Leap Day 1988, Chicago saw the birth of a baby girl, much like any other. The new parents wanted their baby girl to stand out in a crowd, and so they named her February Marlene Lancaster - Rue among family and friends. Rue's mother saw some success in finding commercial work for her baby girl - she was the poster child for a local diaper service for roughly two years. Perhaps that would set the tenor for the girl in later years. Being named for Marlene Dietrich certainly only fostered the notion of stardom as something she could be destined for. But unlike her middle-namesake, where Dietrich had been blonde and of middling height, Rue had red hair and shot up like a beanpole. She grew up admiring her Aunt - actually her father's cousin - Adrianne, who was in the Air Force, and travelled the world. Rue wanted to see the world as well, but knew jumping from planes wasn't quite her style. She spent many long hours babbling away excitedly to her best friend Samara when she would receive a postcard from some exotic location. Though for Rue, Amarillo, Texas felt exotic compared to Chicago.
Each generation witnesses some event that seems to reshape the very world around them. Something that impacts a person so, that they can tell you years later where they were, and what they were doing, the moment they heard the news of the tragedy. Pearl Harbor. The assassination of JFK. On September 11, 2001, Rue was in first period Social Studies, receiving a lecture from the instructor after she and Samara were caught passing notes to each other when the PA system crackled to life and they were informed that a plane had struck one of the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. The thirteen-year-old girl reached across the aisle to hold her friend's hand as she watched in horror as CNN played footage of the impact of the second plane. Much to her surprise, the world kept on spinning. Life went on. Not precisely as it had before, but things carried forward. School progressed, seasons progressed. Rue's world as she knew it wouldn't end for another three years. Years of dabbling in modelling paid off when, at eighteen, Rue was offered a contract that would take her to New York for a series of shoots, with the possibility of further work if her look turned enough heads. She excitedly talked her parents into allowing her to go, with Samara - herself a dancer, rather than a model - in tow to pursue her own prospects.
It was a crisp autumn day, and the two girls were exploring New York together, with a small group of friends they'd made in the city as their guides. On November 8, 2006, the world was tipped on its head again. And this time, the two friends were caught in the thick of it. There was a terrible crash, and panicked screams. Rue can remember Samara throwing her arms around her, and then waking up in the hospital. She had been found on the edge of the blast radius. No one in her group survived the blast that ripped through Midtown Manhattan. Many of the bodies were too badly destroyed to be identified. Rue's survival appeared to be a miracle. Even with Samara shielding her, it seemed Rue's injuries should have been more extensive. The search for survivors and bodies dragged on while Rue recovered from radiation poisoning. The first time Samara appeared to her, she was certain it was a dream. Then a symptom of her sickness. Her body was never recovered, but they both knew she had to be dead. A nurse would come in to check on Rue, and take no note of Samara. At first, Rue was convinced she was crazy. That Samara was no more than a figment of her guilty mind. As she saw it, if she hadn't lobbied so hard for Samara to share her adventure, her friend would still be alive.
Rue returned to Chicago after her release from the hospital, and held Samara's hand at her own funeral, where they buried an empty coffin. Before long, Rue checked herself into a mental health facility in hopes of ridding herself of the illusionary form of her friend. Rue spent the better part of a year feeling like a zombie for all the medication she was given to quell her hallucinations. Therapy was to yield little result at first, until one night, Samara told Rue that she was going to leave her. That despite her insistence that she was real - a ghost of some sort - and some dismay over the prospect of wandering the world without a friend to talk to. She did depart for a time, leaving Rue to her medicated stupor and the therapists that would attempt to bring her to terms with the devastating loss of her friend.
As news of people with extraordinary abilities - they would later be called the Evolved - began to come to light in the months that would follow the explosion in Manhattan, Samara decided that Rue must be among them. Her ability, as she saw it, was to see the dead. Returning to Rue's side, she told her what she had learned and was able to convince Rue that she had the ability Samara said she had. Reconciling Samara's existence, Rue set about convincing her therapists that she was sane enough to check out of the hospital.
It was a brave new world that Rue found herself in once she was off her medication and out amongst society once more. She registered as one of the Evolved. Unable to prove that she can actually see dead people, however, her registry card lists her as having the ability Limited Telepathy. She gathered what funds she had and moved to New York with Samara. If there was any place where she would be able to discover more about her ability and others like her, the great melting pot of New York would be it. The city seemed to be, to Rue, the forefront of all matters of Evolved affairs.
It wasn't long before she was making friends and rediscovering her zeal for life. Quinnie was Rue Lancaster's first love. Bright and talented, Quinnie was like the sun to the young girl. Perhaps it's simply the folly of young love — she chose the path of honesty with Quinnie. It started with telling her about being at the edge of ground zero. How it had nearly claimed her life, and had claimed the life of her best friend. Quinnie had lost someone dear to her too, and perhaps it helped form that strong bond between them. But in time, Rue told her girlfriend that Samara had never left her. That she could still see and communicate with her. Quinnie accepted it at first. But who can compete with a dead best friend? What girl can tolerate for very long the way her girlfriend talks to people who aren't there? The romance lasted only three months. Though Rue was devastated, she accepted Quinnie's offer to stay friends, even if they could never be that close again. She doesn't keep in touch as often as she probably should — a symptom of her broken heart.
The experience at least taught Rue a lesson in discretion. She isn't sure she'd believe someone telling her story, either. Though she professes to be a 'proud card-carrying Evo,' she keeps mostly to herself about her ability now. She swears up and down that the invention of the mobile phone is the greatest of the millennium, and Bluetooth is a godsend. Rue gets by with constant public conversations with Samara by having her phone glued to her hand, and a receiver in her ear. To support herself, she models part-time when she can find the work, and has worked various other part-time positions around the city. She hopes she'll get her big break someday, so she can get her life back on track and fulfil her dreams to see the world.
