Rising Shards

I was standing in the cafeteria, then the library, then a wooden slide that had a bunch of platforms. It was the ever-shifting landscapes of a dream. I knew it was a dream, but all I could do was try and move forward. Everywhere I turned though, Ovie and Jeans were waiting for me.

“You knew,” Ovie said.

“You always knew,” Jeans said.

I kept having dreams about it. Dreams where I knew all along what was going on with Jeans and Ovie. Dreams that had me waking up crying, wanting to run away, wanting to just scream. But I couldn’t do any of that.

So I woke myself up a bit earlier, got my brush, double brush, brush, double brush, triple brush, double brush of my hair, my regular brush of my teeth, and my morning beautification routine out of the way, leaving me enough time even for homework. A problem arose when I was caught up with homework on a shorter school week with a long weekend looming. Everyone in the school was buzzing about it; I could tell just by school chatter that a lot of people were going to be leaving. Which was good and bad. Good because it meant less people staring at me and forcing me to think about Ovie. Bad because less people around meant less avenues to take my mind thinking about Ovie and Jeans. With my extra morning time from my less sleep from desperately trying to avoid the recurring dream, I tried to think of anything I could do to take my mind off it.

That quickly evolved into helping anyone around I could find.

Luckily on that end, Kalei had a knack for getting me roped into schemes that involved waiting in line for a thing I wasn’t particularly excited about. A few weeks after the midnight release of the eGame 3, Kalei had us take our first trip to Rising Shards’ city, Sky Clay, to wait in line so she could get the new game in her favorite game series, Tyrant Rangers. Kalei now was making me wait in a virtual line to get tickets to the midnight debut of the much-hyped movie, Dentist Haircut.

“Why are all these things at midnight, anyways?” I grumbled. “When a Raina Starlight book comes out, you don’t pick em up at midnight. You get em when the bookstore opens or when they get shipped to you. When there’s a new Tower episode, it’s right at dinnertime, a reasonable time not a sleepy time. And they also could have done this premiere this weekend, it’s a holiday after all…”

I was stuck in the computer lab waiting on the stupid ticket website. I agreed to help Kalei with this because she said if I did, she’d pay for popcorn and drinks and stuff at the actual showing a week from then, as well as pay me back for the movie tickets. The only people in the lab with me I knew were Laenie and Aira.

“Normally, I’d agree with your assessment of midnight launches,” Laenie said. “But this is such a huge pop culture event that we don’t want to be spoiled. I’m on the site too waiting for tickets, actually.”

“You two are reasonable,” I said. “Can you explain to me why a pretty normal looking comedy is so big there’s an hour-long website line for tickets?”

“You tell me,” Aira said. “I think this movie looks a tad trite and basic, and I’ve never been a fan of Toot McNoot, but the hype machine has elevated it to absurd levels.”

“I guess that could be true,” Laenie said. “But you’re still going to the midnight release with me, right?”

“Absolutely.” Aira said.

“Oh!” Laenie said. “I just got through! Check yours, Zeta!”

I was still in the digital line, which became even more frustrating as Laenie audibly reacted to every step of the ticket buying process.

“Oh! Checkout page…now it wants my payment info…” Laenie said. “Now where’s my…OK, here’s my card…now…”

I wanted to refresh the page, but the note on the site said if I’d do that, I could lose my place in line. But the thing was going so slowly.

“We want seats in the back right?” Laenie asked. “OK, it’s checking out. It’s checking out! The page…is loading. We got them!”

Once they had loaded, Laenie printed her tickets right away. I asked Kalei if I could just do this on my phone and have like e-tickets or whatever, but she said the ticket site wasn’t designed for phones. Laenie celebrated for a bit with her tickets before logging out.

“Good luck, Zeta Faleur!” Aira said.

“Yeah, good luck Zeta!” Laenie said.

“Thanks,” I said, watching them leave. As soon as I looked back to the screen, I was greeted with a new screen that had the message “TICKETS NOW SOLD OUT.”

“What?” I said. “Oh no, come on, really?”

I refreshed the page, hoping it was just a glitch or something. Kalei was gonna kill me if I couldn’t get tickets. The site crashed. After fifteen minutes of frantic refreshing, it made me watch the TV spot for the movie.

“I can’t believe you think I should get a haircut from your ex-boyfriend! I’m a dentist, what will people think of me?!”

After that, the same sold-out message appeared again.

I shook the monitor, as if that would fix the amount of tickets that could be sold. After a few more frantic refreshes (all having to look at the same TV spot for the movie), it looked like I was out of luck. Kalei was very strict about not going to this past the first midnight premiere, but it didn’t seem like any of the other close showings were available either.

Someone flicked me in the shoulder as I was moaning with my head down.

“What’s up, dude?” Nikki asked. “You look like my mom when she gets my grades.”

“Oh, hi Nikki,” I said. “I just screwed myself over hardcore.”

“With what?”

“Kalei wanted me to get tickets to Dentist Haircut’s premiere,” I said. “And they just sold out.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nikki said. “Which theater are you trying for?”

Nikki leaned over and looked at my screen.

“Hey, my uncle’s the manager at the better one in town, one sec,” Nikki said.

“Huh? Better what, theater?” I asked as Nikki was already calling her uncle.

“Yeah, hey, can you get me some tickets for the midnight showing for Dentist Haircut? How many?” Nikki turned to me. “How many people are you going with?”

“Three,” I said. “I mean, three including me!”

“Alright, can you get us four tickets to Dentist Haircut then?” Nikki asked. “Sweet, thanks dude.”

Nikki hung up.

“Wow Nikki…you just saved me from Kalei’s wrath…thank you!”

“It’s cool, I was looking for people to go with anyways,” Nikki said.

“Kalei was gonna pay me for the tickets if you wanna get money from her.” I said.

“Ah, my uncle’s got it,” Nikki said. “But I wouldn’t be opposed to bugging Kalei.”

“Right,” I said, not really getting what she meant, mostly just relieved she fixed my problem.