I opened the door to me and May's apartment, bracing myself for the reprimanding I knew was going to come.
"May?" I began, "I'm home!"
I heard light footsteps coming from Aunt May's room. She walked out in joggers and a sweatshirt, hands on her hips, one eyebrow raised, worry lined in very curve of her face.
"Well, Peter, would you like to tell me where you've been all day since you left school? I suspect you've been with Ned, but usually you shoot me a text or something. I tried not to worry that much because you're not perfect, you forget things occasionally, I understand that. But because I am still your guardian, and more importantly, your family, I'm still going to check up on you. Is everything okay?" May ranted, out of breath and exasperated.
I am such an idiot. How could I forget to text Aunt May and tell her that I was with Kenzie? My heart dropped into my stomach, and a tingle of guilt raced up my spine. I felt tears creep into the corner of my eyes. But as I thought of my day, the tears dried up and a smile crept onto my face.
May tilted her head to the side slightly, looking me up and down. She cocked her head, and put her hands back up on her hips. "Okay, something is definitely up. Tell me everything. I know I'm old and wrinkly and lame, but friends come in all shapes and sizes you know?"
The pounding in my heart subsided a little bit, and I looked up at my aunt, grateful in every aspect for her. "May, I don't even know where to start. Today has been so amazing. I, I went down to New York City with this girl who I really, really like. Her name is McKenzie, but she goes by Kenzie. She's, she's, ah. There are no perfect words to describe her. She makes me so happy, May. I was such an idiot around her, but she didn't scowl at me, didn't groan or cringe when I looked at her— she actually seemed to like me a little bit. I mean, not like me like me, but she seemed okay with me, you know? I broke her backpack yesterday on accident, so we went to Target and she bought another backpack for herself. She let me come along with her, and she looked so beautiful, and she talked to me like I was a regular person. No other girl has acted like that towards me before. She didn't ask me to do her homework, and she said I wasn't an idiot. Even though I totally am an idiot. We talked and laughed and I just felt like I was on a different planet. May, she makes me so happy." I felt like I could talk forever, but I collapsed onto the couch and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to expend some of the energy and adrenaline that I felt.
I looked up at my aunt, a smile stuck on my face. She had her hands over her mouth, and I saw a glimpse of tears in the corner of her eyes. I smiled even wider, and my entire body felt weightless. She took her hands away from her mouth, and breathed, "Peter. I cannot tell you how happy seeing you this happy makes me. I have never seen you smile so much in your entire life. I can tell how much you like this girl. I am confused as to why I have never heard about her before, but I digress. I have now. I want to hear everything about your day, not a single detail left out. Go." May sat down next to me and gave me an intense look, searching back and forth between my eyes as if she could hear my thoughts.
I started from the beginning and told her everything. Well, almost everything. As I talked, I couldn't stop smiling. I told May about everything that happened, from the external side and the internal side of things. The more I talked about Kenzie, the happier I became. I was certain that at that moment, I was the happiest person on Earth. I was still having trouble grasping the fact that she hadn't hated me, and that she had actually complimented some things about me. And she said that we should go again. She wanted to be with me again. While I was explaining that to Aunt May, it made me want to scream in happiness.
I finished my story, right up to the point where I had walked up to our door. I was absolutely and completely out of breath and smiling like an idiot. Although I had said everything that came to my mind, I felt as if I could have talked about my day for years on end.
I kept returning in my brain to the fact that Spider-Man was her favorite superhero, and how she had fawned over him. I know it wasn't really me she was referring to, but I couldn't help but feel like she was talking about me. I couldn't tell May that, obviously, but on the inside, it made me happier than I could put into words. Remembering my idea from earlier that day, I smiled like an idiot imagining the outcome.
May was smiling really big, and she looked really proud of me. "Well, Peter. You sound like you have had quite the day. I am so happy for you! Make sure you keep me updated on this Kenzie girl, she sounds like a keeper. Try to get some sleep. If you're not able to, it's a weekend. You can sleep all day tomorrow if you want. I love you Peter." Aunt May concluded.
"She totally is. Night, May. Love you too." I replied, closing my eyes, pushing my hair out of my face and grinning widely.
I walked into my room, barely feeling the floor beneath my feet. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the biggest thing I didn't tell Aunt May. I took it out of the box briefly.
I twiddled the beautiful necklace between my fingers, the blue Sapphire for her birth month, September, practically glowing. It was more expensive than I cared to admit, but with the way she looked at it, I would have worked full time for ten years to buy it for her. It was so worth it. She was so worth it. I would have done anything to make her happy.
I knew I needed to put it somewhere special, somewhere it wouldn't get damaged or messed up in any way. I opened up a drawer in my desk, and took out a huge book and a bookmark. I had specially designed this bookmark to act as a key, with an invisible bar code etched on the bottom of it. I stuck it into the pages of the book, in a little hole about ten pages wide that had a code reader on the inside. I heard the click of the lock opening, and I opened up the book to find the secret safe where I kept all of my web fluid. I slipped the necklace back into the box and under all of my webbing. As I closed the book, I put it back into my lock-and-key drawer, and sat down at my desk.
I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't sit still, so I started to draw. I took out a pen and pencil, and sketched my favorite scenes from my day. Kenzie looking up at the huge Target building, Kenzie smiling at me as I explained some of the history of New York, Kenzie's eyes lighting up as she talked about Spider-Man. I sketched her. I had memorized a lot of details about her as I went along throughout the day, thanks to my newly advanced photographic memory that came with being Spider-Man. I pulled up a picture of her on my phone (it was from the school website, I'm not a creep), and used that as a reference to make sure I got every detail correct.
I looked around at my desk, now filled with pencilized sketches of my perfect day. Kenzie's face was portrayed in all of them, from all different angles and backgrounds. I was in some of them too, but that wasn't important.
Her stand-alone drawing sat in the middle of all of the rest. It was lit directly overhead by my desk lamp, shining the brightest out of the rest of all of my drawings, though those were brightly lit as well.
Realizing that I would probably seem really creepy if I had a bunch of hand-done sketches on my desk of a girl from school and someone saw it besides Aunt May, I folded them neatly and quickly stuffed them in an old shoebox in my closet. No one would look there, but that way I knew where they were if I ever wanted to look back on today and remember the details.
I looked at the alarm clock sitting on my desk. It read 4:08 a.m. I wasn't even angry with myself. Nothing could bring me down today.
I changed into my pajamas, and then collapsed on the bottom bunk of the bunk beds in my room. I had bunk beds because Ned was here most nights, because his parents were gone most of the time. Though I love the guy to death, I was glad to be alone tonight. I needed some time to relive the day without having to live in the real world for a while.
I'm not sure what time it was when I fell asleep, but I stayed awake for a long while, staring at the bunk above me, smiling the whole time. I finally drifted off into the best sleep I had had in a long time.
A/N: 7-11-18
Word count: 1666
Honestly, I should have just left the book here. No complications. No sadness. No plot twists. No heartbreak. Just happy endings, right?
Wrong.
Come on, people, I'm an author! I can't let my characters be happy for too long! My job is to make my characters and my readers miserable, right?
Anyways. On that note, you all are lovely and I'm grateful for each one of you. xoxoxo
~n.s.