Walking the Wire | PETER PARKER [1]

| 18 |

Eloise wakes up with a cat on her face. The brown fur blocks her vision, only a little bit of light visible through the soft fluffiness.

She reaches up and gently removes the cat from her face and set it back down on her legs as she sits up. Her nose scrunches up at the feeling of the fur in her nostril.

Then, she sneezes.

"Bless you."

Eloise wipes her nose with her sleeve and turns, eyeing Peter sitting at his desk. He smiles at the sleepy girl.

"Good morning," Eloise says with a groggy morning voice, yawning at the end.

"Morning," he replies. He looks at the cat in her lap. "Sorry about Murph. He thinks the world is his bed."

She shrugs and pets the cat. He starts to purr and does the thing with his little paws that makes it look like he's massaging her leg.

"What time is it?" Eloise asks.

Peter glances at his phone. "6:45."

She hums in response. She still has more than an hour before school starts.

"I should go," Eloise says after a few moments of comfortable silence.

Peter looks up as she peels the cat from her lap and hops down from the bunk.

"Yeah, okay. Thanks for staying with me last night, by the way."

Eloise nods. "No problem." Although she didn't get much sleep and woke up with a cat on her face, it was worth it if she was doing it for a friend.

Eloise brushes the cat hair from her jeans and steps towards the window. "See you after school, Peter."

🕸

Finals aren't even the worst part of school today. Eloise seeing Lucy and smiling at her, only to have her look away is like a smack in the face. She can't focus during the World History final. At lunch Eloise tries to talk to her, but she has her earbuds in and seems hurt still.

Eloise sighs and eats her lunch of chips and a candy bar. When she's out of food, she finds herself wanting to eat herself into a food coma so she wouldn't have to deal with the emotions of letting Lucy down and the general stressors in her life.

So, when she gets home, she does just that. She grabs chocolate bars, chips, pretzels, and a jar of crunchy peanut butter and carries them all into her room where she ducks under her covers and just dives in.

Eventually she feels better, but not physically. Mentally she's stable again, but she also feels like she could throw up.

Her mother knocks on Eloise's bedroom door when evening comes and tells her that she brought home dinner. Eloise stays in bed, unable to move, and stays like that the rest of the night.

🕸

"Just talk to her," Elena says through the phone. "She'll come around."

Eloise sighs, moving her phone from one ear to the other. "I know," she says, "but I've already tried to talk to her. She's avoiding me like the plague."