poisoned 🕷️ peter parker [1]

13

"You guys, I am so proud of you." Mr. Harrison said as they got closer to the Washington Monument. Everybody was laughing and smiling from excitement. They had won the decathlon thanks to Michelle's last answer. Jessica, though, had been silent almost all day, still touched by what had happened the night before. She and Flash were the only ones who didn't answer a single question in the decathlon, just that, unlike his case, Jessica chose to say nothing even though she knew the correct answer. 

"Told you we didn't need Peter." Flash said with a grin on his face as they stood before the tall monument. It was Liz who replied to his comment.

"Flash, you didn't answer a question."

But he was telling the truth. They had won without Peter because he had disappeared right before the decathlon started. Ned covered for him, saying that he was sick and couldn't get out of bed, but something made Jessica believe he was lying. By what she knew about the boy, she was almost certain that he had left to be Spider-Man for the night. 

Either way, she didn't have the strength to argue with him and interrogate him about where he had been. She was more than fed up and she decided to just focus of something else. So that's why, even though she was tempted to stay with Michelle outside of the structure, she walked inside with her classmates. 

"Taking it all in, Michelle?" The teacher asked her as he saw she wasn't following the rest of the group inside of the building.

"Oh, yeah, I just don't want to celebrate something that was built by slaves."

"I'm sure the Washington Monument wasn't built by..." A guard standing by the building waved his hand resembling that it might have been, indeed, build out of slavery. "Okay." He quietly said, defeated by the guard's gesture. "Enjoy your book."

"Thanks."

They were in the queue for the security check when, suddenly, Ned's phone rang and it caught Jessica's attention. Looking at him from the side of her eye, she stood silent to listen.

"Oh, Ned, you're alive." She could hear someone say through the phone.

"Peter, are you okay?"

Her eyes widened in alert. Even though she had promised to herself she wasn't going to get involved in his little hide-and-seek game, she could not keep the silence anymore.

"The glowy thing?" She heard Ned say in a lower voice. "It's safe. It's in my backpack. You missed the decathlon. I covered for you. We're at the Washington Monument."

Jessica took the phone out of the boy's hand and wasted no time on interrogating the missing member.

"Peter, is that you?"

"Hey, Jess." His voice was in a higher pitch than what she was used to. "Put Ned back on the phone."

"You flake. Where the heck are you. I want to be mad, but I'm more worried. Like, what is going on with you?"

"I have to talk to Ned. It's important."

"All items on the belt, please." Jessica had to hang up in order to go through the security scan at the entry of the monument. She took of her belt and left it on a tray along with her phone and backpack. She was about to walk through the scan but was stopped by a security guard. "Miss, you need to take off those gloves."

Still reluctant, she gave in and left the gloves so that they would go through the x-rays. When she was waiting for her tray to come out, the same guard that had earlier talked to her approached her.

"We need to confiscate the gloves. We know it's not a threat, we've detected a Stark Industries logo in one of the internal chips. Still, we will keep them in case they end up in the wrong hands. You can get them once your visit is over."