Beatrice Parkes

According to her records, Beatrice was born in Pennsylvania, and at 8 months old (after 6 months of living in Texas with her birth mother) was taken into foster care. She's not sure if her mother placed her there voluntarily, or if she was taken away by the state, since the records were sealed until she was 18, and by then she'd decided not to find out.

During the rampant abuse of the foster system prevalent in the 80s, Bea went through 6 different homes by the time she was 9, mostly single mothers who took in foster children to supplement their income. Bea was a passable student at best, due more to a lack of friends that comes with often changing schools than any actual love of learning, and she had a tendency to get into fights. On several occasions, her aggression was the cause of her re-homing.

When she was nine and a half, Bea was removed from her home of a year and a half, after breaking another girl's nose and arm during recess. This time, instead of being shuffled off to the nearest nearly-full home that would have her, Bea ended up in a slightly nicer suburban neighborhood, as the oldest foster child of Petra Springs and her girlfriend Vanessa.

Petra and Vani turned her around. With them, she went and helped out at food banks twice a week, learned how to properly study, and even began to make friends with the other neighborhood children. When Vani saw her working out her aggression playing stickball with the other kids, she went to enroll Bea in as many sports as she could, but Bea discovered that of the "girl sports" offered it was only in Lacrosse that she could be free to be as rough as her inner store of rage demanded, against opponents who would be equally fierce.

As she grew older, still in Petra and Vani's care, Bea helped out with the younger children that often cycled through their home, and her skill at sports grew. One day she was brave enough to ask Petra why she didn't just adopt her already, only to find out that the couple had tried to years before, but been turned down due to their 'alternative lifestyle'. At Bea's protests, Petra told her that the best thing she could do was to study hard and be successful, because "the best revenge is living well".

After spending her entire high school career on the varsity lacrosse circuit, Bea was offered a full ride at a number of colleges, and chose to go to A&M because its program was just starting up, so she could be one of the founding members. When her knee gave out during the last game of the season, she entered physical therapy but lost her scholarship, and has been working at the Meat Lab since then to support herself. She met Chrys (and through her, the rest of the gaming group) during her recovery period, when she was living off the last of her scholarship money and the young goth helped her get up and down the stairs of her apartment. At Chrys's suggestion, Bea placed an ad in the Eagle advertising for a roommate, and was lucky enough to meet Ronnie. Since then, things had started settling down into a new version of 'normal'... until the day that Chrys was found dead.