Chapter Fifteen
“Let’s get dinner. You look like you could use some food.” Callan reached out a hand to help me up from the ground, and I took a deep breath, trying to tell myself I hadn’t just had a near-death experience. I also wondered if I should be offended by his statement.
I glanced down at my clothes and immediately wished I hadn’t. My jeans and T-shirt were crumpled and crisscrossed with dirt.
I decided to change the subject and flip it back to him as I wiped some of the dirt off my jeans. He’d probably breezed through every test even if he didn’t have the affinity. I realized then that I didn’t know which affinities Callan did or didn’t have, aside from the trees.
“Which affinities did you have when you tested? I’m guessing trees, but do you have others?”
Callan looked away, and I wondered if I’d been oversteppingto ask. Were these the types of things that magical botanists considered to be personal?
I hurried to cover my faux pas—if I’d committed one. “You don’t have to tell me. I think I’m just looking to make myself feel better, since I haven’t passed any yet.”
“There are still a few tests left.” Callan hoisted open a door to the side of the academy building, and I noticed that he hadn’t answered my question. Still, I was glad that he was acting less frosty than he had when he’d escorted me onto the academy grounds the first day.
Callan led me to another massive glassed-in room where students were piling thin wooden plates with loaded salads, steaming pasta and vegetable dishes, and plump fruits that looked like they were from a Greek painting. Several students were bustling back and forth from the serving table to the kitchen, slicing the food and replenishing the supply.
Callan saw me eyeing them. “Harvester affinities. Or those on Kitchen Botany rotation. You’ll get a taste of that in the winter.”
I briefly wondered how he knew my schedule. Yasmin popped up at my side then, her long, dark ponytail swishing around her shoulders. “If you’re ever here for breakfast, they make the most incredible smoothies, super-fruit bowls, and loaded oatmeal.”
“That sounds amazing.”
“Hey, Ortega,” Callan said. “I’ll leave you two to it.” He gave me a quick nod then went to join some of the students I recognized from the leaf-collecting activities.
“Tree affinities,” Yasmin said with a sigh. “They always taketheir food and run.” She let her eyes drift out the massive glass windows, where the sun was beginning to set. “They eat up in the tree houses most of the time. That was so weird to hear my last name from him. I didn’t even realize that Rhodes knew who I was. By the way”—she looked at a delicate watch on her wrist that had a tiny fern engraved into the plate—“do you need to get home at a certain time? I know you left before dinner yesterday.”
I blinked at her words. She was correct. Yesterday, it hadn’t felt right to be eating dinner with the other magical botanists, but this evening, as I’d walked back from the tree houses with Callan, the idea of eating here had felt completely natural. Could my comfort here really have changed that quickly, even without having identified any affinity powers yet?
We loaded our plates with food that was more perfect than any I had seen before. The leaves of my salad greens were more vibrant than usual, with a variety of berry and nut toppings that added crunch and color. There was homemade bread to eat with cheeses or eggs that were bursting with flavor and a fruit salad containing some fruits I had never tried.
“Where does all this food come from?” I asked Yasmin as we took a seat in the courtyard. I studied our surroundings as Yasmin took a bite of her salad. The white stone tables were in the style of something you might see in an ancient European courtyard, and trellises with grapes and other vines provided shade overhead.
“The majority of it is grown here. There are some nearby farms that we pick up weekly orders from for the dairy and meats. We don’t keep livestock on campus, so only plant-based foods come from here. Which is honestly most of our diet. There’s the fruits and vegetables, of course, but we have wildgrains, corn, oats, rice. With the affinity powers of the students who tend them, we don’t need to take up the normal amounts of space to grow a large quantity of those. Plus, everything has magically enhanced nutrients, so we don’t need to eat as much of those types of items.”
“That’s incredible,” I said after tasting the first few bites of my salad while Yasmin spoke. I wasn’t sure if my praise was more for the flavor of the food or the wonder of the abilities of the other students here. My brain clicked on something then, and I paused eating. “I saw that Perennial Farms is connected to campus. Is that part of Evergreen Academy?”
She gave me a strange look. “Yes, though that’s not widely known. How’d you find out about it?”
“Online research. I saw their parcels are right next to each other.”
“Got it. Yeah, Perennial Farms has a booth at the local farmers’ market. We have to sell our blandest, non-enhanced stuff there, since they might be suspicious of why our food is so much more flavorful, but it’s still more nutrient dense than most of what they’re getting. We have some devoted fans who order seasonal boxes from us every week.”
“Does that help cover the cost of running this place and the stipends we get for attending?”
Yasmin nodded. “Plus, we have magical botanists in high places. Most of the academy’s operations are donor funded.”
I thought about the high-tech lab equipment I’d spotted in some of the rooms, more fitting for a PhD-granting university than a small college. But nothing about Evergreen Academy was normal, and having access to industry-leading technologies should not have come as a surprise.
Yasmin pulled a piece of paper out of her bag. “Professor East told me your schedule, so I made a little table for when you officially start classes next week. It can get complicated when you’re dual enrolled. It’s a good thing all your SCC classes are in the morning. Hopefully, you can get a similar setup next semester.”
I looked over the schedule she handed me. She had neatly categorized my SCC and Evergreen Academy classes into Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday columns. Friday simply listed Affinity Studies.
“Wow, this is great. Thanks.” I studied the names of my Evergreen Academy classes again, and nerves seized my stomach. With all the affinity testing, I’d nearly forgotten that I would be attending classes soon. “I’m already a month behind, though.”
“It might be a little challenging at first, but you’ll be fine. These aren’t like traditional college classes, with tests and all that. Yes, we need to learn everything, but I think you’ll find that it’s kind of fun because it’s so applied.”
Her words echoed what Professor East had told me about achievement at Evergreen and that there were no grades. I tried to relax, but that blend of excitement and nerves that had been my constant companion since finding out about Evergreen Academy still kicked in my stomach.
