When the Alphas call

Chapter 4

"Name?" The administrative assistant asked while typing on the computer.

Sansha said her full name while handing over her social card to her, "Sansha Madden."

The administrative assistant quickly entered all the details while cross verifying them. Sansha replied to most of them without actually paying any attention to them. Most of her senses were taking in the students that had started arriving. They looked friendly, unlike the students from her previous school. But she knew better than judge too soon. Looks can be deceptive.

"Here you go, your schedule and a guidebook that will help you find your way around," the administrative assistant passed the booklet and the sheet of her new timetable before returning to her work.

Sansha quickly thanked her and went through the timetable. She could only hope that she didn't have a lot of portions to catch up.

She was able to find her first classroom with the help of a few other students.

The professor was yet to arrive, so she peacefully settled into one of the empty seats in the back. That way, she didn't have to do the entire introduction fiasco.

It had never been her thing to stand before everyone and tell everyone about herself.

Most of the time, her mind ended up being blank during those times. That was one of the reasons everyone made fun of her in her old school.

The professor didn't even bother to look at his students and started immediately with the class. Sansha couldn't have been happier than that. However, the rest of the classes didn't follow the model of her first period. The teachers were more interested in getting to know the new student and, of course, introducing her to the entire class.

She had to repeat her introduction several times a day, to the familiar faces that now had lost their enthusiasm to learn about the new student.

And who wouldn't? When she repeated the same thing again and again like an unskippable commercial before the video online.

The only good thing about introducing her like a broken recorder came landing on the empty seat beside her during her next period.

A short, petit girl with untamed curly hair and a pair of glasses that were bigger than her face, beamed widely at her. The sleeves of the oversized mustard yellow sweater over a fresh smelling white shirt, covered more than half of her palms. The cream beanie was the only thing that could keep those unruly hair in place. Her faded jeans would have seen better days.

"Sansha, right? I'm Genervieve Mcay. You can call me Ginny," the new girl put her hand forward for a shake that Sansha took naturally after feeling the harmless energy around her.

The girl was nerdy looking but on the cute side, not that Sansha minded. She could hardly recall anyone who would call her a friend, for someone being around her age group. People would prefer calling her a freak instead.

"Did you get to tour the school?" Ginny asked before adding with the air quotes, "well, the school isn't very big to be 'tour-able'."

Sansha felt Ginny's sense of humor broken, but she did giggle a little nevertheless.

That was the first period of the day where she didn't feel like dying out of boredom. Ginny had her own way of entertaining her new friend.

The lame sense of humor didn't stop Ginny from cracking jokes, but she did prove to be helpful with the abundance of knowledge she had catered to. For Sansha, Ginny had not only become her first friend but also a local encyclopedia.

Unfortunately, they only shared two classes together.

The joy for the girls was they had the same lunch break.

During the lunch break, Ginny showed Sansha the compromised locker room where everything was out in the open, the science lab that even cavemen would have seen better days, the sorry excuse of a gym that doubled over as an extra parking lot during any school events. And finally, the cafeteria, a prison mess would serve better food than what they were getting here.

"Are there no funding or sponsorship for the school?" Sansha asked looking at the patch of greenery that was supposed to be the work of a gardening club.

"In a town that could fit all its inhabitants in this school, you don't exactly find people who would single-handedly waste money on a handful of kids. We don't even have any well-to-do families here," Ginny shrugged.

"What about the mansion a few miles down the road? They sure looked crazy rich!" Sansha recalled the marvelous structure she had seen.

"You saw that?" Ginny gaped, coming to a halt.

"Was it not supposed to be seen?" Sansha couldn't exactly understand why it was a big deal to have seen that luxurious manor.

Ginny leaned closer so that her words were mere whispers only for Sansha's ears, "that's a restricted area. No one in the town is allowed to even peep inside that driveway, let alone visit that lavish mansion."

"Why? What's there? And how did you know that the mansion is lavish?"

"Not sure. Apparently, many years ago, something bad happened there. Now it's only a haunted house. Of course, I knew it was a lavish place when me and my childhood best friend had sneaked into that place," Ginny winked with a wicked smile.

"What? What bad happened? And what happened after that?"

The curiosity didn't seem to end for Sansha. It was in fact even thrilling to make her want to know more about all these crazy stories that revolved around the town.

"I'm not sure, none of the adults dare to speak about it. They only say that something terrible had happened. Then his parents found out about it, and they shifted to another city altogether." Ginny's shoulders slumped in resignation. It was clearly something that she regretted very much. After all, she had lost her best friend just because they had visited a place they weren't supposed to.

Sansha made a mental note to go home and search for the incident that might have happened in such a small town.

The rest of the day was alright. Ginny and Sansha exchanged numbers, though Ginny didn't particularly have a smart phone, unlike Sansha, at least it was a functioning one.

The actual headache started when Sansha stood before her granny beetle and stared at the chewing gums stuck on the hood. The stickiness of the gum showed how fresh it had been and that made Sansha make a disgusted face when it stretched into threads from her finger.

Disgusting people... She thought as she realized how long it was going to take to get it removed from there and it was going to chip off the paint from those spots.

It took another ten minutes to actually get the car started. It choked and moaned and coughed like it was lying on its deathbed. Oh, how she wished that it was on its deathbed when her father had gone to see it!

She grumbled when the car tottled down the road at the nerve-exploding speed of 25 miles per hour! At least in the morning, the insufferable car could move 5 miles per hour faster!

The route that had previously taken 25 minutes, omitting the entire event of getting lost in the small town and going to the restricted area, now took 30 minutes to reach home.

The true test of patience had been taken for Sansha that day. Had it been any other day when she was snappy, she might have pushed the car into the ditch with her own hands after driving it for the initial ten minutes. Her father was lucky in that sense.

And for some unknown reason, the GPS maps had stopped working right in the middle of the town. Just like it had in the morning.

That was another reason that threw the time calculation off the charts.

Nonetheless, Sansha made it home safe and sound in the granny beetle. Or should safe and sound be used with regard to the granny beetle?

Parking the car in its assigned place, Sansha climbed out and looked at the leaves that were dancing to the wind. The air giggled in her ears playfully, calling her to play. Mesmerized with whatever spell that the forest had cast on her, Sansha headed towards trees that felt more home than her current home.

Despite her father's warning, which rang like a siren in the back of her head, she moved ahead into the forbidden territory that called for her. With one last look towards the house that was currently empty, Sansha entered the forest with the thought that if she made it back before her father arrived from work, he wouldn't be angry about the thing he didn't know, right? After all, it was only a harmless venture into the uncharted. And her father was never superstitious to believe in whatever stories the people of the town believed, though she herself was yet to hear the tales of their myths and legends. Only if she and her father had known... As she ventured deeper into the forests, oblivious to the creatures that had been waiting for her for a long long time. Oblivious to a fate that was trickier than the trickiest puzzle, to escape from. In fact, was there even a way to escape her doomed fate?

If only she had known that there were things that were beyond the boundaries of science and things that couldn't be understood unless they were experienced. The same science that she prided and believed in undoubtedly.

She should have stayed away from the forest. She shouldn't have ever come to that town in the first place but, oblivious to everything that she was going to regret in the future, she ventured deeper into the forest. Her sealed fate waiting to gobble her up whole if not savor her in bite sized pieces.