Us Against The World ｡ Peter Parker [2]

12 - Kind Souls

I never really thought about how a person might deal with a power that coursed through their body. It always just sounded like a pretty fun thing to ever happen to you. Captain America had been injected with a serum that made him a super soldier and he was praised for many years. His powers had been a gift. Dr. Bruce Banner had been affected by his own science, his calculations wrong and now could turn into a green monster. His own powers were considered a curse. With the very real possibility now thrown upon my own shoulders by my own foolish mistake, the question of if my powers were a gift or a curse had to be asked, even if I wanted said powers or not. That was a question soon to be answered, despite me maybe not wanting the answer either.

"Florence Parsons? Would you care to explain thermodynamics for the class?" A voice snapped me from my mind, my eyes slightly watery from staring at my page for too long. My journal was perched in my lap and for maybe the first time ever, I hadn't been paying attention to the class going on around me or what my teacher had been discussing but on my dreadful ability to see snippets of the future maybe. 

Blankly, I stared across at my teacher, my mouth opening but closing dumbly, no answer coming to mind. I was not sure if it was the sudden shock of being called upon randomly, or simply because I did not know the answer, which was something that had never happened to me. "Thermodynamics is the study of how energy works in a system." A voice called out from beside me, breaking the awful silence. 

Flash Thompson sent me a quick glance, my heart thudding loudly in my ears. I noticed the torn out page he was pushing across our shared desk, words scribbled down in a messy manner. I eyed the page and understood what he was doing. "Uh, it's a branch of physics concerned with heat and temperature and their relation to energy and work. It's governed by four main laws of thermodynamics." I read the words Flash had written on the page out loud, my voice a little shaky.

A strange silence fell upon the class, bile rising in the back of my throat. My gaze spotted Gwen and Mary Jane twisted around in their chairs to watch me, their eyes haunted with cloudy questions. Behind me, I knew Peter and Harry would be seated, maybe frowning with questions too. I had never been unable to answer a question in class and that guilt, shame and embarrassment was heavy on my shoulders today. Along with the idea that Flash Thompson had been the boy to save me from total embarrassment. "Very good. Now, who can tell me those laws?" Mr. Harrington hummed out but I could see it in his eyes, he was not very pleased as he had seen Flash give me the answer. 

As he moved the class onwards, I slummed down in my chair and stared at my journal for a few more seconds. Hatred flashed through my veins and suddenly, my throat was closing up with tears. I hated how I had been so foolish that day in the labs, hated how I had been trying to impress Peter by showing him my parents' work on the serum. I hated how I was falling behind in school and how there wasn't anybody but myself to blame. Slamming my journal shut, closing away the vision theories, I heaved in a sigh and turned to face Flash. "Uh, hey about--"

"Don't worry about it." Flash whispered quietly, giving me a slight smile. Despite everything Flash had done in the past, the name calling and the bullying, maybe he wasn't such a bad guy underneath that hard exterior. Maybe Gwen had been right about him all along, maybe he was a good and kind soul after all. 

***

 Somehow, my mood was slipping and even Peter's delightful stories about his latest Spider-Man mundane adventure could not turn my fading spirits. I had bailed on my friends after school and headed right to my internship early. Deliberately, I had turned off my phone, not wanting to see a flood of worried text message from Peter asking if I was doing alright. With little on my mind, I hurried through another workshop led by Darcy Lewis. By the time my day had finished completely, the sun was setting over the skyscrapers. While packing up my belongings, a curly haired figure pushed something across the desk.