Rising Shards

Oka and I brought our display down to the indoor gym where the Fang Fair was being held. It looked like everyone was a little late from the suggested set up time, at least. We moved through the crowd of our fellow students to get to the indoor gym. Banners with “RISING SHARDS FANG FAIR” written on them were hung up everywhere, and our classmates were setting up. I looked at the other projects, and they all detailed some part of Cani history or science stuff about A lump formed in my throat. Some of these were really good. I thought about what I had prepared for this and it was much less good.

“Here,” Kalei said as she handed Oka an orange and me some kind of canned coffee that for some reason had a picture of a team of shirtless, muscular guys climbing over each other trying to get to a volleyball on it. It was called Volleyball Muscle, and Kalei had gotten one of those for herself too.

“Hey, why don’t I get one?” Oka asked.

“I thought I did get you one,” Kalei said. “Trade with Zeta.”

“I don’t really want coffee,” I said. “You can just have it.”

“We’ll trade, it’s fine,” Oka said. She sleepily looked at both her hands, which were empty. “Where did I put it?”

“Figure that out later, let’s take a look at our thing,” Kalei said, taking probably way too big a sip of the energy drink. It actually kinda smelled good, which made me regret giving mine to Oka.

Oka, Kalei and I leaned over our pathetic cardboard display. One thing I hated about having Cani fangs was when I winced so bad, I bit my lip. At least we were all wincing.

“So, we’re screwed,” Kalei said.

“Who are the judges for our section?” I asked.

Oka searched through a display on her wristband that had a map of our grade’s zone in the Fang Fair that showed which teachers were assigned to judge what.

“Caya and Soleri,” Oka said.

“We’re triple screwed,” Kalei said.

“I feel like there’s enough blame to go around for all of us,” Oka said.

“Where do we even start there?” I asked.

“How about the weird lumpy art thing in the center?” Kalei asked.

“It was a Papier-mâché thing that I painted Raina Starlight on!” I said.

“It doesn’t look like her.” Oka said. “It doesn’t look like anything.”

“I used too much paint and the brush was too thick,” I said. “And it’s supposed to be a moondust stone. You know, our topic.”

“So you just painted a big ol’ scribble over all of it,” Oka said. “All over a weird papier-mâché lumpy thing.”

“I grew a tail, OK?” I said.

“Did you use your tail to paint this?” Kalei asked.

“It’s a moondust stone! That’s what they look like!” I said. “At least it doesn’t look like a single sheet of notebook paper on the center part of the folding board. It clashes really bad with the big lettering on the left board. Is that the best we could do there?”

“I got really bored writing it,” Kalei said. “Seriously, this is on you two for trusting me with the writing part for that one.”

“You volunteered.” Oka said.

“And you wrote the notebook page on the right side,” Kalei said. “So you can’t get mad at me for that one.”

“Couldn’t you both at least tear the fringey part off?” I asked. “And why a mirror?”

“It represents the judges,” Oka said. “They become judged by their own reflection.”

“And what does that have to do with moondust stones?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Oka said. “It was in the script for the play and I thought it sounded cool.”

We all sighed, but my sigh was garnished with anxiety. Panic was setting in.

“OK, we’ve blamed everyone and it’s all our fault. Our faults? All of our faults sounds better, is that right?” 

"I don't know Zates, do you have a point or do you just wanna talk grammar?" Kalei asked.

"My point is what do we do now?” I said.

“Penteldtam’s opening speech starts in a half hour, then judging happens right after,” Oka said. “So that’s a lot of time to work with.”

“We could maybe sneak into the void and back in that time,” I said. “Grab something valuable?”

“Like an actual moondust stone!” Oka said.

“Yes, exactly!” I said.

“We also need to go to the library too to get this printed on something more presentable.” Oka said.

“But they have teachers guarding the doors.” I said. “How do we even get out?”

“Zeta, just go talk to Diast,” Kalei said.

“Why me?” I asked. "Can't we send Oka to go talk to Caya and get some nepotism going here?"

"You and I both know that wouldn't work on Caya." Oka said.

“And Diast loves you, and she will find a way to get us out of this.” Kalei said.

“We’ll come with,” Oka said. “You just handle the talking because like Kalei said, Diast loves you.”

I didn’t have time to argue. Dr. Diast was probably our only hope.

“Diast said in class she’d be on door duty for this,” Oka said.

“Then let’s go?” Kalei said.

Just as I made it near a table by the back doors, Diast walked in.

“Oh, hey…what’s wrong?” Diast asked, and not in a concerned, ‘Are you OK?’ way, it was in a ‘What have you done this time?’ kind of way.

“Hi Dr. Diast,” I said. “Can you take a look at our presentation quick?”

“Am I gonna have to ask what you’ve done this time?” Diast asked.

“Hopefully not?” I asked through a forced smile.

Diast sighed deeply when she saw our board.

“This is what we’re calling a rough draft,” Kalei said.

“So what you’re saying,” Dr. Diast said. “Is that you didn’t get any work done on this for the entire month you had?”

“Well, we were gonna the first day,” I said. “But Kalei has a rule about doing classwork on the first day!”

“A family tradition, no less,” Kalei said.

“Uh huh.” Diast said. “And that let you not get any of this done until I’m assuming an hour ago because?”

“Because…it was really boring?” Kalei said, prompting a punch in the arm from Oka. “Ow! I mean, because it was so interesting, we couldn’t comprehend how to complete it?”

“I think I liked the boring answer better because it was at least honest,” Diast said. “Where’s your other partner?”

Other partner? That made me realize I just assumed it was me, Oka, and Kalei on this.

“What…other…partner?” I asked.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Dr. Diast said, smearing her face exhaustedly with her hands. “And I’m going to suppress my seething rage at the idea that you not only did not work on your project, that you also did not contact your partners. I didn’t hear it. You never said that. You wouldn’t do that. You have the speech ready at least, right?”

We all paused a second too long.

“Oh, my god, are you kidding—” Diast started.

“We did it!” Oka said, busting out notecards out of nowhere. She handed them to Diast as Kalei and I suppressed stunned expressions. Diast looked suspicious, but softened a bit as she read through them.

“Well, it isn’t great, but it is technically a speech,” Diast said. “Go find your partner, and no, I’m not letting you off easy enough to just tell you, I have to get back to door duty.”

Diast muttered about needing five cans of Volleyball Muscle to get through the day and stormed off.

“So that went pretty well,” Oka said.

“Where did you get that speech from?” I asked. “That saved us.”

“I wrote the outline down on notecards,” Oka said. “Just in case we had to like talk to a judge about this.”

“Luckily Diast thought that counted,” Kalei said. “So now we just need to find our partner?”

“Attention students,” Principal Penteldtam said over the speakers. “I hope you’re enjoying the Fang Fair! Unfortunately, I have some news. My big speech to start the thing has to be postponed a bit. I’ve…well, I’m not gonna lie to my students. Somehow, I superglued myself to my chair. I have a guy for this, but he only said he’ll be here before lunch, so I’m postponing the whole dealie this morning until lunch. And because I want to see all the presentations without the judgment of teachers poisoning my opinion before I can form my own, I am postponing the entire Fair until lunch. So no judging until then, got it teachers?”

“That’s great!” I said.

“Great that he glued himself to his chair?” Oka said. "Because I am personally concerned about how many times that's happened to him."

“No, we have time now!” I said.

“That’s terrible!” Kalei said.

“Why is having more time terrible?” I asked.

“We could have slept in!” Kalei said.

We all groaned in unison. But there wasn’t time to lament our lack of sleep yet.