CHAPTER FIVE.
DAYS OF OUR LIVES

" Amelia couldn't stop looking. She didn't stop looking as long as he was in her eyesight. "

THE new semester had come with new challenges and Amelia found Chemistry to be one of them. As she stared at the board, chin in hand trying to understand the Bohr's atomic model Mr. Cobwell had started to teach them, she thought about Academic Decathalon. Her sister used to participate in them in her school back in D.C and when Amelia had learned about the team of Midtown upon arriving, she had signed herself up. Something to make her feel closer to her sister.

Chemistry had turned out to be one of her favorite subjects as she moved forward with her studies and she knew her sister would have been proud, because once upon a time Amelia had hated chemistry.

"Today we're talking about Danish physicist Niels Bohr . . . but trust me, there's nothing Bohr-ing . . . about his discoveries regarding quantum theory."

As she listened intently, she thought about what she was going to say to Monika. No doubt the three of them would fall in a familiar rhythm when they saw each other again but there were things that needed to be said. Monika and Amelia shared an apartment and on days after they had had a fight, the apartment would feel as if it was holding its breath. It was a waiting game to see who apologized first ─ it was Amelia, mostly. Today though, Amelia had been very alone. Monika had already left, a tacky yellow post-it saying Bye! stuck to the fridge.

Amelia shook her head as if to discard these thoughts and returned back to her notebook, continuing to jot down the lesson.

As expected, Gemma and Monika were waiting outside her class as soon as it got over. Monika and Amelia looked at each other, and Gemma came to the realization of the ongoing cold war. She stepped in. As the trio headed towards lunch, Gemma launched into a completely absurd story that seemed unreal ─ so much so that Monika asked if some PCP-crazed madman had told her this story. Gemma said no, just some guy from Staten Island on the ferry. The two girls laughed whole-heartedly at this, though it wasn't supposed to be funny.

This laugh, unbeknown to Amelia, had been heard by Peter who was now staring at her wistfully, chin in hand. Ned asked him where he had snuck away to yesterday with Amelia, and Peter answered in some gibberish. Ned said something along the lines of, "You're so screwed, Peter." MJ sitting at the end of the table mocked his infatuated expression and called him a wimp for not admitting his feeling to Amelia.

Peter defended, saying he didn't have feelings for Amelia only to perk up when her eyes met his across the hall. She gave him a beaming smile and waved and Peter waved back. He turned to his friends to find them with I Told You So expressions. He shook his head. No, he didn't have feelings for Amelia. He liked her as a person and potential friend.

AFTER the last buzzer of the day rang announcing the commencement of the Decathalon practice, Amelia found herself sitting cross-legged on a table, a thick textbook opened in her lap. A poster hung on the auditorium wall informing that the Academic Decathlon nationals would be taking place in Washington D.C. Liz stood at a podium, reading the quiz cards. Ned, Charles, Abe, and Cindy sat on the stage, bells placed in front of them.

"Let's move to the next question," Liz continued. "What is the heaviest naturally-occurring element?"

"Hydrogen's the lightest. That's not the question. Okay. Yeah." Charles nodded to himself.

"Uranium," Abe answered and Cindy, who was frantically searching the books, glared at him.

"That is correct. Thank you, Abraham."

He quietly pumped his fist in the air, "Yes."

"Please open your books to page ten."

Amelia muttered to herself, repeating the names of bones from memory when Flash's annoying voice interrupted her from a few feet away. "You've never even been in the same room as Tony Stark." He sat behind them, reading a book with his feet propped up on a chair.

Amelia rolled her eyes from where she was sitting on the table. There he went again. Eugene Thompson or Flash as everyone at school called him, including the teachers, had some deeply buried animosity towards Peter that Amelia simply couldn't identify. Some deep-seated insecurity perhaps, that prevented him from respecting the existence of others better or worse than him. 

"Wait, what's happening?" Cindy asked, trying to catch up to what the commotion was about.

Sally, who laid on her stomach on the floor, studying her notes, answered her, "Peter's not going to Washington."

"No," Cindy launched into a nervous denial. "No, no, no, no, no. No. No."

Amelia glanced at Sally and said, "I think you broke her." Sally cracked a smile.

Abe rang the bell beside him. "Why not?"

"Really? Right before nationals?" Liz asked Peter, disappointment coloring her voice.

"He already quit marching band and robotics lab," Michelle informed and everyone turned their heads to her on cue. She quickly added, "I'm not obsessed with him. Just very observant."

"Flash, you're in for Peter," Liz announced.

"Ooh, I don't know. I gotta check my calendar first. I got a hot date with Black Widow coming up."

Abe rang the bell in front of him. "That is false."

"What did I tell you about using the bell for comedic purposes?" Mr. Harrington asked Abe rhetorically.

"That it's an underused prop symbolizing perfect comedic timing?" Amelia quipped. Mr. Harrington gave her a look but she didn't catch it. She was looking at Flash. "Don't be a dick, Flash," Amelia called out and everyone looked at her. She had never, although she had wanted to on very many occasions, but she had never talked to anybody that way. Never.

"Amelia," Mr. Harrington warned her about her language. She ducked her head sheepishly but not before catching Peter's confused eyes. Her expression asked him what? but he didn't know the answer. Or maybe he did, he didn't want to say it.

Peter turned to see the clock: 2:45 p.m. He sighed. The school bell rang, telling the class was over and everyone collected their things, starting to walk out. Amelia too. Peter wanted to stop her and do what, thank her? He couldn't. He didn't. He let her go. A little more excited now that school, he was back to being who he really wanted to be.

Amelia though, as she made her way back to her apartment, was thinking about Peter's Stark Internship. Was he some kind of hero? Did Tony Stark give jobs to all heroes? She wondered what powers Peter had, what made him different. Gemma was made of secrets. Acquiring them left a bad taste in her mouth and if she gave them up she felt as if she were betraying herself. So all she had told Amelia was that Peter was like them ─ like her. How? She didn't say, Amelia didn't ask.

Amelia wondered if that was why she wanted to be friends with Peter. Because he was different. No, she wanted to be friends with him because he wasn't so different, not from her. For a long time, the only person ever who had known about her powers was Constance. And when she died, little Amelia was devastated. They called it a miracle, her being alive. It was a curse. There was guilt under every slice of skin on her. She couldn't save her sister.

Maybe that's why she became friends with Monika, too. Somebody to save, she guessed. Maybe all her friendships were trivial.

She jammed the key in the lock a little harshly, irritated by her own thoughts, and opened the door to her apartment. It was empty.

Monika had most probably either quarantined herself in her room, the door filled with DO NOT ENTER and WARNING signs, or she had left to go do something somewhere. Amelia didn't know. She tossed her bag on the couch and fell into its ugly orange embrace.

AMELIA didn't realize when she had fallen asleep but death metal music jolted her awake. Her expression darkened, Monika was here. Her door was cracked just a little, enough to make a point. Amelia got up and stretched before padding towards the room. She knocked and leaned in.

Monika looked at her, one of her eyebrows raised, sharp as a razor.

Amelia said, "Can we talk?"

"Did Gemma put you up to this?" Monika asked but Amelia turned and made her way back to the living room. Monika turned off the music and followed the black-haired girl to the orange couch.

"I'm sorry," Amelia said sincerely. Because she was sorry. For so many things. This second life, this yearning for something inconceivable. For being too polite all the time even when that wasn't really her. For being someone with somebody and someone else with somebody else. For caring too much. For making Monika feel bad.

For Monika, though she had a lead heart, there were only two people capable of melting it. Amelia and Gemma. And no one could stay angry at Amelia long ─ not with her big eyes and sorrow-filled face.

"I'm sorry, too," Monika said, though quietly. She settled on the other end of the couch. "I didn't want to, it's just sometimes I can't stop myself."

"You don't have to explain," Amelia shook her head. She felt terrible. "You're struggling, I know. I should have never talked to that way in front of strangers."

"I should have never let you down," Monika shrugged, justifying Amelia.

"Mon," Amelia said, a conviction behind her voice, "you could never ever let me down. I want you to know that."

Monika smiled a small thankful smile. Amelia returned it though hers was shaky, hiding pain. It wasn't Monika who had let Amelia down. It was Amelia who had let Monika down.

Monika, after five years of being Amelia's friend, still hadn't quite figured out the girl. Amelia was always yearning for something, always looking.

Once or twice when Monika had asked her what exactly she was searching for, she had said that she was 'searching for meaning' or that she was 'waiting for her coming of age moment'. She was a hunter, Amelia was. Monika had discovered it a few months into their friendship. But she was also the one she hunted, the one she pursued. Sometimes Monika had the sense that there were stories waiting to be written about Amelia. Stories of valor and of kindness, stories of laughing tears and rips in seams of hearts that never seemed to mend. They were stories of adventures. They were memories. 

Monika liked to think Amelia wanted to leave a mark. That's all she wanted to become, a constant in someone's life. Amelia wanted to be remembered.

She looked at Amelia again. In her white sweater and black pinafore skirt, Amelia looked like an All-American Dream Girl. A passion in her eyes, hair falling down her forehead in some unspoken, deeply-buried grief. Hooded gaze that looked over the expanse of the world and mind filled with scurried thoughts of seizing the impossible. Amelia looked loud, Amelia looked triumphant. She was the queen and this was her world to conquer.

"God," Amelia muttered, rubbing her eyes. "What time is it?"

Monika checked the clock mounted on the wall. "6:21."

"Come on. Let's go to Missy's. We'll get ice cream and I'll call Gemma and the whole goddamn world will sort itself out."

This was why Monika could overlook that glossy version of Amelia she'd first met. The Amelia she still became when other people were around. Because of her money and her good family name, because of her brilliant smile and her easy laugh, because she liked people and (despite her fears to the contrary) they liked her back, Amelia could've had any and all of the friends that she wanted. Instead, she had chosen the two of them, two girls who should've, for two different reasons, been friendless.

"Mon," Amelia repeated and Monika looked up to find her already standing, turning to go. "Come on."

Monika made a face. It would take more than ice cream to improve her mood. But she followed Amelia anyway. She'd follow Amelia anywhere, she owed her that much.

MISSY'S was a little pastel shop on 21st in Queens housing many different flavors of ice cream, all approved by the trio of girls that walked out of the shop, each with their own choices of the frozen milk delicacy. Monika was feeling like blackcurrant today and Gemma had strawberry, like always. Amelia's was vanilla with acacia honey.

In the September twilight of New York, moments like these made Amelia feel infinite. The three of them were laughing about something. Amelia no longer remembered what they were supposed to be laughing about. Right now they were laughing because whatever they had been laughing about was not something laughable. And while laughing, Gemma had gotten ice cream on her chin, launching the three into another laughing fit.

"Let's go," Monika said challengingly, her nose turning pink due to the cold breeze. She was hopping up and down like a soccer player in the tunnel. Gemma was shaking her head, denying the challenge.

"Go? Where?" Amelia asked.

"Home? The end of the world? The moon?" Monika filled her answers with magic.

"Home," Gemma said agreeably, and the two girls took off, dashing down the street, sneaker-clad feet slapping concrete.

Amelia's laugh rang in her ear. She felt high as a kite, euphoric. "Guys, wait for me!" And then she was running after them. As she caught up to them, all three of them breathing loudly and laughing a sudden explosion rocked them back. Three of them scrambled, seeing a bright laser-like light emitting from the bank on the corner of the street and hitting the deli across from it. Amelia's hand flew to her mouth seeing the explosion in the deli. 

"Let's go, let's get out of here!" Monika had an iron grip on Gemma's wrist and was pulling her away. "Amy, let's go!"

"Wait, there was someone inside!" Amelia's voice became distorted in her own ear. The warm breeze from the fire was hitting her in the face and her ears were still ringing from the loud sound.

"Amy, let's go!" That was Gemma but Amelia wasn't listening.

"Call the police," she shouted, about to cross the street when she saw something in the corner of her eye. She looked up to find Spider-Man, sprinting across the street and into the burning building, looking for anybody inside. Monika grabbed Amelia's arm, pulling her away from the scene.

Amelia's gaze though was stuck to where Spider-Man helped Mr. Delmar and his cat out of the burning deli. He turned to look back at the bank but whoever had caused the explosion had been gone. Amelia couldn't stop looking. She didn't stop looking as long as he was in her eyesight.