Rising Shards

Iris wasn’t sure back then what possessed her to talk to Maia the first time, but she was glad she did. It might have just been that she was the nearest warm body after the pretest that actually counted for points. Iris had also found Maia pretty cool for a long while, even if she never saw her talking to anyone in class outside of required stuff like group projects.

Iris was thinking about the day after they’d become friends as she and Maia arrived at Rising Shards. After a hilariously bad orientation speech from their principal, Iris waited with Maia and the rest of their pod for their newly appointed advisor, an anxious young teacher named Ms. Letoh, to give them a tour of the school. Iris was a combo of sleepy, nostalgic, and hungry.

“Remember that first time we ate at Treesburger?” Iris asked.

“Yeah, why?” Maia said.

“I’m just thinking I could really go for some fries and a shake,” Iris said.

“You put your fries in your milkshake, it’s weird.”

“It’s not weird, it’s delicious.”

“Like if you just dip them,” Maia said. “You shove like a whole medium fry in there.”

“Stop talking about fries,” Iris said. “You’re making me hungry.”

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

Iris sighed. Their advisor seemed pretty new to the whole teaching thing and had told them to wait while she grabbed some papers.

“What’s taking her so long?” Iris asked. “I’m hungry, I shouldn’t do school when I’m hungry. Maia, feed me.”

“No.”

“G-greetings, students,” Ms. Letoh said, jogging back to the group with a stack of papers in hand. Ms. Letoh had messy hair and looked as if she’d rolled out of bed four hours late. She probably had socks that didn’t match. “I mean, I already…introduced before when we met…oh dear…”

Iris felt bad, but also was too hungry to even offer a supportive grunt.

“A-anyways, let us begin the tour of the school,” Ms. Letoh said, sorting through her papers. “First is the cafeteria…”

Iris’ eyes widened when she saw the majesty of her new school’s cafeteria.

“Holy crap they have a Treesburger stand here!” Iris said.

Maia gave her typical move of a “shh” and a flick to the shoulder whenever Iris was being loud when she shouldn’t.

“R-right, yes,” Letoh said. “There are lots of…” She grabbed a notecard from her papers and her eyes darted across it as she read. “Places to eat here! Moving on…”

“This is all I’ll be able to think about for the rest of the day,” Iris said.

Iris was antsy and hungry for the rest of the tour. The school seemed cool, but her favorite fast-food place was waiting for her in the cafeteria. As soon as the tour finished and they were dismissed, Iris power walked to the cafeteria, with Maia following behind.

“Don’t even try to tell me not to, Maia,” Iris said. “I was good for that whole tour, I earned this.”

Iris stopped dead in her tracks when she reached the stand.

“What? No!”

“What’s wrong?” Maia asked.

“It’s just the Super Health Kids menu, ugh,” Iris said. “Oh hey wait! They have small fries on there and shakes! Life really is good.”

Maia got a meat heavy slice of pizza from another stand in the cafeteria while Iris got hers. They sat down at a table in a far corner.

“It feels like this place used to be a mall,” Iris said. “Then they turned it into a school for some reason.”

“For real,” Maia said.

“This is even like what we do when we go to the mall,” Iris said. “I get Treesburger and you get the meatiest pizza you can find.”

Maia took a big bite of her pizza and nodded contentedly. “How’s yours?”

“It tastes kinda funky compared to the real Treesburger food,” Iris said. “But I guess it’ll do. Is yours funky too?”

“It's OK,” Maia said. “What did you think about the rest of the pod?”

“They seem alright,” Iris said. “Did you see that short haired girl had a flask?”

“Yeah, was she actually drinking?”

“I thought so, she kept sneaking sips. I got a whiff of it and it was coffee.”

“Weird,” Maia said. “I was too distracted by the dragon with the bear pajamas.”

“Yeah, she might be trouble.”

Iris finished her shake and fries and let out a big burp.

“You think we can do this Benta thing, yeah?” Iris said. “And if you take a long time to answer, that’ll scare me, just FYI.”

“We’re gonna have to actually try more than we did at Clay High,” Maia said. “And be crafty about some of the dumber stuff on the list.”

“That’s like the most optimistic answer I’ve ever gotten from you,” Iris said.

“Hey, maybe actually being here has gotten me less cynical about it.” Maia said.

It might have been the junk food dinner making her a bit anxious, but Iris still wanted to be sure.

“So if I fail—"

“If you fail, I’m gonna flunk out on purpose.”

Iris smiled.

“That actually makes me feel way better,” Iris said. “And if you fail and I don’t, I’d definitely flunk or just give up on the school system immediately and become like a card player on the streets, jumping from town to town by hitching rides on trains and conning strangers out of their money with my card skills.”

“Are you actually good at any card game?”

“No,” Iris said. “So you can’t fail, alright?”

“If I fail and you don’t, something has gone cosmically wrong.”

“Exactly.”

Iris beamed at her best friend. If Rising Shards was gonna be like this every day, she’d be just fine.