TAKING OUT THE TRASH

SATURDAY, 13 FEBRUARY, 2PM

Now that the adults had settled on a solution to fix the "problem" us teens had created, Hank turned to order us, "Okay, guys. Lunch break is over. Clean up the stall and meet with the others by the fountain. The bus will be here soon."

What break? I didn't remember a break. We were selling cakes like... well, like hotcakes all through lunch! It was so busy that Ben, Dean, and I ended up doing double shifts just to help Link and Kev.

I sighed and pulled open the nearest trash bag to fill up. Ben immediately took it from me either because I was the Alpha (and shouldn't be picking up trash), or because I was too slow for his liking.

He sent Link to return the glass bowl, and table cloth and trays with our thanks. Link was a good choice for that, he returned everything with the most appreciative smile and conversation.

Then Ben made Dean pack up the rest of the trash and Kev to use his large frame to hoist the bulky bags out to the large disposal bins behind the hospital. Ben liked to boss people around, he called it "delegating" as if it were a real skill. Now that I thought about it, Ben's delegating was always pretty efficient, so efficient that I highly doubted he had assigned any of the tasks randomly. Was this another beta magic trick?

After the clean up, Link handed out balloons to the kids while Florence and Joanna set up the stall with a simple flower patterned plastic sheet and the usual row of boxes with home baked treats for a dollar or two.

And just like that, our little stall completely transformed into the familiar bake sale stand that we would have at Night Leaf every now and then. I had to say, I had mixed feelings looking at it. On one hand, it would never beat our super seller stall. On the other hand, it had the really comfortable feeling of home.

I looked at the Lorent booth, they had changed shift too, and I could no longer see Peach, Pear, or Plum anywhere. I wondered if a Morning Light stall would have its own style too. I hadn't got a chance to shop around at all!

Awww... I didn't get to buy anything yummy. I was broke anyway. I only had two quarters left in my wallet. I let Ben lead me the usual way, steering me with a casual hand on the small of my back while the other guys followed behind us.

"Oh, man, the look on their faces was priceless." Link crowed, "Did you see Hank when Ben showed them the money?"

The guys laughed heartily at the memory. A memory that I couldn't laugh along to because I hadn't noticed Hank. I was focused on Mrs Beta's and the other ladies in front of me.

We parted with Link and Kev at one of the stairs down to the carpark. They were driving the old van home. So Ben, Dean, and I met up with the others at the fountain. Lizzy, Savy, Jonah, and Shannon came over to join us and report.

It was all good news. Angela's box won best seller at Lizzy and Savy's stall. And Savy's box naturally won at Jonah and Shannon's stall. As a bonus, Lizzy's box won too.

"That's four box prizes and the top stall prize." Ben nodded grimly, "Good job everyone."

That's Beta approval for you.

"But we don't know about the top stall yet." Shannon said, "Even though we sold most of the stuff, it seemed like the other stalls didn't do too badly either."

Ben grinned, he was clearly enjoying the winning hand, "We sold EVERYTHING."

And because he had to show off, he continued, "At TEN TIMES the price."

"What?" Jonah looked shocked, "Even my mum's banana bread?"

"Ah, no." Ben admitted, "That box was sold at its original price to our own gang as planned."

Jonah nodded, his relief palpable, "Yep, yep. That's good, good."

"What did you do now, Ben?" Lizzy was on her twin's case at once, "You better not have done anything illegal."

Ben made an attempt to wear an innocent expression, "Who me? It was all Sam's doing!"

Eh? I shook my head, "But Ben..."

"Nope, Alpha." Ben patted my shoulder firmly, "This one's all on you."

And then he laughed.

Why did I suddenly feel like the scapegoat? We did something good right? We raised a lot of funds for the hospital's community outreach program this year. We sold EVERYTHING in our stall - even the stock that was not supposed to be sold yet... which hadn't quite pleased the adults. Well, you can't please everyone.

"Alright, is everyone here?" Mrs Beta tried to get our attention.

"Listen up!" Hank yelled and the yapping all around silenced.

"Thank you, Hank." Mrs Beta cleared her throat, "The bus is here. When we arrive at the packhouse, Please head straight to the large classroom on the third floor. I want to talk to all of you."

"Uh oh." Tim snickered, "She wants to talk."

"You." Jay gestured rudely at Tim's direction, "Just shut up."

"What?" Tim lifted his hands with a shrug, "What did I do?"

"You should know what you did." Jay shot back. Nolan caught him by the arm before he could make bodily contact with Tim.

Shannon was quickly on the scene. He stood between the two guys, "Cool it, guys. Whatever it was, let's get back to the pack house first."

I heard grumbling around me about Tim and Morning Light and fighting. Angela rolled her eyes, "Urgh, my stupid brother! Mum is going to flip!"

"What did Tim do now?" I asked.

So naturally, the girls filled me in while we made our way to the pick up point: In a nutshell, this story could be entitled "Night Leaf Goons VS Morning Light Goons".

Once upon a time, not too long ago or far away, there were two bake sale stalls situated next to each other. One of them was being operated by Tim, Sue, Jay, and Nolan from Night Leaf, and another was operated by Nix, Marlow, and Ethan from Morning Light - yes, as in the three hyena brothers themselves.

From the onset, I felt sorry for Sue. And I would like to point out that she had very little to do with this story - she did try to stop them, which was brave of her, but futile. Her biggest contribution was her eye witness account. She had to tell the adults what happened, then she had to tell Angela what happened, and now she had to repeat the entire story again, every time someone asked, "What happened?"

We got to the pick up point but there was a long line of vehicles, and our bus was no where to be seen. Hank immediate walked away to mindlink the driver. Angela put Sue squarely in the limelight, "Okay, tell us what happened again. Don't need to spare any details about my stupid brother."

"Hey!" Her stupid brother protested.

"Shut up. You're going to be so dead when Mum hears about this." Angela scolded her stupid brother.

Her stupid brother suddenly took on a kind brotherly vibe, "Look, you can't tell mum, okay? I'll do anything. Just don't tell mum."

"Shut up and I'll think about it." Angela agreed.

And Tim actually shut up the entire time Sue told the story. He just stood there and although he opened his mouth to protest a couple of times, he was completely soundless.

Oh right, Sue's eyewitness account:

Tim and Sue were on duty at their stall. Sue had to set up. She put out the boxes, found the stools stacked by the side along the wall and brought them over.

"And what was my brother doing all this time?" Angela prompted.

"He had to survey the competition." Sue explained, "So I said I'd set up the stall."

"So naive." Angela sighed and patted her friend on the shoulder, "Don't worry, I'd be sure to let my mum know."

Even if Tim hadn't had his first shift yet, I could feel his hackles raised at that last comment, but he remained otherwise stoic.

So while Sue did all the set up, Tim went round to the other stalls in the vicinity, which was mainly the stall next door where the three hyena brothers were manning. "Manning" was the right word here because all these guys were doing were standing around, bored to tears, in their full suit of muscles and daily dose of testosterone languishing away.

And of course Tim had to go up to their stall and say something like, "Hi, looks like we're neighbors."

And Nix took offence, "What do you mean, 'hi', I'm your gamma so show some respect."

"Yeah, respect." Ethan said, "If nothing else, he's also the basketball captain."

(Which I have to point out, made no sense whatsoever - what had basketball got to do with it? But this is a conversation among guys... so I wouldn't try to understand it.)

"Look, no offense," Tim answered - which usually meant that what he was about to say would be offensive, "But you're a Morning Light gamma. I only take my orders from Night Leaf. And basketball is for dunkin losers."

Which made Marlow laugh, and point at his gamma, "Heh. Yeah. Dunkin loser."

And Ethan cackled.

And Nix growl, "You Night Leaf brats need to learn to respect hierachy."

Which made me think that Nix was growing to be a clone of his dear dad, Endo.

And once again made no sense since Marlow was from Morning Light, and he was just a rude, if not worse.

How should someone respond to something like that?

Tim didn't hesitate when faced with three bigger, badder, upperclassmen, "Look, I'm not trying to pick a fight. I just came to say hi."

"Now you can say, pie (bye)." And then Ethan smashed a pie into Tim's face. Specifically, it was a lemon meringue pie. What a waste of lemon meringue!

This was war! Tim reached out his hand towards Sue, "Quick, give me something to throw."

Sue shook her head. There was NO WAY she was going to have anything in our stall thrown.

The three hyenas laughed at Tim's "fail".

Tim used his hand to wipe the lemon meringue off his face just in time to see Jay and Nolan coming over, "Guys, help me here!"

Jay and Nolan who were just passing by...

"Let me just point out that we were innocent passerbys!" Jay interjected.

Anyway, Jay and Nolan came over because they saw Tim covered in white stuff and the three bigger guys laughing their heads off at him.

"Hey, what's going on here?" Jay tried to intervene peaceably.

"When life gives you lemons..." Ethan said but started laughing again so he couldn't continue whatever joke he had meant to say.

Tim simply picked up the chocolate cake from the Morning Light stall and smashed it into Nix's face.

"You'll pay for that!" Ethan yelled from behind Marlow, who he was using as a human shield, "As in, seriously man, you need to pay 40 bucks for that cake."

"40 bucks for that s***?" Tim argued, "You're overcharging!"

Nix got most of the cake off his face, "You punks need to be taught a lesson."

And then because of the economical cost of smashing cakes at each other's faces, they decided to smash each other's faces with good old free-for-all fist fights.

I took a good look at Tim, Jay, and Nolan. They were rumpled, but otherwise fine, "I guess they went easy on you."

"What?" Jay let his mouth hang open in shock for a moment, "No, they did not go easy on us."

There was silence for a moment as the three guys internally replayed what happened.

So what happened then? I looked at Sue, who looked embarrassed to say it in front of all of us.

"They gave all three of them wedgies." Angela huffed, concluding the story abruptly.

I don't know why, but I laughed.

That was like the stupidest, funniest thing that happened today.

"Ahem." Hank had rejoined us from his mindlinking with the bus driver, "This isn't something to laugh about, Alpha."

Who me? Hahaha, opps. I suppose not.

Angela hit her brother and then the two guys, "Can you numbskulls use your head? We're merging packs. You three bozos are just going to destroy the relationship even before the ink dries on the paperwork."

There's Delta Felicity's daughter for you.

"Yeah, stupids." Ben was in his Beta mode, "Sam's been working hard on this merger. If you guys do anything to blow it, I'll kill you."

Jay raised his hand, "Urm... I'd like to repeat, Nolan and I were just passing by. We were looking for Jonah's... I mean Stall 4."

"Yeah, we were innocent." Nolan said. Which was completely believable because it was Nolan who said it.

So there was only one stupid here?

"I'm telling mum." Angela said again, "She'll know what to do."

"No, don't tell mum!" Tim was almost begging, "Look, I'd do all your chores this week."

Which made Angela pause. Her brother was serious. He was talking about chores.

Eh, it wasn't such a big deal, right? I mean, its just the three hyena brothers...At any rate, those goons started it.

And just as my luck would have it, the Morning Light youths passed us just at that moment. I saw Harvey's training partner, what was his name? Kevy or something. Lola was with him, she smiled and waved to me.

Naturally, my smile broadened, I waved back.

Kevy (if that was really his name), looked up and nodded politely at our direction.

The three hyena brothers came over all on their own accord. Marlow snarled a little at Tim and the other guys who all immediately looked down to the ground.

Only Hank growled back in warning to the three goons. They won't be able to get away with messing around now that he was around, but I waved Hank down.

My boo had risen to meet the hyena brothers. I was tired of standing around waiting for the bus. It was time to play... I mean, set things right. Haha.

"Hello princess." Nix greeted, surprisingly politely.

"What did you three think you were doing?" The words left my lips before I thought about it.

"We're just schooling some pups for you, princess." Nix drawled with this usual charm - the kind of charm that made me want to slap him.

But I had amazing restraint, and was even able to return a tight smile, "Should I be thanking you for that?"

"Just doing my job, princess." Nix made a flirty wink and made a move to leave.

Like hell I was about to let him leave on that note!