Peter Parker and Meredith Stacy (A Spider Man Story)

Part 1: Arbitrary Occurrence

I shut my locker door with a slam harder than necessary and struggle to avoid the questions that are constantly being thrown at me every five minutes. This entire day has me answering the same questions over, and over. "Yes, I was at the Festival." "Yes, I nearly died." and "Yes, I was saved by Spider-man." All my friends feel as if they have the VIP pass to be allowed to ask the questions I avoid answering other people, and that I would give them some inner story of what really happened.

I catch the sight of Peter with his earphones in his ears, and his hood over his head. I start speed walking to catch up to him and when he sees me, he takes out his earphones.

"Hey," he pushes his hood back.

"Hi!" I smile a little too enthusiastically. Wiping that very unnecessary smile off of my face, I attempt to replace it with something more casual.

"How's it going?" he asks me.

"Where you headed?"

"Uh, Monday, free track." He only turned his head halfway in my direction.

"Oh, it's Thursday..." I point out.

"It's Thursday?" He seems very distracted by something. I lean over to have a look at the other side of his face that he has been trying to avoid me seeing, and notice that his eye is bruised, and a cut runs through his eyebrow. I stop walking.

"What happened to your eye?"

"What?" he looks back down the hall.

"Your eye, it's bruised."

"Oh, yeah-ye-I uh, I don't know."

I lean over to get a better view but he keeps his head down, turning it away from me.

"Maybe it's a uh, a rash..." he says.

"It's pretty bad, have you gone to the nurse?"

"Mm-hm." He nods at me. "So," he begins to grin. "How was Spider-guy?"

I roll my eyes at him.

"What?"

"Nothing. He's fine."

"You don't like him?" his brows pull in.

"No, it's not that. He's great. It's just that I've had to answer that same question quite a bit today."

That seemingly ends the conversation so I ask if he likes Branzino, but his expression is blank. I laugh but attempt to keep a straight face as he continues to look troubled.

"Like a fish?" I ask.

"Mmhm," he starts nodding again, "Oh yeah, I know." He chuckles. "...Yeah I know." He totally did not know.

"So, maybe if you want, you can come some time this week? My mom's making Branzino."

I realize that my address was written on his hand a few days ago, and that he might've not written it down. It could've just been washed away. "If you, uh, know what my—"

He smiles at me, "I remember it. Yeah, sure."

...

Placing my history book down onto my desk, I wave the mouse of my computer to awaken the screen. I hear two... three taps somewhere around my room. Flinching, I glance at my bedroom door when I hear the forth noise, I waited if somebody was on the other side. Nothing. I continue back with finding the folder with my homework on it, and there it is. Another knock. Louder this time, and I notice it comes from the other side of my room. I turn around and see someone on the other side of my window... Crouched there, on the balcony. He smiles.

I squint at him, "Peter?"

I stand up to open the door, but that's when I realize, I'm not even wearing a bra... Who the hell rocks up at somebodies house through the window? I'm not even prepared! 

"Jesus, Peter!" I accidently shout at him, oops. That didn't mean to come out. I shut the curtains and go to rummage through my closet for better clothes. When I open the curtains, he's still waiting there. He opens his mouth to say something but I shut it again when I caught my reflection in the glass and I glance at a small mirror that hung on my wall, and I start wiping off the excess mascara that has smudged up my eyelids throughout the day before opening the curtains once again. I can't contain the smile that spread over my face as I quickly open the window at last. He flashes me a wide grin, and without even saying hi, I say, "Earlier, I didn't mean like, right now."

"But you did say sometime this week." He says, "Today is a part of this week."

I narrow my eyes at him. "How'd you get out there?"

"Fire escape." He replies distractedly.

"Do you usually come through peoples windows?"

"The door man's intimidating." He chuckles.

"But, it's twenty stories..."

"Yeah." He acted like there was nothing wrong with that, and he jumps into my room and starts to look around. "This is your room."

"Yep, this is my room..." I confirm.

"Books." He nods, looking at my bookcase with a grin that didn't seem to leave his face. Is he judging my books? I turn and look at my bookcase but stop as he starts to speak.

"Oh, hey uh..." he swings his backpack off of his shoulders and takes out a bunch of yellow and pink flowers that seems to have been tortured and squished inside his bag. "I got you these..."

"Oh. That's lovely!" What did he do? Go on a rollercoaster on his way here?

"I know right," he murmurs.

"They're beautiful."

"Yeah... they were... They were nice." He buries his face in the flowers in humiliation. "I'm sorry."

"No, it's impressive. They actually held together pretty well." I can't control the laughter that is threatening to tease him.

"I'm just gonna keep this."

"No! I want them, thank you." I snatch them out of his hand before he got to put them back in his tattered bag.

"Really?"

I almost regret taking the damn flowers as I stare into his warm brown eyes, and for a moment I'm speechless. What was I supposed to say? I catch his eyes dart lower and to my lips just for a second before he chose to look away instead.

"Are your—" he cleared his throat. "Parents here?"

"Uh, they're not overly fond of unexpected guests. Lets just, keep in here. Okay?"

For the entire night he has helped me do most of my homework for the only class we have together. I learned a little, but he just did most of them for me in under a few seconds which, as frustrating as he is sometimes, I snatch it out of his hands before he ends up actually doing all my homework for me. I want to make him think I'm as good as him. Which, of course I really wasn't. I don't know where he got it from, but the effortless function of his brain really is a gift. Thinking of his nerdy-ness, my mind goes to his glasses, to the nerdy kid from the bus stop, but that was years ago. Sometimes I miss the glasses; they make him look more innocent. I look at him now, and he thinks I haven't noticed his red skinned knuckles but I have. They show through his sleeves when he's writing. I frown. What is he up to lately? He doesn't look like a criminal, not with the face of Peter, but he did look like someone who searches for trouble. Ever since his uncle died...

The bruises look more fresh in his knuckles more than the one on his cheek or the cut on his lip—which were almost gone—but the knuckles were as if they were damaged a week ago, but I knew it couldn't have been a week ago because just yesterday I noticed it wasn't as bad as tonight. I still have the urge to pin him down and force the truth out of him, but whenever I begin to mention it, he turns away and changes the subject. I let it slide each time, because after a while I start to feel like a snob who won't keep her nose out of other people's business. But then I stop myself, because I have the right to be concerned. Or maybe I don't, either way; I'm worried for him.