When the Alphas call

Chapter 3

The dinner had been an emotional one. Brie had to leave the next morning and neither Sansha nor Joe wanted to see her go.

In the new place with no one else, it was a bit hard to let Brie go for Sansha, but they all knew it wasn't going to be forever. Brie was coming to visit them the next weekend, or at least she had promised to.

The West was a twelve-hour journey by train. And it took longer via car, which was why they had to halt at a motel on the way to rest.

Brie only had to catch the last train, only to wake up at her destination in the morning.

That was why they had all convinced themselves that Brie would come to them in no time. If Brie landed another job in the West, that would be even better.

Sansha hoped for the latter. Knowing the mother Brie had been all those years, she was sure that Brie would find one or the other way to be with them.

It was Joe's treat that night. He had cooked up a feast, and they had a small barbecue in their new backyard. Brie was scared that the smell of roasted meat would attract the wild animals of prey, at which Joe only laughed and showed his non-existent muscles that were supposed to tackle and battle the bloody predators. Sansha shook her head at her father's overestimation of himself.

They just joked around and had the family time that left Sansha and Brie in tears when they had to say goodbye to each other the next morning.

Brie was going to miss her train if they didn't rush and Sansha had to go get herself registered at the new school in the area. Sansha's nerves had been calmer than usual. It was indeed refreshing to have a thought other than wanting to rip her hair out of her skull.

She doubted if the size of her tooth had ground down from all the gritting she had been doing all those months.

Nevertheless, it didn't make her any less attractive than she already was.

Sansha was a beautiful girl with long wavy chocolate brown hair that was more tamed than her old neighbor's bulldog. Her honey eyes had speckles of green in them, surrounded by thick eyelashes that everyone envied. Her small nose and pouty lips made her delicate features stand out on her heart-shaped face.

The only thing she inherited from Joe was his tamed hair that he had started to lose in her early teens. That only scared her with the fact that she would start going bald like her father in due time when she reached her late thirties.

While her parents got into her father's car, she got into her very own first car and sighed at the thought of getting it started.

"Remember kiddo, the town is straight down this road! The school is on the other side of the town, down the same road. You have the map with you?" Joe asked, shouting at the top of his voice from his car's driving seat. Not that it was required for Sansha. She would have heard him just as clearly if he had merely whispered rather than shouting his throat out.

"Yes, dad, I have it here," on the other hand Sansha needed to shout, else Joe would be squirting his eyes trying to lip read and understand what his daughter was trying to tell.

Sansha shook the GPS map in her hand for her father to understand, who nodded in reply.

"Be a good girl, and make new friends. This is a fresh start for you," Brie also shouted from her seat, making Sansha nod and wave at her parents' departing car.

The old grandma beetle finally started after the sixth try.

Thanking the lord above for having mercy on her, she drove the car out onto the solitary road with no signs of civilization.

The wind was colder here than it used to be back in the city. The ground was damp, indicating that there had been a shower when she had been knocked out cold. One thing that Sansha was happy about was being a deep sleeper. Not even a roaring thunderstorm could wake her from her sweet dreams.

The beetle struggled to crawl down the road at thirty on the speedometer. She didn't know what she should be doing if a rampant leopard or even a bear chased her down the road. Would she have better chances of surviving if she left her car and ran for her life? Well, it did look like that...

Upon that, she couldn't imagine being in the car in the front with about five more cars after hers. Things were going to get problematic then. She could only hope that no one got stuck behind her very own tortoise on the uphill road.

She was able to see the town after fifteen minutes of driving.

Shops were opening and there was some hustle and bustle in the scarcely crowded town. She could feel the eyes of her passersby, curiosity evident in them. Minding her own business, Sansha drove down the same road as the map displayed.

The town started and even ended, but the school was nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps a little further down the road. She thought looking at the GPS, but it had stopped working somewhere in the middle. The bad network connection had distraught her route. So she had no idea if she had to travel even further to reach her destination or had to turn back around to get there.

With the confusion still clouding her brain, her car wheeled down the road when she found a road to her right.

Perhaps this might be it?

Sansha thought turning right and heading into a place that had been well maintained.

The path opened to a wide fountain with a lavish mansion standing tall and intimidating.

Did a rundown town have such a lavish school? Who could even be sponsoring them? She gawked at the view before her.

As if the lost connection had been reconnected, her GPS display came alive as the path navigation started directing in audio, "take a roundabout turn and go down 600 meters before taking a left."

Sansha's eyes flickered at the screen that showed she had missed her destination by six miles. And whatever was before her was definitely not her school.

Sighing at her situation, Sansha took the reverse and made a turn, only for her grandma beetle to die on the spot with a jerk.

She ignited the car again, only making it moan like a feverish dog. She tried again, and it choked like the granny who owned it before. Her patience was really getting tested, but she couldn't help it as she tried again and again.

Little did she know, something was running in her direction from somewhere in the forests that expanded behind the luxurious mansion.

With the next try, the car came to life after repeated CPR. And Sansha started driving the car down the narrow driveway and join the main road, ending up before a farmer's truck that was carrying the fresh vegetables, to her dismay. Fortunately for her, both of their vehicles crawled at the same speed on the road. So, there was no one to complain, as of now.

The creature that had come running after her, stopped at the edge of the forest and watched the beat-up beetle enter the main road. Had she been alone, it would have definitely gone after her, but with the farmer in tow, it was a risk the creature was not willing to take.

It took her another fifteen minutes to head back to the destination she had initially planned to arrive. To her dismay, the farmer had taken another route through the forest and now jeep of young boys was honking at her granny car. Even a wheelchair might over take her car at the current speed. No wonder, the boys with a faster vehicle were impatient to get through.

As she neared the school, she took her car to the side, letting them pass through before they decided to get down and beat her into a pulp. The jeep zoomed pass her and took a left to enter the private driveway. Fortunately or unfortunately, it was the same path that she had to take.

Her granny car shook like it was going to die again as she parked it in the nearest empty space she found.

The jeep that had passed her a few minutes ago was parked a few cars down hers. And the guys who had been riding in it were definitely pissed early in the morning.

Way to start the day... Sansha sighed, contemplating if she should be getting down now or wait for the boys to get inside first before getting into school. She really didn't want to become a target right on the very first day of her new school.

"No you girls don't understand! You should know that Zackery was there with blood all over him. I bet he killed someone again..." Sansha's ear picked up some girl narrating to her friends two cars down from hers.

"Why can't they arrest him? That guy might end up killing someone at school!" another one of them exclaimed, appalled.

"Don't you know? Apparently, they found no evidence pointing against him. The sheriff had to let him go. The law and order didn't work on the superstitions and myths and legends." Someone else added.

It indeed got Sansha curious about what superstitions and legends and myths they were talking about.

Joe hadn't mentioned anything as such during their dinner or even the breakfast that they shared in the morning. Perhaps it might have slipped his mind, known her father never believed in such stuff or it could even be that he was worried how Brie would react. He didn't want her to be worried about them while living in a place full of superstitions that they had no idea about.