My Personal Hell, D. Richardson [ebook reader browser txt] 📗

and start my family. She wanted me to learn how the school system worked so I could be prepared to handle it.”

“When does she expect you to do all of this?” I asked, slightly horrified. The girl was only about six months younger than me.

“If we don’t find our mates by our eighteenth birthday, one is chosen for us, by our parents.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. What is this the sixteenth century?” She just shrugged.

“It’s just the way it’s always been in the packs. On our eighteenth birthday the higher ranked wolves have a party to introduce them to the werewolf society. It gives her a fair chance to meet her mate among the higher ranked wolves of the other packs. If he’s not there then whatever males that are interested request the right to court her. If they get along he can ask her parents for her hand. If they approve it’s granted.”

“Is this just for females?” She nodded.

“Yeah, otherwise Asher would be alpha right now. He can’t inherit the pack until he marries. And everyone knows that will never happen.”

“How long does it take to figure out who your mate is? Is it instantaneous or something?” She giggled.

“No, that’s just in the movies and books. It takes time, like any other relationship. But a male can only communicate with his wolf in human form when his mate is close. Or if he needs to hunt. So that’s usually a pretty good indication. A female doesn’t go into heat until she spends a lot of time around her mate. We can still have kids and stuff, but they won’t be as strong with a male that isn’t meant for us.”

“So we go into heat when we’re around them a lot, they can’t talk to their wolves if they aren’t around us. And the females only have one night to find their mate or they’re forced into an arranged marriage. Is that right?”

“Well, it sounds worse than it is. Most of the time if the female doesn’t like the male then her parents won’t force her to marry him.”

“Most of the time…,” I quoted and she blushed slightly.

“It does happen.” I gave my head a brisk shake.

“Anyway, back on topic.” Her expression turned frantic again.

“We can’t change anything. The school board already decided, and Dad’s on the city counsel as well. And the school board would have needed their permission to see it through. There’s nothing that can be done, and if Dad finds out we’re working against him, our alpha, there’s no telling what kind of punishment he’ll come up with.” I rolled my eyes, I couldn’t help it.

“Worse than that?” I asked gesturing to the scratched and splintered wood that still bordered my glass door. She winced but kept her back straight.

“Maybe not, but he could exile you. Kick you off the territory, and you’re already a lone wolf, you won’t be welcome anywhere. He could strip me and Camilla of our position. We’d be lucky to get a job cleaning another wolf’s house.”

“All because we’re trying to save our school? So far I haven’t heard of any direct orders from Drake. And really we’re not going against him, just the school board and city counsel.” Her eyes narrowed.

“You’re splitting hairs.” I couldn’t stop my grin.

“You’d be surprised how splitting the right hairs can save your life sometimes.”

“Then we’d better hope you don’t grab a wrong one.”

“We’ll just have to keep your’s, mine, and Camilla’s involvement quiet. Besides, we’re not doing anything right now. Just going to meet with some people and try to come up with some ideas.” She nodded and turned to leave, but looked back to give me one last piece of advice.

“We can’t tell Asher or Aaron either.”

“Isn’t Aaron your twin?” I asked, thinking of the good natured boy that still looked at me with guilt in his eyes.

“Yeah, but he’s been training to be an enforcer. His loyalty will always be to our father before me.” I nodded my understanding despite the wave of sadness that enveloped me. After that I spent my evening with Asher, curled up on the couch watching a movie.

The next day, about fifteen people had snuck into the music room. I wasn’t expecting that kind of turn out, but I didn’t count it as a bad thing. I was only hoping for five or six really. It wasn’t long before they were all seated and staring at me. I guess I didn’t really think this part through.

“Okay, so it looks like this is more than just the school not being remarkable enough to gain anymore funding. Turns out the school board and city counsel were the ones that decided to close down the school.” There were worried whispers and murmuring immediately following my words.

“That’s it then. We can’t fight city hall.” A smallish girl with large glasses exclaimed from the back.

“We can’t just sit back and let it happen. I mean there has to be something we can do. I don’t want to have to start over on another football team,” The captain of said team, Jason I believe his name was, answered.

“Come on, be realistic guys,” A preppy blonde huffed from a few seats down from Christine. I had no idea why she was even there. I think she was from the student council. “This isn’t some fairy tale, or historical story about protests.” That girl needed to go to history class more often. “There’s nothing we can do, we might as well save ourselves the embarrassment.”

“Tiffany, stuff it,” Christine snapped and the girl spun on her, glaring her little heart out.

“Why are you even here, Christine. You’re a senior, you’ll be gone at the end of the year anyway.”

“That doesn’t mean that I don’t care. This is a good school, and I have friends who care. So I care.” It never occurred to me until then, that Christine had people that followed her because she was loyal to them. But this wasn’t the time for it, so I shook it off and tried to do some damage control.

“Anyway,” I spoke loudly, hoping it would get everyone’s attention. It worked. “We may be students but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the freedom of speech. Just like the rest of them. The school board and city hall want to shut the school down, obviously none of you want that to happen. That’s why you’re here isn’t it?” I asked, and most of them mumbled in agreement. “Then lets exercise our rights. Anyone have any ideas on how we can do that?” It was quiet for several moments, until the same girl with glasses raised her hand.

“I’m on the school newspaper. I have to go around and ask the local shop keepers to put their ads in our paper. Maybe I can get them to sign a petition? I mean, they get a lot of their business from the students. If the students leave they‘ll lose some of their profit.”

“That’s a really good idea.”

“But what do we do if the petition doesn’t work? If they already have their minds made up they aren’t going to listen to a few mom and pop stores,” Seth put in, he had a good point.

“Well then, we can have all of the students sign it as well. Maybe some of the teachers would even be interested,” the girl answered, I really needed to figure out her name.

“Okay, a petition is a good start, but Seth is right. It might not work. What else can we do after that?” I asked. Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing. I’ve never organized a petition, or lead a group of people for a cause. I was really just hoping that by getting everyone together, then someone else could come up with a good idea.

“We can set up a bunch of fund raisers. If we can come up with enough funding then they have no reason to shut us down. It might not be permanent but it would give us another year to figure something out,” Jen supplied and the room erupted in ideas.

“Yeah, we can do bake sales.”

“It’s too cold to do car washes though.”

“Maybe we can sell t-shirts or something?”

After that it was all a blur. Idea after idea was put forth, but by the end of it, I didn’t hold much hope. They were all good ideas, but the likely hood that we would get anywhere with any of them was slim. There was no way we could pull in enough funding to fund a school for an entire year. Not just from fundraisers.

But the girl with glasses, Patsy, took the lead on the petitions. Several other girls scheduled out a bunch of different fundraisers, so they didn’t overlap. A lot of them enlisted some help from the various athletes, so they had enough man power.

“One more thing!” I called out before all of them could leave. “Jen, Camilla, and I can’t do anything except from behind closed doors.” Jen picked up for me after that.

“Yeah, my dad is on the city council and the school board. If he found out we were trying to stop the school closing we’d be in a lot of trouble.”

“So would we, our dad’s the mayor,” Christine added, gesturing to Jake as well. It was the first time I’d ever seen her actually address him in public. They all immediately agreed and quietly made their way out. There was something to be said about being taught not to tattle.

Chapter 19

One month later, four and a half weeks of petitions, fund raisers, parental nagging, and all out temper tantrums from some of them, and we were back in the same room. Shockingly the fund raisers had yielded over two thousand dollars. So at least we new the town was behind us. But we were only told point blank by the superintendent that no matter if we managed to come up with enough to fund the next school year, it didn’t change anything. They were still going to close the school.

Everyone was sitting around, looking depressingly dejected, and looking to me for answers. I don’t know when I became the leader of our little rebel group. But I figured so long as everyone was looking to me I might as well do my best.

“I heard my dad talking on the phone last night,” Christine said suddenly. “There’s a man willing to pay a lot of money to build a night club here. He said that since the school is kind of on the outskirts of town then it would be the perfect spot for it. They plan on using the money for the land and demolishing the school to pad the treasury. And do a bunch of city beautification work. Claimed it was what would be best for the economy, since they can just send the students to other schools anyway.”

“That can’t be legal,” I replied with more disbelief than I had ever felt in my life.

“They’re claiming that the school is too run down to keep up with anymore. That‘s how they‘re getting away with it.”

“The school isn’t that bad. I mean, a lot of the lockers are broken but…,” Jason put in.

“The desks are falling apart too.”

“The floors