Hello, everyone! This is Spazzkitty, with my first story Wonderland Reincarnated! If I make any errors, please let me know. Please review if you can- heck, you can even flame if you wanna. Without further ado, here's what you came to see!

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Prologue

Everybody thought they understood sweet, innocent Alice LaChance until the day she blew up the chemistry lab.

Alice was a 4.0 kid- she studied for every test and didn't forget a single piece of homework. She was naturally suited to memorization as some people are- most facts just stuck in her head somehow. She really didn't have any friends, but it wasn't because of anything she had done- Alice was impossible to hate. She had a sweet, generous personality and curious, sky-blue eyes that were easily surprised. The reason she had no friends was because she had a very solitary and formal disposition. She was friendly, but whenever anybody tried to talk to her, she would smile sweetly, but reply in a formal detached way. She always sat alone at lunch, calmly eating her ham-and-cheese sandwich on rye with mustard, content to be at her own table until I came.

I used to sit at the table next to hers, eating my lunch and chatting with my friends. It hadn't occurred to me that Alice may have been lonely until one Tuesday during March. I was talking with Jay, my best friend, when my eyes happened to wander slightly to the left. I saw Alice, pausing with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. She was watching a pair of twin brothers, Jake and Alex, laughing and whacking each other on the back and generally acting like immature freshman boys. Alice was watching them and I was about to turn back to my food when I saw a wistful expression cross her face. She looked so impossibly lonely in that moment that I felt like crying. Instead, I grabbed my lunch tray and moved to her table. She started in surprise, but smiled a little shyly at me.

"Hi, Blaire," she said softly. I grinned in surprise, realizing that she remembered my name even though I had never spoken to her. "Hi, Alice!" I felt Jay's eyes burning a hole in my back and knew that I would have to sit on the bus alone this afternoon, but it was worth it to see the look of delight currently on Alice's naïve face. It was three days later that she blew up the lab.

There was a fire drill- the day was March 17th. The air was chilly- not exactly cold, but not comfortable in my short-sleeved shirt. I stood, rubbing my hands on my arms and trying to get them warmer, kicking a pebble along the parking lot. Jay was still hostile about me ditching her during lunch three days ago, but she must have figured I suffered enough of her refusing to talk to me because she was almost friendly towards me. The entire school was out in the parking lot, chattering idly with everyone else when the explosion happened. There was a huge boom, and billowing black smoke started to pour out of the eastern side of the school. Despite our teachers telling us to 'remain calm' and 'stay put', the students rushed to find the source of the boom.

Turning the corner, we all saw Alice, standing with her hands behind her back, observing the chemistry lab which was roaring with flames. She didn't look guilty or surprised or malicious- she looked simply curious and interested in the fire roaring dangerously close to her. Her light blond hair flew behind her in the smog, wrapping around itself and her legs, tangling and untangling like a banner in the wind. She turned when we raced around the corner and even the teachers were shocked.

"Ms. LaChance!" One of the teachers snapped when he finally found his voice "Did you do this?"
"Yes, I did," She responded politely.

"Why?" he asked, dumbfounded. Alice only smiled sweetly.

When the police came, they were surprised as well. Not only did Alice make polite conversation with them, but she confessed to blowing up the lab single-handedly.

"It wasn't hard- just combined a few chemicals and there it was. Wasn't the fire beautiful?" After that, the police took her away.

That was the last any of us ever saw of Alice Marigold LaChance.

Not surprisingly, rumors spread like wildfires about poor Alice. Apparently, she hadn't revealed very much about her past and the Gossip Vultures in the school could tell a feast when they stumbled across it. She had a little sister named Lillian Erin, who was home-schooled and only ten years old. Lily was an albino, which is why she didn't attend public school- Kids had teased the poor child until she cried. Alice's mother had been flighty and a 'Peace and love' hippie. She had walked out on the LaChance family two weeks after Lillian's birth. Alice's father had been deeply smitten with his wife, so when the flighty woman left, he didn't stand a chance. He had died two months later of a broken heart and a car accident which was a direct result of his loss of reality. Alice, only seven at the time, had moved around with her sister as their only other family lived in Britain. Whenever people found out about the seven-year-old girl caring for her baby sister, the police would look for them and they would have to move on to the next place. But apparently that wasn't the worst of the gossip.

"She left the police station!" announced Sara the following Wednesday. My table stopped eating during lunch to hear this juicy piece of info, knowing instantly who she was talking about. Sara was the daughter of an officer, so all this information was straight from the horse's mouth. "I'm serious- just up and left. I guess everybody in the station trusted her because she acted so normal. They left her alone for a second to go get her files. She was gone when they came back."
"What happened?" Somebody asked breathlessly. Sara grinned, relishing her moment.

"We reviewed the security tapes. What happened was she stood up, apologized to them through the security camera with a heartfelt apology, broke the bars over the window with a kick, picked the lock with a hairpin and jumped through the window."

A stunned silence filled the table. "Apologized?" Jay asked skeptically.

"Yep. She ran directly up to the camera, bowed to it and said 'I'm sorry Officer Green and Officer McCoun, but I can't go to jail. Please forgive me.' Then she left." As everybody began excitedly discussing this new predicament, I sat for a while, lost in thought. I stared at the now empty table where Alice had sat only a few days ago. I could only imagine the sadness in her sweet, round eyes as the rumors multiplied around her, about her and her family. Was I the only one feeling awful because of the spiteful gossip? Probably. Was Alice guilty of blowing up the lab? Again, there was a good chance. But I simply couldn't imagine the gentle, innocent teen I knew as a delinquent, despite all the evidence to the contrary. I could only wonder where she was now, her and her mysterious little sister. I turned to look at the window, noticing the grey-blue sky and the clouds that indicated the incoming downpour of rain. Suddenly, a figure across the street caught my eye.

Under closer inspection, I noticed billowing blonde waves of hair. They reached the girl's knees. Alice? I saw her wave across the street to me. Quickly, I turned towards the table, to see if anybody else had seen it. Nobody else was even paying attention. I turned back almost instantly to the road. The street was deserted and there was no sign of anything living under the flickering streetlight on the corner.