Peter smiles again, a little wider this time. He feels shaky with relief—his fears were unfounded. Everything is okay: it ' s just his brain, making mountains out of molehills, his wires all jumbled up, receiving too many signals. He can get this under control, and everything will be fine. "Can I—?" Peter swallows. "Can I help with the girls? At all? Is there anything I can do?"
Skip grins, now.
"All you have to do," he says, "is keep being the wonderful older brother you ' ve been so far. And concentrate on your school work. Which — speaking of! Your first day starts in twenty minutes. I've almost made you late. Come on, I'll drive you."
They both get to their feet. Peter is about to head for the door, but before he can, Skip pulls him into another hug.
The reassurance of the last ten minutes slides away. Skip squeezes just a little too tight, almost like he is trying to show Peter how strong he is, and suddenly Peter is not in the kitchen anymore. He is in the backseat of a crumpled car. He is lying in the bed under the stairs. He is crammed into a corner, trying to avoid Ryan's fists—
(too close too close)
—and then it ends. Skip releases him. Rubs his hands up and down Peter's arms once. Walks away.
Peter shakes his head. He presses his hands into his eyes, presses the unwelcome memories away. He gets a hold of himself. And he goes to school.
"No. No way. This is a violation of our constitutional right to safety, or something."
Peter feels heat rise in the back of his neck as he makes his way to his seat and drops into it, resisting the urge to look around. He can feel every pair of eyes in the room on him—every pair, that is, except Flash ' s, which are almost as wide as his gawping mouth, and are currently fixed on the teacher, who has just introduced Peter to the class.
" If
you ' re done with the melodramatics, Flash," she says, and she returns her attention to the whiteboard. " We were learning about covalent bonds."
Peter doesn't miss the look she gives him as he turns, however. She has just as many doubts as Flash. Even though he didn ' t expect anything more, it still stings.
He doesn't have time to dwell on it. Flash, who is seated one row ahead of Peter, whips around to face him.
" How did you manage to weasel your way back in here, Parker?" he demands.
"Is it true you pushed an old lady off a fire escape?" says the blonde girl sitting next to him
Peter groans, but the girl, far from deterred by Peter's imagined violent streak, sticks a hand out.
"Betty Brant," she says. "Midtown High morning announcements, editor of the Daily Happenings portion of the school newspaper. Any chance I could get an interview? The prison system is broken, Peter, and most of the kids here are like, so privileged. They could use an insider's perspective on what juvie is really like."
" You are not actually encouraging him right now, " Flash hisses. " Parker ' s a total suck up goody-two-shoes brown-noser, and he's like, an attempted murderer. I' m complaining to the school board."
He and Betty Brant start bickering in low whispers. It's distracting enough that Peter, who is actually pretty determined to prove he ' s not a dangerous delinquent, and doesn't want to start his first day falling behind in class because of Flash of all people, leans forward.
" Flash, " he whispers, " are you gonna shut up long enough for me to start being a goody-two shoes brown-nosing suck-up, or am I going to have to violate your constitutional right to safety to make you?"
Flash turns red and opens his mouth, but before he can make his indignant retort, he ' s cut off by a snort of laughter.
Peter turns around. The girl behind him is smirking behind a sheaf of dark, curly hair. He starts to smile at her, relieved that one person, at least, isn' t terrified of him, but before he can make eye contact she buries her nose in a copy of Paradise Lost, which is open on her desk.
" Since
Mr. Parker is confident enough on his first day to not pay attention, " says the teacher, " perhaps he would like to tell us what a banana bond is?"
Peter turns around, his ears burning. Flash smirks — until Peter gets the question right.
Peter tries to catch the girl's eye at the end of class—lord knows he could use any friend he can get—but she is out the door the second the bell rings, head bent, arms full of books. The bookish girl's rejection turns out to be a good predictor of the rest of the day, at least in terms of how the rest of the school treats Peter. By third period he's almost missing the school he went to when he lived with the Arlingtons: the kids there might have gone out of their way to torment him, but at least they acknowledged his existence.
" I think I might have died in my sleep," he says when he finds Ned in the lunchroom. "Am I a ghost? Am I invisible? Please tell me you can see me."
By way of response, Ned offers up their secret handshake, which draws the first smile Peter ' s worn all morning. They take their lunches to the corner of the cafeteria, and Ned, bless him, holds his head high when Peter's ability to repel eye contact turns out to be contagious.
"They'll get over it," he says as they take their seats. "You're just the rumor of the week. Wait until someone rips their pants in gym class or gets caught making out in the band hall, they'll forget all about you."
" Maybe. " Peter glances over his shoulder, and the mousy sophomore behind him spills her milk she jumps so hard. "This is weird, though. I'm used to being the punching bag. Now everyone is acting like I'm gonna beat them up for their lunch money."
"And that's a bad thing?" Ned is rummaging in his backpack. "You're the closest thing to a badass this school has ever seen. Own it, my man. Aha!"
He emerges from his bag with a fistful of pamphlets, which he shoves at Peter.
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