Page 8 of Legacy Wolf: Semester One (Legacy Wolf #1)

RAWLING

“Do you even know how to do this one?” Jack tapped the problem in her math book. “I swear he didn’t go over this yesterday.”

“He did.” I reached for my pencil.

For whatever reason, Jack was queen of getting all of her work done with the exception of math.

That she always left until we were sitting in the classroom waiting for the professor to arrive.

I suspected it was intentional so she had an excuse to rush breakfast and get over here, but it led to me tutoring her pretty much daily.

I didn’t mind normally, but today I was in a mood, and not a good one at that. I didn’t even know why. I just was.

“All these lines mean,” I indicated them with my pencil, “is the number’s distance from zero. Nothing more.”

Jack scrunched up her nose. “What about this one, though?” She put her finger on the absolute value of negative five.

“Five. It is five away from zero.”

“What?” A kid who was in our class but I hadn’t talked to before turned around from three rows in front of us. “Is that all it is?”

I nodded, and the poor guy cursed under his breath.

“Rawling’s great at math. Join us?” And just like that, Jack had him packing up and coming over for my tutoring prowess. Only problem was that I was meh at math, just better than either of them, apparently.

He came up and sat directly in front of us. “Channon.” He reached out to shake her hand, dropping his books onto the ground—papers everywhere. He collected them quickly and shoved them into his notebook. I wouldn’t want to have to find a particular assignment in that mess, that was for sure.

“Nice to meet you, Channon.” Jack jutted her arm out and pointed to a paper he missed. “That looks like today’s assignment.”

He groaned, reclaimed said paper, and then began asking all about absolute values.

We were in a high enough level of math, it shocked me that not one, but two people in my class acted as if it was the first time they had ever heard the term.

On a good note, it made it an easy topic to explain to my roommate and possible new friend.

It didn’t take long to help them both get their assignments completed accurately, and we spent the last few minutes chatting about this and that.

He was a nice guy from everything I could tell, and I was glad he overheard my mathing with Jack.

The professor came in shortly, along with the remaining students who had dawdled their morning away.

Class over, I said good-bye to both Jack and Channon and bolted back to Phoenix House to grab the notebook I’d forgotten that morning.

The house was what I called “wide awake” when I rushed in.

All of those lucky enough not to have an early-morning class were up and about, although some of them begrudgingly so.

Being this pathetically attracted to someone who looked down on me sucked.

But somehow, I became that sort of guy and actively kept my eyes open for Phelan as I completed my errand and then booked it to my next class, disappointed that I didn’t run into him.

It was pathetic. I knew this, but you couldn’t help who got you hot and bothered. I should know. I’d tried.

Somehow I managed to get to my next class before the professor began.

I wasn’t sure how that happened but was grateful for it.

The only downside was that it put me front and center in the last remaining seat.

There was no blending into the masses to be had, and I was called on multiple times, despite my lack of hand-raising.

I couldn’t help but feel that he was punishing me intentionally, but tried to brush the thought aside.

It could easily be that I was directly in front of his podium and that was that.

Finally it was time for lunch. I still didn’t love the dining hall, but at least the food was good, and people had chilled a bit with the smelling-me crap. Or at least I’d stopped noticing it. Whichever case it was, I was grateful.

I rushed to be near the head of the line.

Jack and I always tried to be first so that one of us could get the back corner table.

There was no point drawing attention to ourselves if a simple seat location would suffice.

I hated that I felt the need to be invisible here, and there were moments I wasn’t altogether sure that I was going to be able to make it through more than a semester, much less earn my degree.

Jack was already at our table when I arrived, and she had a plate in front of two spots.

“Hungry?” I asked, taking a seat.

“Nope. It’s the best meal they have here, and I didn’t want you to miss out if you forgot something in the house again.” She slid the plate in my direction. It didn’t look like much more than a common grilled cheese sandwich, but I thanked her as if it were magic, since, to her, it was special.

“Don’t let it fool you with its basic appearance.” She picked up hers and took a bite, making soft little yummy sounds as she did and then pointing to mine.

I picked mine up, and sure enough, the flavors exploded in my mouth. “This has onion jelly.” It came out as a jumbled mess, my mouth still full. “My godfather used to eat this all the time.”

The memory of the first time he’d made me an onion-jelly grilled cheese flooded into me.

I’d been in middle school, and until that time, I’d assumed all jelly was sweet.

I made him a face that had him laughing a full-on belly laugh, and he assured me it would be the most delicious grilled cheese I’d ever eaten.

He’d been right. As delicious as this one was, nothing compared to the one Rawlins made me that day and many times after.

“You said he went here, right?”

I nodded.

“He probably used the jelly from the annual fundraiser.” And she went off into an entire history lesson of onion jelly and how it came to be part of the soccer team’s annual fundraising tradition. I only half listened, my mind on Rawlins and how I still felt his loss daily.

In many ways, his loss was harder than my parents’—maybe because he was the last person I really had or possibly because it was still so new. Being here helped, and even when things were shitty, I knew in my gut that this was where I was meant to be.

A crash behind me had me turning to see Atticus standing in front of the dining hall workers, an entire tray of food on the floor between them.

I’d met the other student before but didn’t really know him well.

Even so, he didn’t start this. From everything I knew, he was a nice guy who worked hard.

He hadn’t taken us up on hanging out together yet, but from what I could gather, he was pretty busy with work and school.

“Bardoul—or should I say Bar-dully-klutzy. You need to pick that up.” Atticus was speaking as if he were on stage, and I supposed in his own way, he was. He wanted everyone to see what he’d done. Piece of shit.

“The rack is over there.” Bardoul pointed to where the trays were meant to go, and I put him on my favorite people at Sombertooth list.

“And you work here. Pick it up.” Atticus turned to face the room with his smug smirk and then strutted away.

Jack and I were up and out of our seats to help clean up the mess almost instantly.

I knew firsthand what it was like to be treated like garbage by Atticus and didn’t wish that on anyone.

We had things up and on the rack quickly, refusing to let Bardoul help us.

He’d been through enough without that added on top of it.

“You didn’t need to do that.” He spoke in a hushed voice.

“Sure we did,” Jack gave his shoulder a squeeze. “That’s what friends do.”

“Friends?” he asked.

“Yes, friends.” I smiled back at him.

We didn’t have time to chat, with him working and all, but I felt the truth in Jack’s words.

The three of us were going to be friends.

Adding Channon to the group and I’d managed to double my friend circle in one day.

Not too shabby. It made everything brighter as I headed back to the house to swap out my books, which had finally come in, for my afternoon classes.

It made it not so bad when I bumped into Zev, or was it him bumping into me, and he looked at me as if I had three heads and then kept going.

I had no idea what that was about, but I wasn’t going to spend any time worrying about it.

Not when things were finally starting to look up for me here at Sombertooth.