Middle School Heroes

Chapter 30 - Missing People and Anger Management

The next two weeks were a nightmare for Skye, and she wished that she could just crawl into her bed and not come out until March. Tony apologized to her for being a jerk almost immediately, and she forgave him just as quickly. She was exactly right that he was trying to tease Clint, because he thought that he had sent the poem. Clint never seemed to catch on to what happened, but Natasha did when she heard about it, and for some reason she was angry at him. Clint, in turn seemed to be grumpy around Skye and Natasha, and pretty soon decided to stop talking to either one of them. Even Loki, who wasn't there for the fight and really had nothing to do with any of it, was angry at just about everyone and seemed to spend a great deal of time glaring at Ward like he'd love to make him disappear. As much as Skye was flattered that he was concerned for her, she couldn't help but be worried about the sincerity of his hatred.

As Skye predicted, Pepper was horrified by what happened. It was made worse when Bruce Wayne apparently made a crack about Tony being jealous because he got the girl that made Pepper so mad that she refused to go to the dance with him anymore. She wouldn't go with Tony either, so she accepted an invitation from Lex Luthor. Tony, in turn, first tried to get Skye to go with him, saying she could use him as an excuse to blow Ward off and let him deal with the fallout, before he asked Laurel Lance from the Justice League when Skye refused.

The only person who seemed to be happy about anything was Ward, who seemed to think that her agreement to go to the dance with him was some sort of admission that she liked him. He started trying to spend as much time with Skye as he could get away with. Skye had taken to spending all of her free time in her room to avoid him, and Peter and Pietro were always lurking about making sure that Ward didn't try to visit her there.

Skye felt horrible. She didn't know what to do. She wanted to tell Ward to forget it, but she was sure that would just lead to more problems, and more problems was the last thing that she needed. She started imagining ways to get out of it and was pretty sure that Aunt May and Uncle Ben would allow her to hide out with them if she asked them to. Of course, she knew she'd have to come back to school eventually, and she dreaded facing the fall out.

"Skye, why don't you just tell Ward that you don't want to go with him? Sure, he will be angry with you, but do you really care?" Wanda asked her one night while they were in their room getting ready for bed.

"No, I don't care if he's mad, but I can only imagine the drama that it would bring, not to mention the reaction of his little band of friends on STRIKE, if I back out. Seems easier to spend a few miserable hours and be done with it."

"Well, you may have a point there, but on the other hand, does it matter what they think, either?"

"Well, it does since my activities seem to always put me around them." Skye sighed and pulled her blankets over her head, pretending to actually fall asleep.

*********

As quickly as the dance drama started, it stopped when the girls went downstairs for breakfast on the Tuesday before the dance and discovered teachers and administrators everywhere. Tony and Sam ran up to them when they entered the dining hall.

"Oh man, something huge is going down," Tony said, as he and Sam lead them over to the table they were sitting at. "No one is allowed to leave the building, and they're getting ready to start searching rooms."

"What happened?" Skye looked around the room and saw panicked looks on some of her fellow classmate's faces. She noticed Carol sitting with Clark and Arthur, and it was obvious that she had been crying. Clark was comforting her and Arthur just looked angry.