Art Deco ▷ Ned Leeds | ✓

20 - A START

"Liz was really shaken up," she said, and Ned looked surprised, "I know, she came to school today and everything, but she was really scared. I'm thinking she might even go home early today."

She wondered if she could also be lumped in on that, because she did not want to be at school, not with the way she was feeling.

"You know, we haven't been at school that long, but a lot's happened, you know?" he asked, and she nodded earnestly, struggling to breathe as she thought of everything that had happened, wondering how they had even found themselves in their position in the first place.

"Liz brought my paintings to school when she came early, so they're hanging up now, I should try to see if there are any I want to do. I kind of want to do something in homage to the monument. Liz said there was a window at the top, so I could do something like that, maybe with Spider-Man looking in," she offered, and Ned's eyes widened as he motioned towards her with his mouth full, trying to show how excited he was at the prospect.

She pulled her sketchbook out, and Ned immediately averted his gaze. She was always shocked whenever he did, because she had never met someone who didn't even glance over at her sketchbook, curiosity too great. But while Ned was endlessly curious, he knew what it was like to have his things intruded upon.

"In middle school, our teacher wanted us to journal, and if we folded the paper over, she wouldn't read it," he had explained to her when she had finally asked him why he didn't look him, "And I'd bring it home from school, and sometimes I'd fold it over. My parents, they're not awful or anything, but they'd always go through my phone and laptop history 'cause they always thought I was looking at porn. I wrote in my journal about the one time I did, and I come home and they're confronting me and they have my grandparents on Skype with them, and it was so horrible. So I know when to keep my mouth shut."

It still hurt Brooke to think about it. It still hurt her to look at Ned and see a boy who smiled all the time and brought her cookies when he thought she'd be sad, and she didn't understand how he was so okay. He had one friend who seemed to have forgot about him and people hardly respected him, yet there he was, still smiling.

She reached out and touched his hand. "Can you tell me what you think of some of my thumbnails? Since it's Homecoming week, Principal Morita wants me to put up some more spirited ones, so I'm going to find some easier ones. And I'll do the Spider-Man one too. Maybe I'll do three, including the Spider-Man one?"

"That sounds like a good idea," Ned said, but she knew he was hardly thinking about it, his eyes already shining as she handed over her sketchbook to let him flip through it, careful that it wasn't the one filled with drawings of him.

She still had to draw him from reference. He didn't post many pictures online, so she could only really draw him at school, but she was fine with that. She was more than fine, she was happy with that.

It was nice to know that she was still happy with certain things.

º º º

Ned had texted her, letting her know that he was going to talk to his teacher about a test that had been incorrectly graded and that Peter had gotten in trouble. She worried briefly about the boy, as he seemed to be getting himself into trouble recently, but simply pocketed her phone and made her way to the paintings, wanting to grab the confessions before they piled up.

Just as she put away her ziplock bag, she heard footsteps approaching, and she broke out into a cold sweat, her nerves singing as she adjusted her backpack, pretending to stare at her own paintings; she still hadn't given Liz hers, and she didn't feel comfortable putting it up.