THE UN-FINER POINTS OF HIGH SCHOOL FRIENDSHIPS

22 FEBRUARY, MONDAY, HOMEROOM

Fluffy returned to his seat when Elena entered the classroom. She gave us a startled look, and then turned on the classroom lights. Opps, were Fluffy and I just sitting and talking in an unlit classroom all this while? I hadn't noticed. The sun was already up outside, so it wasn't that dark, but now that Elena turned on the lights, it was suddenly obviously brighter and I wondered why I hadn't noticed.

Besides looking startled when she first saw us, Elena proceeded to ignore us and settled at her own desk.

A moment later, EJ bounced back into the room, "Sorry! Sorry, Fluffy! I was delayed by some pretty seniors on my way back!"

Fluffy rose from his seat smiling, "It's alright."

EJ stopped bouncing, "Are you mad?"

"Why would I be mad?" Fluffy's smiling expression remained firmly in place as he picked up his clothes and left the classroom.

EJ sighed noisily and flopped into his seat, "He's mad."

I didn't get a chance to respond to that because Henry and Marcus had to come into the classroom at that point.

"Who's mad?" Henry asked in passing.

He dropped his things on his chair, "Hi Sam."

"Fluffy." EJ pouted, "Because I was flirting and forgot the time."

"Yo." I said.

"You deserve it then." Henry shrugged to EJ.

"Yo? What's yo?" Marcus asked as he dumped his things on his desk.

"Urm... Good morning, your most exalted young alphaness?" I corrected.

Marcus burst into a happy coughing fit at that and shook his head, "No, I don't mean that, Sam. I mean, you're a girl. What kind of girl goes yo?"

Henry sat down and folded his long legs under his desk - had he grown again? How unfair!

"Leave it Marc." Henry said, but he was grinning, "We all know Sam's really a monster."

Well, in that case, "yo" wasn't exactly the most monstrous kind of greeting either, but I was grinning now too. I liked it whenever Henry called me a monster. Boo was easy to flatter that way.

And overall it was nice. I mean last weekend was crazy, but suddenly everything was back to normal again.

The other students started streaming in. The atmosphere was a bit more serious today. Was it because it was exam day?

"Oh yeah, Sam?" Marcus leaned forward on his desk to look at me, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Are you going to confess?" EJ piped in from behind him.

"What? No!" Marcus sounded horrified by the thought, "No!"

I ignored EJ, "What's up?"

"About what my Alpha and Luna said last weekend..." Marcus shifted uncomfortably.

Henry laughed, "I told you to just forget about that."

"Forget about what?" I asked, "What did they say?"

I scrunched my face to remember.

Henry looked smug, "See, I told you. Sam's pretty clueless about these things."

Humph! I'll be the judge of that!

"Clueless about what things?" I insisted.

"Urm... that they think we were dating." Marcus turned a little red under the collar, "But don't worry. I've already explained it to my Alpha."

"Oh yeah, I can't believe they thought that!" And then I laughed. See how un-clueless I was!

Marcus looked a little offended, "It's not that far fetched."

"Yes it was." I callously told him, "It was totally ridiculous."

And then I laughed some more.

Henry chuffed his amusement and wriggled his brows at Marcus, "I rest my case."

"Fine!" Marcus shrugged at Henry, "I know, I know, you were right."

Henry looked even more smug about it, "After all, its Sam we're talking about."

Fluffy returned in his uniform, still smiling, but he wouldn't talk to EJ.

EJ tried to get his attention, but Fluffy calmly took out a textbook and ignored him. After a series of noisy attempts to make up, EJ deflated at his desk.

Some of the girls came over to comfort him. Janice offered them home baked cookies, "You're both good friends. Why don't you just forgive him for now, Alaric?"

Both guys accepted the cookies. Nobody in their right mind would reject Janice's home-baked goodness. I smelled chocolate chips.

"Janice! We're good friends too! Feed me!" I leaned back in my chair. My friends laughed. Janice came over and gave me a cookie. She gave cookies to Henry and Marcus too.

The cool girls strutted in.

"It's exam day, but someone still has time to bake cookies." Leia said somewhat cattily.

Janice quickly offered them cookies too, "I uh... I bake when I'm stressed."

Zara accepted a cookie, "Don't mind Leia. She always talks like that."

Leia took a cookie too, "I thought somebody was supposed to be on a diet."

"See?" Zara said, completely undisturbed. She took a bite into her cookie, "Mmmm... this is good."

Krystal tossed her high pony tail, "No thanks. I'm on a diet. And I actually keep to my diets."

The last part was directed at Zara, who shrugged and retorted with her mouth full, "I didn't have breakfast."

Janice offered her another one.

"I really shouldn't." Zara said, and then she took it.

"Me too!" I raised my hand, "I mean, I already had breakfast, but I'm still hungry."

Krystal gave me a critical look, "Some girls get all the luck."

You mean all the cookies? Janice held out the entire container to me and I helped myself to two. Janice's cookies might actually be as good as Savy's, or even Esther's.

If I ranked all the people I knew who baked, it would be Esther, Savy, and then Janice.

"You have to wonder where all those calories go." Leia commented at me.

"To her wolf." Henry smirked.

Hey! I thought you were pretending not to hear us!

The girls giggled. It seemed like I was the only one who didn't welcome Henry's comment. Janice offered Henry another cookie. Krystal smiled, her good smile. Krystal had a special smile she only used for good looking guys.

But I had two cookies, and you can't eat pretty smiles or empty giggles.

While I happily chomped, Krystal and the cool girls had settled at my table to study. Aside from Jasmine, I had never seen the cool girls study before. At first, I thought they were joking, but they weren't. Krystal had cards with words written on them.

"I got this from a senior." She told us, "He said that these words would be tested."

How did one test a word in an English test? I mean, there was a vocab section, but it was only five multiple choice questions. That's like 20 words to choose from, four for each question, but it could be ANY English word! I seriously doubted a stack of word cards would cut it.

Jasmine and Liam came in holding hands. Some of the guys whooted.

"Why don't you two date over the exam?" Ivan asked. The guys laughed, and Liam gave some of them fist bumps while Jasmine separated from him to come join us.

One of the random girls in front of the class felt that the attention was totally uncalled for, "Please! They've been together like forever. Can you guys just get over it?"

"Somebody is jealous." Leia told us.

"I can hear you! If you're not happy about something, just come say it to our faces!" The random girl shot over.

"If you can hear us, then we did say it to your ugly faces!" Krystal shot back.

Now the random girls got mad. I think things hadn't quite been the same ever since their last clash along the school hallways after the critical incident review.

Even if you said it was all water under the bridge... The water was still swirling around somewhere down there.

"Just ignore them, girls." Abigail advised wisely, "Some people cannot be reasoned with."

"Oh, there she goes..." Leia rolled her eyes, "Talking about herself again."

"Be quiet! Some people are trying to study!" Troy yelled.

"You be quiet!" The girls yelled back in unison.

In our class, its Abigail's random girls VS the cool girls, unless Troy was involved. Then its all the girls against Troy.

Jasmine pulled her chair over to "study" with us while Troy grumbled loudly about how the girls in our class shrews the moment we opened our mouths.

One or two of the random girls took issue with that and they started a proper squabble on the other side of the classroom.

Back at our table, Zara picked up one of Jasmine's note cards to read.

"Oh... how do you start an informal letter?" Zara frowned in worry.

"What's an informal letter?" Leia asked.

Urm... "Like a letter to your grandma right?" I tried to explain.

My friends laughed at me.

"Oh please! Why would anyone write to their Grandma?" Zara laughed.

Maybe she had gone to the next continent after your Grandpa died? Should I be writing a letter to Grandma Luna? At least to tell her that her ring was safe. It was so safe, I didn't even know exactly where it was right now.

"Never mind the informal letter." Krystal, as usual, knew it all, "The seniors told me its almost always a formal letter, like maybe to lodge a complaint or something."

"Oh, good." Leia nodded, "I know how to write those."

The other girls nodded like they knew exactly what Leia meant, and I decided not to ask why.

"How do you start a formal letter? Do you write the date on the left or the right?" Zara asked.

"Left." "Right." Krystal and Leia answered at the same time.

I covered my ears, "Stop, you girls are making my head all jumbled!"

The girls laughed.

"Then YOU teach us Zammi!" Zara said.

"Yeah, you're the A student!" Leia said, "Don't be stingy."

It's not that I didn't want to, but how did you teach English? Most of my English teachers liked to come in and make us do worksheets or read off the English text book.

Jasmine flipped her notes to the formal letter writing page to share with Zara.

Krystal decided to check out Jasmine's other notes.

"Zammi, why is this answer not 'has been'?" Krystal demanded.

Why was she asking me? Weren't those Jasmine's notes? Her neatly printed handwriting were all over it.

I looked at the question she had shoved in front of me, "Urm... because its 'had been'."

"Why?" Krystal asked.

"Cos 'had been' just sounds right." I answered.

"'Has been' sounds right to me!" Krystal argued.

Leia pointed to the answer Jasmine had circled, "She's right. It's 'had been'."

It looked like Jasmine planned to just memorize all the answers.

"I think all the answers sound right!" Zara looked at the question and whined, "The more I read it, the more right it sounds."

"Why don't you ask your clever Ivan to tutor you?" Leia asked cattily.

"That idiot?" Zara rolled up the notes and hit Leia with it, "I'd rather fail than ask him!"

I think Ivan heard that. He looked a little shocked, but turned away when he noticed me looking. I turned away too and looked out of the window, it was snowing again. Just a very light smattering of snow. For some reason, watching the snow floating down from the sky made me think of Heller's mate. She was a very "spring" type of warlock though. So was River, really. Neither of them were very wintry the way we usually attributed the snowstorms to warlock weather.

So River was a formling, huh?

"I'm soooooo.... broke." Krystal announced.

I thought we were supposed to be studying?

But then again, we hadn't studied for more than two minutes straight since we started.

"What happened to your rich boyfriend?" Jasmine asked.

"They broke up." Leia answered for Krystal. She didn't say "I told you so." But she definitely thought it.

Krystal tsked her annoyance, "I'm forgetting about him. I've learned that the best money is the kind you earned by yourself."

"Oh, did you get a job?" Zara asked.

"Something like that." Krystal suddenly looked a little guilty.

"What kind of job?" Zara asked, "Is there an opening for me too? I'm looking for a part time..."

"No... There's no opening." Krystal cut her off, and then she added, "If urm... we need help, I promise I'll let you in."

"Shouldn't we be studying right now?" Jasmine asked. She had been the only one seriously revising so far.

BANG! Terrence stood up on the other side of the classroom. The argument between Troy and the random girls had spread to involve some of the other guys too. Terrence was red faced and angry. He pointed at one of the girls, "You've gone too far! Even if it's just words, there's only so much a man can take!"

"Where? I don't see any man." The random girl made a show of looking all around, and the other girls tittered. Terrence's red face crept up to his ears.

I turned back to the cool girls, who had long decided to give the exchange the cold shoulder. The cool girls were the cool girls and they knew it. Anytime they were miffed, they'd play that "cooler than thou" card. And no matter how petty or stupid the reason was, they still looked cool doing it.

"So... is the pay good?" Zara turned the conversation back to Krystal's new job. Zara noted enviously, "You always get the best jobs."

This pleased Krystal who smiled like the cat that got the cream and demurred, "It pays okay."

Leia rolled her eyes, "If you call selling out on your best friends a job."

There was a pause. What?

But once again it looked like I was the only one who didn't know exactly Leia was referring to.

"You said you wouldn't do it again!" Zara got visibly upset now.

"You said you wouldn't say." Krystal glared at Leia.

Leia shrugged, "You acting like you got it altogether made me change my mind. Sam, Krystal was the one who sold that photo of you and Henry to the press."'

Wait, what?