CROSS, scarlet

[attr="class","hdtitle"]PERSONALITY

[attr="class","hdinfo"] kind, sweet, loving, artistic, talented, generous, hard-working, pacifist, romantic, forgiving.

doormat, naive, shy, easily intimidated, abandonment issues, low self-esteem, weak-willed, vague, escapist, complacent.

- Scarlet has a hat that she is frequently seen wearing/she always keeps on her person.
- Scarlet tends to look at her feet when she speaks, and she always seems to be fiddling with something with her hands.
- Scarlet is very artistically talented, but cannot see it.
- Scarlet loves to read, and mostly reads romance novels.
- Scarlet always sits in the back left corner of a classroom.
- Scarlet's skin is very sensitive, and she burns extremely quickly when she's outside.
- Scarlet is mostly a vegetarian, though she will eat fish or chicken occasionally.

daydreaming, naps in the middle of the day, counting things, cleaning, piano music.

being the center of attention, eating around other people, talking about family life, the smell of nail polish, the smell of cooking meat.

[attr="class","hdtitle"]HISTORY/MISC.

[attr="class","hdinfo"]Scarlet’s birth was not one that was looked forward to or celebrated. Her parents were an extremely young couple who enjoyed nothing more than partying all weekend and all night, and then dragging themselves to jobs that could barely make ends meet during the day. When her mother turned up pregnant, they briefly considered an abortion before deciding against it. They went to their parents for help, and were forced to marry before any would be given. Once they were married, their parents helped them pay for a larger apartment that was more “appropriate” for a child.

Scarlet was born small but healthy, and by the time she was three, she had a younger brother. Her parents weren’t exactly awful, but both children did spend a lot of time at their grandparents’ houses. However, by the time that Scarlet was ten, her grandparents had either passed or weren’t healthy enough to watch she and her brother anymore. Her parents were back in the party scene, and the children were left home alone quite a bit. Scarlet did her best, but life was rather hard for quite some time.

Her parents fought quite a bit, and she did her best to shield her brother from it, though it scared her as much as it did him. She didn’t see her eleventh birthday before tragedy came knocking on her door. An article of clothing was left over a heater one night, and the apartment that Scarlet called home caught fire. Her parents were passed out from a night of drinking and didn’t wake up, but the flames and smoke eventually woke her. She managed to wake her little brother and get him out of the apartment, but by the time that help arrived, it was too late for her parents – whom she hadn’t considered when she got her brother out.

She and her brother had no family to take them, so they were split up and put into the system. Scarlet dealt with a lot of guilt over her parents and a lot of grief over being separated from her brother. She pulled into herself, and had trouble making friends with the children she was so frequently exposed to. She was in and out of foster homes, and never really got to settle in one place for long before she was moved to another. Despite all of this, she did find a love of painting and she did well enough in school. After a couple of years, she started to become friends with her foster siblings but she was always extremely shy and somewhat awkward.

Unable to find it in herself to use the word “no” when she finally thought she’d found a place where she belonged, Scarlet found herself in hot water at the age of thirteen. She had known it was a bad idea to even accompany her “siblings” on the venture, but she had been so happy at being included that she had allowed it to cloud her judgement. Though Scarlet herself didn’t do anything wrong, when she was caught with a group of adolescents stealing liquor things weren’t exactly looking good for her. Not to mention that several of her siblings tried to run, and in a panic, she did so as well.

Though it was her first offense, it was a serious one. Her siblings had several different drugs on their persons in addition to the liquor they had stolen. A lot of deliberation was given to her fate, and finally it was decided that the best place for her would be Birchwood. Though she was guilty by association, anyone could see that she was a good girl, really. And so, she was sent to Birchwood for her freshmen year. She’s been there ever since.