Seriously, beauty school was not in the plan, but John Sheppard found himself there anyway. At least it was Aveda, not Mrs. Somebody's Beauty College in a bad part of town. John had smoked entirely too much dope in high school to get into college, and he was pretty sure that it was his own haircut that got him into Aveda in the first place. He didn't have the heart to tell them that it was just his own regular hair, growing out from an unfortunate impulsive experiment in being bald. Not good at all. Who knew he'd turn out to have an ugly head?

He quit smoking dope for Aveda. He really didn't want to cut off someone's ear or inadvertently make random bald spots. Without being stoned just above baseline all the time, he was a little surprised to find he was good at it. He had a natural flair for seeing what a haircut would look like on the person before he even picked up his scissors, and he could find the angles of Aveda's cutting-edge styles without even trying.

When he graduated, he was recruited by some of the best salons in the city. He chose Atlantis.