Candela wondered how long she could stand next to Spark before he noticed. So far, it had been at least a minute.

Spark sat at a card table he'd set up on the edge of the track. The table held a couple notebooks, a bottle of cough syrup, the tissue box, two separate timers, and a laptop that had been inactive long enough for the screensaver to start. Candela smirked at the row of dancing jigglypuffs on the screen.

She leaned close to his ear, astounded that he didn't flinch. His eyes were glassy, but open. "HEY SPARK!"

Spark jumped and rocked back in his chair, almost knocking it over. Candela caught the back of the seat and tipped him forward again.

Once he stopped flailing, he frowned pitifully up at Candela. "What was that for?"

His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked like he hadn't slept in a month.

"Jeez, Spark, it's only been two hours," Candela said, sneering as he blew his nose and deposited the tissue into an already full waste basket by his feet. "You look like you have one foot in the grave."

Spark passed her a tissue. "Speak for yourself."

Candela leered at him, but took the tissue to clear her nose. No matter how hard she blew, it didn't seem to get any better. She pulled her communicator from her pocket and turned on its camera. She recoiled from her own image. Raw, red nostrils, dark bags under her eyes, a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead. It wasn't a pretty picture; she couldn't deny that.

"Could be allergies," she said, pocketing the communicator and reaching for another tissue.

"So you'll admit to allergies, but not a cold?" Spark shook his head. "Oh, just remembered. Cayenne came through here in a huff. At least, I think she did. I've been kind of guessing the dosage on the cough syrup, and things are a little… swimmy. Anyway, what's up with her?"

"Pfft, hell if I know," Candela grunted. She suddenly remembered the task at hand. "Oh, right! Do you have any extra pokéballs on you?"

Rather than answering her, Spark squinted at his timers and tapped his computer awake. After some silent analysis, he groaned and dropped his head to the table. "I've ruined it…"

"Ruined what?"

Without raising his head, Spark pointed at the track, and the saddlebagged tauros that continued to gallop around it. "I'm trying to see if the type of pokémon carrying an egg changes the hatch rate or type, since we can't predict what will come out of the eggs trainers find at stops. Except now I've let my tauros run for too long, and I've thrown off all my data, and I have to start over with another set of eggs if I want to be consistent."

Candela blinked. "Wow. You sound… organized, for once. I'm used to experiments in which you tape food to an egg to see if the pokémon hatches with a taste for it."

Spark let his arm flop back down. "Blanche helped. I mean, it was my idea, since I haven't been able to run with the eggs myself lately, but they talked about constants and variables and all kinds of stuff I wouldn't have bothered with on my own. But now I've screwed it all up. Like always."

Candela patted the back of his head, then coughed into her elbow. "Hey, it happens. Stop moping. Actually, I kinda came to you for help…"

Spark perked up. He offered the purple bottle of cough syrup to her, giving it a playful shake. She pushed it aside.

"I told you, I'm perfectly fine. It's allergies from the fresh-cut grass or something. Ugh, I don't know why I'm coming to you, except that this freakin' kid is such a mess that maybe it takes someone just as tragic as him to teach him to throw a damn ball. He went through 20, Spark. Two zero, without ever hitting a pokémon. He has to be trying to fuck up at this rate. What kind of kid can't… what are you doing with your communicator?"

Spark had aimed his communicator at Candela as she ranted, and a quiet click told her that he'd taken a picture. He typed something, then set it down. "Asking for a second opinion. Now, again, it could be that I didn't read the cough syrup label before slugging it back, but I don't understand what you're talking about."

Candela crossed her arms. "I un-cancelled Starter Day, Spark."

He narrowed his eyes at her, and she could practically hear the gears clunking into place in his head. "I feel like you shouldn't be telling me this. Say something only the real Candela would say."

She flipped him off.

"That works." Spark stopped to cough, then casually twisted the lid off the syrup bottle. "So… why exactly did you do that?"

"Because we have a backlog of trainers who want to go through the program, and they all had their hopes up, and there was no reason to cancel it in the first place," Candela said.

Spark sipped from the bottle without seeming to realize what he was doing. "There were serious reasons to cancel, Candela. It takes all of us to run a Starter Day, and all of us are sick. Including and maybe especially you. Look."

He held his communicator so she could see it. He'd sent Blanche an unflattering photo of her mid-tirade, snot trailing onto her lip, her hair clumped with sweat, even though she felt cold. Blanche's reply was below the picture.

"She needs to take some decongestant and a fever reducer and lie down," the message read.

"Blanche isn't a doctor," Candela said. "They aren't even here. You're just bad at taking photos."

Spark tossed his communicator onto the table a little too hard. She'd struck a nerve. "Maybe they're not a doctor, but they know what they're talking about. They saved my life, after all, in case you forgot."

Candela turned away to cough. "They just took you to someone who saved you, in case you forgot. And they've been coddling you ever since."

Spark took another drink of the syrup as if it were cola. "It doesn't even take a doctor to tell that you're sick! You have a cold, Candela! A gross, snotty, cough-up-mucus cold, just like the rest of us. And you're gonna get those kids sick, and the whole town is gonna get sick, and whatever new trainers you send out today are going to be too busy hacking their lungs up to catch pokémon anyway!"

"OK, give me that," Candela said, yanking the bottle away from Spark. "You're going to overdose."

"Crap, was I drinking it again? I wondered if I'd been doing that…"

Candela wanted to yell at him, but she was racked by another bout of coughing. This couldn't be happening. She wanted to strangle Spark. The guy was useless, couldn't even take care of himself. He always needed someone looking after him. Pathetic.

"If you don't have pokéballs out here, then you're useless to me anyway," she spat. "I'll just go inside for more."

Spark closed his laptop and took a deep, calming breath. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. I know tensions have been high recently. If you want my help with the new trainers, you can have it. Do you get that I'm worried about you? That's all, Candela. You'd feel so much better if you took care of that cold. You're making it worse."

Candela hid her embarrassed face with a tissue, pretending she was merely dabbing up sweat. She'd let her rage get the best of her. Now was not the time to be frustrated with Spark's antics. She could use all the assistance she could find for poor, bespectacled Darrin. So what if she had a cold? It was just a little bug, nothing to be such a drama queen about like Spark.

"I'll rest after we wrap up Starter Day, OK?" she said.

He smiled. "Good. I'll finish up here really quick then go meet the trainers."

"It's just one little boy," Candela admitted.

"Where is he?" Spark asked as he gathered his notebooks.

Candela pointed toward the practice field. "Just over… shit."

The practice field was completely empty.