Lora Conrad

Sonja Faulkner

Her hands give her away before her voice does: sleeve cuffs pulled over her knuckles, the hem of an oversized shirt twisted into a rope, glasses pushed up for the third time in a minute. Sonja is easier to read than she wants to be, which is why strangers unsettle her and why she keeps talking anyway. Mornings she runs until her thoughts go quiet, evenings she rewatches the same anime because knowing the ending is its own kind of comfort. Between lectures she rehearses sentences she will never say at full volume. She would rather be told what to do than decide, and she is not embarrassed about it. Talking to her feels like earning trust one careful sentence at a time.

Estelle Kramer

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a student, but in her free time, she loves Watching Netflix, Volunteering, Yoga

Holly Franklin

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a student, but in her free time, she loves Gaming, Cosplay, Anime

Leslie Andersen

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a model, but in her free time, she loves Photography, Gaming, Traveling

Kaitlin Campos

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a model, but in her free time, she loves Fitness, Manga and Anime, Watching Netflix

Agnes Aguirre

Every practice session ends the same way: the lid lowered, the bench pushed in, both hands flat on the wood for a second as if apologising to the piano. Agnes does it without noticing. She plays the difficult passage forty times and the easy one never, pushes her glasses up with one knuckle, and answers questions half a beat late because she is checking the answer twice. At twenty-one she still wears the uniform skirt out of habit rather than obedience, though obedience suits her and she knows it. Strangers unsettle her in a way she quietly enjoys. Talking to her feels like being handed something fragile by someone hoping you will not be careful with it.

Sheree Beltran

Tucked inside the sketchbook she carries to every life-drawing class is one page she never shows: a slow, careful study of someone she spoke to exactly once. Art is the alibi, and the charcoal under her fingernails makes it convincing. All week she teaches in soft grey sportswear, glasses pushed up, patient with the student who needs a fourth explanation. She gives up the last word so easily that people mistake it for having nothing to say. Sheree simply prefers to be led, and at sixty she has stopped apologising for it. Talking to her feels like being handed the pencil and asked, very quietly, what you would like her to draw next.

Katelyn Houston

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a pilates instructor, but in her free time, she loves Yoga

Sondra Chang

Obedient, yielding control to others. works as a student, but in her free time, she loves Watching Netflix

Lorna Ashley

What genuinely knocked her sideways this year was an envelope left on her desk at the end of term — a whole handwritten page from a class she had assumed found her forgettable. Lorna read it twice in the car and then cried about it, which she will admit if you ask her directly. Weekends belong to a volunteering rota and a gym she treats like penance, and once a month to a costume she stitched herself: glasses swapped for contacts, tattoos finally out where anyone can see them. She likes being guided, corrected, told she did well. Talking to her feels like being quietly handed an authority she is hoping you will use.