Chương 217: THE WORST MAC AND CHEESE AWARD

In the Student Foyer, our class gathered around three tables. Liam had gotten the guys to push them together.

"Is your class celebrating a birthday?" someone asked. Hahahaha. No, that would have been a completely sensible reason for the whole class to stay back. This was... stupid to the 9th degree. But I had to admit, it was somewhat entertaining, so I stayed and submitted my box for review. First, the girls were to open their boxes and put them on the table. Liam lined the boxes in a row. Beta Peter had arrived with the car as well as a bag of disposable forks.

The guys would all taste the mac and cheese from each box and then decide which box had the worst mac and cheese. It made me seriously wonder what it was they did at woodwork class to be able to discuss all the details. One of the girls suggested that maybe we should also have a Best Mac and Cheese Award. The guys said okay. Anyway, the judging process was straightforward enough: the guys just all ate at the same time and squabbled over the boxes.

Eventually, they settled on three boxes for the best and three boxes for the worst. My box wasn't selected for either category, which wasn't totally unexpected. Now the guys tasted the three in the best category and decided on the yellow box.

"Whose box is this?" Liam called out.

"That's Janice's box!" one of the girls said. Janice smiled and turned red-faced. Liam returned the empty box to her.

"Yours was the best." Janice turned even redder. She managed to stutter her thanks. I decided to start clapping, and soon the rest of the class was clapping and whooping for Janice. Okay, now for the worst. At that moment, it occurred to me that it would've been pretty funny if it was my box. The guys had serious expressions when they approached the boxes. They took turns to test the mac from each box, and some of their reactions were quite hilarious.

Terrance actually vomited after taking too big a bite from one of them. After that, a few of the girls took out their phones to film the boys' reactions. After a while, it was pretty obvious which box would win the award for Worst Mac and Cheese. Besides organizing the taste test, the guys even had a bet on who would produce the worst mac and cheese—and dared to put their money on me! Unbelievable! So it gave me great pleasure when it was revealed that my box was one of the more edible ones.

The box that won the Worst Mac and Cheese Award turned out to be Leia's. (Not mine.) The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Which wasn't funny at all. I mean, if it was someone like me, it was pretty funny. Everyone would laugh, and I would either get mad or find it funny or both. I was the Alpha, I could take something like that. But it was Leia, and it wasn't even entirely her fault.

She had burst into tears and run to the nearest girls' washroom, where she told Jasmine and all the other girls who had followed what actually happened. Krystal and Leia had burned the bottom of their pan badly, but when Krystal had scooped theirs out, she had dished hers first before scraping off the bottom for her cousin. On top of that, their pasta wasn't completely cooked. So it not only tasted bad, the pasta was still on the hard side.

This might have been my bad, since I was the one who helped them remove the pot from the stove just as it was about to boil over. She returned with a protective swarm of girls around her, including Krystal, who had apologized.

"You guys went too far!" Jasmine told the boys.

"But it was pretty much inedible," Marcus said.

"Making Leia the most beautiful woman in our class," I concluded before anyone burst into tears again. Boys can really be insensitive brutes sometimes. The girls all laughed and congratulated Leia on her newfound beauty.

"Sam's turned out actually edible," Henry remarked.

"I lost a hundred bucks because of it."

"Serves you right." I huffed. How dare they bet on me? And in three digits too! I know it's Henry Moneybags we were talking about, but three digits in a school setting meant he seriously felt confident about winning.

"Well, I didn't expect princesses to cook." Henry shrugged.

"The pasta was a little underdone," Marcus informed me. I punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow!" Marcus grabbed his arm and winced dramatically for effect.

"Stop overacting," I scolded.

"I'm not! Sam, you punch like a guy," Marcus whined.

"Serves you right." I was still miffed about being bet on by the majority of the guys in class. I can't believe they would think so lowly of me.

"But Sam, wow, your food box was really popular. It was one of the first ones finished," Pearl said. Yeah, and I didn't even get a chance to taste it myself. Stupid boys.

"Zara's box and my box got finished too," Jasmine smiled happily.

"Oh! Wasn't Zara your partner, Sam?" Pearl said.

"Yeah." I nodded. Zara was my preassigned Home Ec partner. I didn't choose her, but she turned out to be really nice, and we worked pretty well together at Home Ec just now. Plus, it was because of this that I became friends with the other human "cool girls." I was lucky.

"No wonder your mac and cheese worked out," Henry muttered.

"Hey! I cooked too!" I insisted.

"Bet you couldn't even start the stove." Marcus grinned. I punched him again.

"Ow!" Marcus was such a pretender. He let himself fall over the bench. Jasmine and Pearl gasped and jumped up from their seats. Henry only laughed.

"What's going on, Zammi?" Krystal and the cool girls strutted over.

"He said I couldn't even light a stove!" I said accusingly.

"But it's true," Zara said matter-of-factly.

"You couldn't." Wait, what? Well, yes, that's true, but that wasn't the point! I cooked at least 50% of that too! The guys burst out laughing. Even Liam was laughing.

"I knew it," Henry said, shaking his head. Stoopid guys. Grrr....

"It's okay, Sam," Jasmine said kindly.

"It's no big deal."

"You're so lucky you have such a good cook as your partner," Pearl said less kindly. Zara lit up at the compliment. Yeah, whatever. Okay.

"I guess." I shrugged off the earlier irate. Fine. If they want to think that I can't cook. It's fine, whatever. I can take it. I can take a lot of things. I'm the Alpha after all, and whether I could cook or not wasn't any of their business in the first place. If this was one of those "from weak to strong" culinary kung fu stories, I would go seek out a master, train for years, and return to show all of them my true power! But it wasn't. This was an "I'm the Alpha" story. In that case, I wonder what I should do?

{Win} Even though I said it was fine, I had to admit, my Wolfie hated to lose.