The Darkest Hours

Chapter 2

There's something about gymnasiums.

Maybe it's the fluorescent lighting. Maybe it's the acoustics, the way that squeaking shoes echo off the walls, the way thudding basketballs sound on the floor, or rattling against the rim, or the way "bricks" slam into the backboard and make the whole thing shudder. Maybe it's the smell—one part sweat and frictionwarmed rubber to many parts disinfectant and floor polish. I'm not sure.

All I know is that every time I walk into a gymnasium, I get hit with a rush of memories from my own days of high school. Some people call that phenomenon "nostalgia." I call it "nausea."

Unless, of course, nostalgia is supposed to make you feel abruptly shunned, unpopular, and inadequate—in which case, I suppose that gymnasiums are nostalgic as all get-out for me.

The gym was full of young men in shorts, athletic socks and shoes, T-shirts and tank tops. The color schemes and fabrics employed were slightly different, but other than that they looked pretty much exactly like the b-ball players had when I'd gone to school here. That made me feel pretty nostalgic, too.

I hadn't had a very easy time of it in high school, particularly with the sports-oriented crowd who hung around in the gym. A radioactive spider bite had more than taken care of any physical inadequacies—but my memories of that time in my life weren't about fact. They were about old feelings that still had power.

Fine, so I had one or two lingering issues from high school. Who doesn't?

I also had Coach Kyle's whistle, his clipboard, and his practice schedule, complete with warm-ups, drills, and all the other activities which constituted a training session. Plus, I was an adult now. A teacher. I had the wisdom and experience of age— well, compared to a teenager, anyway. I was the one with the authority, the one who would command respect. I was not a big-brained high school nerd anymore. No one was going to give me a wedgie or a swirlie or stuff me into a locker.

Even if most of them did seem to be awfully tall.

I shook my head and grinned at my reaction to all those memories. These days, I'd have to work hard to be sure not to hurt any of them if they tried it, but the emotional reflexes were still there. You can take the nerd out of the school…

I stepped out onto the court and blew a short, loud blast on the whistle and rotated my hand in the air above my head. "Bring it in, guys, right here."

A couple of the kids immediately turned and shuffled over to me. Most of them never even slowed down, being involved in a game of seven-on-one against Samuel.

They probably just hadn't heard the whistle. Yeah, right. No fear, Peter. No fear.

I blew the whistle again, louder, and for as long as I could keep blowing, maybe twenty or thirty seconds of pure, warbling authority. Most of the stragglers came over after ten seconds or so. Samuel, who was big enough and strong enough to dunk, slammed the ball in one more time after everyone else had come over, recovered it, and took a three-point shot for nothing but net. He finally turned to walk over about half a second before I ran out of wind.

"Afternoon, guys," I said. "I'm Mister Parker, and I'm a science teacher, in case you didn't know. I'm going to be standing in for Coach Kyle for a few days, until he's back on the job. The coach has left me a schedule of what he wants you to be doing so—"

"Shoot," said Samuel, with a disgusted exhale. He didn't say "shoot," exactly, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"You have a question, Mister…" I checked Kyle's clipboard. "Larkin?"

"Yeah," he said. "Where you played ball?" His expression was sullen and skeptical. The kid was ridiculously tall, and not just for his age. He would have been ridiculously tall at any age.

"I haven't lately," I told him.

"College?" he asked.

"No."

"High school?"

"No," I said.

"Shoot," he didn't say. "You don't know nothing about ball."

I didn't let it rattle me. "Those who can't do, teach," I told him. Then I held up the clipboard. "But I figure Coach Kyle knows what he's doing, so we're just going to stick to his plan, starting with a ten-minute warm-up run and stretching." I tucked the clipboard under my arm and tried to pretend I was a drill sergeant. I blew the whistle once, clapped my hands, and said, "Let's go!"

And they went. Slowly, reluctantly, and Samuel was still standing there glowering at me when the first of his teammates had finished the first lap, but then he shambled off to join them. Good-looking kid, very strong features, skin almost as dark as his eyes, and his voice held authority well. His teammates would look up to him, literally and figuratively.

Once the run was finished, I told Samuel to lead the team through stretching, which he did without batting an eye. He'd done it for Coach Kyle before, I supposed. I could see what the coach meant when he said the kid was a natural leader.

When the stretching was done, Kyle's plan called for passing drills, and that was when I saw what the coach meant about Samuel's bad attitude.

The team groaned when I said "Drill," and Samuel shook his head. "Screw that. That isn't what the team needs right now." He looked around. "Okay, we'll go half court twice. Starters against me on this end; Darnell, you take the rest to that end and split into four-on-four."

The kids went into motion at once.

Good thing I had that whistle. I blew another blast on it and called, "The coach wants you running passing drills. You are darn well going to run passing drills."

"Hey," Samuel said, "shredded wheat." He shot me a hard, swift pass that should have bounced the ball off the back of my head—but my spider sense, that inexplicable yet extremely cool sixth sense that warns me of danger, alerted me to the incoming basketball. I turned and caught it flat against my right hand, then gripped onto it with the old wallcrawling cling, so that it looked like I had caught it and perfectly palmed it to boot.

Samuel hadn't expected that—but it didn't faze him, either. "You're pretty fast for an old man."

"Thanks," I said, and flicked the ball back at him, making sure I didn't break his ribs with it out of annoyance. "Now line them up and run the drills."

"Screw you, Mister Science," Samuel said. "The team needs real practice."

I frowned at him. "The coach—"

"Ain't here," Samuel said, his tone harsh. "He's off on vacation, ain't he."

"Doesn't matter," I said. "We're running drills. We've got twenty minutes of full-court five-on-five at the end of the day."

The team groaned, and Samuel grinned at me. "Full-court five-on-five? Might as well send everyone else home and let me practice shots. 'Cause that's all that is gonna happen. My way, everybody gets to play."

"You aren't the coach," I said.

He shrugged. "Neither are you."

"I am today."

"Tell you what, Mister Science," Samuel said. "You come out here on the floor with me. We can go half-court one-on-one to five. You get even one past me before I hit five, or if I foul you even once, we'll do it your way. Otherwise you let someone who knows what he's doing run the practice."

I was tempted, but only for a second. Hammering my point through the kid's thick skull wasn't going to do him any good. "We're going to practice," I told him. "If you don't want to practice, that's cool. You can leave whenever you like."

Samuel just stared at me. Then he burst out into a rolling belly laugh, and most of the other kids followed along.

Clearly, the whistle's power was finite. The clipboard's additional failure was sadly disappointing. I was on the verge of trying my luck with pure alphamale bellowing, when someone behind me cleared her throat, a prim little sound.

I turned to find my professional nemesis standing behind me.

Julie from Administration.

She was fortyish, fake blonde, slender as a reed, and wore a lavender business suit. She had a diamond the size of a baby elephant on her wedding ring, a thick pink clipboard in her hands, and was entirely innocent of original thought.

"Excuse me, Coach Kyle," Julie said without looking up. "I needed you to sign this report."

"I'm not Coach Kyle," I said. "Coach Kyle is a little taller than me. And he's black."

She looked up from the papers on her board and frowned severely. "Coach Kyle coaches the basketball team."

"Hence 'Coach.' Yes."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"He's on a medical leave."

Julie frowned. "I did not see the paperwork for it."

I sighed. "No paperwork? Clearly, Western civilization is on the brink of collapse."

She frowned at me. "What?"

Insulting Julie from Administration is like throwing rocks into the ocean. There's a little ripple, and the ocean never even notices it happened. "I'm standing in for him," I said. "Maybe I can help you."

Behind me, the kids had broken up into two halfcourt games as soon as my back was turned, just as I told them not to do. Gee, thanks, Julie.

"It's about Mister Larkin," she said. "His immunization record still hasn't been completed, and if he doesn't get his shots we'll have to suspend him until he does. I need you to sign here to show that you've been notified."

"That happens," I allowed, as she offered me the pink clipboard. I signed by the X. "How long does he have to get the shots?"

"Until Monday," she said. "If he doesn't have them Monday morning, he'll have to go into suspension."

I blinked at her. "It's Friday," I said.

"And I'm working late," Julie replied. "Because unlike some people who work at this school, I find it important to put in extra effort, instead of calling in sick every six-point-two-nine days. Like some people I could mention."

"Oh," I said, in a tone of sudden revelation. "You're talking about me."

Grrr.

"Yes," she said. "I only hope your attitude doesn't affect Coach Kyle's job performance."

Grrr.

"You missed my point, though," I said as politely as I could. "There's no way to get him into a city clinic before Monday morning. They aren't open before then."

'Well," she said, exasperated, "his parents will just have to convince their family doctor to help."

"Parent," I said. "Single parent, working three jobs to support the family. I promise you, they use the clinic, not a private practitioner."

She sniffed. "Then they should have gotten him to the clinic sooner."

I gritted my teeth. "Have you notified him or his mother?"

"No," she said, as if I was a moron. "I required the signature of one of his teachers before I could run through all the forms, and you're the only one left in the building. You didn't sign for it until just now. Which makes it all your fault, really."

The ironic thing is that Julie is an enormous Spider-Man fangirl.

Deep breaths, Parker. Nice, deep breaths.

"But he didn't know he needed the shots." I blinked. "Still doesn't know, in fact."

"Letters were sent to all students' parents last July," she said firmly. "He should have had them before school even started."

"But you're only telling him today?

When it's already too late!"

"It was a low organizational priority," she said. "More pressing matters have kept administration"— which was always Julie plus someone who was going to quit within two weeks—"far too busy to waste time doing Mister Larkin's parents' job."

I rubbed at my forehead. "Look, Julie. If this kid gets suspended, he'll be off the team—and it would make it more difficult for him to be accepted into a university."

Julie gave me a bewildered stare, as though I'd begun speaking in tongues. "University?"

I wondered if I'd get strange looks if I threw myself down and started chewing at the floorboards. "The point is that if he gets suspended over something like this, it's going to be all kinds of bad for him."

She waved a hand. "Well. Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Larkin will be more careful about following immunization procedures next time," she said, and jerked her clipboard back. She tore off a pink copy of the form I'd signed and said, "This is for Mr. and Mrs. Larkin."

"Julie," I said. "Have a heart here. The kid needs some help."

She sniffed in contempt at the very idea. "I am only following the policy, rules, and law of the New York educational system."

"Right. Just following orders," I said.

"Precisely." She turned on a heel and goosestepped out of the gymnasium.

My God, the woman was pure evil.

I glanced back at Samuel, who was currently playing four-on-one and winning handily. He wasn't talking smack to them, though. He was focused, intent, moving in his natural element. The kid was a stiff-necked loudmouth, insulting, arrogant, and he reminded me way too much of people who beat me up for lunch money when I'd been in school.

But no one deserved Julie from Administration.

And since Coach Kyle wasn't around to do it, this looked like a job for Spider-Man.