Rollercoaster - Peter Parker

16. A Chemical Bath

While the group of six friends were holed up in Ned's bedroom on New Year's, Flash Thompson was alone in his room. He laid down on his bed, which sat in the center of his plain room, listening to his family happily cheer in the rooms next to him.

He rolled his eyes, reaching underneath his bed to grab his textbooks. It was one minute into the New Year, and Flash Thompson had already carefully planned out his resolution: find a way to get to the top spot in the class.

Placing his thick textbooks side by side, Flash opened each one up to five chapters ahead of all of his classes and began reading. He opened up a composition notebook and placed it in his lap, protectively hunching over the book as he scribbled away.

If any family member happened to walk into his room at that time, they wouldn't have given him a second glance. His cousin, who was home from college, might've noted that he was already doing schoolwork only five minutes into the New Year but would've brushed it off.

What they wouldn't have seen, though, and what Flash wouldn't let anyone see was his notebook. Besides his actual notes and a simple strategy to make it past Peter Parker in every class, there was a growing set of lists in the back of the book that had been started around mid-October.

One list went through all of the questions that Flash had missed but Peter had gotten correct. It was beside him that Peter could possibly know everything, every question asked of him, the younger boy answered flawlessly.

The second one was a compilation of events that thoroughly confused Flash. The subject of the list was, once again, Peter. The events ranged from Peter arriving at school late to leaving early to showing up at school with what Flash could only assume was a bruised arm, skillfully hidden underneath his layers; it was all very suspicious to the boy. What could possibly cause all of these incidents?

Flash had an inkling that Peter Parker wasn't as smart as he led everyone to believe. Would someone with a huge secret really be that careless with their actions? Flash wasn't sure, but he wanted to find out.

"What's your secret, Parker?" he thought aloud, rapidly tapping his pen on the page where the list was laid out.

-

Flash Thompson didn't like to be overpowered. Anyone and everyone who went to Midtown was aware of that fact, the students that made up the Academic Decathlon even more so. He didn't like feeling weaker than anyone, and he sure as hell didn't want that person to be Peter Parker, the one who watched Spider-Man videos all through chemistry.

He worked very hard to maintain his almost perfect 4.0 GPA, and his main competition since middle school didn't seem to care about school in the slightest. That pissed off Flash more than anything. How was it possible that someone who hardly paid attention in any class was able to correctly answer any question that was thrown at him? Meanwhile Flash, who had nearly ditched the homecoming dance to get even further ahead in his classes, could barely get half of the same questions correct.

His hate towards being felt as inferior coincided with his hate towards Peter Parker, the boy making him feel more inferior than any of his peers. His hatred eventually manifested into his so-called friends. The group of boys were, well, more like a random group of boys than they were Flash's friends.

The whole situation started out as some kind of a sick experiment. By the end of eighth grade, Flash had successfully joined forces with all of the worst bullies he could find in the middle school. Their only "mission" was really to psych out Peter Parker and eventually put him in his rightful place. Flash had figured that with the boys' nature for being overly rude to everyone crossing their paths, their daily taunts and insults would immediately freak Peter out. Hopefully enough to allow Flash to grab the top spot in the class and remain with that title for the rest of his shared school career with the boy.