Chapter Text
“Hi…hello..umm.hello!”
“What!”
“Umm…hi,hey,hello im penny…i mean penelope,penelope parker”
“And?”
“Im here to pick up my schedule”
The receptionist sighed and started looking through a stack of papers and probably some kind of forms.
She was wearing a pair of oval reading glasses which had a string tied to the end of their temple tips. The burgundy glasses sat at the top of her nose and her short graying hair was neatly tucked into a clawclip. She wore a somewhat grandma style cardigan and had something that looked like a floral shirt underneath.
I'm going to be here for a while,won't I?
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After waiting for over twenty minutes she managed to pull up a small paper with my name on top and a time schedule under it. It was a little crumbled but it was readable.
I signed up for AP physics, science and biology. And I was happy that it was possible to sign up for more than one class, last time I hadn't had that chance so I'm glad it was possible.
This is a new school, new people.
and this was good, she doesn't have any people here that know her past, no supposed friends that are going to leave again, here, she was going to be just the new girl not the girl with dead parents, or the orphan girl just the new girl and she is going to like it that way.
Really,
this was good, she was good,
No really, I'm happy that i get to go here. The application wasn't the easiest to fill in but it got her a scholarship to go here.
She was startled out of her thoughts by the older woman sitting in front of her “go sit there”, the lady pointed to the three chairs in the corner “somebody is going to come get you”, “oh,ok,thanks”.
I quickly sat down and put my bag in front of me. She hoped this one is going to last longer or Aunt May is probably not going to be happy with her,but look, it wasn't even my fault! that jerk was practically asking for it with the way he touched me, and god forbid a girl has to use her old bag for self defence and if a broken backpack loop has to go with it so be it, but expel her for protecting herself against creeps ,really?
Anyway, enough of self pity. Finally a moment of peace so were doing this
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Hi, my name is penelope parker or penny to those who know me and these past fifteen years of my life were interesting for some reason wich shouldn't exist bet here we are, and a few things happened so lets take it from the start
I was born to Mary and Richard Parker in New York city.
For over half of my childhood they were gone for some job that they didn't want to tell me about. At first I thought they were doing something illegal like selling organs but I knew it had to pay well if nobody was asking about it.
I'm pretty sure I asked what they actually do at least a million times and their answer was always the same "maybe we'll tell you when you are older, go play penny” and then they smiled with a sad expression on their face. I think they knew that was never going to happen, that there was never going to be an older me and them in the same room.
Because of this I spent a lot of time with my grandparents.
I was with them mostly during summer, spring and winter breaks. We would go visit the old neighbor cat lady who always gave me chocolate, and go on walks outside or to the beach and play cards but their English was not very good so they spoke mostly russian.
i picked up some sentences but only talking, i never knew how to write in cirilic alphabet it was too confusing for me. It was kind of funny, you could tell me to solve highschool maths but i couldnt write solnyshko in the Russian alphabet and I lost it with time so it's not much use either.
But good things only ever last a few years, at least for me and my grandparents died of old age and my parents followed shortly.
What a wonderful life, don't you think?
So, i went to live with uncle ben and aunt may they were recently married so it took me a while to warm up to may but it wasn't hard, she was always kind to me, patient with me and never pushed me when i was closed off after the death of my family and I'll be grateful for that for the rest of my life,probably.
My school life wasn't going much, this one kid kept making fun of me for my old clothes and my unkept hair but I made a friend in the middle of it.
His name was harry osborn
I knew Harry only for a little while, before his dad pulled him out of school. He was quiet and nice to talk with.
He told me about his dad, and how he didn't want to tell him anything about his mom, that she supposedly died right after his birth, and that his dad blames it on him, and that he is practically hiding all day in his locked office. His dad was Norman Osborn, the founder of Oscorp industries. He used to tell me about how he hated having a public figure as a parent and about all the formal dinners he had to attend. Apparently that was what was expected of him.
My parents didn't like him much, but my grandparents practically adopted him and claimed him as their grandson in pretty much everything but blood after one summer after fifth grade.
It was the best summer of my life, but it was also the last one that we saw each other and it was time for middle school after all, and i guess his dad thought that it was going to be better for him if he was going to be homeschooled, so we had to say goodbye i knew it was coming eventually but I didn't think it was going to be so soon.
So we said goodbye and we both cried and it was one of the only times I wasn't embarrassed by it. It had been a good reason to cry.
The next two years were one of the worst of my life. My parents were less and less home so I knew something was wrong, and my family was more and more worried, especially uncle Ben and soon after summer my parents died. They passed in a plane crash on the way home from some conference that was somewhere in Italy at the start of the summer and unfortunately they decided to spend a few months there as I said earlier my grandparents followed the next summer, the one after sixth grade I spent with Ben and May.
I hadn't known may before then very well but i got to know her more as time passed especially that summer we got talking … eventually
You see, it took me some time to adjust to living with them as one would think after losing your parents. I was grieving and was closed off from practically anyone, even the therapist I had one or two sessions with because we could afford more after all, life in New York exactly wasn't cheap.
Aunt May was a part time nurse who took on extra shifts when she could and volunteered in a Holmes shelter. I could tell it was her thing and that she really loved helping other people which was sweet.
On the other hand uncle ben was working as a detective in the new york police department. And he taught me a lot of things.
we would go together to the shooting range and he would tell me how to actually hold a gun so i don't accidentally hurt myself in the process of shooting a bullet, and he would teach me self defence, he always made sure i had a pepper spray and a pocket knife on me so if i was kidnapped by some random skinny guy in an alleyway he made sure that he doesn't stand a chance against me and my destructive punch.
Okay, maybe I'm being a little dramatic, but it was really useful when Jake. m. was picking on me and the week suspension was worth it and it got icecream on the way home with a week worth of watching movies.
Back to the first summer with my aunt and uncle I was in kind of a depressing state. I still have bad days now and then but it's not that often, at least it wasn't in the past two years.
I still remember the night I saw my grandparents last, alive at least.
It was a late night in August. We visited them like every other day but this time they were smiling. It was like they knew what was coming and had peace with it which should have been my first real sign that something was wrong because Babushka and Dedushka never smiled .
we played scrabble at least Dedushka did with me. Ben and Babushka were in the kitchen because she was cooking and had the energy to stand, which was unusual at the time.
That was the second warning sign.
By the end of our visit there was more and more and it snowballed from a small ball you could hit someone with, to one that could easily kill you if you laid underneath it.
It was a huge fucking snowball.
And then when we were ready to leave they hugged us like they were seeing us for the last time which I p knew they probably did but I wasn't ready to admit it.
Later that night, around two am in the morning we got a call from the police on the shared apartment line. The only reason I heard it was that I was waiting for Aunt May and Uncle Ben to make it home after work, partially because I couldn't sleep, and partially because I had this weird feeling deep in my core that something was wrong.
And then I picked up the phone.
It was uncle Ben.
He said he planned to take one last call before he had to go home,the call that was made for grandparents by their neighbors for a check in.
After crying out all of my tears from the three unfortunate incidents I had no energy left for anything, let alone new school with new people, so I didn't try to make any friends as if I could after what happened with Harry.
I still saw him in the news, when his dad was announcing some sort of new internship program for high schoolers.
Most people, including me, thought it was because tony stark had made the same announcement a few weeks ago with his not so new, new image of the good guy and his persona skyrocketed after the chitauri invasion.
She personally didn't entirely agree with the men all the time, especially the sleeping around part, but who am i to judge women are pretty she gets that, but even though she didn't like him that much as a person, she quite admired his skill set in engineering, and over all science.
And that's another thing that she gets, science.
I loved science from the start of my life. Right from the moment that her parents bought her one of those science kits for kids where you could make a glow in the dark slime that dried out the next day and stank of chemicals, all she got from her birthday gifts were these kits and science and engineering books from scientists all over the world.
And because of this she was always passing school. It didn't matter if it was elementary,middle or highschool she always passed. But she started slipping up a little when she was friends with Harry. It was just a late assignment here and there, once or twice a year but it didn't affect her grade so it didn't matter, her teachers didn't mind, and she didn't either, or she did but not that much, and when Harry wasn't there anymore she got her grades up, and spent middle school afternoons in robotics club and band where she started playing the drums at school.
Honestly either wasn't her best subject but her middle school hadn't had a science or engineering club, so it was her best bet, and drums just sounded like a fun way to relieve her stress after dealing with so much loss in such a short time. And they had cheerleading or basketball but she hadn't been one for the sports and she didn't want to cheer for pre-pubescent, misogynistic, sexist boys that didn't know what a deodorant was. So robotics and band was it.
It was kind of fun. And she got better with the drums as the time went on and same with robotics. There was this one boy. I think his name was Neek, Nico, Nick, I don't know if it was some short name starting with n.
He was this filipino boy with fairly tan skin that looked like he spent weeks at summer camps, and he probably did. He had black straight hair that reached his shoulders and he mostly wore it in a bun or ponytail, and he had these very specific Hawaiian button up shirts with white t-shirts and star wars pants which convinced me to see and later fall in love with the movies but I would never tell him that.
He helped me a couple of times when I could not make my robot go in a straight line, and we weren't best friends but he was cool. And he was the only one that said he was sorry about my parents when it became known, but Jake also started making fun of him when he was defending me to him. We never talked on a deeper level than robotics but we kind of co-existed with each other and it was nice. But after middle school I was truly without friends.
I was going to public high school and sure it wasn't that bad but it gave me almost nothing. Most of the time I was calculating random equations on my math practice sheet or just doodling in my notebook and the same was in physics and science but I had to pay more attention in English, and PE wasn't the best, but it was fairly easy.
so when she submitted her application for midtown school of science and technology and got accepted for a full ride for the start of my sophomore school year, I was excited.
And then I got expelled for defending myself against creepy teachers who were supposed to help me get into a good school and when it was done they just expected you to give them what they wanted? Yeah no, of course I didn't let that slide.
So May and Ben took me for dinner in a chinese restaurant and bought me a new backpack a few blocks away, and because they didn't expect that I got to go for free to midtown and had a couple hundred dollars to spare. And it wasn't that they didn't think I wasn't smart, rather the opposite, but there are over hundred people that want that scholarship every year.
The rest of the school year and summer i spent working in a corner store couple blocks from our apartment i wanted to give it to aunt may and uncle Ben to help with rent and to thank them for the back pack and dinner but they wouldnt budge and said that its my money and that im supposed to spend on myself. And I wanted to spend it on things for school, but there wasn't much that i needed to spend it on so instead of being smart with my money i bought rollerblades.
Yes, you heard me right,roller blades.
The girl who famously couldn't do a mile run without sweating like her life dependent on it bought rollerblades.
And I just thought, new year new me, so, the last a few weeks i spent practising in skateparks and on the way to work and back and when it was the a few days before start of the new school year i could make it to and from work without even tripping. And it wasn't like I was flawless, but I could stop and jump over small things, so I thought that in a couple of months I would probably be able to do cooler things on them, and for the first time in a long time I was feeling quite happy.
and now?
Now I'm here. sitting and waiting for some random person to come give me a tour so I don't get lost. Speaking of some person, I was startled out of my thoughts by said random person standing in front of me. Completely frozen.
And then
I looked up.
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