Issette

## Family Members

**Twoing:** Keon Tanaka

* Earth 2788
* Earth Prime

## Biography

### Personality and Characteristics

Issette is bubbly and outgoing. Issette has been Jarra's best friend since they were babies, having grown up in the same Hospital Earth year group. They are as close as sisters.

### Early Years

Issette has passionately collected soft cuddly toys since Nursery that she refuses to throw away.

When she was 14, she looked up information on her birth parents. As was typical for parents of Handicapped babies, they had divorced soon after Issette's birth and made Issette a Hospital Earth ward. When she tried to contact them, her father refused further contact and her mother kept changing her mind about visiting Issette until she finally cut off contact. This left Issette with serve emotional trauma.

Because of her positive experience with psychologists, Issette believes psychologists are extremely beneficial.

### Family

*When she accessed the records, it was obvious that Issette’s parents had done the standard thing. Dump the ape kid, blame the neanderthal genes on each other, and head in opposite directions. They’d been from Beowulf, in Gamma sector. Their divorce had been initiated the day after Issette was born. They’d both changed their names. Issette’s father was now on a frontier planet in Epsilon. Issette’s mother had moved too, but only as far as another planet in Gamma sector.*

#### Next Step Family

Next Step E241/1089

* Jarra Reeath
* **Issette**
* Keon Tanaka
* Cathan
* Maeth Ruggier
* Ross Washington
* Vina
* Ayden
* Selia

### Trivia

* "Whoopiz the Zen” is a weird fluffy toy that she keeps with her even through her move with Keon.
* Zen Arrath is her favorite singer.
* She thinks Rono Kipkibor has great "legs".

## Summary

Issette has a larger role in the prequel novellas than in the original trilogy, where she takes on a supportive background role.

### Earth Girl Novellas

Issette helps Jarra study for the theory part of her pilot license and organizes Keon and Cathan with what they should help Jarra with.

### Jarra’s best friend, Issette

*The following is a excerpt from a Blog posting that the author Janet Edwards did in 2013 at Guest Post: A Glimpse Through Other Eyes by Janet Edwards*.

> *It was my last party in one of Hospital Earth’s residences. I’d been dreaming about this moment for years. At midnight, it would be Year Day 2789, and me and my friends would become 18 and legally adult. Tomorrow we’d be packing our things, and the following day we’d be leaving. There’d be no more Principal giving us orders, no more staff nagging us, and no more rules. We’d be free!*
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> *I was wildly excited and scared stiff, both at the same time. We’d be free at last, but we’d be leaving behind everything we knew. The group of nine of us who’d grown up through Nursery, Home and Next Step together would be splitting up to go on different University courses. When it was just before midnight, and everyone started singing Old Lang Zine, I was on the edge of crying.*
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> *‘Do you know how old that song is?’ said Jarra. ‘Old Lang Zine dates from a thousand years ago in 1788.’*
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> *I groaned. Jarra and I have been best friends all our lives, and I love her dearly, but her obsession with history drives me crazy. I must have told her a thousand times that it bores me to death.*
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> *I put my fingers in my ears. ‘Bad Jarra! This is a party not a history class!’*
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> *‘But it’s fascinating,’ she said. ‘Robert Burns wrote the . . .’*
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> *I picked up my glass of Fizzup and threw it over her to shut her up, then burst into tears. Jarra and I had had neighbouring cots in Nursery, neighbouring rooms all through Home and Next Step. She’d not just driven me mad talking about history, she’d comforted me when I got depressed, rescued me when I got in trouble, and been there for me whenever I needed her.*
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> *I thought of all the times we’d stayed up late at night, giggling over vid stars, complaining about teachers and staff, and taking opposite sides whenever we discussed parents. I’d talk wistfully about my unknown parents, wondering what star system they lived in, hoping they regretted their decision to hand me over to be a ward of Hospital Earth and run away from the stigma of having a throwback baby. I’d daydream about having contact with my parents one day, while Jarra ranted in anger about hers, insisting she never wanted to have contact with people who’d rejected her at birth.*
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> *And now I was going to study medicine at University Earth Europe, while Jarra had some mad idea of lying her way into an off-world history class and fooling them into thinking she was a norm like them. We’d call each other of course, and meet up sometimes, but it wouldn’t be the same as having neighbouring rooms.*
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> *Jarra was maddening sometimes, but I was going to miss her terribly*.
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### Earth Girl Trilogy

Issette starts twoing with Keon almost immediately after they leave their next step, since they are at the same university campus. They do get a contract fairly soon after starting to see each other. She also organizes an art representative for Keon for his light sculptors.

Whenever Jarra is injuried she is there for her and visits her in the hospital.

When Keon is recruited as a Military Consultant working on the Alien laser light communications, she moves with him to Military Base 79 Zulu in the Americas and transfer her medical schooling to the University in America. She had always dreamed of having a proper house to live in, rather then a dome, so Keon got that for her at the military base.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Guest Post: A Glimpse Through Other Eyes by Janet Edwards
2. ↑ Edwards, Janet. Earth Girl (Earth Girl series Book 1) (p. 180). Prometheus Books. Kindle Edition.
3. ↑ Edwards, Janet. Earth and Fire: An Earth Girl Novella (EGN Book 1) (p. 21). Wallam-Crane Press. Kindle Edition.