My Hockey Alpha

Nina

Somehow, I managed to sleep that night, if only for a few hours before I had to be up for class. The news of werewolves had thoroughly spread its way through campus by now like a wildfire, and everywhere I went, people were whispering about Enzo.

“He’s a monster,” I heard one girl say from behind me while we were waiting for class to start. “I don’t know why anyone would want to compete with him. We should just boycott the games from now on until they replace him with someone normal.”

I felt myself fume at this comment, and turned around to glare at her.

“I think we should all be more accepting,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

She laughed abrasively. “Oh, that’s rich coming from you,” she said. “You two have been thick as thieves all semester. How do we know that you’re not a werewolf, too?”

“And what if I am?”

Suddenly, the girl’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth to say something else, but stopped herself as the professor came in and began the lesson.

After class, I walked to the dining hall with Lori and Jessica. Along the way, we started to notice people walking toward the hockey arena with picket signs in their hands. One sign in particular caught my eye: it was the picture of a dog lifting its leg like it was going to urinate with a big red X through it, and below that, it said, “Don’t let dogs piss all over our campus!”

I felt a growl escape my lips, and I went to shout something at the guy carrying the sign, but Lori grabbed my arm and stopped me before I could.

“It’s not worth it,” she said, pulling me away. “There’s no convincing these people. They’re a bunch of jerks with no empathy for anyone who’s even the tiniest bit different.”

“Yeah,” Jessica chimed in. “Besides, there are plenty of people who are supportive of werewolves. I just joined a whole Twitter group of people who think that werewolves should be allowed to attend our school and play in our sports.”

My friends’ words were reassuring, but I still had my doubts. Suddenly, I had an idea.

nodded. “Let’s protest against them. Show them

Remember that one time when people were protesting against the new professor that was super racist? It turned into a huge brawl and tons

“but that professor got fired, too. So the protests

anything bad starts to happen. We don’t need to

finally relented. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s have lunch, then we can go and make our signs.

…

hours later, we had our signs and headed over to the hockey arena to meet up with the

— meanwhile, there were only ten of us, with myself, Lori, and Jessica included. As we met up with Jessica’s group, we quickly realized that our voices were immediately drowned out by the crowd of anti-werewolf protesters, many of whom were shouting at us angrily for

I dunno about this,” Jessica said with a shaky voice, holding her sign to shield her face.

in front of Jessica and shielding her with her

from the other side cupped her hands over her mouth and screamed at Lori and Jessica from across the line, “Hey, traitors! You’re just a bunch of sheep getting bossed around by the

her angry face from behind her sign. “Don’t talk about my friend

you gonna come over here and fight me?” the girl said, stepping into the middle of the line and cocking

of her, throwing down her sign, “but I will!” She pushed up her sleeves and began to rush at the other girl, but before she could, I grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back. My action resulted in a chorus of boos coming from the other side, and the other girl stuck her tongue out before disappearing into

a notch. It doesn’t help our image if we let them get under our skin and start a fight within the

she grabbed Jessica by the hand and rejoined the rest

went to join them, however, I saw an oddly familiar head of blonde hair in

only a glimpse, but I recognized that hair and that

my hands over my mouth

in the anti-werewolf crowd? Surely there was some sort of explanation; I trusted him when he said that he was our friend, and that he would never do something like that. As I walked back to meet up with Jessica and Lori, however, I couldn’t shake that feeling of unease. What if it really was James

myself. James wouldn’t do

Jessica asked as