THE GOOD BETA STRIKES BACK

FRIDAY, 12 FEBRUARY, A LITTLE LATER

Abigail's ride arrived. I knew because Abigail exclaimed from the cheerleaders' table, "Oh! My ride is here!"

This resulted in no small flurry among the cheer leaders. They didn't even need their pompoms. Hahaha.

"Bye Abby!" The other girls said, waving their fingers, "Ciao, babe!"

"Bye peeps!" Abigail sang back.

They proceeded to kiss the air at each other, and then as Abigail passed our table she waved her fingers and called out just loud enough for the entire student foyer to hear her, "See you later, Henry! I'm looking forward to our date tonight."

She blew him a kiss. Henry smirked and then caught it with his hand.

I sniggered the moment Abigail's back turned. Marcus coughed.

"What?" Henry growled, reddening a little, "Look, I'm not the alpha with a pink animal on her lap."

"It's a monster." I defended my pink fluffy friend huffily.

"I'm sure that's a bear." Marcus mumbled.

One of Henry's red cars arrived.

"Opp! Our ride's here." Marcus popped upright, looking relieved that he could get going.

Both guys got up.

"See you on Monday!" Marcus waved, "Happy Vday, Sam."

"See you guys!" I waved, then just because I thought it was funny, I blew them a kiss.

Henry's face totally turned red now. Marcus actually laughed out loud.

Hahaha.

"Aren't you gonna catch it?" I yelled at their backs.

Henry turned and he flipped his finger at me. Omo. No one had ever shown me the finger before. How dare he!

I flared and stood up. If I had anything I didn't want in my hand right now, I would have thrown it at his stupid head.

Except I only had my monster, and I wanted that. Humph! How dare he!

The student foyer started buzzing. Opps. I forgot we had an audience. I shrugged my best 'whatever' and adverted my gaze.

Now it was my turn to feel embarrassed. Stoopid Henry!

Luckily, my car pulled up behind Henry's.

I grabbed my stuff and went over just as Henry's car pulled out.

It was my good beta at the wheel today. He got out of the car the moment he saw all the stuff I was carrying and came up to the student foyer to take my paperbag.

"Good afternoon, princess." He said with his usual wry smile, "Please let me help you with that."

I let my good beta take the paperbag and lead me out to the car on autopilot. I was still fuming inside at Henry. Stupid Henry.

"How was your day, princess?" Harvey asked when we were both belted in. He started the engine and eased the car off.

"Henry just gave me the finger." I complained. Grrr...

Harvey blinked, "As in his middle finger, princess?"

I laughed then, "Yeah. But I was teasing him about his date and I think I embaressed him."

Harvey didn't smile, "I see."

I was beginning to regret blurting that out to Harvey now. Stupid me.

"It's too bad I can't flip him back." I joked trying to lighten the mood.

"Why not, princess?" Harvey asked lightly.

Eh? Well, technically, I was quite sure I could conform my hand physically into that shape. So why not? Why didn't I?

"I guess I could, but..." I answered with a shrug. But what? I just... That's just... But I'm a girl!

If I were a guy, I would've flipped him back and we might have roughed each other up and then laughed the whole thing off.

But I was a girl, I had no idea what a girl like me should have done. I guess that was the annoying part.

Maybe I should've been one of the cool girls like Krystal or Zara. They would have flipped back and scolded Henry something bad, very loudly. But I wasn't a cool girl. I was just friends with cool girls. Just like I wasn't popular. I was just friends with some of the popular kids.

You know that old story, about this kind and honest girl, and when she opened her mouth, jewels fell out? And then her stepsister, who was a mean liar, opened her mouth and the stinkiest rubbish came out? No? Was it a lycan story or a human story?

I read it in the school library when I was in elementary school. My elementary school had a lot of fairytales in its shelves and I've read everything. So I knew not to ever accept apples from old women, or kill geese that laid golden eggs should I ever find one. Fairy tales were practical like that.

And I've always wanted to be the good girl who did my chores and told the truth, and was kind to others, because good things always happened for them.

Good girls got to dance with their prince charming. Good girls made friends with woodland animals. But most of all, good girls overcame.

You can make her do chores all day, abandon her in a forest, lock her up in a tower, send her to war. You can take away her birthright, her freedom, her voice, her hair, her honor, but you can't destroy the goodness in her (or stop her from singing either).

Okay, so maybe lots of c*** things happened to good girls too. But in the end, they always won.

And the bad guys ALWAYS lost at the end. You'd think bad guys around the world would have noticed a pattern by now. I guess bad guys didn't believe in fairy tales.

Granted, no one, not even the bad guys in fairy tales used vulgar language or flipped off, so maybe that felt unrealistic to them.

BUT when I told Mum about the story of the girl who ended up with jewels falling out of her mouth everytime she spoke, Mum said that a girl who spoke sincerely and didn't swear or gossip, would only speak words LIKE jewels. Beautiful, valuable words.

And Dad said an Alpha's word is power, and one should not abuse his power. It was too zen for me, so I just took it to literally mean not to use abusive language.

When I told them, I was just mentioning it because I thought it would be terribly uncomfortable to be puking hard rock jewels out everytime you wanted to talk. I hadn't noticed the moral lesson till they pointed it out.

So yeah... Let's just put it all down to how my parents brought me up. Despite the fact that I was a monster and an alpha, I was still brought up all my life as a "good girl" - I mean, I try. And my parents definitely tried. Hahaha.

I crossed my arms over the fluffy monster on my lap, "I just don't want to."

Yeah, I was just gonna chalk it up to my upbringing.

"Understood, princess." Harvey nodded towards the road.

And I decided to just let it be. It was a stupid thing to have flared up over. Hahaha, I guess I really p***ed Henry off just now.

Our car pulled up a stop light when I realised we weren't going our usual road home. Then Harvey wound down his window and signaled to the car next to us to do the same.

Henry's car? I watched wide eyed as the darkened window came down from the backseat window. Marcus who was seated closest to the window called over, "What's up, Harv?"

"Just something for Alpha Henry." My good beta answered calmly.

"Yeah, what?" Henry called over from next to Marcus.

And then Harvey stuck out his hand from the car and gave Henry the one finger salute.

Marcus made an over dramatic gasping sound before he started a coughing fit, and then he was just laughing. He wasn't even going to hide it.

Henry smirked, "F*** off, beta."

Harvey answered with his usual smile, "Same to you, Alpha. Have a nice day."

And then his smile never wavering, he drove off at the green light leaving Henry's car to eat our dust.

If I were a guy... I doubt I would ever be as cool as Harvey. Even if I tried that move, I was sure the traffic light might not have changed so smoothly and I would be left in an awkward position after the parting shot unable to move my car and myself away.

So maybe it was a good thing I was a girl. I mean, I've always imagined that I'd be a guy like Harvey, but now I realize a "good girl" and a "good beta" were quite different personalities. A guy equivalent of me might be someone like... I had no idea. Maybe Batman. Hahaha. Jk.

If I were a guy, I'd probably be exactly as I was now. Not very cool. Not very funny.

Once we were en route back home, my good beta went on to update me about what I've missed while I was in school.

Firstly, the communique of my presence at the Langston with regards to the news footage last night had been released. The FAO had been handling the follow-up with the press all day. WTH was a "communiqué"?

My FAO must be the only office in the whole of Night Leaf that releases communiqués and held candances.

An unexpected complication arose because now the major Human News Channels have been alerted of this "misinformation" by LNC to the general public, and have now picked it up mostly to rub it in LNC's face with the first report out 30 minutes ago online entitled, "False Goddess Sighting Reported by LNC". You could tell they had a healthy rivalry going on. (I'm being sacarstic. It's common knowledge that they hated each other.)

Meanwhile, our new social media channels had been launched today, along with our FAO's website. The MOON BELL CHIMES was well received and already had more than a thousand subscribers and counting. Ki would report the totals by tomorrow morning.

I pulled out my phone to add MOON BELL CHIMES, and also Mum's NIGHT LEAF LUNA and Beta Lucas' THE LAST NIGHT LEAF BETA just to show my support. Let's not forget my three betas too.

Meanwhile, Delta Dominic of the Lorent Pack has sent a report. Dom had led the Lorent Wolves to visit Ethan with a healer and a large hamper of snacks, a brand new game console and premium download membership, and an annual magazine subscription gift code. They also laughed at all Ethan's jokes, including the one where Ethan said getting shot by them was the best thing that could happen to him.

Seriously, that guy... I don't think he was joking about that part.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty smart of Dom. Since I said they had to go every single day till Ethan got out of the hospital, they brought a healer so they only had to go and laugh at Ethan's jokes once. He found a loophole which he hopped through with a flair of over excessive expenses that I had come to expect from a Lorent wolf.

In my mind, all they needed was to bring a board game or deck of cards, share a magazine or two, and a bag of chips. But yeah... cultural differences.

I wondered how the Lorents celebrated Vday. Omo. Maybe they gave each other annual chocolate subscriptions. Hahaha.

But Ethan had been back on duty since yesterday and I'm glad for that.

Other than that, everything else was continuing smoothly. The weather was still looking on its best behaviour, Gamma Harry had taken a team of warriors and was now dealing with road safety, checking the trees along the roads for overhanging broken branches and other potential accidents.

Gamma Endo had taken his own team and they were digging out and resetting the traps. The snowfall had been so bad, most of the traps were sprung by the weight of the snow. Not to mention the trip wires. The warriors would have to dig them all out and reset them too.

We were really lucky, Harvey concluded. There was no major accident or damage done this storm. Everyone was safe, even comfortable throughout. It was one of Morning Light's better winters.

When Harvey said it that way, I couldn't help but wonder what had Morning Light wolves had to put up with in their not so good winters.

All my life, winter had been alright. Storms were busy and the whole family had to help out, but not dangerous. Emergency teams and extra hours were put in and the pack house would be warm and buzzing with activity. The other wolves would hunker down in the warmth of their homes or come over to the packhouse to shelter.

And the snow days were always glorious!

I still can't believe I spent half of today's Snow Day at school and would be spending the rest of it shopping! T.T

What a waste of good snow!

But I had to wonder, who would play with me now? Savy and Lizzy seem to much prefer to shop and hang out by the fireplace. Even Ben and Jonah had real pack work or else it was his LAN game they had been into lately.

Perhaps all my peers had outgrown romping in the snow? Everyone but me.

But no, this wasn't the time to be feeling sorry for myself. I've grown up too! I'm a cool teenager now. Okay, I'm not, but I'm working on it. Don't rush me. Coolness needs to chill.

Preferably in the snow.

Suddenly, I had a brain wave! If I could confirm that Harvey wasn't taking me to the dance on Sunday, then I won't need to go shopping right? But remembering Savy's warning, I realized this would be trickier than I could deal with under normal circumstances.

I needed to ask Harvey if he was taking me to the dance without him knowing that I didn't know the answer.

And it had to be handled delicately so he didn't think I desperately wanted him to, or that I was rejecting him after being the one who asked him by giving him the chocolate muffin in the first place.

Because either way would be awkward and embaressing for both of us, particularly me.

How should I do this without looking like a fool?

Things were much less complicated when I was a stupid kid.