after Ashley had her accident at age eight, when Tabatha taunted her into going into the woods without Wayne. She felt some guilt and remorse for her cousin’s accident, and stopped overtly bullying Ashley, though she still resented her and picked on her.
The Action & Adventure Club
Though she wasn’t fully aware of it, Ken and Victoria often fought about the way he was relentlessly pushing Tabatha to reach some unattainable goal. When Tabatha became high school aged, Victoria put her foot down and the sheltered girl was able to have more freedom and allowed to go out into Greengale on her own after school and on weekends. It was during the summer of 2015 that she learned about the Action and Adventure Club which had become more and more popular over the past few years and was all the teens of Greengale could talk about.
After visiting the Greengale Indoor Sports Park and seeing what the Action and Adventure Club was all about, she was intrigued and started visiting it more often. She met Ace Eastman there and developed a crush on him. He seemed larger than life, and despite coming from a wealthy family, very down to earth and kind, the exact opposite of the snobby rich girls she’d spent most of her school career with.
As she started spending more time at A&A, she also met Veda Guardman, the unofficial matriarch of the group, and the mother of Ashley’s best friend Wayne. Mrs. Guardman seemed to take an instant interest in the young girl, and Tabatha formed a bond with her. Though Tabatha’s mother had been loving and caring, she also worked long hours and rarely had time for her daughter, meaning that Tabatha spent most of her time with her father who worked from home. Mrs. Guardman was the loving, available parental-figure she needed, always willing to listen, and always treating her as if she was the most special person in the world.
Tabatha found that she was spending all of her summer days at the adventure park and even began helping the teens that ran A&A, discovering she had a gift with marketing and sales, which also meant helping Ace. She was invited to officially join the group just before school started again with the hope that she’d be able to help bring in teens from her private school in the neighboring town.
Tabatha begged her parents to let her join A&A. Ken refused at first, saying that it was an unnecessary distraction It was ultimately Veda Guardman who convinced him to change his mind. Tabatha was in awe of the matriarch managing to stand up to her overbearing father and force him to change his stance, something he rarely did, and her attachment to Mrs. Guardman only grew after that.
Through A&A, Tabatha was able to develop some real friendships, and she began to see her life as more than just a series of goals. Her personality softened some and she slowly became happier, especially since she was earning her own money in the process. However, because Ashley was also a member, she still felt somewhat isolated from the core group of teens that ran A&A. She constantly felt inferior to her cousin and envied how everyone treated her, especially Wayne who was always at Ashley’s side and would do anything for her. Tabatha began to internalize this inferiority, wondering if her father was right. Was the shy, mousey, bubbly girl just somehow better than her?
Never Enough
As Tabatha worked with A&A more, she developed a great bond with Ace, whom she had a crush on. She was shocked when, after a year of working with the group, he asked her out. She was stunned that the older boy liked her and she eagerly accepted.
However, this excitement was short-lived. Her father did not want her to date, especially Ace. Though he didn’t offer a particular reason, it seemed clear what he thought. She wasn’t good enough for the son of the wealthiest person in all of Greengale, if not the entire state. Victoria tried to intervene on Tabatha’s behalf, but it seemed Ken would not relent. Surprisingly, Veda Guardman intervened on Tabatha’s behalf again. It was unclear how she did it, but once again the matriarch prevailed where even her own mother had failed.
Though Tabatha was grateful for Mrs. Guardman’s help, she began to feel that maybe her father was right that she wasn’t good enough for Ace and even decided not to go out with him, but Ace’s relentless pursuit finally won out and the two started dating. Even though Tabatha was happy, having made friends and even a boyfriend, she still felt empty. She never felt like she was enough, not for her father, and certainly not for Ace. He was popular and could date any number of girls. He was a year older which meant he’d go off to college before her. She knew that once that happened, he’d eventually break up with her, if not right before leaving, then after he was gone and met someone better than her. She decided to just enjoy the relationship while she could, knowing that it had an expiration date, and focused on her plans to leave Greengale behind as soon as she could.
Working with A&A meant that Tabatha regularly earned money. This was one of the only reasons her father tolerated her participation as she was able to “earn her keep” as he put it. What he didn’t know was that the money she brought home was only part of the money that she earned. Calvin Eastman was very generous to the team as A&A brought in a lot of business and profits. Since they weren’t officially their own business, all of that money went directly to the Greengale Indoor Adventure Park ledger. However, Calvin knew that this was not fair, so he set aside a percentage of the profits each year for the teens. Each of them had their own separate account that they would gain access to at the age of eighteen.
Though Tabatha had been told this, she never shared it with her parents, fearing that her father would somehow try to lay claim to the money if he knew. After explaining her reasons, she convinced Calvin Eastman and Mrs. Guardman to help her keep the secret, and not disclose how much money she really had coming to her.
Her goal was to leave town as soon as she graduated high school and never look back, using the money to go to college somewhere far away so she could start a new life. Things changed, however, when in the summer of 2017, Tabatha’s house exploded in a tragic accident with her parents in it. This happened while she was away with the A&A Club on their summer trip.
Though she had been miserable at home to the point where she dreamed about fleeing as soon as she could, suddenly loosing her family and home all in one day completely derailed her. She sank into a form of depression and felt guilty for all the mixed emotions she had for her parents, especially her mother. A part of her felt that her secret desire to flee from home, without even telling her parents, had karmically caused the accident to happen, granting her wish in a twisted way.
After that, Tabatha went to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousin. There, she got to witness firsthand exactly what kind of loving environment Ashley grew up in and it made her even more miserable. She couldn’t understand why she never felt that kind of love and affection from her own parents and concluded that her father had been right: there was something wrong with her. She began to think that she was cursed.
Things became even worse when, after only a few weeks of living at her aunt and uncle’s house, she began to realize that they were looking at her oddly, as if there was something wrong. Whenever the accident was mentioned, their demeanor changed, and it was clear they were keeping something from her. Was the accident more than what she realized? Was it not really an accident at all? Had someone purposefully killed her parents?
Tabatha became overwhelmed by a torrent of emotions, guilt, and confusion, not knowing what to think. All she knew was that her entire world had blown up in one day, and now she didn’t know what the rest of her life held. She was determined to find out the truth, no matter what it took, hoping that it might also uncover the truth about her.
Comments