My Hockey Alpha novel Chapter 116

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.

“They’re protesting before the game tonight, right?” I asked, to which Lori and Jessica nodded. “Let’s protest against them. Show them that they can’t just bully werewolves out of existence.”

Jessica scrunched up her nose. “I don’t know…” she said nervously. “I don’t like getting involved in these sorts of things. Remember that one time when people were protesting against the new professor that was super racist? It turned into a huge brawl and tons of people got arrested.”

“Yeah,” Lori said, “but that professor got fired, too. So the protests did work.”

I nodded. “Lori’s right. Besides, we can leave if anything bad starts to happen. We don’t need to engage in any fighting.”

Jessica paused, biting her lip nervously, before she finally relented. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s have lunch, then we can go and make our signs. I’ll notify my Twitter group.”

…

A few hours later, we had our signs and headed over to the hockey arena to meet up with the rest of Jessica’s group.

When we arrived, I was stunned to see the massive protest that had already begun. There were countless people who were protesting against werewolves -- 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 being ‘traitors’.

“Uh, I dunno about this,” Jessica said with a shaky voice, holding her sign to shield her face. “There are so many of them.”

“Don’t worry, babe,” Lori said, stepping in front of Jessica and shielding her with her body. “I’ll make sure no one messes with you.”

Just then, a girl 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 werewolf-fucker, Nina, aren’t you?!”

“Hey!” Jessica suddenly shouted, revealing her angry face from behind her sign. “Don’t talk about my friend like that!”