[CONTENTID1]

Mood-Makers and Dirt-rats

Some people have embarrassing family members. Aunts that got a little too loud and weepy after enough wine. Grandfathers with politically incorrect views he wasn't afraid to shout across the dinner table. That one cousin in jail that nobody ever talked about.

Mine were a little ... different. They weren't embarrassing, per se, but I knew from the start that my family would give me nothing but trouble. That didn't mean I regretted carrying the Wen family name, though. I wore that with pride.

It was a having to escape all the negativity that came with it, of course. And the paparazzi. And the lack of privacy. That was the side effect that came with the priveleges, I guess. The blatant idiots that tried to ride on my coattails for bragging rights and fifteen seconds of fame and glory did nothing to help me, either.

"What do you say, Lei?" The person speaking was my classmate, Liu Jichen, and one of the aforementioned blatant idiots. I hated him. He was handsome, on the basketball team, and had that charming confidence that gave the appearance of him being good-natured, so I had made the unfortunate choice to date him for a little while.

It didn't take me long to see his true colours—that he was actually insufferable, arrogant, manipulative, the list went on. And there was a pretty big part of me that was sure he only dated me in the first place because of my connections to Mood Drugs, candies, video games, and all manners of goodies considered unlawful by the government. He wanted me to be his middleman for illegal candy and be paraded around as his arm candy. I dumped him like a body bag into a river.

He slung an arm around my unwilling shoulders. "Come on, for an old friend? You know I'll need some Lemons if I want to pass midterms. You're not gonna leave me out in the dirt, are you?"

"Who knows?" I said politely, pointedly moving my shoulders away and wishing I had convinced my guidance counselor to move me to a different homeroom like I wanted to at the beginning of the semester. boy needed to take a hint. "You know, if you take too many Lemons when you're still young, it'll mess up your brain development. It's, like, an indisputable fact."

Jichen snorted. "Wow, look who's giving me a science lecture. Like you can talk, Wen Lei. I bet you pop ’em every morning before a test."

I could talk, actually. Even if Ba funded and trafficked Mood Drugs all over the world, I never once touched them, and especially Lemons. The lemon-flavoured syrup was designed to affect the brain and make you temporarily smarter, allowing you to retain and recall information more effectively until the drug wore off. Of course, they were the most illegal out of all the Moodies we trafficked, but the government had a hard time pinning them down. They flushed out of your system once it wore off, so unless they got urine samples within a few days of ingestion or caught the reek of artificial lemons on some dumb sap's breath, it was almost impossible to tell who took Moodies or not. It was the bane of every school's existence, trying to catch the students who took Lemons before tests or exams.

Hell for the school boards; cash cow for the Family.

I wasn’t lying. It had been proven to affect brain development in teenagers, especially if the brain hadn't fully matured yet (something Jichen should've watched out for). Lots of mumbo-jumbo scientific nonsense I wasn't interested in or remembered, but enough of that article stuck out to me that I made sure I stayed far away from that . I also had to consider my sister, too. There was no way I would start taking Mood-Makers and influence her into doing them.

I was smarter than that. I stuck to plain old studying, while Jichen stuck to pathetically pushing his ex-girlfriend to give him some for free.

When I didn't answer, he switched tactics. "Lei, come on. You don't need me to go bug Meizhen, do you?"

It was a subtle dig, a cleverly-concealed manipulation technique. He had encroached upon a testy subject between us that he knew would anger me enough to stop thinking straight, but not enough that I would lose my cool and do something stupid that could get me suspended from the Institute, like, say, throttling him with my bare hands. I knew that and took the bait anyway. At the mention of my best friend, I whirled around, immediately furious. "What did you just say?"

Chang Meizhen was the reason why I was so cold to him. I had learned from some classmates last fall, when we broke up, that he was going around bragging to everyone stupid enough to listen that I supplied him with Moodies and other unmentionables whenever he wanted (which was a lie), that he broke up with me because I was needy and too whiny (also a lie), and that my best friend, Chang Meizhen, was a hang-on, the Designated Ugly Fat Friend, an accessory I wore to make myself look better.

He had also taken to teasing her about it in the ancient history class they shared. When Meizhen came crying to me after class, that had been the breaking point for any sort of relationship we'd ever have in the future, and my firm decision to be lifelong enemies with him. If you were going to waste your energy hating someone, Ba always said, then you might as well don't do it half-assed.

At the look in my eye—and knowing full well to be wary of my anger—Jichen leaned away ever so slightly, but the sly look was still there. "Hey, now, don't look like you'll bite my head off, Lei. I didn't mean anything by it; just meant Meizhen might have some Moodies, you know, since she's your best friend and all."

"She doesn't do that kind of , Jichen," I said, acid in my voice. Frustrated, but not willing to make a scene (the entire school board had their eyes on me at all times as it was), I dug around in a small pouch in my school bag and pulled out a tiny bottle. It was as small as an eyedropper bottle, and even screwed tight with a cap. The faint scent of lemons wafted out from the tip. I flung it at Jichen in disgust.

"Thanks a bunch, babe," Jichen said happily, finally moving away to leave me alone. I could hear him ripping off the protective sealing and downing the sweet-flavoured drug in one greedy gulp as he walked down the hall. What a pig.

I thought back to last fall, when I really truly hated him for being such an . The only thing that got me through my days listening to him spread rumours that I blew him in the bathroom and gloat about dumping me, the “high and mighty” daughter of a mob boss, was the thought that, if I wanted to be really petty, I could have asked Ba to kill him.

Being the high and mighty daughter of a mob boss and all.

Ba would have, too. Fathers were like that with their daughters, and my little sister and I just so happened to be the apples of my daddy's eye.

I slammed my locker door shut and stomped outside, where I could wait peacefully for Meizhen to meet me. The other students leaving the building gave me a wide berth, noticing the angry look in my eyes, no doubt.

I didn't have to wait long. The heavy metal doors that were the front entrance to the Guozhi Institute opened, and a flurry of feathers and round eyes the size of teacup saucers greeted me.

"Lei! Check it out!"

The abnormal eyes were actually just large, dark sunglasses placed on a cheerful, round face, and the feathers were hot pink and from a boa slung around her neck. Instead of the Guozhi school uniform (which was dark blue trousers and a scooped-neck white blouse for the girls, decorated with a navy blue bow), she was wearing a tight-fitting black dress and red pumps. A crazy costume right out of something on a second-rate Broadway.

"Ta-dahh~!" Meizhen sang, twirling. "What do you think? Isn't it gaudy and a fashion disaster? It’s perfect! It's my costume for the upcoming play!"

"Very gaudy," I said with a smile, plucking a stray feather from my shoulder, “and very fashionably disastrous. Is shedding cheap boa feathers all over your audience part of the appeal?"

"Ha ha, you're hilarious.” Meizhen plucked one of the feathers off of her boa and waved it in front of her face. “I'm playing the main character's silly and showy aunt who wants to marry a rich and famous man, so looking cheap and awful is all part of the plan. Just you wait, the audience will be in tears of laughter when I say my lines."

"I don't doubt your acting prowess," I said with a grin, and I meant it too. Chang Meizhen was a little odd and more than a little ridiculous, not exactly the kind of girl that you would expect to be best friends with a mafia princess, but she was the most loyal friend I could ever have, and her skills in the acting department were truly no joke.

She jumped off the steps and I joined her, and as we walked down the bustling street and jostled our way through crowds together, I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Guess which boy was bugging me for Moodies for the midterms tomorrow."

"No!" Meizhen gasped, looking as indignant as though Jichen had bugged her. She had every right to. "Don't tell me you gave him some."

"I did, what else could I do? He was