Chapter 1

Sarah had been an angry adolescent. She moved next door to Melissa a month before they met when her mother moved in with her step father. She hated everyone, especially those closest to her. Her mother kicked out her dad. Her dad made her mom kick him out for being a drunk and a cad. And sober he treated Sarah so sweetly and kind of grown up, but he ruined it. And her step father and his son ... She really hated them. Even more, she didn't trust them. She dressed and altered her face in part to dissuade their horny gazes with black tattered clothing and a deathlike pale make-up featuring smudged eye shadow and blue, corpselike lipstick. Her nail polish changed from blood red to black depending on her emotion: fierce anger or morbid depression.

Worse, she had to face a whole buttload of strangers for her junior year in high school. Her clique of misfits--friendships well entrenched from years of school together in Englewood, New Jersey--had been torn from her. She had no illusions that any of the local yokels in this nowhere town barely on the edge of civilization would welcome her as a friend. And she couldn't imagine opening her arms to any of them anyway.

Too early in the morning for a smiling face, that's what watched her amble to the corner of the residential street to where the school bus would soon arrive.

"Hi Randy," said the smiling face to the annoying step brother. "Who's your friend?"

"Don't know," said the asshole jock senior with a cruel smile.

"I'm your fucking sister you fucking moron," Sarah grumbled.

Randy shook his head and shrugged.

Less of a smile, it still remained. "I'm Melissa." She raised her hand for a handshake.

"Congratulations," Sarah replied sarcastically.

"Why thanks. I love my name. What's yours?"

"Sarah," Sarah mumbled.

"I'm sorry?"

"Sarah!" Sarah shouted.

"Glad to meet you Sarah." The hand remained extended. Sarah finally shook it.

What amazed her about the handshake was its perfection. Firm and warm, neither too slimy nor too dry, the soft embrace held confidence and care. It caused Sarah to study this Pollyanna which caused Sarah to smile.

Big apple green eyes below a high forehead, a softly rounded nose, straight and somewhat small, with a brief ridge that looked as if had been broken sometime before. Lips stretched to smile relaxed into bee-sting cuteness; all placed on a heart shaped face that tapered to a soft round chin. Freckles decorated the skin sparsely. A tangle of unruly strawberry blond hair became an aura of broken strands escaping the large barrette that held its length at the back of the head where it traveled to near Melissa's butt.

"Cute and beautiful," thought Sarah. "Why isn't the dickhead staring at her? Both him and his dad leer at me when they aren't snickering."

Releasing hands, Sarah examined this smiling creature further and discovered why. "Her dress looks homemade. Frilly and pink and it makes her look fat. I bet she's not though. And it looks as if it were made at the beginning of the last century or the end of the century before. She's hiding behind it for some reason, while I reveal my shape in my t-shirt and jeans. They even got holes in them to see the naked flesh. She's covered neck to toe. What a stupid boy."