Rising Shards

”Dude, did you watch that too?” Kalei asked. ”I thought I was losing it when it came on. I cannot believe that show is real.”

It turned out I wasn’t the only one to end up watching that space marine show. Kalei and I spent our stretching time in gym class goofing on it.

”I looked it up, and there is a lot of fan art of that guy and his ship.” Kalei said.

”Shipping the ship, huh...do they draw the spaceship like it is, or...?” I said.

”Nah, usually just like turning the ship into a boobified babe.” Kalei said.

”I forbid you from saying ’boobified babe’ ever again.” Lillia said.

”Make me,” Kalei said. ”Er, on second thought...”

”I genuinely cannot follow what the heck show you’re talking about,” Oka said. ”And I’m kind of relieved, it sounds terrible.”

”Oh, it is,” Kalei said. ”Maybe we can have a marathon night and all watch it.”

”I’d rather not,” Oka said. She started to say something else, but Kalei stared past her, looking across the gymnasium. Nikki and her girlfriend P.D. were walking together, doing their class’s warmup laps very slowly.

”Hey...” Oka said.

Kalei snapped back to attention. ”I’m good, don’t worry about me.”

We had only talked a little bit about that girl talking trash. I missed it happening, but she told Kalei to stay out of her way, as though Kalei were trying to take Nikki away from her. While Kalei was previously crushing hard on Nikki, finding out the way she did that said crush was dating someone doused a lot of those flames.

”I asked around a bit,” Lillia said. ”The consensus seems to be Ovie is already back to spreading rumors, with Chickadee helping her out.”

”Silver lining there, I don’t think they’re landing as well as they did last semester.” Oka said. ”Some of the girls in theater club were telling me that Chickadee tried spreading gossip that a bunch of people from Rising Shards had ’acidic head lice’ and how we should all be avoided because of it.”

”So Ovie back to regular Ovie stuff, but her new messenger is making the made up stuff about us sound even more made up.” I said.

”It’s kind of sad when you put it that way,” Kalei said.

”Almost pitiable,” Lillia said. ”Almost.”

”Have you been able to talk to 09 at all?” I asked.

”Not since that class, no,” Oka crossed her arms. ”Not that I really want to at the moment.”

Luckily, Kalei and P.D. didn’t have any run ins during gym class. Nor did we have to deal with Ovie, 09, or Chickadee.

Curiously, we also didn’t have to deal with any Wildfire Hearts students in Ms. Corinani’s class, as half of the classroom wasn’t there.

”Oh, I give them the day off every now and then,” Corinani explained. ”It’s a bit we do. No Corinani class on Wednesdays, that’s what we call it! I’m such a cool teacher to let my students do this. But that’s a Wildfire Hearts only privilege, you guys can’t take Wednesdays off like this.” It was a Tuesday. ”But enough about them, today we’re all about cold, hard cash. Right? Because it’s time for some jobs.”

Corinani loaded up a video on the projector, but paused it right as it started.

”The Benta Scholarship has a lot of demands for you guys, and they’re getting even more demand-ier as of late,” Corinani said. ”There’s even a guy from the Benta group on campus now, if you see a short dude eating candy that’s really mean, that’s him. He made your principal cry like three times, but he hasn’t broken me yet. He may try to break you too about this job dealio. It’s sad to take any kind of a break from the book reading, but we teachers must do what we’re told. Fear not, I, Alix Corinani, bestselling author of a book that is partially about jobs, will be handling your training.”

Ms. Corinani accidentally hit play on the video, interrupting whatever she was going to say next. It was, unsurprisingly, a KIDS’ ZONE FUN FACTS educational video. Our familiar host, a long-haired surfer dude, put a paper notecard into a machine at a fast food restaurant that was very clearly a set.

”Did you um, ever like, have a job?” Thadley said when he turned to the camera. ”Jobs are cool ways to like make money and stuff. Haha!”

Thadley got to work making very fake looking food as a narrator spoke over him.

”If you’re a Cani and you have a job, you better watch out.” The narrator said as big text reading ”WATCH OUT” flew across the screen. ”You shouldn’t use your powers carelessly. Unless your job involves your particular Cani power, you should consider not using them at all!”

”Do they think we’re really stupid or something?” Kalei asked.

”You’re only just getting that now after how many months of watching these?” Oka said.

The video then presented a few scenarios about being a Cani having a job, including such vital advice as ”show up to work on time,” ”be polite to customers,” and ”don’t bite your coworkers.”

”And I think we got it from there,” Corinani said, shutting down the video. A few moments followed of her scrambling to close out of her browser as she accidentally had a dating website open on the tab nearest to the training video.

”Uh, anyways, that will be very useful information as we get to uh our pretend job.” Corinani said. ”It’s funny that the video was about a restaurant, because our mock job session will be...” She looked at the class with her eyebrows raised, but nobody answered her. ”You know, I’m kind of your manager this week, and the training neglected to mention that it’s very radical to be polite when you’re a subordinate. Hey, whoa!” Corinani shouted as she ducked.

”Uh...did some invisible person attack you?” Kalei said.

Corinani blinked as she rose. ”Oh, hah...usually my students throw garbage at me when I offer slight suggestions like that.”

”Are you...OK? Like, genuinely?” Oka asked.

”Hm? Why wouldn’t I be?” Corinani said.

Starting off with a pretend job seemed like a nice way to ease into things, but my anxious side told me things wouldn’t be too easy.