EYEWITNESS ↝ P. PARKER [1] [ON HOLD]

[3]

"Are you ready yet?" James's voice came through the bathroom door along with the sound of his fist hitting the wood as Wren finished applying her lip gloss, giving herself a final once over in the mirror. "You've been in there for six years."

"I'm ready, I'm ready," she chuckled, pulling the door open to reveal her best friend waiting exasperatedly in the hallway. "I just need to grab my bag and then we can go."

Wren rushed to her bedroom to retrieve her purse while James headed back down the stairs towards the front door of the Davies family home. She slung the bag over her shoulder and took the steps two at a time to join him, the sounds of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix drifting in from the family room at the bottom of the stairs where her brothers Damien and Holden sat watching the movie along with Holden's friend Owen, her parents out at a government gala for the evening and leaving the kids to their own devices.

"And where do you two think you're going?" her eldest brother Damien asked, shooting the two teenagers a knowing grin.

"On the record, we're just going to grab a slice of pizza." Wren said tentatively, James's eyes moving back and forth between the Davies siblings, the two ten year old boys still watching the movie, ignoring the older kids. "Off the record, that slice of pizza may or may not be at Liz's house, along with the rest of the Midtown Tech student body."

"And what's in it for me to keep things on the record?" Damien teased.

"The knowledge that you're the best big brother on the planet?" she tried with a sweet smile, but he simply crossed his arms over his chest, causing her smile to fall. "I'll drive Holden to his soccer practices for the next week?"

"Two weeks," he said, shooting her a wink. "Gala ends at midnight. Do with that information what you will."

"In that case, we're out of here!" she exclaimed, grabbing the car keys and pushing James towards the door. "See you later!"

"Make good choices!" Damien called after them as Wren shut the door behind them and opening the garage to where the black Lexus waited.

While Wren technically wouldn't receive her driver's license until she turned sixteen, her learner's permit allowed her to drive as long as the passenger was over twenty-one. Although the boy sitting next to her was physically only sixteen, the driver's license inside his wallet placed his date of birth in 1946, making him plenty old enough for their drive through the suburbs that evening. It wasn't a far drive to the Toomes residence from the Davies family home, and as they neared Liz's street, cars lined the road where their classmates had already arrived for the party.

Wren found a parking spot nearly a block away from Liz's house, and she and James hopped out of the car, following the crowd moving towards the property. A few faces she didn't recognize, most likely students from other schools in the area who had heard about the party through the grapevine, but those she did know from Midtown Tech bid the two of them hello as they passed by, the music drifting out from inside the house growing louder and louder as they neared the front door.

Wren pushed open the heavy front door to a wall of sound coming from where Flash manned the DJ booth. His eyes met hers with a grin as she led James inside, and he waved as she crossed the distance between them, greeting her boyfriend with a kiss as he wrapped his arms around her waist, James muttering something about going to find the food table and that he'd catch up with them later.

"Hey there, beautiful!" he called over the sound of the music. "You're just in time!"

"Did I miss anything?" she yelled back, and he began to laugh, jerking his head in the direction of where Ned Leeds stood by himself looking nervously around the room, adorned in a fedora.

"Looks like Parker's version of bringing Spider-Man to the party was just Ned in a red shirt." Flash explained, and Wren's eyebrows furrowed together slightly in confusion, as Peter was nowhere to be found.

"Well I'm going to go grab a slice of pizza," Wren said. "Do you want anything?"

Flash shook his head as he put his headphones back on over his ears, and she bid him goodbye, moving back through the crowd of dancers in search of the snack table, and wherever James had gone off to. Although, when she reached the pizza boxes, James was nowhere to be found, though Juliana and Liz stood near the drinks, chatting animatedly.

"Wren!" Liz exclaimed happily, pulling her friend into a hug. "I'm so glad you could make it!"

"This is amazing!" Wren called back with a grin, Liz smiling proudly in response.

As Liz and Jules resumed their conversation, Wren's eyes moved to the drink table behind them, where she picked up a glass bottle of root beer, screwing the top off and taking a sip. She listened faintly to the words the two girls were speaking, but they seemed to go in one ear and out the other as her eyes moved around the party, her attention sitting anywhere but the friends next to her.

On the other side of the room, Flash still stood at the DJ booth, a remix of "One Dance" by Drake playing through the speakers as a large group of partygoers moved about on a makeshift dance floor in the living room. James had disappeared somewhere into the crowd, most likely to wherever Jason and the other boys had to be congregating, and Ned still stood by himself, Peter nowhere to be found.

Wren's eyes moved upwards toward the rows of windows that lined the top of the living room walls, giving her a view of the roof on the other side of the house. On top of the roof, a figure in a red suit crouched down, eyes trained on the people dancing, a matching mask clutched in his hands and her eyes widening slightly as Peter's face became visible in the shadows, her blood turning to ice in her veins.

Peter Parker, the boy she'd hardly given a second glance to, aside from when Flash was teasing him or when she was waiting for James to finish talking with him, was now right in front of her in the Spider-Man suit. The boy who sat behind her in biology class was the same superhero who had saved her life when she'd almost fallen into traffic mere months ago.

While she finally had the million dollar answer of who is Spider-Man, she now had a thousand more burning questions for the boy in red and blue. 

As Wren watched the boy in the spider suit, his attention was suddenly pulled to something in the distance. He rose up onto his feet before he began to run, and quickly disappeared from view as he jumped off the roof. Wren quickly turned back to her friends, neither of which had noticed Peter as they were still caught up in their conversation.

"Hey, sorry," she said quickly, setting the bottle of root beer on the counter behind her. "I'm gonna go grab some air. I'll be right back."

Wren didn't wait for an answer as she raced for the front door, car keys nestled tightly in her hand.