East of Eden | Peter Parker

「i. there's light here」

CHAPTER ONE : WEEK ONE

Eden grits her teeth and bites down hard on the inside of her cheek, a flash of cold dread shooting through her as she glares down at the stark white sheet of paper in front of her. The page is marred by printed black ink, her own hastily scrawled pencil graphite, and an ugly red letter. It's a fucking C- and even though it isn't technically failing, it terrifies her. They expect better of her. He expects better.

Math has always been her weakest subject, but this is a new low. An unacceptable low. It's always been a struggle to keep her average up, but now that there are more and more responsibilities on her shoulders to bear, it's harder than ever to stay on top of her schoolwork. She doesn't want to think about what will happen if things get worse.

For a moment, she's unsure of how to go about solving her newest problem. How to make sure this one last safe, happy thing doesn't get taken away too. As soon as she glances back a few rows to the boy smiling happily down at a bright red A+ though, she realizes she knows exactly how she's going to do it.

"Peter, hey." Eden says as she comes to a stop in front of the boy with his head buried in a book, kicking the leg of the chair he's sitting in to make sure she has his attention. She'd been debating how best to approach him since the moment she decided she needed his help during second period, before she finally caught a glimpse of him in the library on her way to lunch and decided to just wing it.

Peter jumps at the sudden interruption of his studying, and the book he'd been focused on reading slips from his hands and lands in his lap as he whips his head up to meet her gaze. With her arms crossed against her chest, one of her neatly combed brows quirked up expectantly, and her lips pressed together in a tight line, she looks scary beautiful.

"Apphia! What, uh, what's up?" Peter splutters out when his brain finally kicks back into gear. He can't quite believe the girl standing before him is not only looking at him, but actually talking to him too. It's seriously impairing his ability to think clearly.

Eden forces a sigh to seem less desperate, flicks a strand of hair over her shoulder, and says one of the most important sentences of her life. "Do you think you'd be able to tutor me in Algebra Two after school for a few weeks?"

Peter's brows furrow and his lips tug into a frown. For a moment, he's confused by the question, and oddly disappointed by it as well, though he isn't quite sure why. Or what he'd been expecting instead. After a brief pause for consideration, he admits that he doesn't actually know the answer. 

Eden sighs for real as her eyes drift to the clock hanging on the wall across from her and catch the time on display. She unfurls her arms from their position against her chest and hooks her fingers on the straps of her backpack instead, bouncing on the balls of her feet, eager to get moving. "Um, okay then," she starts slowly. "Well, as much as I'd love to sit down and hash this out with you right now, I'm actually kinda in a rush to get to lunch since I haven't eaten since, like, five-thirty this morning. But, if you're at least interested in talking about it a bit more, I'm pretty sure we have biology together later today, so maybe just think about for the rest of the day and grab me after class or something and we can chat about it then. Does that work for you?"

Peter stares at her blankly for a full ten seconds before managing to nod numbly. He's still not quite sure what's happening, but he knows that saying yes is the easiest way to escape, so that's what he does.

Eden's face brightens into a smile when he finally responds, and all the worries she'd had about him turning her down fade away for the time being. "Okay, great! Thanks! I'll see you." Then she spins on her heels and walks away, leaving Peter slightly stunned and wondering what exactly he'd just gotten himself into.

The hallways are surprisingly empty when Eden leaves the library, and she walks through them a bit faster than usual. She's not exactly eager to be caught out of a class without a pass. Even though she isn't technically doing anything she's not allowed to, there's always the chance that she could run into one of the strict, uptight teachers that occasionally roams the halls, and end up with a detention just because they happened to be in a bad mood. 

The possibility alone, no matter how unlikely, is less than appealing to her. She'd miss her loosely scheduled meeting with Parker, and that wouldn't be the worst part of it. She doesn't want to even think about the worst part, but it's impossible not to. As soon as she does, the all too familiar feeling of tension flooding back into her body returns, and her stomach twists in a way that almost makes her wish it wasn't lunch she was on the way to.

She hadn't always been so plagued by the internal turmoil that'd been eating away at her recently, but after the inducement and everything that had come with it, she'd spiraled from bad to worse painfully quickly. Of course, she couldn't let anyone know anything had changed without inviting conversations she wasn't able to have and questions she wouldn't answer. So, she had to maintain the same image they'd established for her when she was first dragged to New York, no matter how hard it was sometimes.

Even though Eden had managed to keep her secrets safe up until now, hiding behind her mask of soft, fluttering hair, bright smiles that only sometimes reached her eyes, and tight, light-wash jeans was about to get hell of a lot harder.

All thanks to a certain boy genius with a few secrets of his own.