FLOOD [Pokémon]

Chapter 18: Rock Bottom

DARWIN

Thursday, March 22, 2018

It was 4:30 PM. I was at the Ya-ya EZ Mart, a grimy shoebox of a gas station twenty minutes from my house. Quincy the Arbok was outside waiting for me, probably impatiently; I'd been inside the EZ Mart for almost twenty minutes now, and ten of those minutes had been spent staring listlessly at the wrinkled blood orange I was holding in my hand. Our kitchenette's empty fruit basket needed to be filled, but at the moment my mind was far from produce.

Not without reason: the past couple of days had left me feeling jaded and depressed and disconcerted.

Thomas had proven my theory of him being a complete asshole correct; he ghosted me and Don at our first two training sessions in the gym. And if that wasn't bad enough, he'd actually left his Kecleon behind, which told me two things. One, the asshole had arrived to both Training Halls early enough to withdraw his pointer from the Depository and dump him in our reserved cubicle; and two, he really was a lying bastard, and expected me to train Brick for him.

Which, infuriatingly, I had, both sessions; it had felt wrong to leave poor Brick just standing there, licking his eyeballs and watching me instruct Don from over in the corner. So I'd incorporated him into our training regimen, just as Thomas had wanted.

There was a silver lining though: Don got a little more confident about attacking the plastic Ursaring dummy when he was doing it with another Pokémon just as weak (or weaker!) than he was. 

Today had fallen totally flat, though; at 2:30, I was called down to Principal Reyes' office for a chat about my Sharpedo problem. Luckily, Mr. Kelley and Sergeant Marshall weren't there, but apparently they'd wanted to be.

"It took some convincing to get them to back off let me talk to you one-on-one, first," Mr. Reyes had told me. "They both had some choice words for you."

More choice words. "I'm sorry to hear that, sir."

"You should be. This is a serious matter, Darwin. When I first heard the news, I thought there was some mistake. It's not like you to break rules like this."

At that, my shoulders had squared. Principal Reyes was generally a nice guy, and had the friendly smile and salt-and-pepper hair of your best friend's dad. But sometimes I thought he used that grin to mask the skillful bite in his words, because when he struck, it hurt. "I'm sorry," I muttered, looking down at my shoes scuffing the thick carpet.

Mr. Reyes drummed his fingers against the desk, atop a stack of papers. "I wish 'sorry' was enough. To be frank, we may be in legal jeopardy."

My strain had mounted as he'd explained: the Water Safari and school board had rules about which Pokémon could be caught for a reason. RTHS was already on thin ice for letting me keep Sharpedo this long; they were facing an impending fine for the violation, maybe more. 

"We could lose our charter, shut down for good," he said grimly. "The faculty responsible for allowing you to train the beast could find themselves in court, facing gratuitous fines or even jail time. Yes, Mr. Blakesley," he said to my gaping mouth, "we're in that sort of trouble."

F*ck me! I had expected horrid news when coming to face the principal, but this... This felt like a punch to the face. It was bad enough that my future looked bleak as hell, but the thought that I would...had gotten other people into trouble for my mistake? Guilt and shame welled up inside and burned as I imagined my sophomore class getting the sudden announcement: the school was closing and it was because of Darwin Frickin' Blakesley. I imagined Ms. Scales receiving a legal summons, appearing in court and then being sentenced to months in jail for condoning the capture of a highly dangerous water-type Pokémon by a minor.