FOSTER CHILD | PETER PARKER

v.

FOSTER CHILD | ACT ONE
scene five: the box

ISLA HAD never felt more stupid in her entire life than she had felt in the last twenty-four hours.

She spent more than a month perfecting her plan only for it to be stomped on by minor inconveniences that gave them major setbacks. She had never felt like such a failure before then she how she had felt now.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, her hands buried in her face as she thought about what went wrong and how she didn't think of all the possibilities that would've caused problems.

Vincent had walked out of the prison, a can of coke in his hand. He had bought it in hopes he could cheer his niece up in some way shape or form.

While Vincent did feel sorry for the girl, he was also equally mad at her as he dropped everything to fly over a multitude of states to help her gather intel on her dad only for him to be completely AWOL.

Isla looked up as she felt the vibrations of Vincent coming over and stood from the ground. Vincent tossed the can to her, the can almost slipping out of Isla's sweaty hands as she caught it.

Vincent and Isla clambered in the car, a sombre mood entering with them as they prepared for a six-hour journey back to LA to catch their flight.

Vincent wiggled the gearstick, getting ready to back out of the driveway when he noticed the solemn expression that seemed to completely take over Isla's face. All feelings of anger for her vanquished within him and he was overwhelmed with pity for the girl.

He turned the ignition off and turned to face Isla. Isla looked up at him, a strange expression on her face as she was confused as to why Vincent had turned the ignition off and why he was staring at her like she was some sort of lost cause.

"You never told me why you wanted to go and see your dad after all these years." Vincent didn't know what to say to her. He thought he had messed it all up when Isla tensed up in her but when she relaxed he knew he hadn't.

Isla sighed and grabbed her bag from the bag the back seat, her hands rummaging through it until she pulled out a brown box, filled with intricate details of what seemed to be a lively forest all along its side. She pulled her necklace out from under her shirt out shortly afterwards and placed the pendant onto the keyhole, the box creaked as the key turned, the sound making Vincent's ears perk up in irritation.

"This is–"

"What's that?"

"Well if you wouldn't interrupt me, I could tell you," Isla said through gritted teeth.

"Sorry," Vincent said, scratching the back of his neck.

She cleared her throat, looking through all the water damaged, aged papers and pictures out of the box. She took out a photo of her mother and father, the two of them standing in a flower field, smiling brightly at the camera. They both looked young, the two of them probably being no more than twenty years old. She rubbed her thumb over her mother's face.

"This is a picture of my mother and father." She said smiling, showing Vincent the picture. "It's from 1998, it says it on the back so around three years before they had me."

Vincent briefly glanced at the picture, smiling as he immediately recognised his sister. "You look just like her y'know."

Isla looked at her mother, crinkling her nose as she inspected the photo. "I don't know, her hairs slightly darker than mine and she's more tan."

She continued to look at the photo as she spoke. "This box came in the mail around two months ago. I didn't think much of it initially, thought it was some weird decoration of some sort, but then one day, almost three weeks after I got the box I noticed that this pendant could fit right into the keyhole. So... I tried it and it worked. It was filled with papers but they were all water damaged, this was the only thing to stay in perfect condition."

She turned the photo around and traced her parent's names that were etched into the back of the photo inside a love heart, a vibrant red kiss imprinted beside it. "Scott L was all I had to work with. I had to scroll through almost seventy google pages to find any information on him y'know. Not easy work if you ask me."

Vincent chuckled lightly, "I admire your dedication. I would've given up after the first page."

"I admire my dedication too. I was bouncing off the walls when I finally found him and figured out where he was..." She trailed off, remembering that she had wasted all her money to go to San Francisco for nothing.

Vincent noticed the shift in her mood and quickly changed the subject, feeling terrible for the girl. "So! what else is in the box."

Isla shook her hand, snapping out of her thoughts. "Oh, nothing important. Just some old water-damaged documents." She lied, loosely scanning over the page.

She was only partially lying, the documents were in fact water damaged. The ink on the pages was smudged and the paper could barely hold up on its own. A gust of wind could probably send the pages into fragments of dust if not handled carefully with how fragile they'd become with age.

However the documents were highly important, well from the information that had Isla gathered from the almost cryptic pages over the past month or so. She read it every day as if it was religious writing, a bible into what could've been her past, present or future. While the pages had no value themselves, it held millions for Isla and that's what made it extremely important to her.

Vincent narrowed his eyes at her. He had a feeling that she was lying but he didn't want to drive the girl into a sensitive state so he just held his tongue. Instead, he just turned the key and started the car back up, the car and the occupants in it spurting for a second before it came to a full stop, heavy steam flowing out from all angles of the car. Vincent tried to start the car again but to no avail, the car failed again.

"Did you bring the tools?"
"Nope," Isla replied just as fast as Vincent had asked the question.

The duo turned to look at each other, a tiresome look riddled on both of their faces as they both got out of the car and began their long walk to the nearest bus station in hopes of finding a way back to Los Angeles in time for their flight back home.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

AUTHORS NOTE

This chapter is literally my longest yet. I didn't even expect for it to be this long I just got really into writing it like half way through and then I just couldn't stop. I had to edit so many parts out as well to keep the chapter nice and short.

Update : I split this chapter because why not

I don't want for A/N to be too long so I'm just gonna end it here! I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I'll probably update the next one by Wednesday because I have a such a end of term.

See you all next time !