Glitterdust (Completed)

34. Preparations

Shirts, hoodies, clean underwear, my gaming mouse and keyboard, the necessities for the upcoming tournament are all spread out on my bed. I check everything one last time before I stuff them in my suitcase. There's this tingling feeling in my stomach and restlessness in my head. I packed and unpacked my suitcase ten times already, to make sure I got all things I will need the next week.

The sound of the doorbell stops my train of thought. The man in front of my door identifies himself as the taxi driver I had ordered. I throw a quick glance at my watch. He's late and we have to hurry to catch my flight.

The man helps me carry my suitcase, while I carry my computer and screen. I want to keep a close eye on them. It wouldn't be the first time someone drops out of a tournament, because some joker thinks it's funny to sabotage a contender's gear.

When everything's in the trunk of the cab, we're off to the airport.

The tournament starts tomorrow. If everything goes as planned, I will be away for six days.

I can't believe it's more than two weeks ago Morgenstern expelled me. The next day I went back to the hospital to talk one more time about what happened, but as soon as I got near the building I knew my chances were slim. In the parking lot, several journalists were arguing with security guards. They were partially blocking the main entrance, and if I had any hope of getting back, it was now crushed completely.

Dan didn't go with me to the meeting, he was afraid his presence would make things worse. He said it wasn't about him, it was about me. People would mix those things up if he would go with me, making a big media circus out of the whole situation and he didn't want that to happen. He shouldn't have worried about it. It already was a media circus.

I was accompanied by a lawyer when I walked into the building. I felt bad for the people that had to go to the hospital that afternoon as they had to push their way through a group of journalists. I tried not to pay too much attention to the paparazzi.

I'm not sure if it was me, the lawyer, or the presence of the journalists that rubbed Morgenstern the wrong way, but it seemed as if he was even in a worse mood than the day before. He didn't come alone to the meeting. He brought a press officer, someone from human resource management, and of course a lawyer as well.

The whole ordeal didn't take long. At first, it felt like there was a staring contest going on. There was a lot of whispering and waving with papers. In my eyes, we were just spending time. Precious time that I could use for other things. The lawyers did the most of the talking. I tried to follow their discussion, but my knowledge of the law is limited and as soon as the first mentions of articles flew over the table, my mind started to wander off. In the end, my lawyer shook his head and said: "I think we're done here."

When we walked outside, I tried to read my lawyer's face, but he must be really good at card games with his poker face.

"I'm sorry miss Morgan, we have to wait three or four weeks what the board will say," he finally said.

"What do you mean?" I said. "They can't do anything like this. I didn't do anything wrong."

"Sadly they can. They decided it's too dangerous to let you work here at the moment. We have to be patient, the board might decide otherwise." He raised his hands as if he wanted to apologize for something.

Although I knew this was coming, I felt sad. What if the board kicked me out for good? I had worked so hard to get here, it wasn't fair that they did this to me.

On the other hand, I could focus fully on the upcoming tournament, which would have been hard if I had to focus on my internship as well. So I started to train, learn tactics, practice battlegrounds until my eyes were red and my fingers were swollen. I had a hard time getting any sleep, as soon as I closed my eyes, the game continued in my head. And when I managed to fall asleep my dreams were filled with battlefields and tactics.