𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐒 | peter parker&michelle jones

chapter 2

"she wasn't looking for a knife, she was looking for a sword." -atticus ♡

For Michelle Jones it was just another day spent in the hell known as Midtown High. She really did like learning, she'd always had a thirst for knowledge, but not whatever this stupid school had to offer. She liked to think about more practical things than logarithms and the quadratic formula, she wanted to change the world, and solving math equations wasn't going to help her with that.

She wandered through the halls aimlessly, usually she'd be sitting somewhere reading her book but today she had forgotten it, a mistake she regretted heavily.

During lunch, the girl usually found herself at her lunch table, alone with her book. Well, she never felt alone with a book in hand, a whole world in her fingertips. Of course she had to forget it, and of course this was the day Peter Parker himself decided that he wanted to sit at her table.

Well, not exactly. He was almost across the entire lunchroom but the fact that she could even see him annoyed her to a point where she even tried to read the back of her granola bar wrapper. He had sat in that same spot before but more recently he'd stopped sitting there, doing different things around the school. Michelle didn't care enough to ask him what he was up to.

Now, she didn't like Peter, that was no secret. She had at one point, in fact she'd had the biggest crush on him she could hardly handle it, but then he said- he said something that hurt her so bad she could never look at him the same way again. He may have only been 12 but she couldn't seem to get past it.

"Why do you never do your hair Michelle?" Peter's voice found its way across the lunch table to her ears.

Michelle remembered his words vividly, it was like a sharp slap to the face and he hadn't even stopped then.

"And why do you wear the same outfits every week?" His voice didn't seem to have any kind of malice, he simply seemed curious, but to Michelle her world was coming to an end.

Her cheeks burned and she had run out of the lunch room and into the library, she cried and she cried knowing Peter with his perfect family would never be able to understand the things that went on behind closed doors in her home. How her father had died and how her mother took out all the anger and sadness on Michelle and how she had to take care of her small brother.

And thank God for the librarian, she didn't ask any questions but she handed the child a book and gave her a warm smile. She didn't say anything when Michelle didn't go to class when the bell rang or how she didn't go to any other classes that day. That was where Michelle had gained her love for reading, it was her escape.

That's when she began to shut everyone out. She'd had a lot of friends before that incident, and then she suddenly had none. And she'd liked it better that way, or at least convinced herself that she did.

The next day she'd told him, well she'd said it and she knew he didn't hear, her voice was too quiet for anyone to hear, "I hate you Peter Parker. I hate you." And after that she had moved away from them at lunch, not even giving Peter a second glance as he looked at her in confusion.

She stood up abruptly from the table and Peter jerked his head to her as if she'd banged a large pan by his ear. She scowled at him and turned and walked out of the cafeteria towards the library.

She'd already read most of the books on those shelves but somehow, just being there made her calmer and stopped her from readjusting her hair endlessly and worrying about never wearing the same shirt more than once every two weeks.

She started working when she was thirteen so she could afford the clothes and had held a steady job ever since. A job at a small bookstore on the corner by her house, it was one of the few things she truly cherished in this world.