Page 43 of A Little Bit More

Shona’s head turned red as Harry’s wife strode to the front to sit beside her husband. Although moving out of her Goth phase, Magenta still wore a lot of black eyeliner and dyed her hair to match. But, for the meeting, she was wearing a bright green T-shirt that proclaimed her love of Baby Yoda.

“You’re all really good at using Harry’s good nature against him when it suits you,” Magenta told everyone. “So, don’t you dare blame him for helping Betty. Especially when you know that the woman steamrolls straight over everybody in her path.”

Betty cackled a laugh that would have sounded perfectly normal coming out of the Wicked Witch of the West.

“Sorry, Harry.” Shona sounded contrite.

“You can buy my pies if you want,” Morag added.

Magenta nodded, folded her arms, and proceeded to stand guard over Harry, who looked relieved to have her there.

“As I was sayin’.” Betty’s voice blasted out. “Everybody needs to go on The Face Book and sign up to be my friend.”

She appeared to be waiting for something, but nothing happened.

“Bunch of bloody idiots,” she snapped. “I mean now. Get your phones out and get on with it. If you get stuck, Harry will help.”

Harry made a whining sound that made Dougal think of injured animals.

“What if we don’t want to be your Facebook friend?” Shona asked. “You cannae force people to do it.”

“Is that right?” Betty stared Shona down, and for a second, it looked like horn shapes appeared on her shadow on the wall. “If I don’t have an audience of friend people on The Face Book, I might have to use my free time to remind people that they need to accept my interweb offer.”

“Crap,” somebody muttered, followed by a flurry of activity as everyone pulled out their phones.

“This is blackmail,” Morag protested.

“Aye, so it is.” Betty laughed as her phone started pinging with notifications that her friend total was increasing. “Margaret Campbell, I don’t see you accepting my friend invite.”

“Oh, for the love of…” Margaret grumbled while tapping at her phone. “Happy now? It’s no’ like we need to look at your posts, you know. We can friend you and still bloody well ignore you.”

Betty seemed a little flummoxed by that. She turned to Harry, the mic still in her hand. “Is that right?”

He ducked his head and squirmed in his seat. “Uh, yeah. People can be your friend but choose not to see your posts.”

“Well, how the hell am I supposed to get my audience then?” Betty demanded.

“You could try being nicer,” Shona suggested.

That caused much laughter.

“So, let me get this right.” Betty stared at her phone in disgust. “There’s no way to make people listen to me on The Face Book?”

“No!” came the crowd’s enthusiastic response.

“Then what’s the bloody point in that?” She tossed the mic back at Peter and stormed out of the room, muttering about her right to get her message out as she went.

“Any other business?” Dougal called as Betty left.

“Aye,” Morag said. “We need to talk about limiting Betty’s access to Harry.”

And, as one, the town turned to glare at their resident computer expert.