Clessidra | Peter Parker.

5. exposed

Waking up the day after turned out to be one of the most difficult tasks June ever had to endure.

The pounding in her head hadn't subsided in the slightest, and she was still feeling terribly exhausted and confused, as if she had stopped time for three entire days.

She dragged her feet towards the bathroom and got ready for the day with her eyes almost closing at every moment. She was so tired that, the night before, she had found it extremely hard to fall asleep. Her mind hadn't helped either, going back and revising every single action Peter had made that had made her heart skip a beat.

The last thing she would have liked to do was going to school, but she could have attempted it if her father was home. Being her mother in charge of decisions in the morning and afternoon, she had no way of escaping. June didn't have the courage to say anything, but she would have preferred for her father to do the night shift, when she was too tired to think, and having him home during the day, so that she could relax and not have her mother bothering her about school and grades the whole time.

She had tried to hide the growing bruise on her forehead with makeup, but the result was very scarce. Being a cold day, it wasn't too weird for her to wear a hat, but she feared that the teachers wouldn't have let her wear it in class, so she went on Youtube, searching for tutorials with bandanas that wouldn't have made her look like a hippie or a thug and would have hidden her bruise at the same time.

She got out of her house with a tired wave at her mother and, being too exhausted to even think of riding something, she left her bike in the garage and reached the bus stop, hoping that the bus wouldn't be late. When it arrived, she reached one of the spots in the back and sat down, resting her head against the cold glass and closing her eyes for a few seconds.

-

"June!"

She had arrived at school earlier, and had decided to quickly grab her stuff from her locker and reach her class to sleep for a while, but Peter had seemed to be against it when he stormed towards her with a hilarious expression.

"What's up?" she casually said, trying not to show how tired she was.

"How are you feeling today?" he asked her, ignoring her question and not even expecting any answer from her, since apparently there was something bugging him.

June noticed it, so she just said: "Little tired. Is something wrong?" and waited as he nodded furiously and grabbed a newspaper that had been hanging from his backpack.

"Read!" he said almost hysterically, slamming the newspaper on June's hands. She turned it towards her and looked at a black and white photo showing two figures standing next to each other, one evidently being Peter in his Spiderman suit, and the other probably being herself. It was from the night before, when she had called the police and had then dropped the call.

The title read: "SPIDERMAN AND HIS NEW SIDEKICK?" and June heavily cringed at the thought of being nothing but a sidekick, but that was only before she realized what that fact actually meant.

"Holy shit," she breathed out, her eyes widening as she turned her head towards Peter, who was still in a hurry to tell her something.

He snatched the newspaper from her hands and turned the pages until he found what he was looking for, handing it back to June. The article didn't seem very important, but what immediately met June's eyes was her own face, stamped on one side of the page, her facial characteristics extremely evident, even if her hair were thankfully out of the shot.

"Oh my god," she repeated, not able to say anything else that made sense.

"It-it's not that big of a deal, no one would recognize you anyway, but holy shit. Cameras? When have we ever had troubles with cameras?!" Peter exclaimed, trying not to yell to avoid being noticed by other students.