Rising Shards

The next day, Oka, Kalei, Iris, and I were feeling pretty defeated, exhausted from returning back to a normal state from Feral Flu. Dr. Diast requested to meet with all of us, but I was too tired to even feel anxious about it. Also contributing to our feeling of defeat: the humiliating cones we had to wear around our necks.

“Heard you guys got darted,” Kalei said. “That is so cool.”

“Yeah, I’m very tired still from it,” Oka said. “I’m not sure the words coming are out in the right order. Because tired.”

“The spot on my back where I got darted really hurts,” I said.

“I got tranq darted too and you don’t see me complaining,” Iris said.

“Yeah, you leapt over Naomi before she could block our door and they got you like in midair…hold on…” Kalei said, a sour look forming on her face. Or at least, as much of a sour look as I could see with the cone covering half her face.

“I know that look,” Dr. Diast said. “Here, one sec.”

Dr. Diast handed her a bucket. I tried to look away as Kalei had a hacking cough, spitting a hairball up into the bucket.

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Dr. Diast said. “There’s a remedy for it if that keeps up.”

“Cool…” Kalei said. “Alright, Diast, just yell at us already so we can get this over with.”

Diast checked us over again, giving us each a last dose of the good tasting pink medicine.

“Well, I’m simultaneously impressed with your craftiness while also being incredibly frustrated that you went this route for the Fang Fair,” Diast said.  “But I can’t blame you too much, I did the same thing when I was your age.”

“Wait, what?” I said, feeling whiplash from intense guilt to this news. “You gave yourself Feral Flu too?”

“Uh huh,” Diast said. “But it wasn’t to get out of the Fang Fair, there was someone I liked that had Feral Flu so I got it to try and get locked in with them, because my school locked up all the Feral Flu Cani in the infirmary. That’s probably TMI, right?”

“So wait, are we off the hook then?” Kalei asked.

“Actually, I think it’d be fitting for you three to get the same punishment I got back then when my advisor found out.” Diast said.

* * *

I felt a bit grossed out by my fellow students as I picked up another glob of food and chucked it in a trash bag. I didn’t think a science fair could create this much garbage, but we were tasked with cleaning it all up as our punishment. Most of the displays at the Fang Fair were left there. I assumed the really good ones were already taken away, as we were directed to throw everything left in the garbage. It was hard to make sure we had gotten everything with the cones on our necks still. At least we had gloves and spray bottles with a pleasant-smelling cleaner in them.

“So, this is going well,” Kalei said. She tried to scoop up a piece of garbage with her cone and fling it into her bag. “Not demoralizing at all cleaning up all this garbage.”

“Honestly, I’m more depressed I lost the tail,” Oka said. “But at least Zeta still has hers.”

Oka tried to yank at my tail again, but I dodged her.

“I guess I can still get a stress tail too someday,” Oka said wistfully.

“Picking up all this garbage is definitely stressing me out,” I said. “I’m really hoping this food isn’t chewed. Why is there so much food on the ground? What’s wrong with people here?”

“I’d say this isn’t fair, but—” Kalei said before hacking again. “That this isn’t fair, but—” She held up a finger and kept hacking as we picked up some more trash.

“I’m sure she’ll get to whatever she’s saying eventually,” Oka said. “I’m glad we didn’t get furballs at least.”

“Why’d frigging Laenie and Aira have to do this lemonade project?” Iris asked, desperately trying to scrub away at a card table. “How’d they get so much lemonade stuck into this table? And why is it so sticky? Lemonade isn’t normally this sticky, right?”

“Can we just throw out the tables?” Oka asked.

“No, the tables are the only thing they said not to throw out.” I said. “I am surprised everyone is cool with having their projects tossed out, though.”

“Would you really want to keep ours?” Kalei asked. “Now imagine what everyone else thinks about their proj—"

As Kalei started another hacking fit, Oka tried to find our project.

“Alright, I give up on this table,” Iris said.

“Aw, it’s gone already,” Oka said. “I wanted to see if we got a ribbon.”

“I wonder who got rid of it,” I said.

“Probably Diast, for how mad she was at how bad our work was.” Kalei said.

“Oh, Maia just texted me,” Iris said, looking at her phone. “Apparently things got a bit weird after one of the groups accidentally went to the void. Someone did an experiment mixing an exploding power with a pile of food and it got very messy."

“Yeah, we noticed the messiness,” Oka said.

“That makes me feel slightly better about all the food on the ground,” I said. “At least it wasn’t all just garbage dropped here.”

“That makes me feel slightly worse,” Kalei said. “We missed a food explosion!”

“Hey, silver lining here gang,” Iris said. “At least we’re over the Feral Flu enough to not wanna eat any of this rancid food, right?”

I shuddered to think of what it would have been like if I had been near this food at peak hunger the night before. We all silently got back to cleaning.

“Hey wait, did Diast even say we actually skipped the thing?” I said.

“What do you mean?” Iris asked.

“Like did we get away with not having to do the whole Fang Fair speech?” I said.

“I think she said we’re going to have to write a make-up paper, but we won’t have to redo the speech.” Oka said. “But I’m still a bit dazed from, well, everything from yesterday. And the cone makes it kind of hard to hear.”

“Well, terrific!” I said. “Not that you’re dazed or the cone thing, that we just have to write a paper. I can handle a paper.”

“Well, I can’t,” Iris said. “I’m just gonna get Feral Flu again to get out of that.”

“I…don’t think that’ll work twice.” Oka said. “Maybe we can all just work together.”

“Yeah because us working together worked so well last time.” Kalei said. “I vote Feral Flu again.”

“You guys can have fun with that,” I said as Iris and Kalei immediately wandered off to a corner we hadn’t cleaned yet to presumably plot how to use Feral Flu to get out of paper writing. “I’d rather clean up than go through all that again.”

“But you’d rather go through all that than do the full Fang Fair presentation, right?” Oka asked. I could tell there was a bit more she was asking me there, a silent “You don’t regret it, do you?” regarding our adventure around the school grounds and in our dorm room.

“Definitely.” I said. “I’d do all that again.”

“Alright, good,” Oka said, smiling softly as she picked up garbage.

“Next time, how about without the Feral Flu, though?” I asked.

“Deal.” Oka said.