Arachnophobia

1.3

Alex
It hurt, the dumb wound. Walking around felt like getting stabbed over and over again. It was healing, unusually slow for once. I was carrying my books, walking with Ned. May hadn't received her salary yet of course.

"Sorry about your backpack, Alex. Kind of my fault for not telling you." Ned apologized as we walked outside towards the school. It was Friday, hallelujah. I wanted no part of school, only one more week after that and I was officially done with my Freshman year of High School.

"It's fine." I shrugged.

"Hey Alex, hey Ned." MJ said, catching up with us.

"Hi."

"Hey MJ, how are you?" Ned spoke for the both of us.

"I'm fine, how's Parker's side?"

"Ned!" I groaned, looking at him.

"Woah woah woah, I didn't tell her, you bled through your shirt a bit, it's black so I would think nobody would notice."

"If it's black how.. you.. you.. you know!" Aggravated per usual with my stuttering. It wasn't unusual that I stuttered, one of the main reasons why I didn't talk.

"Well for instance your sweatpants are grey and there's a red spot right under where I see a liquid coming through, and there's no way it's water or something else." She said with a smirk.

"Damn she really is a detective." Ned mumbled, continuing our walk to school. After some time, we walked in, heading to our first class, which we all shared together.

"Hola clase! Como estás?" Our teacher boomed. Señor Garcia. He was a very nice man, very leant with everything. I flipped my hands from side to said, resembling "así así" meaning Okay.

"Por que?" The follow up question of course, I motioned to MJ and did some sign language, too lazy to actually write it out.

"Uh, lastimarme." ("Hurt myself") MJ replied.

"Oh? Hope you feel okay soon, Alex." He smiled, turning to the board and writing out some stuff I didn't care about.

"So, out of all of the people in history, who's the coolest?" MJ said, knowing how nerdy we were and that we were bound to get in trouble for it.

"Unsure." Somehow, I got it out. It felt good.

"Tony Stark! Have you seen all of that cool tech? I want to build a suit like that!" Ned said.

"Bah, Steve Rogers, the man is a literal Legend. Iced for 70 years and still can fight."MJ replied, tapping her pencil against her notebook.

"Alright clase, group work let's go!" Señor Garcia boomed, causing MJ and Ned to move their desks to face mine, creating a weird triangular figure.

"What's so special about Tony Stark, he has no powers." MJ said.

"No! He has his tech!" Ned replied, way too excited to say the least.

"Steve is pretty cool." I mumbled, and they both groaned.

"Tony was the first cool hero." Ned argued.

"No it was Steve!"

"What about.. Howard?" They both groaned in defeat, causing my smirk to appear.

"Alright clase, no homework this week at all. Last week of school. Have a good day." Señor Garcia said as the bell rang, all of us exiting the class.

"Why is Tech always second period, why can't it be every period." Ned groaned, walking through the halls. I spotted Flash, whom had his arm in a sling. I didn't break it, he did it for attention of course.

"Look what Alex did to me!" Flash cried in fake pain, and all everyone did was stare. Stare and more staring.

"Let's go." Ned said, pulling me into tech class.

"Mornin' class, get back to working on your robotics, if you need help let me know." Mr. Campbell said, sitting at his desk and working on a robot of his own.

"Look, all we have to do is sit around and do nothing now since we're completely done." Ned said, leaning back and I typed away at the chromebook.

"We do report." I deadpanned, typing away. I was already half way done with it, all I needed to do was do a report on each step of the project and what energy sources we used, raw materials, etc.

"So Spiderman, have you seen the newest newsletter on you?" Ned said, nudging me. I looked up from my work and saw him holding the paper.

"Spider-Man stops drug deal and illegal weapon selling's to reach out of states!" It said, and all I did was shrug.

"What? Oh come on Alex be a bit proud of yourself!" Ned practically squealed.

"I could've done bet-better at stopping them. Sloppy it was." I said through some stutters.

"I'm going to need MJ to teach you how to stop not taking compliments and good stuff man! And you know she'll annihilate you if you don't accept it." Ned said.

"No."

"Yup, or I can tell your speech teacher, Ms Rushman . Maybe she can help you." Ned laughed. I threw my pencil at him and got back to typing away on the chromebook until the bell rang.

"See you in lunch." Ned said, doing our handshake. I walked down the halls and into Ms Rushmans room, which so happened to be my music classroom.

"Hello, Alex." She said with a smile.

"Hi Ms-Ms Rushman." I got a singular stutter through, which gave me a small smile.

"Excellent work!"

"I could've don-."

"No, Alex. You did great, now to today's lesson. I want you to just sound out some of these basic words." Rushman said, sliding me a few cards.

"Mih.. mih.. mih.. mic?"

"Now what does that become?"

"Mimic."

"Now put it in a sentence." She smiled.

"I wat-watched the mime mi-mimic the tourist."

"Well done, Alex! I'm very proud of you for that. Other student's couldn't even do that." Ms Rushman said with a smile. "Other students." There were no other students, and I knew it. I was the only one with a speech impairment, and I knew it.

"Alright, let's work on this one.." Ms Rushman said, and we continued to work on words for the rest of the double period.