Anna and Henry met when their two middle schools merged into one high school. Freshman year was exciting for all the adolescents. It was a time of a new beginning and a chance to create their own identities and really find their place within the school. Anna was part of the jock clique. She the stereotypical cheerleader; thin, tall, flexible, had a loud mouth, and wasn’t too smart. She learned early in high school that she just was not very book smart. Instead of wasting time on trying to be a great student and doing good in school, she began worrying more about being Miss Popular. Unfortunately for her, the school had a policy that stated if a student’s grades were under a C they could be asked to leave a team in order to focus more on school. Anna’s coach gave her an ultimatum; either she was to get a tutor to help her, or she’d be off the team. Unable to think of what her life would be like not on the cheerleading team, she quickly decided to get a tutor. Henry happened to be one of the smartest kids in the school and peer tutored during his free period and even sometimes at lunch. He was very much book smart and liked helping others, but he was also very much into sports, being on several teams himself. Unlike Anna, he had the best of both worlds and saw the value in getting good grades and doing what he needed to do in school, and being on a team. Through several tutoring sessions, Anna was able to bring her grades back up to where they were supposed to be and she was able to continue her real passion, which was cheerleading. However, even when her grades were back up she kept going to him for tutoring and talking. The two genuinely liked one another and after a short time of flirting, they began to date. From there they had their fair share of ups and downs, but they remained unconditionally in love with one another. The two were so in love that instead of wasting their time and money on prom they decided to get married and start building their lives together.

Anna and Henry managed to scrap together enough money to move from their cozy hometown in New Jersey into a completely new environment in Pennsylvania. The two moved into a small apartment complex in Philadelphia. It wasn’t much, but it was something they could afford on their own. It was the start of their own life away from their family. The apartment was not all that fantastic. It was a small space that consisted of a kitchen, living room, bathroom, and a bedroom. The two of them were very happy with each other and excited about where their lives were going. The two of them worked hard, both picking up jobs. After about of month into their marriage, Anna found out she was pregnant. The couple was both happy and nervous at the same time. Anna stayed at her job up until the ninth month of her pregnancy. Anna knew that when the baby was born she wanted to devote her time and energy into being the best mom she knew she could be, so it didn’t bother her to leave with no promise of being asked back to her job. About two weeks after she left her job her first child, Bryan Aster was born. He was born on a warm and sunny September day at 12:05 pm. Bryan was a healthy baby boy weighing in at 9 pounds and 5 ounces. That day, Anna and Henry realized that happiness really did come in small packages. Without even knowing much about their newborn son they loved him already with all their hearts. He was the most beautiful thing that either of them had ever seen and they agreed that they wanted many more children. Six more, to be exact.

Being the first-born child of seven, gave Bryan the perks of massive amounts of attention. Every single milestone was written about in his mother's journal and there were plenty of pictures to accompany the little blurb about what he accomplished that given day. Bryan loved his parents’ attention and was a real ham with the camera whenever it was pulled out. When his siblings started coming along he didn't like it because the attention was taken off of him and placed onto the youngest children. He quickly went from being the center of attention to the designated role model for the other children. It was a burden, to say the least, and he always struggled to keep in step with his parents and their high expectations of how he should be. Throughout his childhood, he tried his hardest to be exactly what his parents wanted him to be. He took part in a lot of things he hated like little league sports and cub scouts to win their approval and to make them proud of him. He did not like being a role model and was often jealous of the younger kids because he thrived on his parents’ love and attention.

During his youth, Bryan often received negative attention and took up a lot of his parents’ time and energy because he was so hyperactive. His parents tried everything they could. No matter what they tried, Bryan couldn't sit still, never seemed to listen, didn't seem to follow directions no matter how many times they were given to him, and would blurt out random comments at inappropriate times. It wasn't that he did it on purpose. He really couldn't control himself. For several years his teachers and his peers saw Bryan as a troublemaker. It wasn't until the third grade that a doctor formally diagnosed him with A.D.H.D. His parents were so against the labeling and the pushing of medication that they decided together not to pursue any of the different treatments for A.D.H.D. for their son. It was in the middle of his fourth-grade year after a very heated parent/teacher conference that Anna and Henry were going to move away with their children and start over where Henry's brother lived in Chicago, Illinois. Bryan's family moved about a month after that. During this time everything was chaotic and the young boy had a lot of anger and resentment towards his parents. He hated that he was being uprooted from everyone and everything he had known to an entirely different place.

All throughout school Bryan was quite popular and really didn't have too many issues with his peers. He was the outrageous, funny, impulsive kid that would always have new, crazy ideas generating in his head. In middle school, Bryan could no longer bare being the son his parents wanted instead of the person he really was. When he got older and went into middle school he started to experiment with different activities that he found interesting and fun. He began to do more of the things he wanted to do and quit the other stuff he could care less about. He got into music and playing different instruments and creating art. Bryan’s mother did not approve of any of this at the time. She had never out right told him that she didn't like his switch of interests, but it was just something he just knew. She had wanted him to be a manly man playing sports not a kid that was into writing lyrics about how he was feeling and painting flowers. Throughout the already rocky adolescent years, Bryan had some problems establishing his own identity. He became more and more rebellious doing things he knew his parents didn't approve of. He was smoking, drinking, doing drugs, and having sex before most of his peers. Towards the end of middle school and the beginning of high school, he and his friends became heavily involved in the party scene. They would go to every/any party they could get into every night of the week. It was also around this time that Bryan discovered the power of music and how for him it was equivalent to therapy. He and a few of his friends put together their own band and started practicing four to five times a week in the garage. When they started getting better at playing their instruments and writing songs they recorded themselves and started handing out demos at shows, hoping that someone they met along the way would really give it a listen.

In high school, he was very popular not only because he was known as, “that guy in that band,” but because he was an easy going, laid back, outgoing, overly friendly, funny, caring guy. He was an absolute sweetheart. Bryan was friends with anyone from the jocks to the Goths; labels just didn't matter to him probably because he didn't fit into one either. Bryan was seen as a strange kid, but people were really attracted to his strangeness. He was friends with whoever though. His philosophy was and still is, that if a person is a cool/decent person, he would hang with them despite their label, race, religion. Bryan was not a studious kid though. He spent his time in the classrooms making the teacher's job way harder than it should be. He was by no means a good kid. When all the other kids were excited and getting ready to be sent off to college Bryan was trying to avoid growing up altogether.