Senioritis

Hawaiian Pizza

Peter had been sat on the kitchen table doing lab homework for four and a half hours now. He'd been too sick to go to school that Monday morning. In fact, he'd been too sick to do anything that weekend, and it didn't even matter anyway, because he was grounded.

Peter cringed as his mind flashed back to 4am following the night of Liz's party. Aunt May had found him lying on the couch, clutching his stomach and groaning in pain. He remembered her driving him to the hospital, him having to get his stomach pumped, her yelling at him when they got back to the apartment, and him downing an entire flask of water before going to bed.

He was actually glad that he couldn't make it to school on Monday, because the sheer embarrassment of having to tell people MJ drove him home would have been too much.

MJ, he thought.

He was confused about her being nice to him all of a sudden and caring to drive his drunk ass home. He also couldn't figure out why she just deposited him on the couch and slammed the door on the way out.

"Fuck." Peter muttered under his breath. He was staring at the same Chem question for what seemed like forever.

He gritted his teeth and frowned, like he always did when he was stuck on a problem.

If Ned had been here, he thought, he would know the answer. Peter had always been a whizz at math but Ned was the genius when it came to Chem.

Peter wanted to call Ned up and pick his brains, but Aunt May had sternly told him he couldn't have any visitors before she left for work earlier.

Maybe he should just call him to check how he was doing? After all, he was so pissed that he didn't get invited to Liz's party, and that Peter had just gone without him.

Peter sighed and took another sip of his Gatorade, before attempting to FaceTime Ned. At first, there was no answer, but in true Ned-style, he answered the second call.

Ned's annoyed face popped up on the screen.

"What is it, Peter?" He said, obviously not any less pissed off from the last time he and Peter had spoken.

"Umm..." Peter stammered. He felt like he was talking to his principal instead of his best friend. Ned always had that affect on him whenever they were fighting.

"I just wanted to call you because...I miss you...I guess..." Peter continued, unsure of what to say now and regretting what he had just said so badly.

"Well that's very fucking hard to believe." Ned replied. It seemed like he was playing video games, because Ned had balanced his phone on the table in front of him.

"Ned, look." Peter started. "It's not like my intention was to just go to the party without you-"

"But it was," Ned replied. "Wow, you really suck at lying. You didn't want me to go because you didn't want me to embarrass you in front of all your stupid senior friends. Who aren't even your friends anymore."

"What do you mean?"

Ned dropped his game console in frustration before picking up his phone again to move the camera right against his face.

"Everyone at school is talking about it." Ned said, putting a chip in his mouth and chewing it loudly to deliberately annoy Peter.

"Talking about what?" Peter demanded. He knew that Ned knew that he cared about his reputation a lot, and wanted to use this to stress him out.

"How you...nearly had sex...with Liz...and then chickened out." Ned said, in between eating his chips.

"I didn't chicken out Ned!" Peter shouted, and then lowered his voice. "She was drunk, like very drunk and I didn't wanna-"