VIII
I was sitting at the dining table quietly with Aunt May, waiting for Peter to get home. We had been waiting for him for the past hour and a half, and it was starting to get late. We had made plans to eat dinner together, start some routine, some sort of normalcy out of this past week that hadn’t felt so normal.
As it got later, I realized I should start heading home if I wanted to get home as night set. I slowly got up, “Um… I think I should head home, Aunt May…”
May looked at me, startled by the sudden sound of my voice. “Oh, honey, yes, you probably should,” She agreed, standing up with me. “Do you want to take some with you? For you and your dad?”
I smiled as politely as I could and nodded. I knew it came from a good place, but her tone of voice sounded so pitying. I’m not sure if my dad told her or if Peter did, but she found out about my dad losing his job. And I could see it in her eyes that she felt bad for us.
“I was wondering if you could talk to Peter,” May started as she came back to the dining table with two tupperware containers. “Just to make sure he’s okay. I feel like I haven’t seen much of him recently and I want him to know that he can at least talk to you.”
“Yeah, no, I can talk to him,” I nodded, watching her shovel my plate and Peter’s plate of food into the tupperware.
“Oh, I know you two probably already talk about everything,” May laughed as if it were foolish to think. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I hadn’t seen much of Peter either. We don’t really have classes together. And when we meet up at lunch, he’s quiet or just mentally preoccupied. “Well, here you go honey. Be careful on the subway.”
I watched my dad blankly, not noticing the slight frown on my face. He was sitting on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table with a beer in his hand. He mumbled something when I walked through the door but other than that, he hadn’t turned to look at me.
I walked to the kitchen, setting the tupperware containers down on the counter. “I have leftovers,” I told him blandly, biting the inside of my cheek.
“Oh, thank you,” He said, getting up from the couch. “How did it go? How, uh, how are May and Pete?”
I watched him go to the silverware draw and pull out a fork. I shrugged when he turned around, “Dunno… Peter forgot and I left before he got there.”
My dad furrowed his eyebrows at me as he opened the container full of food and leaned on the counter. He almost opened his mouth to speak again, but I began walking down the hall to my room.
“Provecho,” I said, stepping into my room and tiredly closing the door behind me. I plopped down onto my bed and stared up at the ceiling as I reached for my shoelaces and pulled them loose. I kicked off my shoes and sighed.
Peter really hadn’t made an effort to talk to me since my dad got back from San Francisco. I thought the first few days were simply because he was taking the space he said he needed. But then the time since we had a full conversation started to grow. The only times he’s called, texted, or even started a conversation with me face to face was when he asked strange questions:
‘Do you know any alternatives for spandex? It’s for…physics.’
‘I wanted to fix an old sweater, do you think I could borrow your sewing kit?’
‘Can I borrow your dads old police scanner, it’s for the robotics project…’
‘You seen that guy thats been swinging around on buildings? He seems kinda cool, huh?’
The more I thought about it, the more I started making connections. I got up and walked to get my laptop off my desk. I opened it and got onto the other side of my bed, opening a new tab. I stared at it idly for a second before typing in any key words about the climbing guy: NYC crime guy
The top link being one that lead to the NYPD. Close… I guess.
Crime fighting swinging guy nyc
That gave me something. A video of the one everyone has been talking about swinging away form a police station. I paused the video, zooming in as much as I could. I looked at the pixelated image and sighed, clicking on a different video of the same incident to find another angle.
I looked closely at another angle, noticing a black smudge on the shoe. I leaned in as well as zoomed, only to see more undefining pixels. I tsked and scrolled farther down the recommended column, trying to find an angle that looked closer. Then I found one.
The video was short, 5 seconds if you include the last two with the person freaking out at the end. But the best part was that it was filmed from inside an apartment of the building he was swinging onto. So I could see everything on his person.
I tried to get a closer look at the shoe is saw from the other angle before I realized the other one was in sight. And it had a far more recognizable mark on it. There was a sunflower on the top of rubber toe and across the side of the sole was a slightly smudged sentence.
‘AJ BROCKS PHOTOGRAPH DUDE :)’
“What’s branzino?” Peter asked me when I caught up with him in the hallway. I looked at him strangely and saw how concerned he was with the idea of a fish.
“Um… It’s like sea bass,” I told him. He nodded and thought for a moment more. “What happened to ‘Hello?’ ‘How are you?’ ‘How was your-’ What the fuck?” I exclaimed noticing the bruise on his face.
“Hi.” He said quickly before moving on, “How do you eat branzino?”
I looked at him incredulously and snorted before I realized he was being serious. “Um, you, uh… It’s like how you would eat a mojarra.”
He nodded, finally seeming to understand. “Okay… I’m so glad your mom made us eat that as kids,” He said with a relieved laugh. I hummed awkwardly, trying to get a better look at his face and figure out where these questions were coming from. “Oh! Gwen invited me to dinner tonight. They’re having branzino.”
I felt a twang in my heart at his words. “Oh… I didn’t know you guys were to that point,” I said slowly as my eyes ran over his face, realizing it was worse the more I looked. He looked at me weird. “Ya know, where you’re inviting each other to dinner.”
“I don’t know,” Peter shrugged with a boyish grin on his face. Despite the butterflies this grin gave me, I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. And my mind couldn’t forget what I discovered the night before. “But, it’s a step, right?”
“Yeah, definitely…” I said quietly. “At least you’re not taking stalker pictures of her.” I joked, earning me a shove.
“Hey, Sam, have you seen Peter? We were supposed to meet up to do home work together and he’s usually here by the time I get here…” I said, standing awkwardly in front of our lockers. The darker skinned girl stopped and looked at me strangely, then checked the time on her watch.
“No… I saw him leave class right as the bell rang,” She said, readjusting the strap on her side bag. “Wait, I think I saw him walking out to the field with Gwen.”
“Oh…” I said, looking around in confused disappointment. “Um… Thanks…”
“Hey, I was actually gonna go off campus alone since Nicki isn’t here today,” Sam explained. “She’s sick, so I was wondering if you wanted to come with me.”
I looked around a bit, before nodding apprehensively. “Yeah, that sounds great.” She smiled at me and lead the way to the exit. “You said Nicole was sick. Is she okay?”
“Yeah, I was sick last week and I think I got her sick over the weekend,” Sam said, laughing nervously.
I gave her a sympathetic smile. “Well, I guess this was perfect timing.”