SWEET DISPOSITION
PROLOGUE

Wanda decided to watch the sky until it matched the colour of her mood. It wasn't particularly anything that left her feeling blue. It could have been the Monday morning, or it could have been Jamie's leaving.

Melanie was elated with the whole situation though. While Wanda stared out the car window, processing the fact she would not see Jamie for another three months, Melanie silently thought of all the things she would do on her first day as an adult. Jamie counted something off with his fingers, and Jeb drove the car. Sharon was blissfully ignored riding shotgun.

The ship's horn sounded from a distance, and Jeb stepped on the pedal with a sudden rush, causing Wanda to jump about with a little yell, and Melanie and Jamie to exclaim "Whoa!" in an excited manner. Sharon remained stoic, to everyone's pleasure.

When Jeb, Jamie and Sharon had all unloaded their baggage from the car, Wanda jumped in for a group hug, crying only a little. She was a hugger. Eventually Melanie joined in, and Sharon obviously refrained from such touchy-feely activities, especially with Wanda in the group.

"You girls take care of yourselves, now," Jeb warned, giving both Melanie and Wanda a good raise-of-the-eyebrow and just as quickly returned to a smile. It was now Jamie's turn to say his goodbyes.

"Miss you, Mel," he said, giving his sister a tight hug. He let go, and embraced his adopted sister now. "Miss you, Wanda."

Wanda was literally in tears now, unable to speak. As the horn sounded again, she whispered incoherent goodbyes to everyone, including Sharon, which went ignored again. She watched them entering the ship, while Melanie patted her back. She kept watching as the ship floated away into the distance, treading through the sea.

It made her think of herself, the sea. It made her think of her place in the world.

She was one vastly unimportant person, according to none but herself. She was born alone and intended (against her heart's wishes) to die alone. Aside from being pessimistic and an orphan, Wanda was quite intelligent and also clueless. While she could name the capital of any country on the map, she could not tell what all the boys at school really thought when they were staring her down.

"Lets get going, Wanda, we'll be late for school," Melanie interjected her thoughts. She was now thinking about her travels of the past with Jeb, and how much she missed them.

She stood there watching still, for quite a long time and replied to Mel saying, "Okay." and then louder, and turning towards the car, "Okay."

When in her heart she knew, it wasn't really okay. She hated school. Hated it with everything she had, and no one could blame her because anyone would with a bully like Lacey had every right to. As she entered the building, she was pushed around – quite literally – while making her way to her locker. Melanie was too rough and tough for anyone to pick on, and with her around Wanda, pushing around was as far as anyone got.

Secretly though, Wanda was in many of the boys' hearts. With her petite frame and her blonde ringlets they could not deny she was certainly a girl worth having, but with Lacey hating her and Melanie protecting her, everyone had managed to put off such thoughts from their minds. Wanda was simply not worth it.

Today, she did her routine check with the mirrors on her locker to look over to see what Lacey was upto. Most of the time she was with a bunch of girls, talking about people and mostly what they were wearing. Today, though, she did not appear in the reflection at all. She looked around the hall to see for herself, and managed through the crowd, to notice she was with some guy. It was just her, and a tall boy she did not recognize and Andy standing in the far corner near the front office.

She decided it was one of her new boyfriends. It was interesting to actually see her boyfriend in the flesh, because almost always the boyfriends she spoke of were from some other school or some other state. Though she could not see him clearly, he looked very athletic.

Must be one of the jocks. She thought, Could be new. Haven't seen him around.

In a small town like Picacho Peak you usually had everyone's faces memorized.

She had nobody to greet while making her way to double English. She didn't have many friends. Melanie liked to call it The Seeker Effect. "The Seeker" was a nickname for Lacey first coined by Melanie, but it seemed to catch on, and everybody called her it behind her back. Anyway, her observation was that whoever Lacey victimized was bound to be friendless because she tended to scare everyone off. That was the effect. True but sad.

Melanie and Wanda were far too close to ever be torn apart by a mere bully. They went way back to kindergarten, where Wanda had first moved to Picacho Peak with her foster parents. On her very first day of school, she'd been pushed into a ditch by a couple of mean kids. Melanie had been the one to save her. They'd been best friends ever since.

Wanda's adoption was another story, though.

Her English teacher was the only person to greet her this morning. As soon as she reached her desk, she resolved to nap through Macbeth but today was quite loud and full of gossip. Gossip was common, but not to this extent, where everybody was talking about the same thing.

"His eyes are dreamy."

"He is so hot."

"That body, that build."

"He is so hot."

"I bet the height of his body is proportional to the size of his-"

She'd plugged her ears beyond that point. The subject was no doubt the guy Lacey was with, and it no doubt annoyed her English teacher to the point where he told the class to shut up. Paige, the girl who sat next to Wanda, (and not by choice of free will) still spoke in hushed tones to her friends. Wanda didn't know most of their names.

"So, Andy told me he plays ball," Paige was saying, and this made her friend bite her lip, enticed.

"So you're saying," her friend started, the notion making her excited, "I can get to see him shirtless underneath the sun every time I go to the bleachers?"

Paige got in close to whisper, "Better. I'm saying, Andy is a close friend of his, and I could totally hook you two up."

"Get out." She said in disbelief. Lacey, who was way across the room was now tuned in to their conversation.

"Sorry, Violetta," she sneered, clearly really happy with whatever she'd done or had to say. "I've already called dibs. Before Violetta could object, Lacey continued, "He looked me over today, and already asked me to give him a tour."

The person next to Lacey, a boy this time, said, "Lacey's scoring an O'Shea then? This requires a celebration don't you think?"

Wanda was now tuned out. Even Macbeth seemed like a more interesting topic to focus on than their foolish fights and passive aggression over a boy. They continued their chattering while Wanda ran that name over her head. O'Shea. Why did that name sound so familiar?