Future Villain Detention

Problem 4: Stoner Metal

"Would you guys be interested in some extra credit work?" Mr. Null asked.

Sam tried to remember the last thing he'd done for money, and whether he should try and get compensated for school work. He'd been with Mr. Null the longest, and had a feeling haggling with the teacher wouldn't work out.

To Roscoe the idea of getting excited for someone else's idea was a waste of energy. He continued trying to spin a pen around his thumb.

"What kind of extra credit?" Audrey asked. Her eyes were wide open and her face was impersonating a tomato.

Mr. Null blinked and picked his next words carefully. "Public service, the kind that retired people do."

Audrey couldn't keep the disappointment out of her voice. "Oh."

"So no interest?" Mr. Null asked.

There were a few shoulder shrugs and a lack of eye contact. Mr. Null knew that teenagers needed either a carrot or a stick, and the stick hadn't been working.

"What if I said that anyone who completes the extra credit gets to take one day off a week from detention?"

The carrot was dangling, and everyone looked hungry. An extra free afternoon every week meant all sorts of things. There would be time for sword practice, or parkour running, and maybe even going on a date in the next town over where the other teachers wouldn't find out.

"Could we still come into detention if you're running it?" Audrey asked.

Mr. Null decided to tell a white lie so they could get going. "Yes, if there's a detention that day you can come in." Mr. Null did not mention that the reason they were getting a day off was so that he could get home early and practice playing his new bass. He'd bought it so he could out-cool the other teachers when the talent show rolled around.

The detention class allowed themselves to be led down the hallways and out to the teacher's parking lot. The four of them squeezed into Mr. Null's tiny hatchback. Roscoe and Sam were both in a bad mood as they rode in the back seat. Roscoe had called shotgun, and Sam had argued that as the tallest he should get the front seat. Audrey had replied that if she didn't get the front she would put both of them to sleep, in every sense of the term.

As they drove Audrey kept trying to hold Mr. Null's hand as he shifted gears. Roscoe played a game on his phone, and Sam had to pretend he didn't know what game it was or that he played it at home.

The car pulled to a stop in a gravel parking lot on the outskirts of town. Wild grass had grown past knee height on an old baseball field. The jungle gym was made from rotted wood and metal, and looked ready to fall apart and jump start a lawsuit. A basketball court had backboards but only a faded square where the nets used to be mounted.

"I had no idea there was a park here," Roscoe said.

"It was raised to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Truth-Man defeating his archenemy The Deceiver. A story broke a few years ago about Truth-Man cheating on his wife with the Deceiver during parole hearings. Public perception turned on him and funding for the park ended up getting pulled. Hardly anyone comes here anymore."

No one was listening to Mr. Null's speech. Sam and Roscoe were challenging each other to see who could get across the monkey bars faster. Audrey was thinking about the last time she'd come to a park, and how far that sleeping kid had been launched off the swings.

Mr. Null herded the students over to a community garden. Loose chicken wire was lying on the ground. Anything edible had been nibbled down to nubs by wild animals. However, there were a few plants growing unmolested.