The Spark

By Dan Richards

Gabriella and Jonathan fell in love exactly the way the Hillmont School’s two favorite young teachers should, enticed by the flaming sunsets on the river.
Or was it the sunsets?
Seventeen-year-old Derek Chance knows. Derek tries to tell Stephanie, but should she believe him? Could he have become a walking love potion? Pheromone-enhanced perfumes and sexual attraction research grants aside, who would believe that the laboratory explosion had given him the power to fuzz people’s brains and make them yearn for each other?
Teenage fantasy or tomorrow’s reality hurried into the present, Derek Chance has the power to harness love, and he revels in it. He uses his new power for pleasure and for spite. He brings happiness to the lonely but doubt to already loving hearts. When his power stands squarely between him and Stephanie – between him and all of Hillmont – he tries desperately to lose this curse of the twenty first century Cupid.
What is spontaneous, what is programmed? Is this really happening? The lovers of Hillmont watch humankind’s unique impulse to master its environment take a fearful step, a step that challenges the very passions whose maverick spirit makes us human. Who would yield to this impulse and who will fight it is the story of THE SPARK.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Richards
• Release date: Mar 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310702556

Dan Richards

Can be reached at [e-mail]

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THE SPARK

by

Dan Richards

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Dan Richards

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 1

Stephanie set her books beside her on the seat and watched her classmates laugh their way onto the school bus. Kids she had known forever - since before the tide of womanhood had overtaken her one summer day on her way to 31 Flavors - filed down the aisle nudging each other into the relative privacy of bench seats for two. Big Gary and the other jocks scrambled into the rear section where they could set up their portable locker room for the duration of the trip. Single girls stopped in the first few rows or sought out best friends armed with notebooks and magazines. Midway down the aisle, at the intersection of these two worlds, the couples made a place for themselves. Rich, senior class president, sat with his arm comfortably around Angela, just the way everyone at Hillmont had come to expect. Arnold and Penny, who always carried a minimum of two books apiece and who spent as much time as was humanly possible for a boy and a girl to spend together without ever touching one another, sat side by side, reading. Vanny, the head cheerleader, considered bouncing all the way to the back of the bus but controlled herself, settling in next to Nancy up front. Nancy, as if on cue, immediately began talking. Barney stared out the window hoping that the siren of his dreams, the luscious Mrs. O'Toole, Lower School English teacher, might stroll by, while Lance Redell, as if unable to decide which lucky girl should get the honor of his presence, walked slowly toward the guys in the back and sat down, smiling, alone. These and others took their appointed places on the bus as Stephanie watched. Everyone's got their own little niche, she thought, We're already as predictable as the teachers. But even as she tallied the predictabilities of all the kids around her, Stephanie mindlessly took the spray mist from her purse and wondered where Derek was.

In the front of the bus, old Mr. Bromley cleared his throat. Ladies and Gentlemen, as he was fond of calling Hillmont's first coed senior class, please give me your attention. We will shortly be departing on our excursion to the Veterans Administration facility at Cedarville. As I'm sure you know, there are any number of fascinating laboratories of scientific research and medical treatment at Cedarville, and we will be touring them today. I wish to remind you that the opportunity to do so is indeed a privilege, and that, accordingly, I expect you to conduct yourselves with the maturity of which I know you to be capable. Martin Bromley, beloved science teacher at Hillmont for thirty years, gave the back of the bus his sternest look and then smiled with relief that, duty done, he could relax and enjoy his students once more. He sat down and waited for the last few to straggle from the dormitory toward the bus.

What a drag, Barney sighed. What are we going to some old soldiers' home for anyway?

Yeah, why are we doing this? Caroline Masters scrolled distractedly through her iPhone and questioned no one in particular. Daniel, the school's resident whiz at computers, psychology, and seemingly any other field, decided to answer.

Because, Ms. Masters, not all of the money that runs Hillmont comes from well-heeled guys like your father. Some, like grants for lab equipment, comes from good old Uncle Sam. And so, this highly visible attempt by our trustees to show how serious they are about giving us every opportunity to improve our hungry little minds. Caroline did not deign to look at him.

At least it's something different, someone said, and all agreed, including Stephanie. Something different. With the impatience of a high school senior class more than ready to be launched at the waiting world, Stephanie and the others languished in their luxury encampment, dear old Hillmont, until winter might pass through spring into June and they would be free. Already the nip in the air was only a reminder of past freezes, and the green shoots of first spring had begun to infiltrate the river campus and the playing fields.

The Hillmont School lay on a rise by the river and was closer to being paradise than any of them knew. With a tradition of academic excellence and a commitment to personalized instruction, Hillmont comprised an ideal environment in which the future leaders of the society could learn and grow: small classes, top facilities, well-picked faculty, and grounds more befitting a resort hotel than a school. Here, for the sixty or so students in each class - grades seven through twelve, divided into Lower School (7-9) and Upper School (10-12) - mind, body and spirit were molded into young adults, ready for whatever bold challenges the future might hold. Life here was demanding yet rewarding, the rigor of class work balanced by an atmosphere of opportunity and pride.

One opportunity relatively new to Hillmont was the chance for boys and girls to disappear in pairs into the Arboretum or elsewhere in the overgrown shrubbery along the water's edge. The grand experiment had begun six years before with the acceptance of Stephanie, Caroline, and friends into the Lower School, and while the initial task of dividing the dormitory into two impregnable halves had been accomplished rather well, the labyrinthine stand of pines and oaks that was Hillmont's western edge along the water had proven far less suited to the concerns of deans and parents. The Arboretum in particular, with its winding pathways of pine needles wandering through the hibiscus and other exotica, gave safe, sylvan harbor to many a couple. By now that first class of pubescent girls had become seniors, and somehow, the Arboretum notwithstanding, Hillmont persevered, perhaps even more proudly than before. Now young ladies as well as gentlemen could be readied for the responsibilities of tomorrow, for the journey to fine universities and beyond.

For this senior class, the teachers knew, it would happen soon enough, in three short months. Yet to Stephanie as she sat waiting for the bus to depart and for something indefinable to happen in her life, the moments crawled by. If the cocoon of Hillmont were golden, it remained to Stephanie and her friends just that - a stage of life to be cast off so that real life could begin. Stephanie was no longer the little girl who had nervously tip-toed through the Lower School hallways that first year; she was a young woman, mature (more than most, in fact), tired of boys and ready for men, for college, for anything if only it would come.

Derek Chance hopped onto the bus just as the engine turned over. In a flash he was past her in the back seats, slipping in next to Lance.

You've got a helluva smile on today, Lance he said. Does this mean Vanny has been demonstrating all those head cheerleader jumps and splits for you? All the guys laughed, except for Big Gary, who harbored what he thought were secret dreams for the lovely Vanessa. Three seats up and just within earshot, Stephanie sighed, her waiting ended as the bus wound through the long horseshoe drive and out onto the street.

Derek Chance, shock of dark hair and eyes as quick as his tongue, had pronounced the day ready to begin. Some thought it was only in contrast to staid old Hillmont that Derek appeared so brash, but in fact he was truly untamed, as Mr. Kassler, Dean of Boys, had kindly put it. Barbaric was the term that came more easily to Lavinia Holt's lips, but then, as Dean of the first flock of tender young maidens ever to grace Hillmont's steps, Ms. Holt had much on her mind. All could agree that Derek Chance never seemed to rest. His tireless devotion to tweaking the udders of Hillmont's most sacred cows enraged some and tickled others just where they most needed tickling, but he bored no one. In fact, Derek seemed to take as his calling in life the job of making certain that no one be bored, even for a moment. If he had been touched by the contemplative sighing which had overtaken his classmates as they waited for the school year mercifully to deliver them to their grownup visions, no one knew it. If anything, the mood that settled like cobwebs around his peers spurred him to greater playful heights. In spite of - or, more probably, because of - Dean Kassler's warning that one more episode like the one in the girls dorm would lead to serious repercussions and a revision of the school's recommendations to colleges, Derek found himself thinking more and more of the great coup, the one triumphant twist he could perpetrate during his final term in this ho-hum little world down by the river. Derek got his grades well enough, and Mr. Bromley insisted that he had a nose for scientific discovery, just the combination of brains and unwillingness to think along beaten tracks that has so often led to great new finds. Like the others, he was ready to be rid of the high school shackles, and he could have passed the bus ride as were so many of his friends, thinking about next year at college. But he didn't. Instead, he thought vague thoughts of breaking away, knowing that sometime today the opportunity would present itself.

In Cedarville, the group filed off the bus and was met by Dr. Cupper, who waited for them to gather around him on the hospital steps. Rich and Angela stood appropriately up front, while Barney looked around distractedly. Big Gary got as close as he could to Vanny, but she didn't look up at him. Nancy whispered something to nobody in particular, and Arnold prepared to take notes.

I would like to welcome you all to the V.A. facility here at Cedarville. We have an interesting day planned for you. You'll get to see a number of research laboratories which I'm sure Mr. Bromley has described to you, and you'll have the opportunity to talk with many of our staff about their work. We want you to feel free to see and to ask whatever you like, so please bombard us with questions, the more the better. Dr. Cupper was a roundish man obviously used to sitting at a desk full of papers.

We're going to begin this morning with the medical side of the V.A. You'll see the various wards, the outpatient treatment areas, and we'll tour the operating facilities as well as some of our more sophisticated test equipment, like the brain tomography equipment and the dialysis unit. After lunch you'll see some of our research settings, which include such diverse studies as new post operative coronary care regimens, immunocompetence research that bears directly on cures and treatments of various types of cancer, and a study of sugar metabolism. If we have time, we will check on a pheromone research study to see just how insects and small animals manage to get together to make more insects and small animals. We call that our 'love lab' around here. Dr. Cupper, administrator, smiled at his little joke. We're proud of the fact that many of our research laboratories are at the very forefront of scientific discovery. What's being tried experimentally today could be curing disease or making our lives better tomorrow, often in surprising new ways. So keep your eyes open.

Of course, he continued, "there are a few rules we'd like you to follow, primarily for your own safety. Please stay together as a group, and be ready to step aside if any kind of medical emergency should present itself. We are conducting research that involves the use of biohazardous materials and other potentially toxic compounds. There's no danger as long as you stay with the leader and don't try to handle any materials that aren't specifically recommended for your examination. I'm sure there won't be any problems. Now, any questions before we begin?

There were none. The group began to wind its way through the hospital behind Dr. Cupper, shuffling and gabbing through the day. Daniel asked intelligent questions. Rich and Angela walked hand in hand, and Big Gary walked a few paces behind Vanny with his eyes ambiguously lowered but not so ambiguously entranced. Arnold and Penny communicated through their note-taking against the ever looming pop quiz of tomorrow. Stephanie walked with quiet interest, and Derek was still.

Derek's voice was still, but his mind was not. He watched the thin boy they all called Keats for his love of poetry wander as if lost in the halls of science. He watched Wanda, Hillmont's female athlete of the year, swagger along on the edge of the pack as if she might at any moment break into a trot. He caught Caroline looking at her nails and Barney peeping through each doorway, just to see what he could see. Derek watched all of them, saw all of them with the clarity of his teenage eyes. But more than anyone else, he watched Stephanie and wondered.

Stephanie Powell. He remembered playing dodge ball with her many summers ago. Growing up only a few houses apart had made them very familiar, swimming together, starting school together. Though he had teased her with his typical relentlessness at the time, it now seemed predestined that they would have been allowed to continue to see each other at Hillmont, that the bastion of boys education should make an exception so that they could be together day after day. Clever and fair, Stephanie had always been there. Like a sister, he thought, except that they went home to separate beds in separate houses. Mrs. Powell said that Derek was too wild, but her little girl had always liked him; and his pranks, while often on the verge of danger, had never really done Stephanie any harm. Why, he had even slept over a time or two, long ago. That, of course, had ended abruptly even before Hillmont. As he watched her now, he wondered why it was that he could see all the others so clearly while she, the one he had known the longest and should know the best, seemed such a puzzle to him. It was more his own feelings that puzzled him than Stephanie herself. He still liked and admired her; down to earth, honest, not given to the exaggerated primping and stylizing of other girls. Her eyes were warm without being dulled, she was solid without being dead. Yes, that was it. How did she do that, Derek wondered? How did she stay so full of life without being silly, without resorting to juvenile jokes? Watching the movement of her body as she walked, he sharply regretted the crass sexual wisecrack with which he had started yet another day. Had he been able to see more clearly through the haze of teen years, he might have recalled that his confusion about Stephanie Powell had begun at about the time they'd all started playing those kissing games, that somehow who she was and who he was had been obscured from his vision ever since. Derek did, at least, know that she attracted him as they walked, silent and separated from each other by the crowd around them; but for the boy who seized the moment, who always had a fine verbal volley on his lips and the attention of others whenever he felt like smacking the world with his little games, Derek Chance felt strangely powerless in the matter of Stephanie Powell.

The morning passed without incident. If their foray into the realm of illness subdued the group, lunch and the enthusiasm of Mr. Bromley for an afternoon in the exciting world of research rekindled their fires. Even in the familiar science classroom back at school, the dear man had a way of communicating his energy to others, a way to bring Planck's constant and the periodic table of elements to life. Here was a man who so obviously enjoyed being alive that he infected others with his pleasure, and this quality of Mr. Bromley's went far beyond the chemistry lab. He and his wife Sarah, who taught music, had become fixtures at Hillmont, a true patriarchal couple overseeing the development of generation after generation of young minds and bodies. Had they had a thousand children of their own they would still have felt like parents - and, more currently, grandparents - to the whole of Hillmont. In the beginning Martin Bromley had not been certain that teaching could replace the excitement he felt in the laboratory, but his doubts were soon dispelled. In the lab he might see something new once in a year, but to his students it was all new. Each demonstration opened new eyes and brought new questions. Not every student was a budding Pasteur, but even the less science-minded among them were coaxed into the game, not unlike a youngster watching an older brother playing with a magic chemistry set. If Mr. Bromley's eyes sparkled at the experiments even more than those of his young friends, well, that just made it all the more fun.

Today, he was at first in his glory, strolling from lab to lab, learning, showing, refueling his spirit. But as the day wore on, even Mr. Bromley became subdued. Deeper and deeper into the bowels of the hospital complex he marched his troops. Windowed patient-care facilities gave way to the artificial glow of interior hallways and secluded laboratories, cordoned off from the mainstream of hospital traffic by their remoteness and by imposing AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY signs alongside DANGER: DO NOT ENTER. The researchers preferred solitude for their work, and most were clearly uncomfortable with the swarm of visitors. For students used to Mr. Bromley's personal touch, these scientists appeared guarded and ill at ease. As the hours passed, the class came to be silenced, wandering through the morgue-like halls, listening with polite indifference to remote, prepared speeches while their helpless old science teacher worried over his choice of outings.

Mr. Bromley thought this silently. The students more openly showed their unrest with the dry, academic presentations by whispering and fidgeting. Even Arnold stopped taking notes. As if caught in a day from which there was no exit, the group followed their host from locked room to locked room. As they shuffled en mass down a dark hallway, Derek took Stephanie's hand and pulled her to a stop behind the others.

Derek, what are you doing? We'll lose the group, she whispered. Derek shushed her with a finger over his lips, never loosening the grip on her hand.

Stephanie said, Stop clowning around. We'll be alone here in a minute. Derek waited until the group had solemnly rounded a corner and disappeared.

We are alone, he said. Come on, let's poke around and see what we're not supposed to see in here. He smiled his winningest smile, the one that had always worked on her.

I don't want to, she said. I want to stay with the others.

Not true. All you had to do was speak up when I stopped you and somebody would have looked back here. You chose to stay with me.

Stephanie frowned. What is it you want, something you can brag about later with the guys?

I can see what's on your mind, he grinned at her. She started to walk in the direction the group had taken.

No, wait, he said. Let's just walk around a little. He began to lead her in the opposite direction. We can talk.

Talk about what? She followed slowly down the corridor.

Anything, he said. Somebody said you were accepted at Colewood. You gonna go?

I haven't decided yet. I've still got a few applications in at other schools, so I'll wait and see.

Yeah, that's right, you told me you applied to NMU and Briarston. They're even farther away than Colewood.

It was at that point that they became aware of the fact that they were holding hands.

You still heading for Tech?

Derek stared at the dingy tile floor as he walked.

Yeah, he said. Seems like the best bet. It'll be a lot of work though.

You'll do fine. I heard Daniel's going there, too. At least you'll have a friend along for the ride.

"Yeah. He'll probably teach them a thing or two. You know anyone going to Colewood?

Stephanie shook her head.

Why do you want to go so far away? he asked.

What's to keep me here? Besides, they're all good schools.

Derek had no answer. In uncharacteristic silence he and Stephanie walked through the quiet corridors of the massive building. They were in the underground portion of the hospital complex near the power plant, and vague, deep sounds of great machinery accompanied them on their walk. They strolled quietly, each thinking of the other but saying nothing until Derek could stand it no longer. With a gleam in his eye, he motioned Stephanie's attention toward a particularly forbidding-looking door. Still holding her hand, he began to try the lock.

Derek! The sign says, 'BIOHAZARD.' Are you crazy?

Aren't we all? To his surprise, the knob turned in his hand.

But what if somebody's in there? she whispered sternly. Again he shushed her. The heavy door swung open to reveal a long, narrow