Dancing Around // peter parker

8

I locked the bathroom door before sitting on the stranger's floor. The cold tile brought some kind of feeling to my legs, taking some attention away from my hurting head. The towels with the word 'guest' sowed into them kept giving me dirty looks as I brought my legs to my chest and I hug them tight, trying to calm down.

I wasn't shaking or crying or anything. My breathing seemed fine and my head only hurt a little, but my heart seemed to gain a couple of pounds during my journey from the room to the bathroom. It sat on top of my stomach. My stomach didn't like the extra weight.

I didn't really care much about what people thought of me, in the sense of people I never talk to or thought of. People I have never wasted my time on.

I wasn't in love with Al. I didn't even know if I liked him. I did like the idea of him smiling because of me and the idea of him trying to smell good for me. And I did like how he said the letter 's' like it was its own idea or something. Like there was something more to the letter that nobody but he had noticed, and he refused to tell anyone what it was.

I liked the way his lips felt and the way he grabbed my hand. I liked the way his skin felt on mine, so much so, that it had led me to sit on the bathroom floor.

I didn't know what to do now. I didn't know how to act. Was I supposed to cry? Laugh? Act like the feelings that were carving their names into my chest weren't real? I didn't know what I was feeling, and I didn't know how to express myself.

I kept thinking about Ms. May and what her reaction would be once Peter told her about Al and me. Was it seeing Peter that made everything turn out this way? Would I have cared so much when Al said those words if I wasn't thinking about what Ms. May thought of me? It wasn't like that was the first time a guy had said something like that to me and I knew it wasn't going to be the last.

I stood up from the floor and washed my hands to buy some time. I couldn't stay in the bathroom forever. There was a line outside. I tried not to look at myself in the mirror, but I ended up doing so anyways. Looking at the cat eye that took me so long to create and my lips covered with the perfect shade of red, I realized that the image people have of me was a prison.

I walked out of the bathroom, ignoring the girl that held up her middle finger at me. I hurried down the stairs and looked through the kitchen until I found Michelle taking photos of a broken vase on the floor with my camera. I walked up to her calmly, looking down at the broken vase. "What happened to it?"

"They were tossing it around."

"Why?" I asked.

"For fun." She took a picture, the flash lasting only a few seconds.

"Poor vase."

"It deserved it." She handed me back my camera.

"Thanks. You want to drink?"

"No." She stepped over the broken vase walking somewhere towards the living room.

I watched her until I couldn't anymore. I looked down at the broken vase. I looked around, wondering if somebody was going to pick it up. I sighed, deciding I might as well be that somebody.

With my camera hung around my neck, I looked through the kitchen for a bag. I found a bottle of something. I didn't know what it was, but I opened it and took a few sips of it, before finally finding a bag I could put the pieces in. I didn't want to throw away the vase. What if it had some kind of special value to Liz or her family?

I sat down next to the crime scene. I placed the bottle of whatever beside me and started to pick up the broken pieces of the vase and put them into the plastic bag from a grocery store. It only had intact pieces. I placed the bag on the island next to the empty bags of chips, before picking up the bottle and swinging my head back with it attached to my lips.