Little Spy | Peter Parker ✓

[7]

TODAY HAD TO BE BETTER.

My 'first day of high school' was a bust; apart from our small interaction, the Parker boy and I did not end up interacting at all, and I was left to plaster on a smile and pretend like I was excited to be the new addition to Midtown High. All throughout the day, students and teachers that had no business with me otherwise would stop and ask how I was taking the new system, or if I wanted to care about what little information they had to offer - no doubt, things that were already provided to me from Madame or Inga - and force me to make more interactions with people of little-to-no-value to me. Peter, try as I had, had not crossed my path at all.

Inga was not too happy about that.

The problem was, I had no idea how to approach him, for he had not turned out to be quite the threat as I had imagined up. He was a quiet kid, mostly keeping to himself or with his annoying friend that seemed to be more of a shadow than a companion. He also did not talk much, leaving little chance to bounce off and create some more interactions. His time in class was spent furiously scribbling down notes or doodling in his mysterious notebook, and outside of that, he had been in the library, first alone and then chatting with Ned Leeds. I had wanted to talk to him at first, but I feared a straight-up conversation would startle him and would cast me as someone I didn't need to be in his eyes.

No, when we were to talk, it had to be natural. I had to be delicate, offering up a gentle smile and a hand outstretched with whatever he liked, in order to lure him in. One wrong move and he would scare like a baby deer, darting away into the bush with no desire to emerge again. Unlike how Madame had described him and his tendencies to me, it seemed as though he would be a delicate subject to deal with. 

It certainly did not help that his friend never left his side and followed him everywhere, babbling on about some sort of nonsense or other at a constant rate. Any attempt I could make would have to be with Parker and him alone, not his clingy shadow that did not budge. 

My eyes, seemingly cast downwards to anyone who glanced my way, were trained on the two of them at that very moment. They were in the sunny courtyard, discussing something that I knew nothing of - or could not pick up over the chatters of others around. Peter, for once in the times I had seen him over the past day or two, was extremely engaged in the topic and his hands moved around, gesturing wildly as he made his point. Unlike every other time I had observed him, he was filled with passion and an animosity I did not know existed in him. Contradicting every note I had made yesterday. 

However, that was good. It meant that there was a point I could begin on, forcing a conversation and a mutuality between us that might not have worked before, a-

"Hi!"

Shit.

I had been so wrapped up in my thoughts, I had not focused on who could be behind me, or acknowledged the footsteps that could have been easily noticed - something I would have picked up on at the Academy. My eyes and ears were trained on him and him alone, not to the girl that would approach and tap on my shoulder, forcing my acknowledgement and my begrudged attention.

The girl was short, shorter than I was, but made up for that loss of height with her gigantic smile and widened eyes that made her look a bit younger than an assumed fifteen, sixteen. In her hands was a large clipboard of information with random swirls and doodles drawn across it, with a pink ball pen clutched at the top of it by carefully manicured hands. Her smile was what caught me off-guard, however, the most. It was strange, almost worrisome as to how many people at Midtown High wore the same large, brainwashed smile that made someone think there was nothing floating around inside their heads; eerie, bizarre, confusing as all else I had seen so far.