Webs In Ink

I had watched Peter devour the entire meatloaf after he came out of the bathroom. It was almost disturbing watching him moan with every bite and quietly thank Aunt May for ‘making such good meatloaf’.

He had spent a worrying amount of time in the bathroom. He came out of there looking shaken up, but he seemed to have been since he got home. I even got to ask him about his skateboard that seemed to have gone through hell and back. He said someone broke it on the subway.

I tried to get him to take a shower after seeing how much sweat his shirt was drenched in. But I decided to leave him be when I realized he was simply in no condition to be showering.

I had woken up before him, so I ran downstairs to leave the empty plates of food and grab a bowl of cereal. When I came back, I started working on homework, waiting for him to wake up or for his alarm to go off.

What I hadn’t expected when the alarm went off was Peter jolting out of bed and smashing the alarm clock to bits. I sat on the floor completely stunned as he grumbled and shoved his face back into his pillow.

“Peter?” I asked carefully, hearing him grumble in reply. “What was that?” I saw his body huff right before he sat up and shuffled off to the bathroom. I watched him go peculiarly once I noticed the way his jeans weren’t in anyway buckled or zipped. His bright yellow boxers more than visible.

I took a deep breath and focused my attention back to the modernized version of Hamlet. Just when I started getting back into the reading, I heard the sound of spraying water coming from the bathroom. That was followed by the sound of more clattering.

I stared at the door with wide and confused eyes. It was even worse when I heard something as if it had been ripped off the door? “Peter?”

“Yeah?” I heard him call out, sounding almost frightened. Then I heard the corridor bathroom door open and saw Peter run into his room. He closed the door behind him, looking at me with scared eyes before he went to sit on his bed. He had his toothbrush in one hand and the knob to the sink in the other.

I stayed on my spot on the floor, frozen with concern as my best friend slowly developed a thousand yard stare. He would jolt every once in a while, moving his head at tiny sounds throughout the room. His head then whirled to the right, his face contorting into an uncomfortable look. Then, out of nowhere, he turned in the complete opposite direction as the AC turned on, jumping back and holding up his toothbrush defensively. I looked over to see the blinds barely moving.

“Peter?” I asked, slowly dragging out his name. He turned to look at me with the same wide eyes. “Are you okay?”

He only nodded and got up, stepping over some of my things to get to his computer. I moved it all out of the way as he stepped on a worksheet. I pursed my lips when I noticed how the paper didn’t seem to want to get off of Peter’s foot. He shook his foot repeatedly trying to get it off before I just pulled it off myself.

He pulled out his chair and sat in it uncomfortably. His shoulders were scrunched up as he hunched over the keyboard. I stood back and just let him frantically go onto Bing and look up ‘spider bites’.

“Are you sure you’re-”

“I was bit by a spider,” He cut me off. He put his hand on the back of his neck and pointed at the strange hole in the back of his neck. Then he continued on his searching and it all started to click together.

“That doesn’t look very good,” I relayed to him, stepping closer to him to get a better look at the supposed bite. I surveyed his rigid posture for a moment. “Can I touch it?”

He stopped typing momentarily before he nodded and continued. I sucked in a breath and touched the back of his neck. He flinched causing me to retract my hand. His skin felt warm which you could have guessed simply from looking at the red patch of skin.

“Does it look like any of these?” Peter asked quietly. I looked up at the computer screen and he started clicking through pictures of various spider bites. Some of them made me queasy just by looking at them. But none of them really looked like his.

“Mm-mm,” I hummed with disagreement. He huffed before he opened up a different window on Bing. He quickly typed in “Richard Parker spider’ before it became a jumbled mess. We both looked down to see how the keys had stuck to his fingers.

He pulled his fingers off the keyboard and with them came the keys. He looked at his hands with confusion written all over his face. Just when I was going to ask him about it, my phone rang. It was a 415 number. San Francisco.

“I’m gonna take this,” I said, slowly starting to step out of the room. “You’re explaining when I come back,” I point to his hands and laptop.

“Dad?”, I said tentatively into the phone, cautious of it just being a potential spam call.

“Hey, yeah, it's me,” I heard my dad's voice through the phone.

“Hi, you didn't call me yesterday,” I informed him as if he didn't know already.

“Yeah, I got caught up but I'm all good now.” He said tiredly. I cleared my throat and hummed for him to continue. “You know Carlton Drake, right?”

“Yeah? The Life Foundation guy, right?” I asked for confirmation. He hummed, “What about him?”

“I have sources that told me he is a terrible man,” He told me. I thought for a moment, causing a silence between us. “This isn’t some hunch either, AJ, this is real. I have evidence and it is very dangerous for me to keep going without telling you.”

“I thought you didn’t like telling me this stuff so I wasn’t someone the police could get answers out of?” I asked, crossing my arms.

“I know you're smart enough to dodge their questions,” He said before he sighed. “You've been doing it to me since you were 15.”

I laughed quietly, “Yeah… So you said Carlton Drake? What did he do?”

“He’s been sending air crafts into space, but they haven’t been authorized by the government. That’s why the network originally sent me out here,” He explained. I hummed for him to continue. “I found out he was also doing testing on people that ended in terrible lawsuits.”

“They… died?” I asked worriedly. “Dad, what are you getting yourself into?”

“No, I’m okay, there’s nothing he can do to you,” He told me, trying to be reassuring.

“That is not what I’m worried about here,” I sad incredulously. He sighed on the other side.

“Before you get mad at me, I need you to know I’m interviewing him tomorrow,” He explained. “I’m going to-”

“Wait, who’s your source?” I cut him off with the question. When he didn’t respond, I grew more curious. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s your source?” I asked more intently. I was met with silence again. “Okay, don’t tell me. But if it’s too dangerous for you to tell me, be careful.”

“I will be. And I want to call you everyday, just to make sure you’re alright,” My dad said with finality.

I nodded as I spoke, “Okay. Off of Anne's phone, or yours?”

“I don't know, baby,” I heard him sigh. “Just answer us when we call.”

“Okay.”

Peter insisted that we went out to get some sort of food after I had come back from my phone call with my dad. He was less disheveled and more coherent. He had even made the effort to get dressed. So we went out for bagels.

“You wanna tell me what happened this morning?” I asked him when I realized he wasn't going to say anything. We had been walking in an unsettling silence for almost ten minutes now.

He didn’t say anything back. I looked at him inquisitively, waiting for him to say something. Then I watched him open his mouth to say something. He did that a few times before shaking his head. I pursed my lips and nodded.

“Okay, well, I talked to my dad. He told me how he’s staying with Anne in San Francisco,” I told him, trying to be as vague as possible. He looked at me and smiled.

“Isn’t that the girl he liked?” He asked me, smiling. I found myself smiling as well. My dad couldn’t stop talking about her after he met her. He, by chance, met her when he had to investigate someone she was representing. After that, he did everything he could to ‘coincidentally’ run into her again. She finally let him take her on a date, but two weeks after, she moved to San Francisco. My dad said she was ‘the one who got away’.

“Yep,” I hummed. Shortly after, we fell back into the silence. This time, it was more tense.

But Peter broke the silence again. “Did he tell you what was going on?” He asked, causing me to nod slowly. “What did he say?”

I thought about how to answer. Peter was refusing to tell me what was wrong with him. It might be petty and childish, but the difference between me and him was that my thing was dangerous. Even just knowing what is happening could effect him as a consequence. If I told him, he could get hurt. And it wasn’t just something we could talk about. Let alone talk about on the way to get bagels.

“Well...not really. He told me the same thing as always…‘Nothings wrong, Lina’ and ‘wait until the story come out’,” I sighed, kicking a little pebble on the sidewalk. “But I don’t know…somethings still off with him.”

Peter hummed pensively. I looked over at the sound of his shoes shuffling against the sidewalk, he was also kicking little sticks and pebbles. His hands were in his pockets. He had also put on his dads glasses. He looked good. Too good. Unfairly good.

“But what’s up with you?” I asked, nudging him with my shoulder lightly. I expected him to stumble like he usually did, but he didn’t move. It was like shoving a statue. “What the-”

“I was just freaking out over the spider bite,” Peter sighed. “I think I’ll be fine.”

I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously, “You smashed your alarm… into dust.” We reached a cross walk and I kept my eyes on him. His eyes darted to me before looking away to the pedestrian signal. 

Peter scratches his head, shrugging. “It was just… loud.” I opened my mouth to say something but Peter continued walking towards the vendors on the side of the street.  “What kind of bagel do you want?”

I let out a slow breath and bit my lip to try to calm down. “Everything bagel and cream cheese,” I told him, looking over the menu at the strange bagel combinations. We were standing behind two other people in line.

I felt Peter’s eyes on me and I looked at him blankly. I raised my eyebrows as to ask him what was wrong. “Your order is so basic.” I scoffed in disbelief.

“Okay, what are you gonna get? Hmm?” I asked, completely offended by his claim. “A plain bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon? Maybe a hint of lemon squeezed over it?”

His expression became sheepish. My jaw dropped as I slowly realized I was right. “I was actually gonna get a poppy seed-”

“Oh, shut up!” I laughed, snorting when he sighed.

We took a step closer as there was now only one more person in front of us. “Can we stop by Mooney’s before we get back?”

“Sure, why?”

“I just want to by Dr. Conners’ book on cross-species genetics,” He explained. “I think that’s what those pages in my dads briefcase were about.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said right as we stepped up to order.

“I want to visit Dr. Conners,” Peter said, looking at the back of Dr. Conners’ book. I looked out the window to him. He thought it would have been better to sit out on the roof while he went through his dads work.

“Today?” I asked him strangely. I took the last bite of my bagel, balling up the butchers paper. I tossed in the general direction of Peter’s trashcan from across the room and doing a mini celebration when it went in perfectly.

He hummed, “Yeah, I know it’s kinda weird but… I think I can ask him some questions.”

“About what?” I questioned, rolling myself closer to the window in his rolling chair.

“The equation. If he knew anything about it… My dad.”

I hummed as an idea came to me. “I can take you,” I offered, remembering the keys to my dads bike that were in my possession.

“He lives kinda far. I don’t want you walking back on your own.” He said, still not looking up from the book and sheets of paper.

“No, I meant on the bike,” I clarified. He looked up from his papers and to a tree in the distance. Then he turned to me and I raised my eyebrows for confirmation.

“Uhh…how long ago did you get your license?”