I thought that chapter of my life was long behind me, but life had other plans and threw a few rather unexpected changes my way.
Still, I couldn’t exactly complain.
Looking back, I could confidently say that my school years had been the calmest and most stable period of my life.
Not that I had thought so while I was actually attending school.
School buses turned out to be pretty convenient, though.
You showed up at the stop and got a free ride to go learn something.
At private schools, they could even stop directly in front of every student’s house, but that wasn’t the case here.
I arrived among the last students, when most of the others were already seated and the bus was preparing to leave.
As I walked down the aisle, I absentmindedly returned the greetings and jokes thrown my way.
“Look who finally decided to grace us with his presence.”
I still had to get used to my new name.
Right now, being called “Sam” gave me a strange sense of dissonance.
It was my name, but at the same time, it wasn’t.
I spotted a couple of empty seats toward the back and took one.
That was when I witnessed a rather unpleasant scene.
At the very last moment, a breathless Penelope Parker rushed onto the bus.
Yes, this world’s version of the famous red-and-blue hero was in my class.
She wasn’t a hero yet, though.
At least, there was nothing about her activities online.
What was happening on the bus, however, looked remarkably similar to a scene from one of the Tobey Maguire movies.
A group of bullies was refusing to let the poor girl take a seat while throwing nasty comments her way.
Strangely enough, Thompson wasn’t on the bus.
The queen of the local school thugs arrived at school in her ridiculously expensive convertible.
Perhaps her lackeys had decided to take matters into their own hands.
I looked at Parker and couldn’t understand what their problem was.
She seemed like a perfectly nice girl.
Her face was pleasant, even pretty.
Her clothes weren’t particularly expensive, but they were clean and neat.
Then again, what was I thinking?
The reason didn’t really matter.
Bullies didn’t need one.
A sweater that wasn’t fashionable enough, or wearing glasses, could apparently be considered a perfectly valid reason for harassment.
Speaking of glasses, she wasn’t wearing them anymore.
And overall, she looked considerably slimmer and more toned than Sam remembered.
Could that mean the famous field trip had already happened and Parker had been bitten by a spider?
Most likely.
Too bad.
Getting spider powers myself would have been pretty tempting.
In any case, I had no desire to get involved in the circus unfolding around me.
“Parker, over here.”
As soon as she came closer, I gestured toward the empty seat beside me.
“Thanks.”
Penelope gave me a hesitant smile and sat down.
She was clearly uncomfortable, and I understood why.
Being bullied was awful enough.
Being humiliated in front of someone you liked was even worse.
Though, apparently, her definition of someone she liked was different from mine.
I was interested in talking to a future superhero, but before I could figure out the best way to start a conversation, she spoke first.
“Listen…”
“Yeah?”
I tried to smile and sound friendly.
She was obviously nervous.
“Has Gabriella contacted you?”
Yes, that was an interesting little fact from our boy’s biography.
Considering Sam’s attitude toward life, it would have been surprising if he hadn’t taken an interest in the heir to Oscorp.
And, I had to admit, his strategy had worked brilliantly.
Just like guys in my old world, girls in this one didn’t particularly enjoy being treated like walking wallets.
Many of them had simply accepted that this was how things worked, but that didn’t mean they didn’t want something more genuine.
Sam had taken advantage of that.
He played the card of pure, sincere love.
He didn’t ask for expensive gifts.
He didn’t hint about dinner at some luxurious restaurant.
Instead, he constantly made it clear that he was interested in Gabriella herself, not her money.
Such a simple strategy had worked amazingly well.
Before long, Osborn herself had been ready to shower her boyfriend with money.
The ridiculously expensive smartphone in my pocket was one of her gifts.
Unfortunately, their relationship wasn’t destined to last.
Before long, Gabriella had left for Europe to continue her education there.
I suspected it had less to do with studying and more to do with the Osborn family’s hereditary illness.
Of course, I could have been wrong.
I didn’t remember the family’s history particularly well.
Oh, I really hoped Mr. White’s romantic adventures wouldn’t come back to bite me.
The last thing I needed was a yandere girl on a glider.
As for Parker, she had been Gabriella’s best friend, but Sam hadn’t really interacted with her.
He had never joined in when others bullied her, but she wasn’t rich enough to attract his positive attention either.
Still, he had always treated her with the basic courtesy she deserved.
He firmly believed that if you wanted a wealthy girl to like you, you should at least be somewhat nice to her poorer friend.
Apparently, that obvious bit of common sense was beyond many of the local boys.
It only made Sam look even better in Osborn’s eyes.
After her friend left, Penny had tried to stay in contact with Sam.
There were several problems, though.
First, after Gabriella’s departure, Sam had completely lost the motivation to attend school.
Second, he simply wasn’t interested in Penny.
He never rejected her outright, but he remained rather indifferent.
And third, Parker wasn’t exactly good at socializing.
As long as her friend was around, she could somehow keep herself together.
But whenever she was alone with White, she completely fell apart.
Sometimes she couldn’t string two words together.
Other times, she started rambling about something completely incoherent.
I suspected she had more than a little affection for Sam.
Fortunately, in this world, having feelings for your friend’s boyfriend wasn’t considered shameful or problematic.
Quite the opposite.
Girls often joined forces and looked for a man together.
“No. She hasn’t said a word to me since she left. What about you?”
Parker simply shook her head sadly.
She clearly missed her friend.
She didn’t have any other friends besides Gabriella, so it wasn’t surprising that she felt lonely.
“Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”
I asked mostly to distract her from her gloomy thoughts rather than because I was genuinely interested.
“Not really… Oh! You missed the field trip!”
Penny seemed either happy that I had finally started talking to her, or even more nervous because of it.
Either way, she immediately launched into a rushed, disjointed explanation of the field trip.
I could barely keep up with her train of thought, but I had to admit that she looked pretty cute while doing it.
Why had Sam ever turned his nose up at her?
She was adorable.
Aside from that, I picked up something rather important.
So the field trip had happened after all.
Goodbye, little spider that grants awesome powers.
We never knew each other, but I’ll miss you.
We reached the school like that.
By the end of the ride, Penny had finally managed to calm down, and we were able to have a normal conversation.
As for the school itself?
It was a school.
There were plenty of little differences compared to what I was used to in Russia, but the basic idea remained the same.
Sit down and absorb knowledge.
The only truly surprising thing was how completely indifferent the teachers were toward Sam’s attendance.
The leniency shown toward men and their behavior in this world never stopped amazing me.
Penny
The morning had started horribly.
Those bitches had decided to start picking on her right there on the bus, and worse, they had done it in front of Sam.
Was it her fate to look as pathetic as possible in his eyes every single time he decided to show up at school?
Still, things hadn’t gone completely wrong.
He had offered her a seat beside him, and they had even managed to talk.
At first, she had gotten nervous again and started rambling, but eventually she managed to calm herself down and speak normally.
Sam had looked like he was genuinely enjoying their conversation.
That gave her a little confidence.
Sam White had been her crush for a long time.
Ever since Gabriella had introduced them, actually.
He was so different from the other boys.
The others didn’t even try to hide their materialistic intentions.
Some of the particularly shameless and arrogant ones would practically give Osborn permission to shower them with money and gifts.
Of course, they didn’t say it quite that bluntly, but that was essentially what they meant.
There was nothing wrong with a girl supporting her boyfriend or buying him gifts.
But how could anyone look at a person and see nothing but a thick stack of banknotes?
Sam was completely different.
Penny still remembered Gabriella telling her, eyes shining with excitement, how Sam had suggested taking a walk through the central park instead of asking her out to some ridiculously expensive restaurant.
He wasn’t materialistic.
He was always polite.
And on top of that, he could easily be considered the most handsome boy in their class, if not the entire school.
How could anyone not fall for him?
She had confessed her feelings to Gabriella, and her wonderful friend had promised to try to bring her and Sam together.
But she hadn’t gotten the chance.
Gabriella’s departure to Europe had come out of nowhere.
Osborn had left without properly explaining anything, while Sam seemed to withdraw into himself and almost stopped coming to school.
Penny’s terrible social skills didn’t help.
On the rare occasions when he did show up for class, she could never seem to talk to him without making a fool of herself.
Then came the field trip.
The spider bite had initially seemed insignificant.
Then came the terrible hunger that drove her to empty the refrigerator.
And when she woke up, she was different.
At first, she was confused.
Why did everything look so blurry through her familiar glasses?
Only after taking them off did she realize that she no longer needed them.
Then she looked in the mirror and froze.
The skinny nerd she had always seen was gone.
In her place stood a slim, beautiful girl.
There hadn’t been any drastic changes.
Just a little more muscle, smoother and clearer skin, and a completely different overall appearance.
Her entire body seemed more perfect somehow.
She spent a long time admiring herself in the mirror.
Then she discovered her superpowers.
She could climb walls like a real spider.
And she had a strange sense that warned her whenever danger was near.
At first, she had absolutely no idea what to do with them.
Part of her wanted to make a costume and go out into the streets to help people, just like the others who had gained superpowers.
But another, much weaker part of her still clung to all the cruel things the bullies had said.
That part kept whispering that a loser like her could never become a hero.
Still, she decided to try.
Her costume was almost finished.
There was another matter she had to deal with, one that had nothing to do with superpowers.
It required her to fight against the same awful, cowardly version of herself.
She had to finally ask the boy she had been crushing on for so long out on a date.
She had promised herself that she would do it the next time he came to school.
And that day had finally arrived.
She spent every class sitting on edge.
She knew perfectly well that Sam was a kind person and wouldn’t make fun of her if he rejected her.
That didn’t stop her imagination from conjuring increasingly horrifying visions of the humiliation waiting for her.
The bell rang.
She rose from her seat like someone about to walk to the gallows.
She pushed down every cowardly thought telling her to retreat, took several deep breaths, and walked straight toward the object of her fear.
“Sam, can we talk?”
She swallowed.
“Alone, I mean.”
Somehow, she managed to say it calmly.
White raised his eyebrows in surprise, then smiled and nodded.
“Lead the way.”
As they left, they were accompanied by the whispers of classmates who hadn’t yet gone home.
Apparently, she’d been wrong to think she’d spoken calmly.
Her voice had been loud enough to ensure that the entire class knew Penelope Parker had invited Samuel White somewhere for a private conversation.
Could things have possibly started any worse?
She really hoped she wouldn’t accidentally stick her hand to his clothes with her powers and tear them, like she’d done to Aunt May’s favorite blouse.
This was so embarrassing.
They moved to a quiet corner.
Sam stood there with a kind smile, almost encouraging her to speak.
Finally, Penny gathered her courage.
“Sam, would you like to go somewhere with me?”
She immediately started stumbling over her words.
“I mean, together. Like a date! Well, I mean, I really like you, and I’ve liked you for a long time. So, I kind of…”
“Penny!”
Sam interrupted her before the stream of increasingly incoherent words could continue.
Failure.
That had to be the worst date invitation in history.
Who would want to go on a date with an idiot who couldn’t even put two sentences together?
“I have to be home by six to make dinner, but I’m free until then,” White said as casually as if nothing had happened.
Her mind went blank.
“Wait, does that mean…”
She couldn’t believe her ears.
“I’ll go with you, Penny. Let’s go on a date.”
It took every ounce of self-control she had not to throw a fist into the air and shout some ridiculous battle cry.
Take that, bullies.
Take that, cowardly little voice in my head.
Take that, world.
Penelope Parker was going on a date.