Metaworld HopeCore

Friday.

LAPAGANZA.

Day One.

Hell week had begun with the arrival of the trucks. Scaffolding. Food stalls. Banners. Shades. Barriers. Generators. Day by day, the students watched their school perform its miraculous transformation.

To the Freshmen, the occasion seemed like sorcery.

To the Seniors, the noise and the changed spaces were inconveniences to their art.

What the students did not know was that, originally, “LAPA Extravaganza” had been born out of necessity. The school needed funds, and there was no better win-win than publicly showcasing LAPA’s talents while selling carnival-priced food and drinks, memorabilia, and souvenirs. Whenever LAPA produced an Academy nominee, Grammy winner, and Tony-adjacent set designer, folk from the surrounding suburbs and beyond would flock in to see what kind of school had produced such talented individuals.

Then, of course, LAPA was forced into its present hybrid funding model.

Six months after her induction, VP Thomas had deemed that the carnival atmosphere was no longer permissible for “Fame High,” the second-best performing arts high school in the country. LAPAGANZA was what emerged from the organic extravaganza of the past, a performing arts festival commercialised to the point of nausea.

Euphemia Fontaine thus arrived on Friday morning in her theatre blacks, venturing from kettle corn to bacon-wrapped hot dogs to churro stands to dolewhip to yet more desserts masquerading as breakfast, caring nothing for the horrified gaze of others.

By 10 AM, the parking lot had overflowed onto the adjacent lot. Trucks and sedans nosed into the grass, directed by two dozen kids in orange vests doing their best to fill up the oval.

CSULA volunteers in matching t-shirts staffed the check-in tables, the info booth, and the water station; campus security stood at every entrance, saving their energy because they knew that the chaos had only just begun.

The crowd came in waves—alumni in their good blazers, siblings dragging beach carts, industry types trying not to look like industry types—funnelling past a hand-painted banner that listed the day’s events.

Above them all, giant vinyl posters hung from the colonnade—Titus, stern in a general's greatcoat, medals catching the light, Cooper's fascist-Rome mashup rendered two stories tall; Chiron, sneering; Tamora regal in gold—but the one that stopped foot traffic, the one people actually paused to photograph, was Lavinia.

Valorie's face, twenty feet tall, photoshopped and serene, watched the whole quad arrive.

Eppie's actual job, as far as anyone had bothered to assign her one, was to help—wherever help was short. She spent about three hours wrapping up preparations for the Seniors, then ran to the Sophomores for the next two. In between, she watched a local TV crew set up outside the administration building, watched Principal Burton and VP Thomas take turns in front of the camera saying warm, well-rehearsed things about art and universality and the transformative power of a LAPA education—the kind of sophistry that Lana loved, delivered with such excessive sincerity that the audience began to feel self-conscious.

Here and there, she saw Susan Carr, whose entire Friday seemed to consist of crying into a walkie-talkie, a one-woman show trying to survive the three-day event and failing.

In the late afternoon, she met up with Valorie, the two of them gathering gazes like a combine harvester, to visit their friend at the Old Music Building.

By now, the string quartets, concertos and jazz combo were done.

The space was cleared by 5 PM for the dancers selected for Friday, including their friend, Simone Goode, whose moral well-being might have faltered, but whose craft had remained uncontested.

In the half-full black box, Eppie watched Simone’s performance while knowing little to nothing about how the performance was judged. They watched her free her body, adorned by the accursed shoes and wearing Valorie’s gifted outfit, cleanly land every syncopated beat, spilling past the limited choreography with pure talent.

Valorie explained under her breath that Simone really was exceptional. Talent… was never Simone's problem. Poverty was—she'd had only her Dance Chair's limited time to work with, on top of shifts at the Lantern Club, instead of the ten hours a week a nationally accredited tutor might have given her. Simone’s ceiling had been set before she ever took her first step.

Watching Simone bow from the waist with gratitude, she thought of Ava’s failed bid to enter Guilliams, and understood a little more intimately why patrons of the arts had historically been a thing, why Simone had been so desperate.

Simone’s sisters hugged her as soon as she left the stage.

Valorie said it was probably best if they left them for the time being.

Outside the theatre, they didn’t make it three steps out of the black box before a TV crew flagged them down.

The female reporter with a LAPA-branded lanyard knew them by name, and she had questions about the play, mostly: was Titus Andronicus really appropriate for a school stage, and how did it feel knowing that they would set the standard for future LAPA students?

Eppie let Val take most of it—Val was a Sanders, after all, nothing in her voice betraying that in two days she'd be standing under stage blood pretending to have no tongue.

Eppie added a line about ensemble and legacy that she'd more or less stolen from Costello, and the reporter looked satisfied enough to move on.

“Let’s grab Simone now…” Valorie checked her watch. “Mrs Goode has her shift, so…”

“Good idea,” Eppie regarded her friend with pride. “I could use another round of Taco—”

“NO. Eppie. Please stop.” Valorie’s grimace lasted only a split-second before her smile returned. “My pick… I’ll drive. We’re going to Luminarias.”

Eppie racked her [Memorisation], then arrived with the vague impression of a restaurant sprawling with Spanish hacienda, arched doorways, a waterfall, and sweeping San Gabriel Valley views. “You don’t need to book?”

Then she remembered.

Of course, Val didn’t need to book.

Amex Black.

You can’t go back.

By the time Eppie made it back to her dorm room, it was well past ten, but not so late that Josefina would have words. The day had eaten her alive in small pieces—checking sound equipment twice because Klein didn't trust it the first time, re-pinning a hem on Elizabeth's Tamora gown, running Val's lines with her through the greenroom mirror until she was satisfied, the crowds, the four-course dinner, the effort it took to keep Renée from looking at the price… Eppie felt tired in a way that had nothing to do with [Causality].

DING! DING!

Her phone buzzed once, late. It was Zara.