OUR FIRST SALE

SATURDAY, 13 FEBRUARY, MID MORNING

We alighted at Gate City Hospital - in my mind, I stepped out like the boss, followed by my pack of wolves - but I was quite sure in reality, we just looked like a bunch of teens pouring out of a school bus for a school excursion. Sigh. Reality bites.

Anyway, Jonah and a group of guys volunteered to go with Hank to collect the boxes from the van while the rest of us assembled by the large fountain outside the hospital. Mrs Beta let us draw numbers for our stalls. Naturally, Ben pushed me out to draw our number. We got stall 3, which was somewhere inside the building lobby.

It wasn't stall 1 or 2 which was placed around in the circle with a mix of other stalls around the fountain where we were gathered. There were benches here, and today's weather was great. This would have been the best location for people to buy baked goodies, sit and eat, or just pass the time if they were waiting for someone. Maybe stall 3 was lucky because the wind was a little chilly and it was situated indoors? I don't know. Maybe my luck wasn't working today, you know my wolf could have her off days, but Ben was confident. He told the other two guys, "Good. This must be the best location."

I suppressed a sigh at my beta's unwavering blind faith in my luckiness. Where did he get such an impression anyway? I was the Alpha, not the goddess! Ah well, whatever.

When all the boxes were unloaded, we were told to take 5 boxes each. We weren't allowed to choose the boxes. They would be distributed randomly by the teachers.

"Just make lines in front of the teachers and take the boxes given to you." Mrs Beta instructed, "No requests for exchanges would be entertained."

Ben's hand shot up, "Can we swap with other stalls?"

Mrs Beta narrowed her eyes, "Why?"

"In case we get too many of the same kind or if we wanted to specialize in on type?" Ben suggested.

He was totally making it up. I had to hand it to him, he was good at thinking on his toes.

"Alright, I'll allow you to swap boxes among yourselves." Mrs Beta allowed, "BUT it has to be a mutually beneficial and agreed exchange."

In other words, Ben was not allowed to use his beta-command-charm to make the other stalls to surrender the good boxes. Mrs Beta was trying to be reasonable, but it had to be hard to not suspect her own son. I mean, she was right, Ben was definitely up to something. But what made her think Ben's shenanigans would be so crudely straightforward?

"Yeah, okay." Ben was contrite, "I won't."

So we all queued up and collected our boxes. Five boxes each made 20 boxes per stall (and 120 boxes in total, spread out among 6 stalls, if you were counting).

"So... should we open them up to check what's inside?" Link asked.

There was no way we could without putting the boxes on the ground though...

"No need. Just check for our names on the boxes."

It was a little like a lucky draw. For our plan to work, we needed at least one box out of the 20 with any one of our names of it.

"The probability is a 10% chance of getting one of our own boxes." Kev had calculated for us, (where our own boxes referred to any box belonging to someone from our three stalls.)

That's not too bad. We had 20 boxes in all, my math wasn't anything to boast about but I'd say the odds were in our favor.

"No way." Link exclaimed.

It turned out that neither Link nor Kev had any of our boxes. Neither did Ben.

"Sam, who's boxes did you get?" Ben turned to me.

I strained to see but I was still holding the 5 boxes against and the names were facing to one side side.

"This side." Kev located it. I tried to shift my arm so the guys could read the names.

"Oh damn." Link said.

"What? Is that bad? Who did I get?"

Ben was grinning like the Cheshire cat with both paws in cream, "You got you, me, Savy, Angela, and Jonah."

I frowned a little. I was undecided about my luck. Getting both Angela's and Savy's was definitely lucky, but Ben and my boxes were a double dose of chocolate fudge... and Jonah... that was the banana bread with long beans that were harder than bricks and looked like worms right?

"Sam, you really took the cake this time." Ben crowed.

He was the one who looked like the cat who got the cream though, and unless Angela's mum broke her long standing traddition of "baking" Krispy Creme dougnuts, I was quite sure none of my boxes contained cake.

Jonah and Shannon came over with matching worried expressions and a couple of boxes.

"Bad news." Jonah announced, "We didn't get a single one of ours."

Ben pulled out Savy's box from my stack, "Trade us - something decent. This is Savy's."

"Oohhh, you're giving us Savy's?" Shannon took the box, "Yeah, I'll get you something nice. Thanks."

The rest of us just stared at Ben like he lost his head. WTH would he give up what could have been our best seller with our name on it?

Lizzy and Savy came over to report next. They were setting stall with Marissa and Jessica. They've gotten Jessica's box, but they also had a problem.

"I don't really know how to put this." Lizzy said, "The brownies Jessica made are kinda... urm... I don't think we can sell them fast."

Oh yeah, Jessica's brownies. She's very proud of them, and they didn't taste bad, but I've eaten them before on many occasions and they were consistently on the dry side. It even looked dry - so I could understand Lizzy's concern.

"We also have Esther's box." Savy said, "Esther made very beautiful white cupcakes with swans sitting in the icing."

Now that sounded like a best seller box.

Ben frowned, and then he handed over Angela's box, "Trade you for Esther's box."

And then he promptly passed Esther's box to Link, "Go trade this for something decent and above average with any of the other teams."

"Too easy." Link declared and took off with the precious box of Esther-made white swan cupcakes - I wish I could have at least opened them to look.

But now, that left us with two boxes of unassuming no-bake chocolate fudge squares of which one needed to sell out first because I was quite, quite sure that Jonah's box wasn't going to cut it.

"Let's go set up first." Ben sounded pleased with how things turned out, "Kev, let Link know where to find us. And remind him to trade for a very average looking box."

"What are you planning, Ben?" I asked.

But Ben was on the mindlink to our gang, "Operation Banana Bread is at Stall 3. Drop by before opening time to pick up a piece and collect your refund from Stall 4."

Ohhh... I guess Jonah's box was in the running for the first to sell out after all.

We got to our stall and I put Jonah's box on one side of the table - the one nearest to the money collection can. Just in time too, Jonah, Shannon, Angela, and Delilah all came to buy them on their way to their stall.

"By the way, thanks for sending traffic over to our stall, Ben." Jonah grinned wolfishly at his best friend at parting.

Ben grinned back, "Thank you for bringing sales to mine."

The moment they left, Link returned in a hurry. He proudly opened up a box of chocolate chip cookies.

"Yeah, that'll do." Ben nodded approvingly.

We opened all the rest of the boxes up and set up stall.

"Sam and I will be on the first shift." Ben said, "Link and Kev, you guys take the second shift. I'll be counting on you to clean up and total the earnings at the end of the day."

"Yeah, sure." Link nodded.

"I can do the accounting." Kev agreed.

Why would a bake sale stall require accounting?

Ben nodded and waved them off, "Alright, you may go first."

"Thanks, Beta." Link actually bowed a bit before leaving. Kev echoed the bow with a nod and the both of them left.

I know I said that it felt like Ben had been our beta since forever the moment he shifted, but it still surprised me to see the bigger and cooler teens suddenly bowing out to him.

The stall got quiet with just Ben and me. I took a look around. Our stall faced the main lift lobby. On our left was a very large Lorent booth - the size of four of our little stalls, and that was it. The Lorent booth was quiet. There was nobody here yet.

There were quite a lot of other people walking by. Some of them would slow to look at our stall while they walked past, but they were on their way to check in for appointments, or work, or whatever people came to hospitals to do on a Saturday morning.

Suddenly, a woman and a little girl stopped in front of our stall. The woman studied the contents of the boxes, and then the prices that Esther had written on them. She turned to the little girl, "Hey sweetie, what do you say we buy some goodies up to surprise you daddy?"

The girl eyed the assortment of stuff at our stall. I offered the second thing in front of me (the first was Jonah's banana bread), "Chocolate chip cookies?"

"We have very good chocolate fudge too." Ben added. He cast me a side glance as if to say, "Don't forget the mission, Sam."

Yeah, I had forgotten. We had to sell out one of our boxes of fudge first.

"Yeah, the fudge is good." I nodded.

"I was thinking of something a little more... breakfasty." The woman politely declined.

I looked around at the random 19 boxes (excluding Jonah's - I'm sorry, I cannot in good conscience sell Jonah's banana bread to anyone, much less someone who's mate was staying in hospital right now.)

At this point, Jay and Nolan came over to our stall. The moment we looked up, the mother and daughter began to examine the different boxes of baked goods at our stall. I decided to give them space to choose what they want.

Jay and Nolan were the guys who usually hung out in Angela's gang. I've never personally interacted with them beyond group activities like the Ultimate Dodge ball game the other week, or when our Lycan Study Groups combined for events or games.

Jay raised a brow at us, "Yo, Sam, Ben."

Nolan who was obviously the more polite of the two managed a small bow, "Good morning, princess. Good morning, beta."

"Why are you calling her princess?" Jay asked, sounding offended on my behalf.

"Well, she urm... I thought..." Nolan turned red.

"The question is, why aren't you calling me princess." I smiled at Jay. How could I watch him bully Nolan and do nothing?

"You want me to call you princess?" Jay challenged.

This stumped me, just for a sec. If I said yes, would it further cause the unwanted moniker stick? If I said no, would it signal my dislike for the name and thus create an opening for unwarranted teasing? Wait, I was the alpha. Why was I worried about being teased?

"I want you to call me alpha!" I flared.

The mother and daughter froze on the spot.

I froze. Oops.

Ben got straight down to business, "What do you two want?"

Jay became serious and lowered his voice, "Is the banana bread here?"

"Yeah." Ben pulled out a paper bag, "How many?"

Jah squinted at the price on the box, "It's like only a dollar each?"

Yeah, I guess Esther couldn't in good conscience charge any more than our minimum price.

"Yeah." Ben tapped his foot impatiently, "How many?"

"I'll take 2, please." Nolan said.

"Yeah, ditto." Jay decided.

"So 4 in total." Ben put all 4 pieces into the same bag, then he pulled out a fresh paper bag, "What else?"

"What else?" Jay asked.

"Yes, buy something else too. Hurry up." Ben snapped, "Pick something."

"I don't know..." Nolan considered, "They all look really good. Do you have any recommendations?"

"The chocolate fudge squares are good." I remembered we were supposed to sell them first, "But everything here is probably nice too."

It's not like we had tasted any of them to know. I didn't even know what most of the baked stuff were exactly. At a glance they were all mostly brown things sitting in boxes.

"Nothing like the banana bread, I bet." Jay had to say under his breath.

I laughed, "No, that would be in its own category."

It was definitely in its own special space at our stall, right next to the money can and as far away as possible from the customer's point of view without completely alienating it because I was afraid Laura might come over and see the box in a corner, or separated from the other boxes, so the placement had to be subtle.

"I'll have the fudge squares and hmmm... maybe this round thing, what is this?" Nolan pointed at a bagel? I had no idea what it was. It looked like a bagel...but it smelled like something with meat and cheese inside.

Ben bagged them for him, "You don't have to name it to eat it."

"Yeah, okay." Nolan paid the money and accepted the bag, "Thanks."

Jay pointed out a muffin, "Is that blueberry?"

"Only if you want it to be blueberry." Ben smirked.

Jay took out the money and Ben bagged the muffin for him.

"Where's Jonah... I mean the next stall we should go to?" Jay asked.

"Down that way." Ben indicated with a nod, "Stall 4."

"Right..." Jay smirked, "Stall 4."

"Thanks, bye!" Nolan politely bowed. Was Nolan always so polite?

"Bye, now get lost." Ben growled.

I laughed and then remembered the mother and daughter. I better see if they'd decided. Eh? But they were gone. I thought they wanted to buy a surprise breakfast? I guess they changed their minds.

And then I noticed them at the Lorent booth.