Kimberly Finkle

**Kimberly Finkle** is a new work-study student who comes from Gilbert, Arizona, a small town that is predominantly white.

## History

### Childhood

Kimberly's parents were often working when she was a child, so she spent a lot of time with her nana. Once, her nana had a stroke while they were working on a puzzle together.

### Arrival at Essex

Both of Kimberly's parents came to drop her off at Essex. When they got her to room, she was excited to meet Bela Malhotra and Whitney Chase. While they were talking, Leighton Murray came in, but left quickly, believing her room assignment to be an error. After their parents left, they went to a dorm meeting, where Frude Rasmunssen, their freshman advisor, introduced himself and had them share a time when they were scared to bond them.

The next day, Kimberly went to her work-study interview, where she got a job at Sips, where she met Lila and Canaan, her co-workers. Back at her dorm that evening, she tried to console Leighton, who had shut herself in her room after finding out her high school friends had asked not to room with her, but Leighton asked her to leave, so she went back to playing Uno with the other girls. While they played, Nico Murray came to the door looking for Leighton and Kimberly was immediately attracted to him.

Max, Kimberly's boyfriend, surprised her by driving up from Princeton to see her for the weekend. That night, they had sex in the common room of the dorm. The next morning, he dumped her, saying he wanted them both to be free.

Leighton, through her brother, got an invitation for herself and her roommates to go to a frat party. Kimberly went reluctantly, but after getting knocked to the floor by a guy doing a keg stand, she decided to leave. On her way out, she ran into Nico. She told him about the bad day she'd been having. He offered her dry clothes in exchange for her agreeing to stay at the party. However, she left soon after when Bela came to her and said she wanted to leave.

### Start of Classes

Kimberly was eager to start classes. She was taking French Revolution and Romanticism and considered French her best class. She went to class and found that her classmates spent the summer traveling and interning at places, while she spent the summer working at a kennel. After class was over, Professor Cassel had her stay back and told her the class might be too advanced for her. She suggested dropping it, but Kimberly insisted she could catch up.

Desperate to keep up, Kimberly skipped on going out and studied. Frude encouraged her to go out and make friends, so she decided to join Bela and Jocelyn, who were going to a naked party. When they arrived, Kimberly and Bela struggled with undressing until they saw Jocelyn do it. They stripped down together and entered the party. Inside, they still struggled to get comfortable and mingle. After talking to Jocelyn about her secret, they decided to start drinking to get more comfortable. Jocelyn also taught them to mircoglance to check people out.

After the party, Kimberly went to Nico to ask him to tutor her in French. He agreed to do it.

Kimberly met Nico at a coffee shop and they had a conversation in French and he helped her with her pronunciation. They made plans to meet up again and watch The Golden Girls in French, but when she showed up at his frat house, he wasn't there. When she called, he asked if they could do it another time. Disappointed, Kimberly went home and started cleaning out the dorm fridge, which had developed a bad smell. Through this, she learned that the fridge was unplugged, which is why the food rotted and started stinking.

### Alumni Party

Bela invited Kimberly to go as her plus one to the Catullan alumni party. Kimberly didn't have anything suitable to wear to the party, so they went shopping and Bela convinced Kimberly to buy a dress she really couldn't afford, saying she could leave the tag on and return it after. At the event, Kimberly felt awkward because Canaan and Lila were working as servers. She tipped them overly generously and when she found out no one else was tipping, she drew attention to them being students on financial aid, knowing it would attract more tippers. At the end of the night, Lila and Canaan gave Kimberly back all her fake tips, plus a cut of what they made, because they wouldn't have made anything without her.

Later that night, Nico commented on her photo from the evening complimenting her dress, so she decided to pull off the tag and keep it.

The next morning, while talking to Bela and Whitney about the comment, Kimberly saw that Nico had deleted it. She said she refused to overthink about why that might have happened. Despite this assertion, Kimberly went to Canaan for insight on what Nico might be thinking. She decided to post a story on Instagram and see how quickly he watched it. When he watched it within two minutes, Jocelyn and Bela told her that meant he was into her. When he invited her to the Theta party, she attended, but barely saw him. He found her as she leaving, apologizing for not talking to her at the party. He offered to walk her back to her dorm. They stopped at a bench on the way back and Kimberly asked him about the comment. He admitted he'd deleted it because he didn't want anyone getting the wrong idea because she's his sister's roommate and he's tutoring her. When Nico left to go back to his dorm, Kimberly looked at her phone and realized in horror that it was after 1 AM and she'd missed an assignment deadline for one of her classes.

### Parents Weekend

In preparation for their parents arriving for the weekend, the residents of the dorm met up to talk about it. Bela suggested they all share the lies they'd told their parents that they wanted each other to corroborate, which everyone else agreed was a good idea. Kimberly told her parents she went to church every weekend and her priest was named Father Steve.

Kimberly's mother came to the parents weekend and they were so worried about underdressing for the dinner that they overdressed. Carol also brought bag hooks as presents for the girls. After looking at the menu, Kimberly and Carol became uncomfortable at the high prices. Leighton's dad offered to pay, then Bela's dad offered to split it. Whitney's mom then said she had to insist on paying because legally, any gift she receives over $50 is considered a bribe. Kimberly broke out in hives and excused herself from the table. Leighton followed her to the bathroom and gave Kimberly her credit card to cover her portion of the bill because she saw how uncomfortable she was with the prices. Kimberly reluctantly agreed. However, this ruse was revealed when the bill was returned and Leighton's dad opened it to give people's cards back only to find Leighton's in there. Carol was embarrassed and insisted on paying. She then told Kimberly she knew dinner was going to be expensive and she'd saved for it. When Kimberly said she was having trouble fitting in at Essex, Carol encouraged her not to pretend to be someone she wasn't. Kimberly met up with Nico and went back to his dorm room with him.

The next morning, Kimberly woke up in Nico's bed. Kimberly repeatedly made excuses to leave work in order to continue hooking up with him. Her frequent tardiness led to her getting into trouble with Roger, though Lila was intrigued by her sex life. When Kimberly confessed that her grade in econ was slipping, Lila suggested she ask Professor Bennett for extra credit, which Lila herself had done the year before. Bennett agreed to give it to her in exchange for help with his research. He left her to get started, but instead of working, she called Nico to come to the office so they could hook up again. Bennett interrupted them. Kimberly begged Bennett for another chance, but he said she'd had enough chances and told her to leave. Worried about passing her class, Kimberly told Nico she needed to go home that night and study. Nico showed her a filing cabinet at Theta that had tests and assignments that professors recycled year after year and offered her the econ test. She insisted that she couldn't cheat.

### Cheating

Kimberly committed herself to studying every moment, including while at a tailgate party before Whitney's soccer game. While they were watching the game, Kimberly asked Bela and Leighton about her frequent urge to urinate and they told her she had a UTI, which she realized was from having frequent sex with Nico. Kimberly was excited to go to Nico's birthday party, but she ended up learning at the party that Nico had a girlfriend. She left the party, taking the copy of the econ test with her.

While venting about her problems at work, Kimberly admitted to Canaan after he found the test she'd taken that she was planning to use it to cheat. He warned her not to do that, saying she wasn't equipped to get away with it. Despite this, Kimberly hid the test in a bathroom stall near her classroom and used her UTI as an excuse to make frequent trips to check answers. On one such trip, she found the test paper gone. When she went to leave the bathroom, she found her professor waiting for her, holding the test paper.

Because of her actions, Kimberly had to face a meeting with President Lacey and the honor board. As she prepared for this, she told her dad what had happened. He said he was disappointed in her. Lila said that the only way for Kimberly to avoid expulsion was to turn over evidence that the Thetas were keeping tests stored to cheat. Kimberly decided to use the Anything But Clothes party to steal from the filing cabinet and wore a gift bag for that purpose. While Kimberly was loading the bag with files, it ripped and then Nico walked in. Despite this, he told her to take them in order to keep herself from being expelled.

Kimberly explained the pressure that was on her to succeed and how much her family had sacrificed so she could go to Essex. Then she handed over the files she'd taken and waited for their judgment. She later got an email saying she wasn't being expelled, but her scholarship was revoked, leaving her having to find an extra $23,000 a semester to pay her tuition.

### Annual Snow Run

As a result of her turning in the files, Nico and several other senior Thetas were expelled. The house was also prohibited from throwing any more parties. Kimberly and her suitemates were banned from the premises. With her scholarship lost, Kimberly had to go to the financial aid office to apply for a loan. She did so, but found out she could only get one if her parents co-signed and she'd be paying it off for most of her life. Since she couldn't tell her parents, Kimberly decided to get a second job captioning an Australian reality show. Unable to focus with a new student, Jackson, having sex next door, Kimberly gave up and went to the Snow Run and then a party. When she saw Jackson at the party, she confronted him and he gave her his number and said to text when he was being too loud and he'd stop.

With the frats all mad a them, the girls decided to throw their own party. But when no one showed up, they decided they needed to make things right with the frat.

Professor Hennessey invited Kimberly to dinner at her place and after learning that she had a Syrian student staying in her guest room, Lila suggested that Kimberly could ask her to co-sign the loan. At the dinner, Kimberly asked Hennessey to co-sign and she agreed after some consideration. Then Hennessey's husband hit on her. When Hennessey came to Kimberly to tell her something, Kimberly admitted to him hitting on her, but promised she would never do anything with him. Hennessey had just planned to tell Kimberly she couldn't co-sign the loan because her accountant was worried about if affecting her credit, but was upset to learn what her husband had done and kicked him out.

### Selling Her Eggs

While leaving the loan office after telling them she lost her co-signer, Kimberly saw a pamphlet about selling her eggs. After some deliberation, she decided to do it.

Since they were in the same Irish literature class, Jackson asked Kimberly to work together. She showed up, but learned he'd also invited Fred, who liked Kimberly. He told Kimberly it was because he wanted to help Fred, because guys like him couldn't usually get with hot girls like Kimberly.

Kimberly started hormone treatments in order to produce more eggs to be retrieved. She struggled to give herself the shots, so she had Leighton give them to her. After the shots were completed, Kimberly planned to have Travis take her to Boston for the retrieval. Leighton heard this and said she'd order a car service and go with her instead. When they arrived, Kimberly struggled to sign the forms because she was worried about the anesthesia. Leighton reassured her and she signed the forms. Once the procedure was over, they rode back to their dorm and Leighton got Kimberly set up on the couch to recover. She planned to stay with Kimberly, but Kimberly saw that she wanted to go to the Hack-a-Thon and said she'd be fine on her won. When she got up to go to the bathroom, though, she locked herself out of the dorm. When Jackson saw that she was locked out, he offered to let her wait at his place until one of her roommates got home. Whitney later came and took her home.

After having Jackson take care of her, Kimberly worried she'd been "med-zoned," like Jackson saw her as someone who needed a caretaker. At work, Roger, the manager, was let go and Kimberly encouraged Lila to try to get the job. Lila was upset that Kimberly thought she would want the job, confusing Kimberly. Lila came back to her later and apologized for overreacting. She admitted that she thought she'd be good for the job, but the idea of interviewing made her really nervous. Kimberly agreed to practice with her until she was ready to do it. Newly confident after helping Lila, Kimberly confronted Jackson, saying she was healed and not fragile and didn't need him checking on her. The two of them went back to his room, where they hooked up. They had frequent loud sex, to the annoyance of her suitemates.

### Food Workers Strike

Kimberly went to work one day to learn that the campus food service workers were going on strike to get a wage increase. She was immediately supportive and told her suitemates not to eat at any campus eateries to avoid crossing the picket line. She was upset when Jackson and several other students entered the dining hall to eat anyway, so she decided to call Whitney's mother, Evette Chase, for help. She asked Senator Chase to come speak at their rally, hoping her influence would actually help them make a change. Lila, as a manager, was unable to strike with them and was upset with Kimberly for making things harder for her. In an attempt to placate the workers, President Lacey created a "mental health bubble" for students who needed a pick me up. Senator Chase told him it wasn't going to fix anything and just showed how out of touch he was. Kimberly took the senator to film a speech. She'd prepared one, but Senator Chase refused to read it. Instead, she pulled out a single quote she liked. When Jackson walked by, Kimberly explained that they were not eating at the dining hall to support the striking workers and he agreed to join that effort. Lila came to the event and said she supported the workers, but wore a disguise to avoid being recognized. Just as Senator Chase was about to go on, her assistant informed her that the video they'd recorded got some bad press because the quote she liked came from a person who owned slaves. She tried to leave to save face, but Kimberly begged her to stay and said she could change the narrative by getting ahead of it herself. This worked and they were able to bring attention to the real issue at hand. Senator Chase then met with President Lacey and they agreed to the workers' demands.

When Lila and Canaan pointed out that Kimberly seemed to like really hot guys even if she didn't have a lot in common with them, she became insecure about her relationship with Jackson. She tried to get to know him better and find things they had in common. She eventually told him her concern directly, but he didn't see it as a problem. He liked that they were different and said he liked learning new things from her. They also agreed that they were dating.

### Canaan's Awards Banquet and End of Year

Kimberly was doing the word scramble in the school paper when she saw an article about Canaan, who was being honored by the economics department. Canaan had planned to skip the awards banquet, but after talking to Kimberly, he decided to go and asked if she would accompany him. He'd asked Zoe, but she was busy. Kimberly happily accepted. After the awards were given out, Kimberly and Canaan danced together, continuing when a slow song came on. At the end of the night, Canaan walked Kimberly home and thanked her for encouraging him to go and going with him. Instead of going home, Kimberly went to Jackson's room and told him she thought they should break up.

Kimberly went to Lila and confessed to having feelings for Canaan. Lila told her to keep them to herself because she wasn't Canaan's type and telling Whitney could ruin her living situation. Then Kimberly found out that Canaan had never actually invited Zoe to the party, meaning she was his first choice. At the last party of the year, Canaan invited Kimberly to an afterparty She initially declined, thinking of Whitney, but then left the party and asked Canaan about him inviting her to the banquet and lying about inviting Zoe first. When he admitted to lying, she leaned in and kissed him.

## Relationships

### Romantic

#### Max

Kimberly began dating Max in high school. During this time, they never had sex because he said he wasn't ready. After they graduated, he went to Princeton while she went to Essex College. Shortly after move-in, Max drove to visit Kimberly at her dorm. That night, they had sex. The next morning, Max ended their relationship, saying he wanted both of them to be free.

#### Nico Murray

Kimberly was immediately attracted to Nico after meeting him when he came to visit his sister's dorm. After realizing her French class was a lot harder than she expected, Kimberly went to Nico and asked him to tutor her. They met up and he tutored her and suggested they watch the French version of The Golden Girls together, but then stood her up. After dinner with their parents for parents weekend, the two of them kissed and went back to Nico's dorm. Their brief fling was cut short when she found out Nico had a girlfriend.

### Family

She has a cousin who proposed using a nursing home flash mob.

## Notes and Trivia

* She's the first in her family to go to college.
* Her phone number is 480-639-5784.
* She was the high school valedictorian.
* She talks to her Grandma Joan in her sleep.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Le Tuteur
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Welcome to Essex
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Naked Party
4. ↑ Kappa
5. ↑ That Comment Tho
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Parents Weekend
7. ↑ I Think I'm a Sex Addict
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 The Surprise Party
9. ↑ Cheating
10. ↑ The Truth
11. ↑ Winter is Coming
12. ↑ Frat Problems
13. ↑ The Short King
14. ↑ Will You Be My Girlfriend?
15. ↑ Taking Shots
16. ↑ Doppelbanger
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 The Essex College Food Workers Strike
18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Pre-Frosh Weekend
19. ↑ Sex & Basketball
20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 The Rooming Lottery