Unanswered Prayers-Book 6 Of The Mad Mad World Series

Chapter 1

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Once there was a little girl who wanted nothing more than to be like everyone else. She was somewhat plain, bright, and didn't have many friends. Her adopted parents(her mother's sister and brother-in-law) took care of her but they made it clear that she was a burden on them, thanks to her parents' death in a car accident when she was four. They never told her she was loved, never praised her on any of her accomplishments, nothing. She learned quickly how to keep to herself, to never speak unless spoken to, and by watching the world around her, learned to navigate the slings and arrows of childhood and adolescence.

Boys were a never-ending mystery to her. One moment they could be cruel and cutting, the next fawning and sweet. She had a couple boys as casual friends, boys who were as much an outsider as she was, but not boys she would look on as anything other than friends. She was having a hard enough time moving through her teen years with its hormonal storms, pressures at home and the load of schoolwork she had due to her adopted parents insisting she be in as many advanced classes as possible than to add to it by dating. They might not have loved her the way she should have been, but they realized how bright their adopted daughter was and took every chance they could to see that she was never bored, never stifled, never told she couldn't do something because she was a girl.

By the time she was grown and out of the house, she'd begun to notice that there more than a few covert glances shot her way by the young men in her college classes. One or two were brave enough to ask her out, one even agreeable enough for her to lose her virginity to, but in the end they drifted apart, nothing more than one or two things in common enough to keep them together. Enforced celibacy was a bother and sometimes left her curled up in her tiny apartment, sweating and shaking from lust that no matter what she tried, wasn't enough to settle her soul.

She'd wished and prayed so hard that at least one of the men she met later in college and then in her first job would find her interesting enough to see her as a casual fling, more than just "one of the boys." There was one man who fit most of the bill, one that she'd stayed with for a good part of a year but in the end, something drove her to break off the relationship despite his insistence that he loved her and that someday she'd change her mind and come back.

So the prayers continued, none of them answered, or at least not where you would ever realize them. The little girl, now a fully-grown woman, resigned herself to being single the rest of her days and went about furthering her education, getting a well-paying, challenging but enjoyable job and doing quite well in her field of work. However, she stopped looking for friends and closed herself off, locked away her disappointment, jealousy at her colleague's happy family lives and her anger that her wishes had never come true. She presented a calm, happy demeanor to the world; no one would know about the hurt she kept inside.

But sometimes wishes and prayers take time to come true, and come true in the strangest way possible. They sometimes arrive after a time of great sorrow and pain, but when they do, the reward washes away all the darkness,sadness and grief that have come before.