Black Swan ▹ Marvel

TWO: MEAN

"Elizabeth!" Liz shouts at the top of her lung as Elizabeth speed walks across Midtown's large, grassy lawn. She sighs and keep walking as if she hadn't heard her. She shouts Elizabeth's name again so she turns and sees Liz and Peter approaching speedily.

"Oh, hey Liz and Peter Parker," Elizabeth says in a quiet voice when they stop in front of her. They both are a few inches shorter than her, but their hands clasped together in a tight grip makes her feel small.

"Where do you want to have lunch?" Liz asks in her usual cheery tone of voice.

"I'm not hungry," she replies, it's a big fat lie. Elizabeth was hungry, but not hungry enough to eat with Liz and Peter Parker.

"Oh, maybe tomorrow," she says with her usual smile of pity she's given her since Ryan.

"Maybe," Elizabeth says, but probably not. Not if she could avoid a whole forty-five minutes of Liz and Peter canoodling and being couple-y. She turns on her heel and set out for a bench on the edge of Midtown's campus near the hole in the chain-link fence around the school. When she gets there she sits on the bench and watch the cars pass. When Elizabeth hears her stomach growl she opens her backpack and take out her leftover parts of sandwich from the day before. She ate in silence as she continues to watch cars pass. She's comforted by the sound they make because it almost drowns out her lust for her best friend's brand new boyfriend.

Thinking of Peter with Liz made the blonde think of him as a Ken doll. Well if Ken was a little bit on the short side and had brown hair and an actual penis. He was on the level of Barbie status that Liz had achieved in everyone's eyes and especially Elizabeth's. Barbie and Ken, the perfect couple and she was Midge, Barbie's best friend that she left in a fucking hovel in Wisconsin when she moved into the Malibu Barbie dream house.

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"Why did you lie to Liz?" someone asks Elizabeth in a demanding voice as she roots through her locker looking for her chemistry textbook. The blonde turns and see one of Liz's groupie named Manon. She wears shocking pink lipstick and other neon colored clothes that belong in a different decade and maybe another lifetime.

"What are you talking about, Manon?" Elizabeth asks as turn back to her locker and finds her missing book tangled in a Champion hoodie.

"About lunch," she replies. The blonde looks at her. Her pale arms are crossed over her chest. She expects an answer. Elizabeth frowns sightly and meet her stare. She slams her locker shut, Manon jumps slightly at the sound of the slamming door.

"Why don't you mind your own business, Manon," Elizabeth hisses at her in a nasty voice, "you think you're so entitled to things, but you don't have the slightest idea." She's almost seething when the blonde girl finally turns away. Elizabeth walks and rolls her eyes. She now can expect a phone call from Liz later asking what was wrong and asking what she can do to help. Liz is too nice, or maybe that it's just that she's too mean.

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"Why are we in detention?" Elizabeth asks MJ as she pulls down her shirt which had hiked up onto her stomach. MJ looks at her and she realizes how refreshing it is to look into eyes that weren't rounded with charcoal eyeliner or whatever Liz and her gal pals used as mascara. They always tried to get Elizabeth to try it out, but no matter what type of eyeliner the girl wore she always looked like a raccoon.

"We are here to capture their misery," she answers and pulls a beat up sketchbook out her open backpack along with a mechanical pencil. A kid with dark and tight curly hair lifts his head off the desk. For second he looks like someone she used to know, but ELizabeth purges her mind of the thought.

"She's in here everyday," he groans and his head falls back down on his arms. MJ's usually rather emotionless face turns down in a slight frown. Elizabeth clicks her tongue in the pregnant pause before MJ speaks again.

"I'm here by choice," she declares and stares down the top of his head. "Why are you always in here?" The body raises his head off the table and instead rests his chin on his folded arms.

"I keyed the principal's car, but they can't expel me if they don't want to piss off my dear old dad so detention or suspension is the way to go."

"I thought Flash Thompson's dad was the big donor to Midtown," she says. The boy's mouth pulls from a straight line into a tiny smile.

"Different moms, same player dad," he replies. "The name's Maxwell Carter-Thompson."

"Elizabeth Copper," she responds. Max pauses.

"Oh, I know. Everyone in school knows you and Ryan," he tells Elizabeth. Her blood is ice, no one dared to speak Ryan's name in her presence. He must not have known what happened or was just rude enough not to care. "Oh don't worry. It's all good things."

"Oh. Great," Elizabeth replies flatly.

"Well," MJ says and shoots Max Carter-Thompson an icy look that could most likely take down the lava monster in Moana. "We have misery to sketch."  she peeks over at her page to see she already have the outline of Maxwell's face, hair and shoulders already drawn smoothly on the paper slightly grey from her probably shoving pencils inside it. Elizabeth opens her backpack and pull out her AP French notebook and open to a random fresh page that she would later have to rip out. Elizabeth starts drawing the first face that comes to her mind and after exactly fifty-eight minutes of complete silence she has a complete and detailed photo of Peter Parker side by side laughing with a drawn version of Liz. She's beautiful as expected. Elizabeth scuffs and shuts her notebook closed. No one wanted Elizabeth to be mean, but that's exactly what she was going to be.