fearless || peter parker

four || week two of forty-something

There were three floors at Midtown High. The first one, for techs, the gym and cafeteria. The second, which housed mostly languages and elective classes, and then the third, for maths and sciences. Oh, and the basement, which was basically just a hallway with two dull classrooms that were never used for classes. I presumed the builders decided to build up, instead of across, so that we had room for a courtyard and field. I wasn't one for sports, though, no matter how much Madison pressed me to try out.

"Lockers?" Nitara asked me upon our entry to the school, already heading to the staircase. Our lockers were three apart from each other, thanks to us sharing a homeroom: Spanish. Nitara was probably the only good thing about that wretched class.

Nitara snapped hers open, sorting out her lunch. I unlocked mine, and a few papers and a shoe tumbled out when I did. It was only the second week of school, and I had already made a mess of my locker. I bent down to clean it up, but I fumbled first with the shoe and landed on my knees in a heap.

"Hey, klutz, you good?" Nitara asked from her locker, but it felt like she was screaming right next to my ear. All I could do was nod, and she reverted her attention to her own locker, letting me bonk my head against the cool steel of my own. After a minute, I slowly placed my shoe and the sheets of paper back in the bottom of my locker. That was weird.

I picked up my binder from the top shelf, and tucked it under my one arm, after gently closing my locker door. As Nitara finished looking in her side mirror, I ran my gloved hand against the grooves in my binder- it was weirdly calming.

"To Spanish," Nitara announced, and I lagged behind her on our way, dreading this class.

* * *

For the most part, Spanish was uneventful, except for the warning of our first quiz that lurked sometime next week. I contemplated not even going, but I told myself that I had to stick with school for the first little bit, while my motivation was fresh. Even throughout the entire class, my brain felt like someone was jamming a white hot cuchillo through it. I missed half of what the teacher even said.

Whenever I got my report card, Madison would be happy until she saw my atrocious Spanish mark. It always confused her as to how I could get nineties in everything and then- oop, fifty seven. Language was just not my strong point. So this period, I couldn't wait to dive into a world of molecular structure and just forget about all the verbs they use in countries I'll never go to.

I dropped my books onto my table, next to the red binder that was already there. I looked around for my chemistry lab partner, and I managed to see him in the back, fiddling like mad with a beaker and a little mustard yellow container. I sighed, and decided to ignore whatever he was doing. We had just been assigned our partners last week, and for our first project, he was never available to work on it. Not even on the weekend. He just came up with some excuse about an internship that he had to work on, so I ended up finishing it myself. It was fine- we had gotten a good mark, no thanks to him.

I tipped my chair forward as the bell rang, and diverted my focus to Mr Cobbwell. He started to take attendance, and my partner swiftly took his seat on my left, carefully setting his bag on the ground.

"Diana Bennet?" the teacher called out, too lazy to look at me.

"Here," I called. Then I turned to my side, tipping back my chair. "So, what's in the bag?"

He perked up, surprised that I had bothered to talk to him, I guess. "Huh? Oh, the bag. Nothing. Just books and stuff."

I raised my eyebrows, and looked at the bag. It was different than the one he used last week. Black, not red. I wondered what had happened to his old one. He grabbed the sleeve and pulled it away from me across the floor, and it made clinking noises, like glass against glass. "Sure. Books and stuff. You know, you could probably just ask Mr Cobbwell for extra credit supplies or whatever, and he would..."