Chapter 9
Peter closes his locker door and sees Ned standing there. “Jesus, dude. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Peter asks and gives Ned a smile.
“Obviously,” Ned replies with a small smile as they start walking down the hall. “How are you feeling for the test?” Peter looks at Ned with confusion, and Ned looks back with surprise. “Don’t tell me you forgot Peter. Mr. Warner has been talking about it all week.”
“Ugh. I am totally gonna fail. I haven’t studied at all,” Peter groans, but he doesn’t actually feel any anxiety. He used to get so worked up for every little test and quiz, but now he just feels a slight twinge of annoyance at not having remembered.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine dude. You’ve been doing great in calc all term and it’s only one test,” Ned tries to comfort him. He knows how stressed Peter gets about school.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Peter responds, but he doesn’t really care if he does good or not. Luckily, calculus is their first class of the day, so Peter doesn’t have to think about the test for long. He gets it over with and is pretty sure he did well, but doesn’t feel any relief.
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They get their tests back on Monday and Peter gets 92%. He’s surprised he did so well considering he normally studies so hard. It makes him question why he always worked so hard. If he can get that good of a mark without studying at all (and without doing any of that week’s homework) then what was the point? Sure, if he had done all the work he might have gotten a higher grade, maybe like 98% or something, but who cares about 6%? Why was he working for so many hours every single day for 6%? Ned looks over and sees his mark, “That’s great Peter!”
“What’d you get?” Peter asks. Ned holds his paper up for Peter to see, a red 97% is written and circled in the top right corner.
“Awesome job dude!” Peter tries to reply cheerfully, tries to force his voice to sound how he doesn’t feel. He should be happy for Ned, he did great and they were always happy for each others’ accomplishments. He thinks he’s probably just an asshole who doesn’t care about his friends. Ned seems genuinely happy and relieved for Peter, why can’t he do the same for him? He at least hopes he fools Ned, even if he doesn’t actually feel happy for him the least he can do is not let him know how little he cares.
Peter walks home from school and leaves his textbooks in his locker. His backpack is lighter than ever but the weight on his shoulders stays the same.
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Peter learns that not every test goes as well as that first one when you don’t study. Or do any of the homework. Or listen in class and take good notes. But overall it isn’t going too terribly. He fails the occasional test, but quickly realizes that it doesn’t affect his mark that much. He doesn’t even think he’d care if it did. He stays with an A average in all of his classes and does good on most of the tests and assignments. He doesn’t know why he fails some and does good on others, he’s not changing any of his study habits. He feels like an idiot for caring for so long when he now knows none of it mattered. The only change that’s occurred from not doing any work is having more free time and not having his shoulders hurt as much from the weight of his backpack. The teachers don’t even notice any difference. He sleeps in some of his classes - well, he doesn’t actually ever fall asleep but he just can’t be bothered to hold his head up sometimes - and the bags under his eyes are steadily getting darker, and sometimes he doesn’t even open his backpack to get out a pencil and paper, but the teachers don’t notice. Or they don’t care. But Peter hopes it’s the former.
He kind of wants someone to notice. He wants someone to ask him what’s wrong. He wants a teacher to ask him to stay after class and talk to him about sleeping in class. He wants someone to ask. He wants someone to see. But he also knows that if anyone did ask what was wrong he wouldn’t say a thing. He’d make up some excuse about not getting a good night’s sleep or something. But still. I’d be nice to know someone cared.
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It’s December now, and it’s nearing the end of the term, which means final exams. Peter uses this excuse with Tony now more and more often. It feels like now that Peter doesn’t want to get together with him Tony suddenly wants to see Peter more. It’s probably just because they haven’t seen each other since Tony took him out to eat. They text pretty often, but Peter never knows what to say. When Tony asks what’s new with him or what fun things he’s been doing he has to stop and think really hard. He doesn’t do anything, so he mostly just lies to Tony. He feels bad for lying to him, but not bad enough to stop.
Peter's phone lights up and he sees that Tony's calling.
“Hey Tony,” Peter answers the phone.
“Hey Pete, how’s it going?”
“Oh, you know, super busy with school and all.”
“Yeah, I remember those days. How has patrolling been going?”
“Good, yeah. Last night I caught some guys trying to break into a corner store, so pretty normal lately.”
“Normal’s good, not normal usually ends with you coming to the tower and going straight to the medbay, so I’m glad to hear it,” Tony lightly chuckles. “How did that physics assignment go? I know you were worried about getting it done on time.”
“Yeah, I finished it the night before. I haven’t got the mark back yet but I think I did pretty good, well hopefully.”
“I’m sure you did great, don’t worry about it, you always do amazing.”
Peter doesn’t mention that he failed the physics assignment before this one, he doesn’t want Tony to know. Tony could probably check his grades if he wanted to, but he hopes he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to disappoint him.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right,” he replies instead.
"Peter, dinner's ready," May calls from the kitchen. Peter's relieved he doesn't have to talk to Tony anymore, he never knows what to say, but also disappointed that he has to hang up.
"Sorry Tony, dinners ready, I gotta go."
"Alright, I'll talk to you later kid," Tony replies.
"Talk to you later." Peter hangs up the phone before leaving his room. He misses the comforting sound of Tony's voice already.