THE ALMOST CATFIGHT

10 FEBRUARY, WEDNESDAY, HOMEROOM

"Why is Sam suddenly getting a makeover, anyway?" Abigail asked from the other side of the classroom.

"We're trying to decide if she was more of the cool type or the cute type." Krystal answered with a shrug.

"Hm..." The cheerleader came over to our table.

By now, I was mortified beyond anything. The embaressment was real.

"Why don't you just ask her?" Abigail wondered, "Sam, do you think you're the cool type or the cute type?"

She smiled at me, showing me both rows of her straight white teeth, making me feel quite sure it was a trap.

{Trap}

Yes. Sigh. Wolfie, I just said that it was, didn't I? I might be slow in some things, but my instincts were pretty on the spot.

Too bad instincts didn't come with clever retorts or witty one liners.

"I don't know." I answered, careful to mask my embaressment and wariness in front of Abigail, "Does it matter?"

"See," Krystal folded her arms smugly, "She's the cool type."

Abigail beamed, "Maybe we can vote on this. Should Sam be cute or cool?"

"Can't I just stay the same as usual?" I asked.

"NO!" More than one girl shouted in surround sound at sensitive ears.

I winced.

"Zammi is with us." Krystal stepped up to face off Abigail, "She's one of the cool girls."

"Well, I think she's more cute than cool." Abigail said, "We'll let this vote decide. If Sam's cool, she can stay with you. But if she's cute, she should be with us."

Wait. Stop. WTH.

I looked at Abigail and her posy and then at the cool girls. Mostly, I was trying to figure out what was going on, because it sounded like they were fighting over me like I was some kind of new toy.

"Sam, you should hang out with me. Those girls just want to copy your homework." Abigail informed me.

"You just want to be invited to her parties!" Zara accused.

"Okay, let's vote!" Abigail said.

"Not up for votes, she's with us!" Krystal said.

"This is stupid!" Troy complained too loudly.

"If you girls want to fight over Sam, just catfight. Don't drag us guys into it." Ivan said.

And then I said, "That's enough. I'm not cute. I'm not cool. I'm just Sam."

"But you're with us, okay Sam?" Krystal said. She called me Sam!

I nodded, "Yeah, we're friends."

"Good." Krystal nodded. She raised her brow smugly at Abigail, "Zammi isn't going to fall for your fake popularity."

At the word "fake", all hell broke loose.

Abigail was immediately furious, "You're the fake! You can't even get a boyfriend who isn't just dating you to f*** you."

Krystal slammed the table with her hand at that, "You two faced b****, you've gone too far!"

I took a step back.

But Zara stepped up in Krystal's defence and yelled at Abigail, "Yeah! You two faced, two timing, two **** ****** ****..."

You know what, let me just not write out the rest of it. Zara turned out to know quite a lot of unprintable insults.

I took another step back. I might be the alpha. But these girls can be really scary in their own ways. And unlike me, they were less easily embaressed.

I felt someone tug on my sleeve. It was Maria. I realised I was standing next to my seat now. I sat back down quickly next to her.

The homeroom bell rung. Ah! Saved by the bell.

Mrs Henderson came in, "What is going on here? Everyone who isn't sitting down come up to the front of the classroom!"

Or was I just saved by a vampire? Omo.

"You're welcome." Maria smiled silently into my mind.

I pushed her out without a word.

I watched the cool girls and Abigail's posy and some of the guys walk to the front of the class. Troy tried to sit down, but Liam had lifted the back of his chair and dumped him back out onto the floor.

Mrs Henderson was very displeased. She gave everyone standing in front of the classroom a stern look, "I want all of you here to write a reflective essay about what happened this morning. Liam, please take note of all their names."

After that, Mrs Henderson let everyone returned to their seats. Today for homeroom, we were going to talk about cliques. Mrs Henderson wondered if anyone could explain what a clique was?

"Samantha." She decided.

I stood up, "A click is a measurement of how far you ran? I think it's short of a kilometre."

The class sniggered. Mrs Henderson's lips pressed down and I realised I blundered. I sat down.

Mrs Henderson wrote "CLIQUES" on the board and said, "Not click, I'm talking about cliques among friends. Do you feel there are cliques in our classroom?"

Oh... I had never heard of it. But it sounded like one of those homeroom sessions about stress and rebellion and other human teenager problems. I settled down to hear it out.

The other kids seem to understand though. Most of them said yes.

Mrs Henderson asked us to identify some of the kids who had cliques in our class. We would pretend the board was our classroom, and she would write our names and draw a circle around each clique.

So then everyone started shouting names like Abigail and Krystal... And Mrs Henderson gave up and asked Liam to come up and help her draw out all the cliques.

After a while, I began to see cliques were just another way of saying a group of friends you're usually hanging out with.

It was really surprising though, because my name was under what the rest of the class called "the cool kids clique" which was the cool girls plus Henry and Marcus and Liam.

Except that the other guys argued that Liam should be in the football clique with them. So Liam moved his name over to the football clique.

Abigail was identified with the largest clique, comprising of most of the girls in class.

There was also a small "nerd clique" and a "computer game clique". I had thought all the boys played football. But it seemed there were lots of invisible boys doing other things too.

And then there were a few other names that were outside these circles, like those two girls, and Arlene and Elena, and Maria.

A lot of this surprised me. Like that I was with the cool kids, but also that we had humans in my clique AND that Pearl was in a human clique.

I mean, if I had drawn them out, I would have put all the wolves together. That should be how it worked right? Wolves should run together. It certainly started like that. I wondered how it happened that we were in different groups now. I wondered if I had failed in some way as the alpha in keeping the group together.

Now the class was finalizing the chart on the board. Some girls felt that Janice and a few of the other girls should get their own clique. They were like the "nice girls clique."

I'm not sure what was the "nice girls clique" about. It was like saying the other girls weren't "nice"?

After that Abigail's clique wasn't that big anymore.

And then Henry insisted the Liam should put his name across both the football clique and ours. Maybe that showed how popular Liam was... He had more than one clique.

And then the gaming clique and nerd clique also had reshuffling.

Overall, I would summize that a clique was like your inner circle in a pack. Like within every pack, there were special groups of wolves - mostly, these wolves were bonded over time, but sometimes it's like something just clicks and we form an instant connection so that we run together super well.

We liked to group our warriors together like that for patrolling, scouting, hunting, etc. The best teams were formed by the wolves who had strong bonds with one another.

Like in my pack, although I was the alpha and would protect my whole pack, I had a "clique". To be very honest, they weren't even everyone in my gang.

Cliques had to be exclusive that way because they were important and very personal.

Even though they were pretty informal, cliques were to a pack what cells were to a body.

A good clique supported you in your missions, boosts your social rank in the pack, and established you as a well bonded healthy wolf.

In a pack, another wolf in your clique would be the one you trusted to tell you if you were out of line - regardless of your rank, or hold you accountable for your pack commitments.

If ever a young wolf got orphaned and was left without family, his parent's clique members were always the first in line to adopt them.

So you could imagine my surprise when Mrs Henderson started saying how bad cliques were because they were exclusive and make other feel left out and forces those in the clique to conform to peer pressure. Cliques like to use their collective social power to bully others and put others down.

She asked us to imagine how it would feel like to be a new kid in our class and not be able to find a group of friends because everyone was in their own cliques.

"Like Samantha, for example, is different from a lot of you." She turned to the board to look for my name, "Goodness, did you kids even write her name down?"

"She's with us, Mrs Hen." Krystal informed her.

I had to say, seeing my name in the cool kids circle felt good.

Mrs Henderson looked surprised at the board, "Ah, well, yes...alright then."

She decided to look for a name that was alone to make her point, "Maria then, how do you feel about not being in any of the circles, Maria?"

Maria stood up, "I don't want to be trapped in a circle. I don't like anyone in this class except for Sam."

Mrs Henderson blinked at that. It was definitely not the answer she was expecting, "Okay..."

"Well then, Sam... I mean, Samantha. You are with the cool kids now?" Mrs Henderson asked.

"Sam is fine." I told her.

"Okay, Sam, was it hard to be accepted into this clique?" Mrs Henderson asked.

I thought about it and remembered the first home ec class where we were introduced and I was immediately told I was one of them now, "Not really."

"What do you have to do to be part of this clique?" Mrs Henderson prompted meaningfully, "Did you have to change the way you wear your uniform? Or maybe lend your homework for the others to copy?"

I felt very strongly like she wanted me to answer yes, but that would be a lie.

"We're not bullying Sam." Krystal decided to strongly reassured Mrs Henderson at this point, which as usual, resulted in the opposite effect.

Mrs Henderson frowned.

I'm not sure why Mrs Henderson always seemed to feel I was being bullied or something weird like that. Did I look weak? I was the alpha!

"Well, let's watch a video." Mrs Henderson decided, "and we can discuss that."

So we watched a video about this girl who was the new transfer into a school where all the other kids had cliques and she just couldn't find a group to fit into. She tried to change herself to dress and act more like the other kids and she felt very lonely and would go home and cry everyday. Eventually, she ended up being bullied by the group she wanted to get into.

It was all very strange and I could not relate to it at all. Maybe she was the human equivalent of an omega.

"I'm sure we can all relate in some way to this girl." Mrs Henderson prompted after the video. And then she had a bright idea, "Pearl, you joined us recently, where are you now?" Mrs Henderson found Pearl's name next to Abigail's on the board, "Ah, you're with Abigail's clique."

Pearl smiled, "Yes. It was hard and it took a while, but I managed to find a group of nice friends to hang out with in school."

"Yes, good for you, Pearl." Mrs Henderson smiled encouragingly, "And what advice would you give to the girl in the video?"

"Maybe not to give up. And sometimes the first group of friends you approach might not accept you, but that's okay, you can make other friends." Pearl advised.

I thought it was pretty sound advice.

Leia raised her hand, "I have advice for the girl in the video too. The girl in the video should reflect more deeply on her actions. Maybe she said or did the wrong things."

Then Krystal raised her hand, "I also think the girl in the video should be more realistic about her expectation. She was just a plain girl, so trying to join the cheerleaders was dumb. She needed more self awareness."

Then Jasmine raise her hand, "I don't think it's anything wrong for the girl in the video to want to join the cheerleaders, as long as she works hard, she can be cute too."

"That's what she tried to do," Krystal snapped back without raising her hands, "And look what happened! They just used and bullied her!"

"The point is just that the girl in the video got to such a pathetic state because she offended the other girls." Leia raised her hand to say, "If she hadn't gossiped about them behind their backs, things wouldn't have ended up that way."

"And that the cheerleader group was too high in the social ladder for her to reach in the first place." Krystal added.

"Although, if she worked hard, she could be a cheerleader too." Jasmine insisted.

And then Zara burst out, "Oh! Well, she could join another cheerleader clique that would accept her because the cheerleaders there are just as mean and backstabbing as she is."

"That's just stupid! Why would there be another cheerleader clique?" Ivan interuppted.

"You're the one who's stupid. Can't you count? There are only 4 girls in the video. Tell me where in the world would you find a school with only four cheerleaders?" Zara shot back.

"Isn't it obvious? The video was so low budget that's all the actors they could afford." Ivan retorted, "Stupid."

Zara was insensed, "Don't call me stupid, stupid."

"But you are. Pretty girls like you are always stupid." Ivan accused.

Zara tossed her head at that, "At least I'm pretty. You are just stupid."

"That's enough!" Mrs Henderson finally decided to put her foot down, "There would be no name-calling in my class!"

Our class quietened.

Mrs Henderson looked around the class, her face wrinkled with worry. I don't think it had escaped her notice that something was going down just now.

Anyway, even if she hadn't figured that out, I think Pearl bursting into tears and suddenly running out of the classroom right now made it obvious.

"What?" Mrs Henderson looked stunned. The bell rang.