I’d worn my white Converse knockoffs, which I had a feeling I was about to trash. Mental note to get hiking boots with Sawyer’s money, because now that I had these cuffs on I felt less bad about spending his cash. If he was going to be a dick and cage me, I was going to retaliate with shopping therapy.
“Oh look!” Jennie pointed to a thick fern bush and I followed her gaze.
It took a second for my eyes to adjust, but when I realized what it was, I gasped a little.
Whoa.
There must be over a hundred orange and black butterflies dripping down the branches like a living sculpture.
I screwed on my macro lens and took an amazing zoomed-in picture of the texture of the wings.
Click, click, click. We all snapped pictures.
“The monarchs. We only get them for a few months and then they’re back on their way to Mexico,” Professor Hines said.
After that, we silently settled into the hike across the valley and over to the base of the waterfall.
“Can I go in the water?” Jennie asked.
I liked Jennie, she was chill, low maintenance, and didn’t make the top twenty with Sawyer, so she wasn’t an asshole to me like the other girls.
“Absolutely,” Professor Woods said.
Chris pulled a camera drone from his backpack and I scowled at him. “Cheater.”
He grinned. “I’m not climbing all the way up there for a good shot.”
“I am!” I announced.
“Me too,” a dude named Samson said, and started to hike in that direction.
“Wonderful! It seems you all have an idea of the shot you want to get. Take your time. We have three hours slotted for the fieldtrip.”
I started to hike up the well-worn path to the right of the waterfall, and Walsh stepped in behind me. “You don’t have to go up with me,” I told him.
He just grumbled under the hood of his jacket, which was now pulled up because the waterfall was spitting mist at us when the wind changed directions.
Okay, I guess my chatty Walsh was gone.
It was a steep hike. Like a freaking stair stepper. My thighs burned when we got halfway, and I stopped with Samson to pull water from my backpack and take a long swig. Walsh didn’t look nearly as out of breath as Samson and I, and I wondered what kind of exercise regimen Sawyer’s guards were on. Because clearly I needed it.
“Fuck this. Good enough,” Samson groaned, and walked over to the edge, starting to snap pictures.
I frowned. “Not going to the top?”
He shook his head. “Too much work for a photo.”
I swallowed my scoff and nodded. Photography was my life. Most of the time it was taking a photo in a moment, but others it was waiting hours for a bird to show up and drink from the bowl of water you set out, or to hike a mountain and get that shot that’s in your head. Photography was freezing your memories so other people could view them forever, and that’s what I was determined to do today.
I took off up the mountain with fierce determination. I wasn’t going to back down because something was hard—what kind of person did that? No one I could ever respect or be with. I glared at Chris’ drone as it flew down from the top, already having taken its amazing photos and now done. An annoyed growl ripped from my throat and I picked up the pace even faster.
“You’re pissed about something,” Walsh commented, barely winded at my side.
I gave him a long side-look. “Yeah, it just seems like everyone in Werewolf City is used to having things handed to them on a silver platter.”
A slow smirk pulled at his lips. “And you’re not?”
“No,” I growled, and pushed harder into the hike. It hit me then, I was so mad. Mad at Werewolf City, mad at Curt Hudson and his stupid bylaws, mad at the system. Why did my mother and father get kicked out? Why did I have to grow up without a pack, in a school of misfits who shit on me every day, when these Wolf City kids were being spoon-fed every drop of luxury. I guess I was glad it happened that way, it made me who I was. I wasn’t the girl who took the easy shot.
