When Scarlett Hansen was born, it was under careful calculation and planning. There were no accidents with the Hansens, and she was budgeted for. Her parents, Roderick and Susan, were both carefully constructed business-minded folks (a lawyer and a literature professor) who detailed every minute of their life so there was no room for surprises, as the case had also been for their two previous children, Thomas and Elizabeth. The Hansens lived by strict guidelines to everyday life, keeping up with the neighbors and on scheduled timetables, so that when their youngest decided her career path was to be an artist, by the early age of 8, the gasps and horrors and mistakes she was making by her behavior and decisions were well-ingrained by the time she reached high school.

Furthering her quiet rebellion, Scarlett fell in love with a girl. A girl, and one that was a family friend. The shame it brought to their family was never actually spoken, but rather skirted around like any other issue that was brought forth. It wouldn't be spoken, or acknowledged, and nothing could further disappoint them than the canvases she that littered the expanse of her room as she grew. Despite any talent, even dalliances into homosexuality wouldn't lighten the shadow of her being an artist.

With an acceptance into PRATT to study art history, Scarlett's window out of Hartford and into the real world where her parents couldn't rule every thing she did. Despite her gut feeling, overshadowed by the emotion she would later vow to not feel, Scarlett urged her girlfriend to move with her and into a shitty apartment free of both of their parents' reach. The go they made of it was brief, as most high school love stories go, and they broke up not long after the move due to Scarlett's own burgeoning lust to break free of her Connecticut shell, including abandoning all ties to a girl she claimed to love.