At lunch, Mona sat at the small table aginst the wall where she always sat. Everyone tended to sit at the other end of the room by the windows, so she sat as far away from the windows as possible. ‘Great,’ she thought. ‘Jordan is here and he’s trying to get me involved in all this crazy stuff.’

“Hey Mona. You shoulda warned me about this school food. I think this chicken nugget moved.” Jordan had sat himself at the table and put a nugget in his mouth.

“Didn’t someone ELSE invite you to eat with her?”

“Yeah, but I passed that offer up. Why didn’t you warn me about the food?”

“I was hoping it would kill you.”

“That’s harsh, Mona. Real harsh.” He lowered his voice, “We’ve got to talk.”

“Why? There’s nothing to talk about. I can’t do anything. The more uninvolved I am, the better off everybody is.”

“I told you I was sent by Ashley. Since my brother died, she’s been helping me and now I owe her something. That something is going to be your help.”

“You really want me to help, doens’t you?”

“I’m desprate.”

“Well...”

“Jordan,” Madeline was standing behind him. “Why didn’t you come over by the windows and sit with us? Couldn’t you find our table?”

“I saw you, but I decided not to sit with you.”

“Oh,” Madeline seemed a bit taken aback “You can sit with us tomorrow then.”

“You don’t get it, do you, Maddy?” Mona asked. “He doesn’t want to sit with you or any of your friends, so get out of his face.”

Madeline had nothing to say so she walked away.

“Thanks, Mona.”

She didn’t say anything, she just rolled her eyes. “Now, what are we doing?”

“You mean you’ll help?”

“Yeah, yeah. Now tell me what we’re doing before I change my mind.”

“Ok, but we’ve got to go somewhere else. This table has too many ears.” He nodded towards the table next to them, which now was occupied by Erin, Caroline and Madeline.

Mona turned her head and saw them fawning over Jordan. “Play along,” she whispered.

“Um, ok.”

“No, Jordan!” she said loudly before he could even finish. The three girls turned their heads.

“Please, Mona?” he asked, kind of confused but getting the jist of what she was doing.

“I’m sorry, Jordan. I don’t want to go out with you!” She grabbed her bag and walked out of the cafeteria with Jordan following behind.

Mona ran to the library and sat down at a far table behind all the bookshelves. Jordan came in and sat next to her. “Ashley needs your help.”

“I know this.”

“You’ll have to train. The vampires, they’re strong and humans can very rarely come close to matching the strength of even the weakest ones.”

“Then you don’t truly know what happened to your brother,” she mumbled and started picking at her nails.

“But if they’re after you, you’re obviously stronger than the average human.”

“Yeah, you betcha. Just last month I beat the crap out of this guy who tried to steal my bag.”

“Mona, behind the Starbucks, there’s an alleyway-” The bell signaling the end of 5th period lunch rang.

“I’m not going to Starbucks.”

“You don’t have to go inside. Just go to the alleyway behind it tonight at ten. But be careful. You know they’ll be looking for you. I gotta get to my next class.”

------

That evening, Mona reluctantly left the Guerin house to head to Starbucks.

Ashley waited very patiently in the alleyway for almost an hour and a half, but Mona never showed.

Mona barely got off her front porch when she was confronted. “Hello, Mona. Look, you know why I’m here, so I figure we just cut to the chase.” A young woman with short and wild blond hair, wearing a black dress with a strange red apron stood on the Guerin lawn. Mona was a bit frightened. She felt this woman was more powerful that almost anything she had ever encountered

“So, uh, who are you working for?”

“Oh, I don’t think it matters, but if you must know- Shana.” The woman took a few steps closer to Mona. Mona started to run, and within a second, the woman was in front of her. “Now, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” The woman made a fist and punched her left hand with it.

“Ok, easy then.”

“What? Huh?” The woman had been anticipating a fight.

“I’ll go with you to Shana.”

The woman looked confused, and then, “Oh, well,” she lifted her arm and punched Mona harder than any punch Mona had ever received or given. She fell to the grass unconsious.

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That was a whole butt-load of new chapters. I was recently looking through my old stories cause I uploaded some new ones, Gathering Stars, and The Unknown Mystical Energies of an Ex Laundromat (READ THEM! shameless plug :-p), and I checked this story and noticed I didn't even have any parts with teen Mona up, so I publish them now.