This Way Down // peter parker

44

I IGNORED PETER's call, telling myself I needed to focus on my summer assignments since summer was so close to ending, but really I knew I still had the ickiness from the interrogation on my skin. It had been a few days since charges against Peter were dropped, but I still heard the blue jacket's words echo through my mind and the feeling of uncertainty would follow suit every time. Was I really as against heros as the fed guy claim? And what would Peter think if he knew I wrote those articles? That I had those thoughts? Would he ever talk to me again?

Martha showed up at my bedroom door, announcing her presence with a few knocks. "It's time," she told me, a small birthday hat on her head. I looked down at my essay for Catch-22, and looked over to my phone for a brief second before I decided to leave it on my desk. I followed Martha to the living room, placing a birthday hat on myself as we watched the front door, waiting for my dad. My eyes wandered towards the kitchen counter where his cake laid.

"Wow, amazing cake, Martha," I admired.

"Thanks. I didn't make it, but it does look good, doesn't?"

I nodded my head. It looked yummy too. I couldn't wait to eat that.

Soon enough, my dad came in with his soccer sweats, a soccer ball under his arm. "What's all this?" He asked.

Julian jumped in front of him, his arms wide as he screamed, "Happy Birthday!"

My dad smiled wide. He placed his hand over his chest, looking over at us one by one, touched. "I have the best family, don't I?" He asked, bringing everyone to a hug. There were a few laughters of joy, but none came from me.

I tried my best to act normal, smiling a lot, laughing when my dad unwrapped Julian's present: some kind of slime ball. But a part of me couldn't truly enjoy it. I was too busy worrying what my mom was going to do for her birthday? It would come soon enough. It felt a little unfair that my dad had the best family ever, and my mom didn't even have one.

— -

I think the hardest thing about having guilt is never knowing where to put it. Justified or not — it's not really a feeling that leaves you, even if you are forgiven, even if you do recognize you have to accept it, even if you know you have to move on from it and let it go. It doesn't simply disappear or evaporate, it turns into things: actions, words, feelings — or it lingers.

Every now and then I thought of my mom, of how lonely she must be, about how hard she works and how she has no one to come home to. I think the guilt comes from knowing she misses me, wants to hear from me, wants me to be around. But, I have all this hurt attached to her. I know all this, I know I can make her happy by just showing up, by giving her a call, but I can't seem to let go of all the times I came home to an empty home and all the times she never called me back or all the times I never heard from her. So the guilt lingers.

When I had decided that it was okay to date Peter because Rosie wouldn't be mad at me, some of that guilt turned into understanding. I understood and believed that she wouldn't be mad at me, and I detached the horrible thing that happened to Rosie from Peter, from what he was doing, so I could be with him.

But I wasn't with him anymore, and now it felt as if I could fully feel the loss of Rosie again, just like before. Of what had happened to her. Some of that anger was still in me. Even if the fed guy was trying to manipulate me, I think a part of me knew he had some truth to what he was saying. I wasn't exactly for heroes, but I didn't want to be against them, either. I thought Peter really did make a difference and he seemed to help people. Hell, heroes are the reason why I was even back from the blip. Tony Stark was the reason why I existed again. I understood that, but I still couldn't let go of the people who got caught in the crossfire, I couldn't let go of how bothered I was about how much inconvenience and pain Peter went though just to be Spider-Man — so when Peter calls me, though I want nothing more than to hear his voice, to talk to him, to be friends with him, I feel guilty. Shouldn't he be surrounded by people who support and believe fully in what he does? Talking to him would make me feel guilty, like I was doing him a disservice by taking his time but not being fully on board. He deserved someone better than me.