[Hester opens her mouth to answer but pauses, slowly closing it as it dawns on her this is the first time anyone's really asked about her life before the school.]

I- [She clears her throat and straightens her posture, trying her best to look like she hadn't been falling apart just 5 minutes ago.] It was a bit after my eighteenth birthday. I had graduated from high school that summer and I had just aged out of the system. I grew up in a pretty small town and, I know you can relate to this, the people there could be very small-minded.