Starlight › Marvel [1] ✓

015. winner to disaster

› CHAPTER FIFTEEN ‹

Raleigh stayed out for two extra hours that night while he searched high and low for Peter Parker. At around the hour and a half mark, his phone begun immediately redirecting to the voice message. It was Ned who eventually convinced Raleigh to return to the hotel, despite them both fearing what could have happened to their friend. So, though he got back to his room around two in the morning, he still felt incredibly tired and unfocused since Peter had still not returned to his and Ned's shared hotel room.

If it wasn't for Abe being his room partner and forcing him to get out of the bed and a good luck text from Trystan, he was certain he would have skipped the competition and go back out to search for Peter Parker. 

With his ghastly yellow colored jacket over his simple everyday outfit, he followed Abe out of the room. He saw Ned also exiting the room with his backpack and Raleigh knew he was sharing the same sense of nerves and distraction as they approached the room where the competition was taking place. He was almost reluctant on giving the people collecting phones, his own, but when he saw Ned do it, he decided to follow through and gave the woman a timid smile.

The team marched to the back of the stage and grouped together.

"Where's Peter?" Liz asked. She turned to Ned and Raleigh. "Ned? Raleigh?"

Both boys glanced to one another.

"He, uh, I haven't seen him—" Ned stuttered. "—I haven't seen him since last night."

Raleigh cleared his clogged throat. "I—I left him to study when it got late. Yeah... it was late and I was tired. Um, he wanted to study longer."

Ned shot him a look to get him to shut up before he made himself appear guilty on Peter's whereabouts. Of course, the ravenet snapped his mouth shut and gave them a nervous frown.

Liz ran a hand through her hair and shifted to Mr. Harrington who seemed just as complexed and worried. However, he knew he needed to keep control of the situation and turned to Flash Thomson. He pulled out a spare jacket from his bag and handed it to Flash, giving him the clear to join them. The boy grinned and said something nasty about Peter skipping on them, but Raleigh wasn't able to understand with the worry building up in his system.

As Raleigh began the essay portion of the competition, he struggled to write a completed and comprehensive essay about the 1970 social changes, when any other day he would have easily finished within half the time given. Of course, even though his mind was on where Peter was, he knew he needed to work the best that he could, since the rest of the team was going to do the same. Peter had already let them down, he couldn't do the same to them.

He was relieved when the timer went off, telling the teams to drop their pencils and pass the essays to one of the judges. He only got through half of the revision process after writing his conclusion, but he didn't feel too bad about what he had written. So as he walked back to the rest of his team, he felt satisfied since he had done his best.