NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE ∙ Peter Parker

☆ ✸ ☆ 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐄 1.3: Who Are You, Really?

That drugstore was his second home—had been for ten years now—with an older white couple that had no children and two cats that free-roamed the drugstore with no complaints from customers. Art started coming there when he was seven, looking for band-aids to cover up the burn from the stovetop on his left leg, and Miss Tilly sat him on the counter-top and promised him her eyes worked well-enough after retiring from nursing. Greenie, her husband, was the working pharmacist who under-charged him for the ointments needed. He had fifty cents that day.

No surprise that he found himself there again, chapped lips and runny nose and a very bloody hand that Miss Tilly was left to fix again. "Baby, you've gotta get a haircut," was the first thing Miss Tilly muttered to him, running her frail hands through his long, shaggy hair after he sat down on the counter. Seventeen now, and still just as fragile. Lizzie braided his long locks the other day, and he already missed the feeling of having the hair out of his face.

Arthur flexed fingers and sucked in a sharp breath when he felt the alcohol hit the cuts again, and the lines of her face twisted in the same place. Tilly had empathy for people, and now she had the marks to show how many she helped. Art was only one of them. Even if he wanted to spit the word 'FUCK' very disrespectfully.

"Go ahead—"

"—mother-fucker," he hissed out before she could even give the full permission, throwing his head back and then forward to the crevice of his elbow so he could bite into his hoodie sleeve. A whimper escaped him, then he pulled himself back together, his misty eyes meeting with her green ones. "I'm sorry."

Miss Tilly sighed and patted his hand, dropping it gently and leaning forward. Their foreheads touched, and Arthur's chest split open like a fault-line. Every day he walked through that door with another injury, he swore he took a minute off their lives. Greenie was a blunt born-and-raised New-Yorker, and with age, his tolerance for people lowered. Arthur spent the last ten years convincing the man not to take his cane down the corner; he didn't know what would happen if that day ever came. He hoped it wouldn't.

"One more year."

When he turned eighteen, he would finally get to leave. Arthur stared down at his hands, swallowing hard. "One more year...I'm looking into some Ivy Leagues."

"Oh?" the woman asked him, with a smile. "Any particular one in mind?"

"MIT."

Tilly clacked her tongue. "You're going make us pack this whole place up to Massachusetts?"

Arthur could have cried yet again, but luckily, something broke the moment between the two so he could swallow up his emotions. Both of them looked up when they heard the sound of the bell chiming over the front door. Arthur cleared his throat, turning back to Miss Tilly to squeeze her arm in affection before he jumped down from the counter. He motioned that he would cover the register for her, and after a heavy sigh, the woman packed everything back into the First-Aid kit to take it around back. His phone ringing took him out of his head for a moment, and he pulled it out quickly to be sure it wasn't his mom.

Today       12:34 PM

Migraine Junior

You up for a run?

Arthur breathed out the biggest sigh of relief at his friend's text message, rushing to type the fastest response of 'PLEASE.' While he hated running, the idea of focusing on that hatred instead of everything else brewing in his chest sounded like a gift. Lizzie always had a way of knowing, without truly knowing, when he needed an out from everything. Her not finding out the truth about his home situation—the full truth—was the hardest part. With Taylor and Eli, the subtle details were missed. He didn't blame them. The fourth member of their group never missed a thing. Ever. He caught her staring one-too-many times at his baggy hoodies, but Lizzie met his parents. His parents loved her. To have fooled her, he believed, might be his saddest and greatest accomplishment to date.