Free Fall [PETER PARKER]

SEVEN: GET BACK UP

chapter seven

It'd been four days since Peter had seen or heard from Ana. He hadn't expected to hear from her right away, but he'd hoped to at least get a text asking what was up or even what the homework was for Chemistry. It was dead silent from her end, but he'd tried to reach her. He just wasn't very good at texting girls, at least ones that he liked.

She said she'd call him. Why would she say that if she wasn't going to? Ana's word had always been one that he could rely on, so what was going on with her that was changing that? He kept coming up with excuses for her in his head, possible explanations as to why she'd gone AWOL. He knew she wasn't feeling good, maybe she felt too sick to pick up her phone. Or maybe she didn't have cell service at her uncle's place. Why else would she lead him to think that he actually had a chance if she was just going to leave him hanging? Her parents were still next door, she was going to come back to them sometime. When? He still had no clue. She said she'd be back soon when she'd said good-bye to him in the hallway, but her good-bye had felt so final, which made him wonder how long she was actually going to be gone for.

He was sitting in his Spanish class, his phone on his lap as he stared at the empty screen void of any notifications of text messages. He tapped the button to write a message himself, and pondered on what to say for a moment. Should he say, 'hey' again? No, doing so would only make him feel like a loser even more because so far, those were all that the last three texts in their conversation had consisted of. Well, the one-sided conversation he was having since Ana wasn't replying to any of them.

"Peter!" Ned hissed quietly. Peter's head snapped up to look at his friend, then tucked his phone away to hide the fact that he'd been contemplating on texting Ana again. Ned knew what was going on, though, so he couldn't get away with it so easily. "Please don't embarrass yourself even more."

Peter sighed, slumping in his desk as he scowled at Ned. "I don't know what you're talking about." He whispered, regretting ever telling Ned about what was happening.

Shaking his head as he leaned toward Peter, Ned kept his eyes facing forward as he replied, "You know exactly what I'm talking about. Just wait it out for a day or two, man. She's gotta reply sometime soon."

Furrowing his brows, Peter looked over at Ned and said, "I think something might be wrong. You should've seen her the night she left, there was just something off about the way she was acting. She seemed like she was okay, but I kind of got the feeling that she wasn't. Like really, wasn't." He could tell the difference in Ana when she was her normal cheerful self from when she wasn't. It was such a contrast seeing the way she acted that night she left, compared to how she acted so warmly every other day.

Ned thought hard about what Peter was telling him, but he couldn't think of anything to explain the kind of behavior Peter was describing to him. "Maybe she hates her uncle?" He suggested.