Elizabeth Kiara Eliade was born one minute to midnight on a hot August night. The third and final child to join the Eliade family, she was greeted with tired enthusiasm and an appropriate level of doting and cooing. When she was cleaned off and examined closely, the doctor proclaimed with a tone of shock, "Oh my god!" When her parents asked, totally panicked, what was wrong, he turned to them with the baby in his arms and said, "It's a girl, and Laila, she looks just like you!" This caused her father to curse a blue streak under his breath, and her mother to look around the delivery room for something to throw at him.

Elizabeth grew up much the same as any youngest child would -- slightly spoiled, but held to higher standards than her older siblings. Her brother had always been a shit-stirrer, and her sister was the type who would get letters sent home from school, saying she showed good potential as long as she would just apply herself. Elizabeth, who had been called anything but her full name from a very young age, was different from them in one very obvious way. She loved school, and found more comfort in the written word than anyone else in her family. She had taught herself to read when she was very young, and was always advanced in school. She brought a thick novel to second grade ('Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself' by Judy Blume) to read during the mandatory silent reading period after lunch, and one of the boys sitting in her desk clump made a snide comment that she was supposed to be reading, not just looking at pictures. He wouldn't shut up until she showed him that the book had no illustrations at all, and threatened to punch him in the nose. She got sent into the hallway for disturbing the class, but her teacher told her later that she was proud of Betty for being such an avid reader.

It was this love of books that got Betty through the hardest time in her life. When she was fourteen, her parents went to a Christmas party across town, and their car was struck by a drunk driver, killing both of them before first responders could get to the scene. They were found in the wreckage of the accident holding hands. Destraught, the Eliade siblings all behaved vastly differently in the aftermath of this tragedy. Jesse, who was seventeen, went on a disctructive rampage. He smashed things, he kicked a hole in the wall, and he screamed. He screamed a lot. Lucy, who had just turned fifteen, went to any party she could and drank to forget. She experimented with drugs, she had sex with any boy who gave her a second look, and tried not to be sober if she could help it. And Betty, who had gone numb from the moment the police officer had turned up at their door, buried herself in her school work, and read mountains of books. Tucked into her aunt's tiny sewing room, she read her mother's trashy romance novels, even if they made her roll her eyes, and she read her father's medical journals, even if she didn't understand half of what was being said. With headphones on and her Discman never far from her side, she blocked out the outside world the best that she could.

Her siblings got through their self-distructive phases in time. It took Jesse being caught by a store security guard when he tried to stuff a Nintendo game down the front of his pants (they didn't even have a Nintendo anymore, he was just being rebellious), a pregnancy scare for Lucy, and their uncle threatening to send them both to reform school, but they began to straighten out. Betty was sixteen, a straight A student, and felt a strange mix of pride and embarrassment when Aunt Kiara said to her siblings, "Why can't you be more like your sister?"

It wasn't that Betty wasn't angry herself. She just chose not to let her emotions get the better of her. She'd read too many books where that ended badly for the characters. When she did feel overwhelmed, and like she might explode, she would put on her Rollerblades and go out for hours, skating until her anger gave way to exhaustion. She would come home with bruises and skinned palms from tumbles she took, but in much better spirits than she had been when she left the house hours earlier. It was this that got her into roller derby; she was in the park, and zoomed past another girl on skates, calling out a quick, "On your left!" as she went to pass her. The other girl, recognizing someone else who could stay on her feet on a pair of skates, called after to get her to come back and talk to her. And that was how she wound out at the tryouts for the local junior adult derby team. And after some careful deliberation, she was offered the roll of blocker. If, they conditioned, she was comfortable with throwing a shoulder check. Growing up with an older brother who would torment her constantly, she immediately grinned widely and said that she could handle that.

Betty went to university; the only one in her family to so, and she got a full ride, too. Once again, her siblings were subjected to the "Why can't you be more like your sister?" lectures again, even though at that point they had both moved out from their aunt and uncle's place, and were living on their own. This caused both Jesse and Lucy to look at their sister with no small amount of distain. Used to their cutting eyes and snide remarks, Betty ignored them and focussed on her studies. She didn't know what she wanted to do with her life yet, but she knew she wanted to work with books. She decided to study Literature at NYU, and began volunteering in the children's section of the library her second year. She loved this so much that she decided on a double major; she wound up getting her BA in English Literature, and her MS in Library Science.

Upon graduating, she moved to Sleepy Hollow, New York, and got herself a job as a Library Technician at Warner Library. She still does Roller Derby, and she still perfers nights in with a stack of cookies and a thick book.