Page 18 of Legacy Wolf: Semester One (Legacy Wolf #1)

RAWLING

“Ugh.” Jack slammed the door shut behind her and tossed a bright red paper on my bed. “Mandatory.”

I grabbed the flier, assuming it was going to be a meeting or something equally dreadful. It wasn’t. Unless I was missing something, that was.

“Phoenix House Clean-Up Day.” I read the words from the flier.

“What’s so bad about that? It looks like we do some gardening and then we eat a good meal.

It also says there are games.” It sounded like a block party, only with some yard maintenance.

I could think of worse things to do on a Saturday afternoon. “This doesn’t sound so bad.”

Jack growled at me. Full-on growled. “We pay too much money to be their freaking lawn people. They can hire a crew or pay students.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

“It says there are games.” I shrugged, not wanting to make matters worse. Jack had some serious feels on this.

“We shall see. It’s not like we have a choice. I guess we aren’t hitting up the bakery tomorrow.” She plopped down on her bed and let out a long sigh. “I really wanted more of those macaroons.”

She hadn’t mentioned to me that she wanted to head back. I’d have been all over that. As uncomfortable as our first outing was, it felt good to get off campus for a bit, and I’d be happy to do it again anytime—except Saturday apparently.

“We can go on Sunday?” I offered.

“They’re closed.”

“Then next weekend we will have to eat double. Tonight, we can eat protein bars and watch that new vampire show everyone is talking about?” It wasn’t the same or as yummy, but I didn’t like to see her so grumpy, and I had a strong feeling it had less to do with tomorrow than it did with something that happened during her day.

But Jack was Jack and she would share when she wanted to.

“Yeah, okay. But not those protein bars. Let’s polish off the candy from last weekend.”

As if I could argue with that.

We ended up having a decent night. The show was everything I thought it would be and more.

By the time we went to bed, Jack was in a much better mood.

And in the morning, she woke up and got ready without too much grumbling.

She still thought we were being used for free labor, which was fair enough.

But overall, she had a better attitude about it.

We grabbed a quick breakfast and met our house out front at the stated time. Everyone was there, including people I didn’t remember seeing before. When Mrs. Ardilla said it was mandatory, she meant it.

The morning started with us weeding, planting, raking, and trimming all the different areas around the house.

Mrs. Ardilla said that it was important for our house to look good as potential students started to tour the place for next year.

It was hard to believe that it was already that time of year, but I supposed people did that pretty early if they were unsure of what they were looking for in a school.

Sombertooth University didn’t feel like the kind of place people were unsure of, though.

It felt like a place people knew from before actually applying to colleges was on their radar.

Most everyone I’d met here had a relative who went here.

I was one of the rare exceptions. Heck, even the faculty had gone here.

Although that might not be unusual. I never really paid attention at my last school.

I worked with Jack trimming the bushes. It was something I’d done with Rawlins and was easy enough to get done. It was also something that required a bit of skill, which from the looks of the way half the people were holding gardening tools, wasn’t in abundance here.

By the time noon rolled around, the place looked amazing. Mrs. Ardilla gave us a half-hour to clean up before lunch and games. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking. Having the entire house fighting for hot water at once was a fool’s errand.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so, passing by quite a few people running out of the house with clean clothing as Jack and I headed inside.

We hurried for our showers, glad that our bathroom mates were some of those headed out to the locker rooms for their showers.

“The free labor part of the day is over,” I teased as Jack braided her hair. “Now comes the fun stuff.”

“How do you know it will be fun? It could be all those cheesy ice breakers no one ever wants to do.” She had a point.

“Or it could be fun. Maybe it will be like soccer relays. You’d rock that out of the park.”

She smiled a bit. At least we were moving in the right direction.

When we got outside, Holden, Zev, Bardoul, and Channon were already there with plates of food. Mrs. Ardilla didn’t wait for any of us. It was food time, and the spread was put onto the buffet tables.

Jack and I filled our plates and joined Bardoul and Channon who were sitting in the shade.

“This is pretty good.” Bardoul forked some potato salad. “I’m surprised.”

“Me too.” Channon grabbed the last of his sandwich and popped it into his mouth. “I was pretty sure it would be stale and yuck.” Or at least that was the best I could decipher his words with his mouth that full.

As we ate, the rest of the house joined us in dribbles. It was nice just sitting together, the four of us. We mostly chatted about the food and what we had accomplished over the course of the morning. With so many people around, deep conversations weren’t happening.

Once lunch was over, Mrs. Adilla called us for the games.

The first few were what I had feared: cheesy ice breakers.

No one ever liked those kinds of games, and it showed by the lack of enthusiasm as we went from one to the other.

I was just about to give up on the day being salvageable when she announced the “Main Event” for the game time.

I was expecting it to be as bad as the others. It wasn’t.

“The last game for the day is The Phoenix Team Challenge. You and your partner are going to pair up against all of the other teams in a rice cereal sculpture challenge.”

I had no idea what that was until she explained.

Basically we were making sculptures out of crispy rice cereal, marshmallows, and a few other random ingredients of our choice from the table.

We could use pre-made rectangles or could make our own sticky goodness.

And in the end, the winner would be decided by single-elimination-style brackets. The theme: Animals.

I’d made enough rice cereal bars growing up. They were one of my favorites and the first thing that Rawlins let me do on the stove, but sculpture? That was a different beast altogether. I couldn’t wait.

“Ready, Jack?” I asked, more excited about this than pretty much anything else since we’d been on campus. It might be a silly little house contest, but it connected my past and my present in a way that gave me the warm fuzzies.

“Yeah. We got this.” It was nice to see her excited about it, especially with so many people groaning their unhappiness around us. They all seemed to want a competition based on their physical strengths, and this was definitely not that.

“What do you think we should make?” I asked, my voice low. We didn’t want to give the others ideas.

“Let’s think outside the box,” she said and leaned in for a huddle.

The whistle giving us the two-hour countdown blew, and we raced off to work. Most of the students raced for the pre-made sheets. And that was fine. Let them. They could have boring all they wanted. We were going to knock this thing out of the park.

There were some stations set up with camping hot plates for us if we wanted to make our own, and while it wasn’t fancy, it worked out well.

Being a bit too competitive, I kept my eye on the others’ projects.

Most of the people were half-assing it. Holden and Zev just cut the rectangle into the shape of what I could only guess was a mouse and called it good.

Channon and Bardoul were trying to make a dinosaur.

The idea was cute, but the poor arms kept falling off.

And Phelan and Atticus? I had no idea what they were doing, because every time I looked that way, my eyes either fell directly to Phelan’s ass or caught him checking out mine. The distraction was real.

“Give me the intel. Who is our main competition?” Jack was whipping up the frosting, our capybara already formed, and while it wasn’t perfect, it was adorable and would for sure be the only one.

“I think we are going to rock this,” I assured her.

“Even with Atticus and Phelan’s Phoenix?”

“Phoenix?” I should’ve known to keep my mouth shut.

“You keep looking over there, how did you… never mind. I don’t even want to know.” She shook her head.

“They were blocking the view.” There was no way she would believe that, but I felt like I had to throw something out there. Best-case scenario she assumed I was being grumpy about Atticus and not checking out Phelan. “But trust me. We got this.”

And we did. Sure, the main reason we won was that our arms and wings didn’t fall off like the majority of the entries, but a win was a win.