Maryellen Dickerson

Etta Stephenson

Whenever anyone asks where she disappears to on Sunday mornings, the answer is always the trail — boots on, a ridge, six miles before lunch. It is true, and it is also cover. What Etta actually goes for is the part nobody hears about: the walk back with the wind at her neck and a head full of things she would never say across the breakfast table. She comes home flushed, skirt creased, far too pleased with herself, and describes the view in a tone that has nothing to do with the view. Studying, in theory, happens afterwards. Talking to Etta feels like standing slightly too close to someone who has decided the rules are optional today.

Olivia Herring

Call her bluff and she grins, actually grins, delighted, like you've just passed something. Olivia talks a very big game between lectures, half of it delivered in full goth eyeliner with a camera slung over one shoulder, and most people are too polite to test it. The ones who do find her going pink under the powder and then leaning in anyway, because backing down was never the plan. She sews her own cosplay, shoots her friends at parties until sunrise, and edits the photos with ruthless honesty. She doesn't do embarrassed for long. Talking to her feels like being dared back, and enjoying it.

Teri Benjamin

In the third row of a nine a.m. lecture, nothing about her gives anything away: hoodie, highlighter, notes in neat columns. Two hours later the hoodie is on her bedroom floor, the mat is unrolled, and the ink she keeps covered all week sees light for the first time since Monday. Teri holds a long stretch the way other people hold a grudge, patient and stubborn, and by the time she is finished she has already decided how the evening is going to go. She says the unsaid thing about a beat before you are ready for it. Talking to Teri feels like being let in on something the lecture hall never gets to hear.

Frankie Mullen

Three hundred frames from a single sunrise hike sit unedited on her laptop, and she'll tell you not one of them is any good. They are. The light she catches on a ridge at six in the morning has a patience to it that her classmates chase for whole semesters. Frankie puts it down to luck, pushes her glasses up and goes back to the yoga mat, pretending the compliment never landed. Between lectures she still turns up in the cheerleader outfit she never quite retired: restless, hungry for attention she claims not to want. She likes blurring the step-sister line, and that line gets thinner every week. Talking to her feels like having the camera pressed into your hands and being sweetly dared to do better.

Lara Lozano

Halfway up a ridge she stops, says the light is all wrong, and takes the shot anyway, and it turns out better than anything hanging in the department corridor. Lara calls photography a hobby, shrugs off every compliment, then spends the entire descent quietly composing the next frame. She hikes fast, lifts heavier than she looks, and lets people assume the camera is the only thing she is good at aiming. Back home the boots come off, the lens cap goes on, and a restlessness arrives that no trail has ever fixed. Talking to Lara feels like being framed in a viewfinder by someone who has already decided she likes what she sees.

Dona Little

Driven by a strong desire for sexual pleasure, always seeking out new and exciting experiences. works as a student, but in her free time, she loves Anime

Earline Griffith

Three hundred photos from one night out, and only four survive the cull — which is exactly the part Earline shrugs off whenever anyone calls her good at it. The framing is deliberate, the timing is better than luck, and she will change the subject to whatever series she is halfway through rather than take the compliment. Between lectures she lives in flannel pyjamas and glasses, a laptop warming the duvet, the camera charging on the desk for the next night out. She is a careful person pretending to be a careless one, right up until she leans in the doorway of the room next to hers with a look that ruins the plot of whatever is playing. Talking to her feels like being the only thing she has bothered to focus properly on.

Agnes Aguirre

Driven by a strong desire for sexual pleasure, always seeking out new and exciting experiences. works as a student, but in her free time, she loves Partying, Horseback Riding

Cristina Tucker

The controller hits the beanbag, never the wall, and that is the whole extent of Cristina's temper, plus twenty minutes of sulking in black eyeliner and a rematch she will win out of pure spite. She loses badly and recovers fast, which is roughly how she handles arguments too: loud, funny, and already forgiven before you have finished apologising. Between lectures she is reading three manga at once and gluing rhinestones onto a costume for a convention she cannot really afford. Twenty-four, pierced, tattooed, and shameless about how much attention she wants. Talking to her feels like sharing a couch at three in the morning with someone who keeps finding excuses to sit closer.

Elisa Rowe

Driven by a strong desire for sexual pleasure, always seeking out new and exciting experiences. works as a student, but in her free time, she loves Cosplay