“Melyssa, Melyssa Darrington, super spy extraordinaire at your service. Show me your villain, the crime and I will surely bring justice to evil doers and all around bad guys in record time.” Melyssa says to herself as she is walking to school. Daydreaming to school is more like it. She has walked this way to school for the past four years of her six year career as a student at Middleton elementary school. Both her parents are too caught up in work to be able to take her to school or to spend time with her in the morning so she has gotten used to taking care of herself.

She would get up in the morning and put on the clothes that she laid out for herself the night before. Then go downstairs and call for her parents. They were of course both gone by that point, but it doesn’t hurt to hope. Mrs. Sanchez, the Spanish speaking maid and Melyssa are the only people there at that time in the morning. She says hi to Mrs. Sanchez and sits down at the table for her customary bowl of cereal and juice breakfast, then leaves for the walk to school at precisely 6:45, to beat the heavy traffic of dead beat students running late or hanging around the streets just waiting to cause trouble or to pick on her, the latter happening more often than not.

Melyssa and her family live in Middleton, Ohio, a town of two thousand three hundred and forty two people. The town itself is built in the old Victorian style with houses that seem to be no younger than a century at best.

Often, Melyssa would walk to school slowly just to look at the houses on her route to MES. She has seen the houses millions of times but there are some that she really does enjoy. Some are one story ranch style houses but most are two story Victorian houses.

Truth is Melyssa can’t wait to get out of this town. She can’t wait to grow up and be able to move away and do whatever she wants. She isn’t exactly a sad, depressed kind of girl. She just likes to be left alone. She has never had many friends. More acquaintances than anything, but she doesn’t mind. Less people she has to deal with the better.

Melyssa is walking down Main Street now in front of Sam’s Hardware Store heading towards the corner of Main and Fifth Ave and she turns the corner onto fifth and bumps into a boy of about the same age.