HALLIE N. MILLER
( backstory )

NOTE: Inevitably there will be spoilers in this chapter, concerning Hallie's childhood and other events taking place prior to the timeline of the books. If you feel this will interfere with your reading experience, please wait with this chapter and come back when you would like!

TRIGGER WARNING: Contains some mentions of suicide. If you think this might trigger you, please don't feel like you have to read this chapter.

E A R L Y
L I F E

Hallie Novak-Miller was born on June 1st in Charleston, West Virginia; the firstborn and only child to Janet Miller and Sean Novak. She is of mixed ethnicity, with Polish from her father, and German and Irish from her mother.

Two years after she was born the family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Hallie lived happily for a large chunk of her childhood. Her Dad was an accountant and her mother was a marketing manager; both were borderline workaholics, so Hallie spent lots of time in child care or trying to get their attention. They often proved futile, which made Hallie feel slightly unloved. This gave her an ambition to strive for success in everything she could, like school subjects — she came out with the highest grades in her class from a very young age. However, her excessive obsession with being a high achiever isolated herself from a lot of her classmates, who wrongly stereotyped her as being a "try-hard" and "rigid" and even "scary." This was said so much that Hallie started to believe it, inhabiting this persona of her being a "robot."

This reputation followed her all through her life, but she didn't try to alter it. It sometimes became a struggle then to make friends, although she had her first and dearest companion Rachel Mendoza who she met in child care. They both shared a passion for classical music, Rachel leaning towards the opera route and loving musicians like Andrea Bocelli and Renata Debaldi. They even shared an Animal Crossing town, which Hallie still has saved on her Nintendo to this day. However, Hallie moved away from Pittsburgh to Uniontown, and Rachel later moved out of the state to New Jersey. No matter how hard they tried to stay in touch, it eventually failed. It is still one of Hallie's biggest regrets.

Hallie always had a close relationship with her paternal uncle, her father's twin brother William 'Bill' Novak, as well as his wife and her aunt, Maggie. Unlike her parents who didn't seem to have the time for her, who only appeared to collect her from childcare or show up on Parent's Evenings, her uncle and aunt were lively — they seemed to take joy in her accomplishments as if she were their own daughter, especially Bill. Consequently she also grew close to her cousins, Sydney and Liam Novak. Many people used to mistake Hallie and Sydney for being sisters — even twins — because they looked surprisingly alike when they were younger. Ironically, their fathers are identical twins.

One of the biggest parts of Hallie's life is her love for music, and it all started on Christmas Day when she was seven years old — she received her first cello as a gift, and this was after they had been to a family wedding where apparently the fascinated Hallie sat herself down in front of the band and listened to them for hours, before the cellist had kindly invited her up on stage and showed her how he created such a beautiful sound. Hallie named her cello "Mozzy", after Mozart, and ever since she has never broken the habit of giving her cello a name (though she won't openly admit it nowadays). Her most recent cello is named "Tony", after Antonio Vivaldi.

The more Hallie played the cello, the more she became connected to her instrument. Soon, Hallie was determined to play in a symphony orchestra when she grew up. Her love for it reached an all-time high when her music teacher in Pittsburgh was Dawn Osten, or as she called her, Miss Osten. She was young, inspiring and a mentor figure for Hallie. She informed her of opportunities for concerts and careers but never put too much pressure on her either. Hallie enjoyed impressing Miss Osten — she paid more attention than her parents did and congratulated her on her achievements. When they first made the move to Uniontown, Miss Osten still wanted to teach her and committed to the commute so she could still give Hallie her cello lessons. This lasted for a couple of years before sadly, Miss Osten moved away to Africa, leaving Hallie feeling more alone than ever.

Considering all of the disruption she had faced thus far, things were looking okay for the time being. She had made some friends at school — Calvin Simpson, one of the only participants of the board game club; Stanley Barber, an overly friendly boy who she'd been seated next to in Art class; and a few Band kids or Orchestra geeks. Things might have started to look up, until a couple of months into her time at school in Brownsville, everything was about to change...

L A T E R
L I F E

Hallie had been in her final period of gym class in Fifth Grade, when she first felt her heart rate soar abnormally higher than average. Having just been running around considerably, she assumed she had just worn herself out. But as she got changed and left school, it continued, and didn't stop until a couple of hours later at home. Hallie hoped it was a one-off, but she kept getting these bouts on-and-off. She didn't know how to catch them because they came on so unexpectedly.

It wasn't until a few months later, at an Easter Concert where she was playing cello, that she had her worst episode yet and collapsed with a heart rate of 270 bpm. She was taken to hospital, and very swiftly a doctor diagnosed her with Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) — a type of arrhythmia where your heart can suddenly beat much faster than usual, due to unusual electrical activity in the upper chambers of the heart. There is no cure, and was simply something Hallie was going to have to live with for the foreseeable future.

Whilst it was a relief to get a diagnosis and know it wasn't life-threatening, it also put Hallie on edge. She found herself feeling paranoid in everyday activities and wondering in the back of her mind when another episode might come on. This underlying fear led to Hallie feeling generally withdrawn and unmotivated for many things. She shut people out, people like her family and also Stanley who she felt awful for letting drift away from her. Things she once loved felt like a chore, which she hated. Nevertheless, Hallie tried to live as best as she could with her diagnosis, cutting certain foods out of her diet as suggested and, despite having a great dislike for exercise, forcing herself to keep somewhat fit.

One of the biggest blows in her life came when she was sixteen years-old. On an unassuming school night, while she was practicing her cello, her parents picked up a phone call downstairs. Minutes later they were sat in her room, breaking the news to her that her Uncle Bill was dead — and what's worse, he had committed suicide. Hallie could never have seen it coming, since she was always so used to his cheery disposition, and his death took an incredibly big toll on her as well as the rest of the family. Everyone struggled to talk about it, which didn't help alleviate the shocking grief in the slightest. The cracks were beginning to show not only in Hallie's family life, but also Sydney's — it was as if they were treading on eggshells.

Almost a year later, it was something that had been brushed under the rug, a taboo subject. It wouldn't be until the autumn of that year, when Hallie's parents decided to go on vacation to Saratoga and leave her with Sydney's family for a week, that the past began to be brought up again. And not only that, but some superpowers her cousin Sydney seems to have acquired overnight emerge that, if not tamed soon, could do more harm than good...

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[ you guys... i'm so sorry 'keep your head' has been lacking in updates. my life has just been crazy lately and, even if i do feel motivated, i'm just too tired! but i'm hoping to get at least the plot planned out in my summer break, so updating should be much easier then. ]

[ also if you're wondering why hallie doesn't have a birth year listed, it's because it isn't specified when ianowt is set. it's pretty ambiguous, although in my opinion i feel like it's set in 2006/2007 time, so if my maths is right, she would be born in about 1989/1990! but ianowt could easily be present day too, since i read somewhere that brownsville is a town that's kind of stuck in the 80s anyway, so it would fit the aesthetic the show has. so in that case, she might just be the age she is now! ]