Rising Shards

Art classes with Tik Moonheart had been interesting so far. The depth of Tik's knowledge about art history and form and stuff was incredible, and the way she taught made even the complicated stuff easy to understand. It was a different sort of teaching than Dr. Diast, who made complicated stuff simple by talking about it more casually. Tik made it sound a lot more professional (no offense to Dr. Diast) while I still got what was being taught. Usually she had her companions Kara and Mars Valor with her, who definitely didn't know as much as Tik about the particular subject, but were still a lot of fun. Each class made me feel more confident in agreeing to help with trying to figure out the deal with my parents. The three were a breath of fresh air after every class with Corinani, which gave me a lot of secondhand embarrassment that needed recovery time.

During this class, we were making clay plates. Kalei sighed as she rolled her ball of clay, which looked more like a snake than a plate at the moment.

Tik tilted her head as she watched Kalei slowly work.

"Kalei, your clay sculpture looks a bit..." Tik said. "Bleak, at the moment."

"It's nothing," Kalei said. "I'm just in the prototyping phase."

"I see," Tik said. She didn't press Kalei further, and moved on to the rest of class.

"I think it looks awesome," Marmalade said. "Very...abstract!"

"Thanks," Kalei said.

"Looks better than mine," Iris said, who had somehow flattened her clay and turned it back into the same block shape it started in.

Kalei noticed that Marmalade, Iris, Maia, and Michi were all seated near us.

"Hey, you all went on that thing with Corinani," Kalei said. "How did you deal with her?"

"Well, Maia and me snuck off to go maaa-uhhhh, I mean..." Iris said.

"Maple!" Maia said. "We went to...maple. Syrup."

"Yeah, they had syrup there! And we got sooome...for ourselves...?" Iris said. "And we chugged a whole bottle."

"Right, that sounds very not made up." Kalei said.

"Phew!" Iris said.

"I kind of just went with it?" Marmalade said. "She's not...the worst teacher."

"She tried to get us to steal a bunch of arcade machines," Michi said. "Which is kinda cool. But we were only able to steal one."

"I thought we were supposed to keep it secret." Iris said. "Not that I have, but that's what Corinani told us."

"Eh, we wouldn't get in trouble for it, she would," Maia said. "Probably."

"I can't believe she's gonna be our manager for the 'mock job session,'" Kalei said. "Which sounds like something we'd get in trouble for searching on the school computers."

"And you know all about getting in trouble on the school computers, right?" Oka said.

"That was just the one time!" Kalei said.

The next day, we got to see the setup for our pretend jobs. Two of the home ec classrooms had been converted into faux restaurants, with the one being labeled "Rising Sandwiches" on the left and "Wildfire Grills" on the right.

Corinani watched as the other half of our literature class went to the right.

"Is that why no one from Wildfire Hearts was at to my second period class?" Corinani asked.

"I thought that was because of the joke you guys had?" Iris said.

"Well, it's that too, but uh," Corinani said. She shook her head like a dog after a bath. "Yeah, that's the only thing! Rising Shards, or Rising Sandwiches students, head on in to the left."

It got tense pretty quickly, as P.D. and Kalei spotted each other before we entered our respective fake food establishments.

"Maybe try to ignore her," Oka said.

"Yes, that's a great idea," Ovie said, sneering as she walked past. "P.D., after everything I told you about that clique, you should really steer clear of them."

P.D. nodded and left.

09, along with Chellsi and Mikeila-Keila, were by Ovie. 09 didn't even look at Oka as she passed by.

"What the heck?" Oka muttered.

"All we need is Caeda showing up to do a big stupid speech to make this the worst," Kalei said. "Where is she, anyways? Actually, I don't care."

Caeda Firae apparently had the day off. But Chickadee didn't and she apparently wanted to put a stamp on this awkward moment, as she skipped over to us next.

"I bet your food is gonna be nasty," Chickadee said.

"Yours will be worse, guaranteed," Kalei said.

"Let's just go already," I said.

"Yeah, whatever," Kalei said.

The inside of the classroom had really cute handmade decorations; lots of construction paper to give the effect of a Rising Shards themed sandwich shop. For this pretend practice job, we were divided into various roles. Kalei, Maia, Amara, and myself were in the food prep area, Oka, Lillia, and Aira were servers, and Marmalade, Michi, Kai, and Rain were servers. The others in class got to be customers. I wasn't sure how being a customer would help train them for our upcoming jobs, but I was maybe jealous that they got to order food while I would be making it.

"I'm so sweaty, are kitchens supposed to be so sweaty?" I asked, rubbing my forehead.

"Zates cracking under the pressure already." Kalei said.

"What if I prepare the food incorrectly?" I asked. "And give everyone food poisoning?"

"Zeta, we need to add that pasta you made to our menu." Kalei said.

"Are you even listening to me?" I asked.

"Like half listening, sometimes it's hard to keep up with your anxiety brain." Kalei said.

I got out my phone, wanting to check What's Wrong With My Body to see their pages on sweating, but Kalei yoinked my phone right out of my hands.

"Hey!"

"Oka said I could take your phone when you're about to go into a 3WMB spiral." Kalei said.

"I should've never agreed to that," I said.

"I'll give it back once you've calmed down," Kalei said.

"Maia, you better make this sandwich good or I'll be fairly pissed off," Iris said, leaning on the counter in the corner where the kitchen setup was. We had a few cutting boards, piles of bread, a few packs of lunch meat, some veggies already cut for us, and various sauces and spices and such.

"I'll do my best," Maia said.

"At least do better than Kalei," Iris said, pointing to Kalei, who was in the middle of mushing up a piece of bread like it was someone from the Wildfire Hearts class.

"This will be a sandwich soon, don't you worry," Kalei said. "It's just...also in the prototype stage."

"Uh huh, I think I'll order non-mushed up bread," Iris said.

Amara finally shooed Iris away.

"Customers aren't allowed in the back, ma'am," Amara said.

Corinani gave us a brief rundown of the menu, how to put a sandwich together (it was all pretty basic even for someone as inexperienced as me), how we'd take orders, that sort of thing. I was still really sweaty and mainly concerned about that.

"You know what?" Kalei said. "I think I'm actually gonna try." Our group glanced at her mushed up ball of bread. "Ignore that, that is not indicative of me trying. You know why I'm gonna try? Because I'm sick of these Wildfire Hearts dorks beating us. And being huge jackasses all the time. So let's show them up by making some food that makes them all embarrassed by how much worse theirs is."

"Yeah!" I said.

Maia gave a thumbs up while Amara sighed.

"Something wrong with my speech?" Kalei asked.

"Your speech was fine, I am sigh in regard to Rain," Amara said. "I assumed she would be one of our clients, but since she's not, I'm not as pressed to really care about the quality of food we put out."

"That's...hm." I said.

"That's one of those thoughts that we maybe don't say out loud," Kalei said.

We didn't have time to argue with Amara, as Ms. Corinani blew a wooden whistle to signify our work shift starting.

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