after rain ||| peter parker (cancelled)

Chapter 8.

Neither Felix nor Peter were at school the next day. Orya tapped her foot anxiously as she looked around, Corven seated next to her , doing the same thing.

"I need to talk to you." They both said in sync, cursing their years of friendship for putting them on the same wave length. "You go first."

"Darn." Orya said at the same time Corven said "Shit."

"I could-" They stopped again and frowned, tapping their foots.

"You!" Corven said quickly, and Orya breathed a sigh of relief.

"I've been talking to Eddie." She said quickly.

"Eddie? Eddie as in Eddie?" He clarified.

"Eddie Brock Eddie." Orya said, fidgeting with her fingers. "I had a crush on Peter- I have a crush on Peter and I didn't know what to do because he cancelled on me twice, but he invited Felix over, so I was thinking that maybe Ed-"

"I kissed Gwen." Corven said, unable to contain his secret any longer. Before Orya could say anything he continued. "We started texting after she got Sugar Plum, and Felix and her got in a fight, and she was trying to find a way to make up with him so that she could start hanging out with us!"

Ned stared in between them, confused. "Who are Gwen and Eddie?"

Orya and Corven turned to look at him, forgetting that he hadn't been friends with them for years.

"Oh... um." Orya was hesitant.

"They're old friends. We all knew eachother since we were in diapers. We've gone to the same preschool, kindergarten, elementary, and middle school. We were the ones who found Earl's together, and we watched Felix's first ballet recital together." He looked down.

"Last year, Eddie got caught stealing from the principal at our school. It shouldn't have been that big of a deal, except the principal had a huge assembly and put him on blast. Eddie was really embarrassed and Felix said something along the lines of-"

"You were stupid to get caught." Corven said. "He called Eddie stupid for getting caught. And then he told him that he was stupid for stealing from the principal. Eddie and Felix were the closest out of all of us, and so it created a rift in our friendship. Felix on one side, Eddie on the other, Gwen,Orya and I in the middle."

"They started getting really hostile, and it climaxed when Gwen and Eddie put posters up around the school, exposing Felix for..." Orya looked down. "Felix had come out to Eddie... in a text... and now that text and Felix's phone number was posted all around the school."

She remembered how her and Corven had arrived early because Eddie had told them they would want to see. Felix had begun to cut himself away from all of them, and everyone was beginning to feel cold. When they arrived they were both horrified. Gwen wouldn't look at them as dozens of kids read the posters. Teachers would snatch any of them out of anyone's hand, but Eddie had plastered the walls with Gwen's help. Half-torn posters stuck to the wall. The words "Fag" were written across some of them. They rushed to Felix's locker to find the Hardy boy frozen, surrounded by a crowd, staring at the mess that had formerly been his locker.

Their school colors were white and blue, and the lockers reflected that, but Felix's locker was a mix of slurs, spray-painted red and sharpied black. Photoshopped images of the by in crude and disgusting photos were stuck to it, and the locker was dented inwards, as if a monster had attacked it. Everything inside was thrown out on the floor; anything that was paper was shredded, textbooks included. Felix had placed a deconstructed white house model in the small space, painted and ready to be put together and it now looked like aliens had bombed it 80 times. And worst of all, his camera was smashed to bits.