Peter's Godfather

Ch4

(TW)

Fall 2016

"...And a seven paragraph essay on Thomas Malthus and his affects."

Peter grimaces and locks eyes with Ned, who looks desolate, like the rest of the class. 

The bell sounds out- dong, dong, dong! and the kids scurry to escape Mr. Preston's room.

"Hey, Peter," Ned says, "wanna come over later and start another Lego set? Or watch some Netflix?"

"Sure! I'll bring the snacks."

"Great. You turning here for study hall?"

"Meet you there. Gotta pee."

"Meet you there."

Peter ducks out of the flow of students and locates an empty men's room. The school he goes to is huge, and even after a year or so here, it's still a maze to him.

As he is washing his hands, all of a sudden, an alarm comes over the PA. A fire alarm. Panic courses through Peter. He'd never been in an emergency like this before. What should he do? What-

Rumble, rumble, rumble. The ceiling of the restroom makes pounding noises like footsteps on the next floor up running. Evacuate, Peter thinks. He wrings his hands, nervous, and shockingly finds they are steady. He inches towards the door and presses his palm against the metal handle. It's warm. 

Peter tries to wrack his brain for guiding facts. Something about a scale- if it's this hot, run out, if it's this hot, stay inside. How hot was too hot to leave?

Peter realizes his hand has been resting on the handle for a good 15 seconds, so he jerks it back. There's a light burn on his palm. The teen deduces since the heat was on his skin for so long without him registering it, it's okay enough to try and leave the bathroom; then hopefully the building.

He yanks the door open and steps out.

Focus, clear your mind, figure this out, is Peter's first thought, but it quickly falls victim to the chaos of his mind. How can he think straight? He's surrounded by fire. Literally surrounded, inside the fire. All Peter can see is red. His broiling eyes water and he attempts to cover his nose and mouth with his fist. Starting with his head, then his stomach, then his ankles, he feels the burning and screams. Why hasn't the fire just gone away yet? Where does the field of it end?

Peter harnesses the little energy he has left and pushes through the flames. Moments later, he's into clean air, but he takes off down the hall of his school, not even looking back to see how much fire he just ran through, afraid it's chasing him.

At the principal's office, the closest room he could find anybody occupying that was fire-free, Peter drops to his hands and knees and yells for help. The secretary comes out of the back and rushes to Peter, phone in hand.

"Peter! Thank God! The fire is being extinguished, and I called 911." She reaches out to help him up, but he bats her away; he feels like he would crumble at any touch to his scalding, burned skin.

"Thanks," he chokes out. "May."

"I'm sorry Peter, your aunt didn't pick up, so I called the other number on your emergency contact list, your godfather, okay?"

That can't happen. May doesn't want Peter to know this man. Peter can't know.

"Wait! No-"

The dialer clicked. "Hello? Tony Stark speaking."

I bet y'all were 100% predicting what happened in the ending easy, but oh well haha. I have some ideas of what I'm going to do with this story next, but nothing's set in stone, so if any readers have things they'd like to see written in the future of this book, shout em out, it'd be much appreciated.

Thank you sooo much for reading! As always, if you just wanna talk about how your day is going or anything, feel free to reach out! Have a great day/night!

Bye :)