Ms. Susan Summers [Science - High School] (474 views)

Ms. Susan Juliette Summers

Ms. Summers, Susan. Her brother calls her a gold-digger, but he’s the only one allowed to call her that. To her daughter she is momma, and to her friends she’s just Susan. She hates the nicknames Sue and Susie and pouts if anyone calls her them.

32 years old, her birthday is January 20th.

Science Teacher at Metric High.

Female

Heterosexual

Susan teaches the science and chemistry courses for the High School. She’s a very relaxed teacher and as long as students actually turn in their work, it’s impossible to fail her class. Her class is very discussion based and hands-on based, so there’s a lot of field trips out into nature and experiments involving chemicals. Susan is a very intelligent woman despite her goofiness and, to those who actually have an interest in the subject matter, she can discuss it for hours. Sometimes during class, she’ll go on tangents about how cool things are.

Susan is known for being a bit of a pushover and an easy grader. She’s very nice, pretty, and a lot of people who take her class appreciate how easy she is. Susan has a passion for science and likes to teach but sometimes her class doesn’t challenge students who want to learn unless they particularly look for it.

Her best friend is Natalie Hall. They were pregnant with their daughters at, roughly, the same time. They bonded over that, and Susan has come to see Natalie’s family as her own. It’s almost like Natalie is her sister with how close the women are. All the time, Susan watches and babysits Annabelle just as Natalie babysits Adelaide. They often see each other every day not only because of their jobs but because their daughters are best friends, and nothing in the world could make Susan happier than when she found that out.

She’s friends with Willis Dillis, a professor over at the college. She likes him and his creative writing a lot and follows his blog. She thinks his sense of humor is a little out there but respects it anyway and if she has free time, she’ll pop on by his office to see what crazy stories he’s working on.

Susan also gets along well with Westley Coxx – and has a bit of an attraction for him – and he’s usually out with her and Susan and Johnathan. She doesn’t talk to him much outside of that group but definitely appreciates the view when she gets to.

Of course she’s close to her brother, and considers him one of the best people in her life no matter how abrasive his personality is.

n/a

Single.

n/a

5’3”

Black/bob length

Dark blue. Susan will wear some makeup to school every day, to look her best, and likes to collect it. However she doesn’t always use it. She likes to hoard makeup, and is particularly fond of mascara.

Feminine, she likes to wear cute dresses and blouses paired with skirts or slacks. She keeps it professional for school, but will wear something less conservative if she’s going out with friends.

Her smile is wide and notable

Brazilian-American

Morena Baccarin

Makeup, her students being successful, helping out students, watching science documentaries, space/the concept of space travel, time-travel films,

Her brother’s smoking habit, being left alone, driving/cars (their parents died in a car accident), feeling replaceable/in the way, failing students (she offers a lot of extra credit),

Talking a lot, smiling a lot when nervous

Susan loves to look up YouTube videos about cool space and science facts – and often shows them in her classes. She also likes to read books about oddball theories.

Science nerd, friendly, empathetic, understanding, intelligent, dedicated, hardworking, goofy

Clingy, overbearing, nosy, forgetful, overemotional, gullible,

Binghamton, New York.

Arthur and Susan both drive a 2002 Volkswagen that has seen better days. Arthur likes to drive so he’s the one who uses the car most often even though it’s legally in Susan’s name. He takes the car to and from work, and also usually drives for Susan when she needs to go long distances.

Susan was the only child of her household growing up. She was raised by two very loving and popular parents, Wren and Adelaide Summers. Ironically, Susan didn’t grow up as a perfect young angel like her brother seems to think she did. In fact, the two are more alike than he’ll probably ever know.

Susan wasn’t really that different than she is now, at first. It wasn’t until middle school hit that she became different. Susan’s attitude became lazier, she did less schoolwork, slept more in class, got involved with the wrong crowd. Susan was best friends with a boy named Johnny, who had a girlfriend Sheryl. Susan was caught at the movies with Johnny by someone, and, long story short, it resulted in some nasty rumors and for Susan to be outcast (8th grade drama… isn’t it wonderful?).

But she didn’t take it standing down—she lashed out at her peers and became cold and rude towards them. Johnny left her as a friend because Sheryl got extremely angry about them spending time together. Susan did well in school but when it came to socializing she did not even try. She cut off all of her hair for eighth grade and did everything to make herself stand out. The end result was that, on her 8th grade graduation day, Susan almost got in major trouble because she almost flipped off her peers when she got her ‘diploma’, turning towards them and shoving her right fist at them with the middle knuckle raised.

Despite everything, though, Susan had her family. She loved her family and wanted to start one of her own someday, a desire that increased when her baby brother Arthur was born when she was 14 and she immediately grew to love kids. She planned to go to a college no one in her school would go to and start over, get a teaching degree, and move on with her life. So during High School Susan focused on her grades and her grades alone, doing her best to ignore her peers. She became cold and put up with the bullies. She never lashed out, not once, and never did her self-esteem really deplete either because she had a goal and hope for the future.

Susan’s attitude problem faded by the time she was a senior, and when most of her classmates seemed to mature, she actually started to get along with them. She made up with Johnny and Sheryl (who had broken up by then, anyway) and then she became much more social. By the time she graduated high school she had good friends and could laugh about the past with them, and holds mostly fond memories of high school.

Devastation hit her, however, when she got a call at her summer job telling her that her parents had both been killed in an accident. The loss was horrible to her and she was suddenly forced to grow up way too fast. Her parents had never been rich, and though they left her everything in their will it wasn’t nearly enough to live off of for very long. The loss of Mr. and Mrs. Summers shook their hometown terribly and Susan was given a lot of breaks. The rent of her apartment was cut in half, so she could afford it with her summer job. Susan fell into a depression, missing her parents, who had been the only people there for her throughout her life. Without them, she felt like there was no one who seriously was there for her. She had friends, but they were just that—friends. She needed family and love.

For about a week she completely forgot about her baby brother, who was there at the apartment, too. Susan went through her life in a slump. She went to work, talked to people with a fake smile on her face, but when she got home she was a wreck, crying herself to sleep and wondering why she was the only one left behind.

As the funeral drew closer, Susan had to make the arrangements. She was numbly signing papers for it when she noticed something placed on her desk. It was a blue flower pen, a pretty thing that their next door neighbor sold. Susan looked down at her little brother, who had been the one who put the flower on her desk. He hadn’t been nearly as shaken by the deaths of their parents as she had, simply because he had no idea what was going on. Except, of course, that his parents weren’t around and his sister was crying every night.

That simple gesture was what woke Susan up. She wasn’t alone—she had Arthur. Her parents had left her to take care of Arthur, of course, and she’d been being excruciatingly selfish for thinking otherwise! She wound up hugging him for the first time since their parents had died that night, and spent the entire night playing with him instead of signing papers, and rocked him to sleep when he cried that night. Instantly she felt guilty. How many times had he cried himself to sleep, completely and utterly confused, with Susan wrapped up in her own little world?

Ever since that, Susan dedicated her life to her baby brother. She didn’t cry as much, and she now had a new goal since college was out the window: raising and living with her brother. The funeral was hard for her to go through, but she had Arthur (even though the 4 year old was very confused) for support.

For a year Susan lived in the same apartment that her parents had rented, but the landlord had no choice but to kick her and Arthur out since they couldn’t afford the full rent along with food, electricity, and clothes. Susan took this pretty optimistically and found a cheaper (though shaggier) apartment, and she and Arthur moved there. She picked up another job and, with this place’s cheap rent, it wasn’t hard to scrape by. Initially, she took the couch, but when Arthur got older (about 10) he pretty much forced Susan to take the bed. Since Susan knew her work performance was suffering due to sleeping on the couch she caved in, and that was how they lived. They had plenty of fun times and Susan noticed Arthur did a lot of things while Susan was at work and he was home from school—like cleaning, cooking (though his meals weren’t exactly good at first, they improved and he, as a result, became a better cook than Susan), and even doing little things that he knew Susan liked. It was completely adorable to Susan.

Susan eventually got a well-paying job in favor of her two minimum wage jobs as a secretary in a psychiatrist’s office. Her boss was kind of creepy and hit on her a lot, but that didn’t matter to Susan because as long as she just smiled and brushed it off she got her paycheck. With her newfound money she wanted to splurge and buy them all sorts of nice things, but Arthur (the ten year old) was the one who convinced Susan to be frugal. She couldn’t get over that!

When Susan told Arthur she’d always wanted to be a teacher, and he told her to do it, she explained that it took a degree. He said she just had to get a degree, and when she said that cost money he convinced her to put aside some of the money that she got at this new job for it. Susan actually thought that was a good idea and looked into online courses, and decided to take them. She felt a lot better doing that, and felt like she wasn’t betraying her younger self and actually was chasing after her dreams.

Between earning her degree and working, Susan didn’t notice too much about Arthur’s school life. She only knew when something was wrong when she was called by a teacher about his bad behavior and lectured him. After that, he caused no more ruckus, and she only knew his final grades. Susan tried to be a good mother figure to Arthur but sometimes she was too busy to ensure he got three meals a day.

When Arthur was about 13, Susan was able to finally enter the dating pool again. She had time now that he wasn’t a toddler. Her first boyfriend that she introduced Arthur to, however, was a disaster. Arthur wasted the man’s money, insulted him, and constantly kicked him under the dining room table. The man never called Susan back after that and Susan told Arthur he shouldn’t be rude. The second man was the same story. Susan lectured Arthur after that, told him to stop being so rude to these men!

After that Arthur and the men still didn’t get along but it was much more passive-aggressive. Arthur indirectly insulted them, shot them nasty looks, ect. Susan, annoyed by this point, just stopped introducing her boyfriends to Arthur. She decided unless it got really serious, to the point of possibly marrying the man serious, she’d never bother introducing him to a man again.

When Arthur got his first job at 15, Susan could finally devote more money towards her degree and took more classes a semester. She got her teaching diploma that summer, and looked desperately for a job opening. She eventually found a position that was a boarding school with dorming and apartments on campus, but it was an academy for the arts. She thought Arthur wouldn’t make it in and thus was willing to give up, but Arthur wasn’t. He filled out an application and told Susan he wanted to act. Susan believed this and quickly was hired for the position. Ever since, Susan’s been a teacher at Metric. Arthur entered the school as a student.

About three years ago Susan discovered she was pregnant and nine months later she had her baby Adelaide Lynn, named after her deceased mother. Susan’s boyfriend, Kasper, who she was very serious about had to move to Hungary. He already moved before Susan discovered she was pregnant and when she finally told him it was too late for him to move back. So Susan broke up with him but said if he could ever come to the states he was more than welcome to meet Adelaide, because she understood the reason he couldn’t come back was too important even though it hurt to be alone with the baby.

Though technically she was never alone—her younger brother Arthur helped her raise Adelaide and grew quite fond of the baby himself. Susan does find it hard to be a single mother again but now she’s much more financially stable than she was when she first raised Arthur. Adelaide’s a handful, but Susan is glad to have her regardless.

Now Arthur is going into college, and Susan couldn’t be prouder. She sobbed when he graduated high school and when he told her about his plans for the future she almost cried again at how sure he sounded. Susan’s pretty satisfied with her life at the moment—though an unfortunate downside to Arthur growing up is that there’s much Susan’s discovering that doesn’t set well with her—like the big fight they had about his smoking habit.

• Susan doesn’t like to talk about it much, but when she lost her parents she went into a severe depression. It wasn’t until she realized she had to take care of her baby brother than she managed to strive to overcome it. Working multiple jobs wasn’t something she necessarily had to do – she could have scraped by on one – but it helped give her a sense of purpose.
• Kasper leaving her behind also hurt her more than Susan is willing to admit to anyone, except Natalie when she’s had a few drinks. Susan was in love with him and pictured a happy-ever-after ending. When he left she was willing to let him go until she found out she was pregnant and that was when everything spiraled down for her. She thinks that, had she not had her brother around, she would have spiraled down into a depression similar to when she lost her parents. Though she knows she would have overcome it for Adelaide, it would have been too much for her to take raising the baby alone. And as much as she knew she could trust and rely on Natalie, she knows Nat had her own newborn and family troubles at the time. She just thought that she and Kasper would marry and raise Adelaide together.
• The song lyrics are from Overwhelmed by The Animal in Me.