Ardent [PETER PARKER]

FIVE

FIVE.

WILL WOKE WITH the sky.

The sun burned red through the backs of her eyelids, waking her long before she wanted. She'd left her blinds open the night before, and the morning had emptied itself into her room through her window. She blinked through a haze of gold to find her walls lit by sun. She yawned, arching her back, before falling back against her bed. It was too late to fall back asleep now. Will leaned against her pillow and let her eyes wander up her walls instead.

She knew her decor was less than ordinary. It certainly wasn't Liz's collage of colorful band posters and glossy Polaroid pictures, but she loved it all the same.

Will's wall's were dizzying. She kept every map she touched, and then some. And every map went on her wall, held up by tape and thumb tacks and old pieces of museum putty that hardly stuck and left the corners fluttering. She had even started to run out of space on her walls, and maps had begun to spill over onto her ceiling. From a map of the English countryside from World War II her father had given her to the subway map she'd collected yesterday, Will had pieced together the world inside her room.

She watched the sun chase the jagged teeth of the edges of the pages up onto the ceiling, eyes tracing the winding threads of roads and rivers and mountains. It was a chaotic jumble of paper and ink, but nothing Will had ever done had been neat or tidy.

It probably should've felt claustrophobic to Will, to have so many places jostling for space on her walls, but it didn't. Maps were places she hadn't seen, opportunities she hadn't witnessed, lives she hadn't lived. Maps meant possibility to Will, and in a world where she craved change, nothing mattered more.

A sharp knock on the door drew her gaze away from her walls.

Saturday. Office hours.

She'd forgotten.

"Will, are you up?" her father asked, voice muffled through the wood grain.

Will stared straight ahead at at the curling edges of a yellowing map of South Africa and stayed silent. She didn't know why. Her throat felt dry and scratchy and the word Yes was trapped somewhere inside her.

"Will?" he repeated.

"Will."

"Will."

He opened the door. Adrian's eyes narrowed when he saw her awake, burrowed down beneath her comforter, and staring straight ahead.

"Will! Were you ignoring me?" he asked sternly, placing his hands on his hips.

"You're Dad Posing," she pointed out.

"I'm your dad, therefore I am allowed to Dad Pose. Why didn't you answer me?"

Will tried her best not to sound whiny. "Can't we just take one day off?"