Oka and I brought our dispy down to the indym where the Fang Fair was being held. It looked like everyone was a little te from the suggested set up time, at least. We moved through the crowd of our fellow students to get to the indym. Banners with “RISING SHARDS FANG FAIR” written on them were hung up everywhere, and our cssmates were setting up. I looked at the other projects, and they all detailed some part of i history or sce stuff about A lump formed in my throat. Some of these were really good. I thought about what I had prepared for this and it was much less good.

  “Here,” Kalei said as she handed Oka an e and me some kind of ed coffee that for some reason had a picture of a team of shirtless, muscur guys climbing over each other trying to get to a volleyball on it. It was called Volleyball Muscle, and Kalei had gotten one of those for herself too.

  “Hey, why don’t I get one?” Oka asked.

  “I thought I did get you one,” Kalei said. “Trade with Zeta.”

  “I don’t really want coffee,” I said. “You just have it.”

  “We’ll trade, it’s fine,” Oka said. She sleepily looked at both her hands, which were empty. “Where did I put it?”

  “Figure that out ter, let’s take a look at our thing,” Kalei said, taking probably way too big a sip of the energy drink. It actually kinda smelled good, which made me regret giving mio Oka.

  Oka, Kalei and I leaned over our pathetic cardboard dispy. Ohing I hated about having i fangs was when I winced so bad, I bit my lip. At least we were all wing.

  “So, we’re screwed,” Kalei said.

  “Who are the judges for our se?” I asked.

  Oka searched through a dispy on her wristband that had a map of rade’s zone in the Fang Fair that showed which teachers were assigo judge what.

  “Caya and Soleri,” Oka said.

  “We’re triple screwed,” Kalei said.

  “I feel like there’s enough bme to go around for all of us,” Oka said.

  “Where do we even start there?” I asked.

  “How about the weird lumpy art thing in the ter?” Kalei asked.

  “It ier-maché thing that I painted Raina Starlight on!” I said.

  “It doesn’t look like her.” Oka said. “It doesn’t look like anything.”

  “I used too much paint and the brush was too thick,” I said. “And it’s supposed to be a moondust stone. You know, our topic.”

  “So you just painted a big ol’ scribble over all of it,” Oka said. “All over a weird papier-maché lumpy thing.”

  “I grew a tail, OK?” I said.

  “Did you use your tail to paint this?” Kalei asked.

  “It’s a moondust stohat’s what they look like!” I said. “At least it doesn’t look like a single sheet of notebook paper on the ter part of the folding board. It cshes really bad with the big lettering on the left board. Is that the best we could do there?”

  “I got really bored writing it,” Kalei said. “Seriously, this is on you two for trustih the writing part for that one.”

  “You volunteered.” Oka said.

  “And you wrote the notebook page on the right side,” Kalei said. “So you ’t get mad at me for that one.”

  “Couldn’t you both at least tear the fringey part off?” I asked. “And why a mirror?”

  “It represents the judges,” Oka said. “They bee judged by their own refle.”

  “And what does that have to do with moondust stones?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Oka said. “It was in the script for the py and I thought it sounded cool.”

  We all sighed, but my sigh was garnished with ay. Panic was setting in.

  “OK, we’ve bmed everyone and it’s all our fault. Our faults? All of our faults sounds better, is that right?”

  "I don't know Zates, do you have a point or do you just wanna talk grammar?" Kalei asked.

  "My point is what do we do now?” I said.

  “Peam’s opening speech starts in a half hour, then judging happens right after,” Oka said. “So that’s a lot of time to work with.”

  “We could maybe sneak into the void and ba that time,” I said. “Grab something valuable?”

  “Like an actual moondust stone!” Oka said.

  “Yes, exactly!” I said.

  “We also o go to the library too to get this printed on something more presentable.” Oka said.

  “But they have teachers guarding the doors.” I said. “How do we eve out?”

  “Zeta, just go talk to Diast,” Kalei said.

  “Why me?” I asked. "'t we send Oka to go talk to Caya a some ism going here?"

  "You and I both know that wouldn't work on Caya." Oka said.

  “And Diast loves you, and she will find a way to get us out of this.” Kalei said.

  “We’ll e with,” Oka said. “You just hahe talking because like Kalei said, Diast loves you.”

  I didn’t have time tue. Dr. Diast robably our only hope.

  “Diast said in css she’d be on door duty for this,” Oka said.

  “The’s go?” Kalei said.

  Just as I made it near a table by the back doors, Diast walked in.

  “Oh, hey…what’s wrong?” Diast asked, and not in a ed, ‘Are you OK?’ way, it was in a ‘What have you dohis time?’ kind of way.

  “Hi Dr. Diast,” I said. “ you take a look at our presentation quick?”

  “Am I gonna have to ask what you’ve dohis time?” Diast asked.

  “Hopefully not?” I asked through a forced smile.

  Diast sighed deeply when she saw our board.

  “This is what we’re calling a rough draft,” Kalei said.

  “So what you’re saying,” Dr. Diast said. “Is that you didn’t get any work done on this for the entire month you had?”

  “Well, we were gonna the first day,” I said. “But Kalei has a rule about doing csswork on the first day!”

  “A family tradition, no less,” Kalei said.

  “Uh huh.” Diast said. “And that let you not get any of this doil I’m assuming an ho because?”

  “Because…it was really b?” Kalei said, prompting a pun the arm from Oka. “Ow! I mean, because it was so iing, we couldn’t prehend how to plete it?”

  “I think I liked the b answer better because it was at least ho,” Diast said. “Where’s your other partner?”

  Other parthat made me realize I just assumed it was me, Oka, and Kalei on this.

  “What…other…partner?” I asked.

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Dr. Diast said, smearing her face exhaustedly with her hands. “And I’m going to suppress my seething rage at the idea that you not only did not work on your project, that you also did not tact your partners. I didn’t hear it. You never said that. You wouldn’t do that. You have the speech ready at least, right?”

  aused a sed too long.

  “Oh, my god, are you kidding—” Diast started.

  “We did it!” Oka said, busting out notecards out of nowhere. She hahem to Diast as Kalei and I suppressed stunned expressions. Diast looked suspicious, but softened a bit as she read through them.

  “Well, it isn’t great, but it is teically a speech,” Diast said. “Go find your partner, and no, I’m not letting you off easy enough to just tell you, I have to get back to door duty.”

  Diast muttered about needing five s of Volleyball Muscle to get through the day and stormed off.

  “So that went pretty well,” Oka said.

  “Where did you get that speech from?” I asked. “That saved us.”

  “I wrote the outline down on notecards,” Oka said. “Just in case we had to like talk to a judge about this.”

  “Luckily Diast thought that ted,” Kalei said. “So now we just o find our partner?”

  “Attention students,” Principal Peam said over the speakers. “I hope you’re enjoying the Fang Fair! Unfortunately, I have some news. My big speech to start the thing has to be postponed a bit. I’ve…well, I’m not gonna lie to my students. Somehow, I superglued myself to my chair. I have a guy for this, but he only said he’ll be here before lunch, so I’m postponing the whole dealie this m until lunch. And because I want to see all the presentations without the judgment of teachers poisoning my opinion before I form my own, I am postponing the entire Fair until lunch. So no judging until then, got it teachers?”

  “That’s great!” I said.

  “Great that he glued himself to his chair?” Oka said. "Because I am personally ed about how many times that's happeo him."

  “No, we have time now!” I said.

  “That’s terrible!” Kalei said.

  “Why is having more time terrible?” I asked.

  “We could have slept in!” Kalei said.

  We all groaned in unison. But there wasn’t time to ment our ck of sleep yet.