THE PHYSICAL:

Hair: Straight. Medium blonde. Thick and long (just past her waist). Cut in bangs. Likes her hair loose, but wears headbands or barrettes sometimes.

Eyes: Average set. Average size. Light blue. Thin, light brown eyebrows.

Nose: Straight, average nose.

Mouth: Slightly thicker-than-average lips. Teeth are in good condition and straight.

Skin: Pale and smooth with a tendency toward pinkness. Has a few pale freckles across her nose.

Face: Thin but round-ish face. Pierced ears.

Age: By book 5, 13 years old.

Height: On the short side of average.

Weight: On the thin side of average.

Body: Generally looks a little fragile, but fairly healthy and nothing out of the ordinary.

Ethnicity: Caucasian—family has a ton of different roots. She and all her siblings look unrelated to one another.

Distinguishing features: Long hair and transparent gaze.

Voice: Has an average, soft feminine voice. No discernible accent. Doesn’t laugh often, and if she does it’s usually held back before it actually makes noise.

Gestures: She is actually remarkably still most of the time. Tends to seem unfocused even if she is listening. When uninvolved with other activities, she tends to place one or both hands against her middle, around the solar plexus area. Closes her eyes and presses her lips together when she’s upset.

Clothing and style: Doesn’t have much of a fashion sense and doesn’t much care. Likes clothes that fit snugly—her jeans are usually tighter rather than looser, and she likes stretchy pants too. Also likes sweaters, tee shirts, and fairly feminine blouses (depending on weather). Wears unobtrusive, tasteful earrings and often a single metal necklace (silver or gold) with some sort of generic charm on it. Wears tennis shoes or open-toed shoes.

THE PERSONAL:

General mood: Difficult to pinpoint. Depends on the situation. As a default she seems rather blank, but tends toward a sulky, brooding expression as if something is always bothering her at the back of her mind. Others see her as very quiet, very calm, and very lonely.

Talents and abilities: Her most unusual and most impressive talent is a widely-ranged and multi-faceted telepathic ability. Basically she is aware of other people’s thoughts and feelings without trying to be. Emotions and “loud” thoughts and very obvious “phrases” come out to her so she can’t not “hear” them, but she can also specifically focus on people and receive more input and is learning to give thoughts to other people. She is strongly affected by other people’s moods and physical feelings, and though she can recognize which ones are hers and which ones are other people’s, sometimes that gets confusing and frustrating, especially since other people’s push hers to the background sometimes. In her narrowest focus she experiences a feeling she refers to as “buzzing,” where she is simply aware of other people living around her, especially if they are awake. Sometimes something as simple as a neighbor having a nightmare can wake her up, or someone downstairs burning their mouth on hot soup can startle her. Besides the whole mind-reading aspect, she also has some less developed abilities in the fields of clairvoyance and psychometry—she has had prophetic dreams, can guess future chance events at a much better-than-average rate, and can sometimes know information based on an object or photograph or based on walking into a room or sitting on a bed. If she makes a “guess” that is supposed to be an equal chance of right or wrong (say, guessing heads or tails), she will guess right 75 to 80 percent of the time.

Weaknesses and shortcomings: In the name of isolating herself as much as she can, she comes off as stand-offish. She has trouble respecting other people sometimes because she knows some of their less desirable thoughts. With all her knowledge of what other people think, she’s wise beyond her years and sometimes mistakenly says things she shouldn’t—it’s hard to keep everything straight and monitor herself all the time. She finds it very easy to hate other people, though usually it’s not easy to see from her actions that she feels that way. Has a weak immune system. Has difficulty talking to people on the telephone.

Interests: Reading, music, television, and—believe it or not—psychology.

Pet peeves: People who think of intellectuals as “nerds.” People whose default is a bad mood. People who make snap judgments. When people argue or hit each other.

Phobias: She worries that eventually having to deal with other people will drive her crazy. She fears getting sick or hurt so that she has to go to the hospital (because she thinks being around lots of sick people would be painful for her). She also worries that she’ll eventually lose her ability to tell what thoughts belong to her and lose her discretion about whether to reply to things people haven’t said—actually sometimes that happens, but only when her guard is down (and that’s rare). Also fears people who are physically powerful.

Eating habits: Doesn’t much care about food. Tends to eat three meals a day and use condiments only if people tell her to—she is a rather mechanical eater and will choose cheap or easy rather than choosing for taste or nutrition.

Education: Currently in middle school (seventh grade).

Language abilities: Speaks very well and has very above-average literary skills. Speaks English, but because of her talent can understand absolutely any language if it is spoken to her in person.

Occupation: Just a student.

Political affiliation: None. Hates politics of all kinds.

Religious beliefs: Family is churchgoing, non-denominational Christians. Skyler goes to church with them but generally dislikes religion and religious people (she doesn’t have much use for “faith”). Believes there is probably a God of some kind.

Sexual orientation: Doesn’t think about it much, but she’s wired for boys.

Marital status: Has a boyfriend, Jason.

Family information: Raised by a single mother (Cheryl) and is the youngest of five, with two older sisters (Joyce and Zoe) and two older brothers (Dominic and Alex).

Friend information: She considers her brother Alex her best friend because outside of her family she doesn’t really do “friends.” Jason, her boyfriend, is fairly new on the scene—she isn’t sure how she feels about having a boyfriend since this is her first one, but Jason has some odd abilities himself and she just felt right about beginning that kind of relationship with him. She also likes Jason’s cousin Brad and some of Jason’s friends (he’s very popular). There are a few girls she gets along with in a school study group, and she has a strange acquaintance at a bookstore, a mid-twenties girl named Austin. Otherwise, she’s forging a very important relationship with the Handprints members, especially Nina and Ivy.

Other information: Even though Skyler’s telepathic ability is one of the most annoying things in the universe, she’s never wished she didn’t have it—she just wishes there was a way to turn it off sometimes. She’s glad to know what’s behind other people’s eyes, because when she’s forced to communicate with others without it (say, through the phone or through non-real-time communication), she feels very lost and confused. She also has trouble listening to the radio and the television because even though she can basically understand, she feels like she’s missing the full content and sometimes the words go by too fast. In Skyler’s family, her mother and one of her sisters believe they know what she can do, and the others have just noticed strange things now and then and done nothing about it. She learned to keep her mouth shut very quickly, because obviously being telepathic is very handy in finding out what disturbs other people and therefore should stay secret.

THE STORY:

Skyler had a life-threatening fever when she was a baby. After she recovered, she had a very odd sort of brain damage that caused her talent to manifest. From that point on she had the ability to know what people were thinking and feeling.

Throughout her life she seemed to alienate people because she always knew too much, and even though she usually knew what not to say it was apparent that she knew things she shouldn’t. Sometimes she would forget how she learned something and use the information in ways that made people suspicious. When she was very young she sometimes answered questions that hadn’t been asked. Even in the present, she sometimes responds to unspoken cues that couldn’t be acquired any other way.

With her family not understanding her and her elementary school years a blur of trying to find her footing in a world with too much going on, Skyler tried upon entering middle school to use her talent to help her become popular, but that didn’t work; even doing and saying everything she was supposed to and wearing the right clothes and listening to the right music didn’t make her one of them—it was like they could see through her the way she could see through them. Resigning herself to a life with no company, Skyler threw herself into the escapism of books and spent most of her free time reading.

Jason, a boy at her school, had a dream about her and approached her to talk about something they shared: Being different. Jason was born into a family in which unusual gifts were common, so he had always been proud of his ability, which is a limited form of clairvoyance. Other people generally know about it, but don’t think he’s spooky; he’s got them thinking of it as just a quirk of good luck and a secret “inside scoop.” He tried to teach Skyler how to incorporate her gifts into her personality the way he has, so she can also be well-liked and happier. After she met his cousin and heard similar philosophies, she began to think maybe she could do this too, but soon enough her world got rocked.

She had a persistent prophetic dream about her sister getting attacked by her boyfriend, and it was up to her to figure out what to do. That was when Nina found out about her and contacted her to get her to join the Handprints group. Not only did they want to help her with her personal issues and be her friends, but they wanted to help rescue her sister. She was instantly grateful to them.

They drafted a plan to save her sister and put it into action. Ultimately her sister got saved but there were some issues, and the whole experience made Ivy go a little psycho with wanting to use the group’s abilities to save more people. Skyler voiced arguments on both sides as to whether the group should do such a thing. Ivy also asked her to help find out another character’s true motives in the latter half of Book 5.

FAVORITE SKYLER QUOTES:

“There’s lots of levels of surface.” –Book 5, chapter 5

“It’s nice to be understood, but sometimes I wish I could lock myself away from the world and not have to deal with anyone. School is the worst . . . if you think kids are cruel, you should try hearing what they don’t say.” –Book 5, chapter 5

“I hate waiting for someone to finish talking when I already knew what they would say for like five minutes.” –Book 5, chapter 5

“Everyone has bad thoughts they don’t really mean. Even I do.” –Book 5, chapter 9