Rising Shards

I sat in the beds past the nurses’ room, wanting to just get into my own bed in my room again. The stitches in my forehead and right leg were really itchy. The sun set outside my window. After explaining everything that went down to Zak Cavalier, Dr. Diast was the first to visit me. She stood a bit away from me, looking at me like I was a ghost.

“I’m sorry,” Diast said. “I let you down.”

“You didn’t.” I said.

“If I scheduled the memory trials better and ugh,” Diast said. “I won’t let this happen again.”

“It really truly wasn’t your fault.” I said.

Diast sighed.

“I don’t know what her problem with you was,” Diast said. “And I won’t press you on knowing that, but I wanted to let you know she won’t be at Rising Shards anymore. I am 99.99999% sure she’s getting expelled if she doesn’t transfer schools.”

“So she’s probably going to Wildfire Hearts, then?” I said.

“As if you needed any more reasons not to go there, right?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, I’ll double my efforts to keep you here,” Diast said. “You have my word on that.”

“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t feel at all betrayed by her, but the way she looked at me made me want to cry. Like I was feeling too much empathy for her guilt to worry about my own problems.

“And all that isn’t even getting into the clybrid android y’all stumbled upon.” Diast said. “You had a weird, weird day, huh?”

“No kidding,” I said. “09 did save me, though. Do you know anything about her?”

“I just know she’s going here soon,” Diast said. “I know a good deal of technical stuff about clybrid Cani, but not this particular one. I also have a few guesses as to who adopted her, but that’s not important now.”

As if on cue, suddenly I could hear my sister’s voice echoing through the nurse’s office.

“Where is she?” Stella yelled. She stormed into the bed, and basically ran to hug me.

“Watch the stitches,” Diast said.

“Oh, thank god you’re here at least,” Stella said once she let go of me and saw Dr. Diast. 

“Is that genuine or sarcastic because of all this?” Diast said. “Because my guilt-o-meter is off the charts right now after your sister went through.”

Stella’s voice was stern, but I knew that tone from her. That was the ”everyone else messed up but you” voice that was rare to hear.

“Genuine,” Stella said. “Now where is the pathetic little bitch that did this to her?”

“Dude, your sister is awesome,” Diast said, her jaw practically dropping. She got her composure back quickly. ”Sorry, that came out incredibly unprofessionally.”

“You’re fine, and I know,” I said. “She’s gone, Stella. The detectives or whoever took her. And I won the fight at least.”

I didn’t include that a clybrid Cani really won the fight, but I won the first part of the fight. I earned that victory at least. Stella wasn’t totally satisfied by my answer, but after Diast and I relayed the story, she wasn’t as furious with everyone outside of the room. There was a bunch of stuff she needed to sign off on, so she left the room as I got more guests.

I was kind of surprised by the amount of people that came to visit. Aira and Laenie had lots of hugs for me, Lillia Cadence didn’t even glare at me when she visited but instead brought a book she thought I’d enjoy, Iris and Maia made me laugh, then KJ, Amara, and Rain showed up and didn’t even fawn over each other like normal. Kalei admitted she was kind of jealous I got into a real fight at Rising Shards before she did. Finally, Oka was there. It was just me and her. While the others kept their distance, she sat down at the edge of the bed cross legged.

“How are you doing?” Oka asked.

“Surprisingly…not bad.” I said. “All things considered. If this happened a few weeks ago, I’d be a total wreck, but…”

“I feel like a total wreck,” Oka said. “All that happened like literally directly under my nose, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

“There wasn’t anything you could do,” I said. “So don’t feel bad, alright? You didn’t fight me like Ovie fought me, and you didn’t tell me what Ovie told me.”

“Alright,” Oka said. She squinted. “Wait, what did Ovie tell you?”

I hadn’t told anyone this yet. Well, I did tell Zak Cavalier, but he was collecting info on Ovie for a more investigative reasons, so it didn’t feel as hard to tell him. It would be hard to tell Oka.

“She told me…” I said. I gave a moment’s thought to not burden Oka with this. I cared so much about her, and this hurt me enough. Did I want it to hurt her too? But I also knew that if I lied about this, that would put a barrier between me and her that would be so hard to scale. “Jeans was cheating on Ovie with me. The whole time. All the time I thought I was dating her. I was just...an affair to her. She was dating Ovie before me. And she’s still dating Ovie.”

Oka looked like something had just punched her in the stomach, which is probably how I looked too when Ovie told me.

“Oh,” Oka said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I was just…I wasn’t even a real girlfriend to her.” I said, my eyes welling up from something that hadn’t fully hit me yet underneath everything else. “I was just a...I don’t even know.”

Oka thought for a moment.

“You know though, she wasn’t a real girlfriend to you either,” Oka said. ”At least you were trying. She had you on the side of Ovie sure, but she was still treating you like crap. Treating you and Ovie like total crap.”

“How are you so smart?” I blurted out before some part of me would worry about gushing about her that audibly. “Like, you’re legitimately one of the wisest people I’ve ever met.”

“Aw, stop,” Oka said.

“It’s been nice to hear from everyone, and they all helped,” I said. “But that’s the first thing I’ve heard that actually makes me feel better.”

I sighed.

“I do feel bad for her, still,” I said. “Ovie, I mean. She seems even more messed up by Jeans than I was.”

“You’re not like, going to fall for her, are you?” Oka asked. “Because I read this book series and the main guy went for the one that hurt them the most, the like ultra cruel type like Ovie, like that was the romantic payoff of everything, and it was so stupid, and I chucked that book across the room.”

“No,” I said. “I feel bad for Ovie, but it doesn’t take away what she did to me, too. Like she beat me up pretty much just a few hours ago and put me in the hospital. Or kinda the hospital, does the nurses’ office count? We probably have a connection because of Jeans hurting us the same way, but that’s as far as it goes.”

“Good,” Oka said. She saw Nurse Lyla with the famous Cadence glare looking her way. “Alright, I better go.”

Oka hugged me one more time and left. I looked at the sunset again. If this was before I met Oka, I really wouldn’t have been able to deal with any of this. But she was like the island at the end of a stormy boat ride. Thinking of Oka was like, if I could ride through this storm, maybe a nice island of Oka waited for me.

“My type…” I mumbled to myself, looking at my crumpled blankets as if they were an ocean. “Is more…brown hair…green eyes…cute everything…nicest person in the universe…that’s my type.”