Quoth the Raven

After that particularly delightful conversation with Mr. Comstock wherein I was let off the hook for being attacked and defending myself like any rational person with Spider-Man powers would, I left the administrative offices and found myself in a mob. Much of the school was still on lunch break, and dozens of students were standing around the main hallway milling about and talking excitedly amongst themselves. They'd probably gathered for the show, ambulances and stretchers and all that.

"There was a fight upstairs in the back hall. Like six guys got sent to the hospital."
"Who started it?"
"I dunno, the ones I saw were all those gang dudes."

As I took a few more steps into the crowd a few faces began to turn toward me. Fingers pointed, voices hushed. Rumor spread through the masses like a ripple, and people yet again had a reason to single me out. Fantastic. I started cutting through the mob and heading toward the door when Amy wedged her way through to intersect with me.

"You're here," I said as she fell into step with me. A trail of "it was him?"s echoed behind us.
"I'm everywhere," she said with a grin. "Did you see the fight? And did you just come from the office?"
"I was the fight."

We'd broken free of the largest part of the crowd and ducked into one of the side halls by then.

"You mean you were in the fight? Ohmigod are you ok?" she looked me over, trying to find where I'd hidden the pints of blood I should have been leaking.

Am I ok? I considered that for a moment. A long moment.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Somehow I just put four kids in the hospital."

She looked in my eyes, trying to find which part of that made sense.

"I don't know," I said before she could say anything. "I physically ran into a bunch of those Mexican gang wannabe guys, I said some stupid stuff to them, they put me against the lockers and as the ringleader was about to cave my face in, I like freaked out and went allkung-fu on them and was about to clock Officer Rhodes in the face when I blacked out."

"That's... " Amy started, "... different. So you beat them all up?"
"Yes."
"All of them?"
"All of them. Broke a nose and collapsed a windpipe, I'm told; though I could swear I felt a wrist break and the guy I kneed in the back will probably have some coccyx fractures once they x-ray him."

I looked around, people in this hall were starting to look at me, too. I grabbed Amy's arm above the elbow and started walking toward the door to the student parking lot.

"Have you taken karate classes or something?" she asked in stride.
"No; and that's what Comstock asked me right before he told me I wasn't in any trouble and that they wouldn't even tell my paren... my mom."
"That seems unusual."

We stopped in front of the door. "Everything seems unusual now, and it doesn't seem to wanna stop. I'm done here, for now."
"Done with what?"
"Done with school, I'm not coming anymore. It was bad enough with all the 'his dad died' stuff, now people are all going to know that I uncharacteristically kick ass."
"You can't drop out, school's done forever in like two months!"
"I don't need to drop out. We need 22 credits to graduate and with all my A.P. English classes and those dummy computer classes I tested out of I've got 21 as of this semester. There's two months of school left and I just need to pass two of my classes. I can do that without trying, so I will."

She stood with her mouth open. I pushed the door open behind me with my foot and stepped backwards through it.

"I'll talk to you later," I said, grabbing the door for a moment as it swung shut. She just looked at me.

My cell phone buzzed as I was getting into my car. I pulled it from my jacket pocket and flipped it open. Black-against-green letters spoke of a new text message from Amy:

"starbucks @ 3.30"

I sighed, flipped the phone shut and tossed it into the passenger seat. I looked up at my high school, hoping I'd never see it again, then drove off into my future.