The Girl and the Superhero{Peter Parker}

Part 37(Kenzie's POV)

          I woke to a feeling like a herd of elephants stampeding on the underside of my skull.

          Soft light filtered in through the curtains of my reading nook, managing to further infuriate the elephants in my head as I opened my eyes.

          I feebly made my way out of my bed, annoyed to find myself in my same outfit from yesterday. My fingers found the small chain around my neck, and I repositioned the necklace from Peter until it once again rested an inch or two below the dip of my clavicle.

          Peter, I thought, my eyes widening. I walked slowly around to the bottom-right corner of my bed, relieved to see that he was still there.

          Blindly, I'm sure, my boyfriend had picked the most vividly pink blanket I owned out of the trunk at the foot of my bed. It was pulled taut around him, like he fell asleep with an iron grip on the blanket, and his muscles refused to release it even as he slept. The part of his face that wasn't hidden by the blanket was nearly overridden with Peter's curly hair. There was one small piece that barely reached his nose that fluttered with every breath he exhaled. His mouth hung open slightly, and as I listened closely, I could hear him snoring softly. Somehow, sleep made him small. A single ray of sunshine slid through the gap between the curtains, creating a slash of gold across what I could see of Peter's eyes. Even in sleep, he was restless; under his eyelids, his eyes darted incessantly, as if searching desperately for something.

          Walking as quietly as I could, I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen to look for pain medication.

          The clock on the oven read 6:37. I let out an exaggerated groan, but the sound thundered through my head and made my ears ring, reminding me of the reason I came downstairs in the first place. Hardly able to see through the pain in my head, it took me a minute to find the medicine box.

          I fumbled through the bottles of pills, finally extracting the Ibuprofen. I popped open the lid, swiftly dumping out three of them and dry swallowing them on the spot. From the little food in the house, I managed to find a piece of bread to clear the bitter taste of medicine that was left in my mouth.

          With the consolation that my pain would be lessened in a half an hour or so, I began to trudge my way back upstairs.

          "DON'T GET IT, KENZ!" Peter flipped down from the high banister in the blink of an eye, his hair frazzled and his clothes wrinkled. He latched his hand onto the door handle, frantically gesturing for me to get behind him and away from the door.

          Annoyed, confused, and in pain from the unnecessarily loud volume, I grunted, "Peter, I didn't hear a knock at the do--" A series of raps at the door cut me off, sufficiently clearing up my suspicion.

"Kenz, are you still behind me?" Peter's head whipped around in my direction, his iron grip on the door handle still unrelenting.

          I folded my arms. "So you're able to tell when someone is approaching my front door while you're sleeping upstairs in a room, behind a closed door, but you can't tell if I've moved from standing three feet behind you?"

          "Uh—"

           More knocks came through the door, thundering through my head. A muffled voice was heard from the other side of the door, sounding quite exasperated. "Ms. James, open up, please. My name is Captain Norman Faste, I'm a special agent working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and my jurisdiction is specifically over the NYPD. I need to ask you some questions about what happened last night. I have no intention to hurt you. So, if you could tell your knight in shining armor to open up the door and let me in, that would be greatly appreciated."