After he emails Ned, Peter falls asleep again. It's a long sleep, but restless, and when Peter blinks back to consciousness sometime in the late afternoon, it takes him a second to orient himself. He stares at the ceiling for a full thirty seconds, expecting the white paint to turn into the broken slat of Felipe's bunk at any moment.
But the white remains. So the next thing Peter does is check his phone.
He expects to see a reply from Ned. He does not expect to see seventeen replies, the first of which is OH MY GOD!!!!!, several of which are just completely incoherent, and the last of which says, I am outside.
Outside? Peter stares at the word for a long time, wondering if it's some sort of typo. Outside of what?
This is when he realizes there are voices coming from the living room.
Peter looks up. The bedroom door is half-open, allowing the voices to drift through. One of them, though muffled, he recognizes as Skip's. And the other... Peter practically trips over himself in his haste to get out of bed.
In the living room, two figures are sitting on the couch, facing away from the hallway. Even sitting down, Skip towers over the second figure, which has black hair and round shoulders and is bouncing slightly as it says something to Skip that Peter can't quite hear.
"Ned?" Ned and Skip turn to face him.
Peter feels a surge of happiness, elation, disbelief — that ' s Ned, his Ned, sitting in the living room of the apartment Peter now calls home when just hours ago Peter was certain he would never see him again. Peter starts forward as Ned leaps to his feet, then—
Freezes. Just as suddenly as the happiness rose, it sloughs away in a cold front of dread, so powerful it takes Peter a disorienting moment to understand it, and even then he's not sure he does understand—isn't he supposed to be happy to see his best friend?
But he's not. He's… the only word for what he's feeling is terrified. Peter is a curse, a taboo, and while he can accept that for himself, can even live with it, especially when he can use it to help the people around him, he never, never, never wants Ned to get caught up in the terrible whirlwind of bad fortune that is his life.
Ned, catching Peter ' s expression, halts midway across the distance between them.
"What are you doing here?" says Peter.
Ned's face falls. Peter has never seen anyone look so disappointed, but he can't move, can't summon anything other than an almost irrepressible desire to make Ned leave. It ' s irrational, inexplicable: Skip has been nothing but nice to him since he arrived. But the animal part of Peter is screaming at him to get Ned out, get him away, the same way it screamed at him to take the food and run this morning.
Skip gets to his feet slowly.
"It's okay, Peter," he says. "Ned and I were just getting acquainted." Swallowing, Peter turns to Skip.
"I didn't give him your address," he says. " I don ' t even know your address."
"I found it myself," says Ned. "I basically just Googled all the Westcotts in Midtown, it wasn't even like, hard. Peter, I thought—"
"It's not Ned's fault," says Peter. "I just—I was telling him I had a new —a new place to stay, I didn't think he would actually show up, I know I' m not supposed to — please don ' t blame him. It's my bad."
" Woah, woah, woah, " says Skip, holding up his hands, frowning. "Peter, you're not in trouble. You're allowed to have friends over."
The worry doesn't disappear, but it does go stagnant.
"I am?" Skip laughs. It's a little awkward, but not unkind.
"Yeah. I told you this morning, I want you to feel at home here. Granted, I'd normally appreciate some warning" —he glances at Ned, and once again something foreign and absurd flares in the back of Peter's mind: the instinct to jump in front of his friend— "but Ned here seems like an okay cookie. And I can understand why he's eager, it sounds like you two haven't seen each other in a while."
Peter swallows and nods.
"Come sit down," Skip says. "Ned was just about to tell me some exciting news."
Dumbly, Peter follows Ned back to the couch. Sits beside him and can hardly believe he's real, even when their sides are pressed together. While Skip takes the armchair across from them, Ned mouths, Holy shit, dude, and gestures at the apartment, wide-eyed.
I know, Peter mouths back.
Skip waits until he has their attention to speak.
"So," he says, "Ned was just telling me you used to go to Midtown. That' s very impressive, Peter. It's not in the file they gave me." Peter gulps, shrugs. The edge hasn't quite faded—he still feels tense, like he's waiting for a blow to fall. But Skip is still smiling, so he says,
"Yeah, um. I only did seventh grade though, before—before I moved."
"Peter was the smartest kid there," says Ned. "He had a scholarship and everything." "Ned, you don't have to—"
" And I know he missed eighth grade," Ned plows on, "but the new semester just started a week ago and I talked to Principal Morita today and he said that if Peter can still test into all the grade-level classes he'd be willing to consider letting him do late registration because of the circumstances and whatever, and Peter can definitely test into all the classes because, like I said, he was the smartest kid in school. And no offense, Mr. Westcott, but I think it would be super uncool of you if you didn't at least, like, consider it. Because really, is there anything worse than um, unrecognized potential? And I know it's kind of expensive, but I can get Peter a transit pass and if he signs up for the same classes as me we can share books, and—"
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