It's Monday during the autumn season. This week she turns seventeen. She knows that she's not happy and is uncertain about her future. By Friday, her life will be turned upside down. But for now, life for Vanessa Carlton in Hill Valley, a suburb of Portland, Oregon, isn't all that it's cracked up to be. She has a boyfriend, is getting a car, and life should be good. But many things in her life are amiss. Her biological father has contacted her. Never having met him and not knowing his name, she is nevertheless determined to meet him. At the same time, things are getting weird in the mansion where she lives. Her relationship with her guardian, Matt Carlton, a.k.a. the Warden, a former prison superintendent and abortion clinic operator, is getting difficult. Drew, the Warden's partner, is not sympathetic to Vanessa's thwarted desire to have a birthday party involving her friends. And to top it all off, she is hiding a pregnancy by her boyfriend, Gary Harrison. Meanwhile, in Seattle, Jake Storm is trying to land a technology account by meeting with Seattle technology tycoon Bull Cates at the New Drake Hotel. Jake has made something of himself in the advertising business, and this meeting is his big chance to earn some money and respect. It has been seventeen years since he quit shooting heroin in the streets of Portland, Oregon. Most of the time, he's forgotten that his daughter was born addicted to heroin. Except of late, he has Vanessa on his mind.