CHAPTER NINE;
lavender bouquet

"OH, MY GOD. IS HE HOT?"

Exhaustion pools beneath Amala's eyelids. With a stellar three hours of sleep, she's beyond tired.

Sitting in History, her brain can barely register the teacher speaking. Everything sounds like a speaker put underwater — muffled, far and groggy.

Her appearance is... well. If looks could mirror your feelings, Amala thinks she'd be represented pretty spot on. She sports simple black sweatpants and an oversized Nicki Minaj hoodie, hair tossed together in a messy bun and random socks tucked into her beaten up sneakers . Her face is bare without an ounce of makeup — just navy bags under her eyes. To put it bluntly, Amala looks she she'd been dragged into an alleyway by her hair and gotten ravaged by a family of street cats.

After Spider-man's surprise visit, Amala had been left with a head full of thoughts. At first, sleep came easy; exertion had made her bones lazy and she needed to recharge. However, hours later she would wake up in a sweat and sleep would evade her for the rest of night.

After tossing and turning for what seemed like an eon, she gave up. She would have to wake up in a couple hours anyway, so why bother? Instead, Amala had sat on her balcony until sunrise, nothing but a hoodie and some fluffy socks to keep her warm against the bite of April mornings. The sun rose and the sky split into shades of orange and pink. By that point, Amala took it as a sign to go back inside and get ready for what would be a dreadful day of school.

Now sitting on the familiar hard, plastic desk, Amala realizes that was an understatement. Today was beyond dreadful. Her head feels like it's been filled with lead — it's so heavy that it might just roll off.

To make matters worse, Akira won't stop pestering her with questions about her second encounter with the hero. 

"Did you see his abs?" Akira swoons besides her, leaning in to whisper.

"No." She replies tersely.

"What about his hands? Oh my god, did you see them? Did they have veins?" Asks Akira once more.

Amala could sense her best friend's drool run on to her arm.

"No." Says Amala once more.

"Fine, fine. What about his face? Did you at least get a little peak?"

"Akira." Amala hisses.

Her best friend leans back, taken aback and leaves space between them.

"Sorry..." she begins saying.

"No, no." Amala interrupts. "I'm sorry. I'm just -" she groans, "so dead right now."

Slight concern laces Akira's voice, "Did you not sleep?"

The raven shakes her head but automatically regrets that choice. Her head rattles and pulsates in pain (it's as if there were people inside her brain, hitting the skull with a hammer).

She groans. "My head hurts so bad. I'm going to die."

"What happened after he left?"

Amala sighs and stays quiet for a moment. "I don't know." She says. "I just - I couldn't sleep."

Akira hums in acknowledgment, twirling her pencil around a piece of paper, sketching what looks to be a giant butterfly.

"I think he has a thing for you."

Amala furrows her brows and shoots her best friend a glance.

"I'm sorry, what?" Says Amala, beyond dumbfounded.

"Him," Akira says before whispering, "Spider-man."

The raven laughs.

The teacher shoots her a glance of silence. Amala sends her an apologetic gaze and closes her mouth.

"You're crazy." She whispers back. "Absolutely insane."

Akira leans into her and whispers back, "no I'm not. I mean, come on. He came to see you twice."

"Yeah, because he was hurt both times and i offered!"

"Amala," the teacher says. "Enough talking."

She glares at her best friend. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Anderson."

"The first time, maybe. But the second time? He had a single cut on his neck. He could've just cleaned that himself." Akira refutes quietly.

"I'm -" she sighs. "Okay. But it still doesn't make your other statement correct."

Akira's pencil stops moving. "Fine. But it's not that far fetched and you know it."

Groaning, Amala rests her head against the table, her hands stand as cushioned support against the hard object. The back of her eyes drown in static and she feels nauseous. Her headache won't go away and it's killing her slowly.

In a slow motion, everything around her stops making sense. Sound stretches awkwardly through her ears and there's a foreign pressure on her sinuses. An intense wave of sleep threatens to take over and the raven grasps at whatever shred of willpower she has to stay awake.

"-Mala, get up please."

Her body cries out in retaliation and she digs her head further into the crook of her arms. Nothing makes sense. Everything hurts.

Boom, boom, boom, the pounding won't stop.

"Amala, are you -?"

Why is everything so loud? Why won't everyone just shut up?

Kill me now, her mind pleads.

"-Kira, please check up - is she okay - no -"

Two hands rest on her shoulders and her body automatically wants to reject the contact. Yet between the immense pain and her exhaustion, she can do nothing to stop it.

Those two hands shake her gently, and a soft voice blows through her right ear.

"Mala? Are you okay?" She recognizes the voice of her best friend who sounds clearly concerned. "What's wrong? Do you need me to take you to the nurse?"

Amala tries her best to respond but her voice fails her.

In the end, she mumbles out a simple, "please." Whether it's heard or not, is beyond Amala's level of thinking at the moment.

With that, Akira exchanges some words with their teacher that Amala fully drowns out in favor or keeping whatever sanity she has left. Akira shakes her figure once more and asks her to get up.

With much struggle, they walk to the nurse's office — Akira remaining quiet the whole time as her hands supported Amala's weak figure.

Anything after escapes Amala's memory.

One moment she's slumped on a plastic chair, the next there's a cold hand pressed against her forehead, then the sound of a phone ringing freezes her spine. She doesn't remember how she got to the car, just that she sat in the front seat and cursed the daylight for blinding her. The ride home was spent swimming through consciousness and unconsciousness, the walk into her room was spent lazily dragging her feet against the carpet and the roll into her bed was anything but graceful.

Amala sleeps through the next eleven hours.

By the time she wakes up, the clock strikes past midnight. Looking around, Amala sees that the curtains have been drawn and the covers have been pulled tightly above her.

For the first time in the whole day, she feels like she can breathe. Her head finally feels like it broke the surface.

Lazily, Amala rolls out of bed, feet hitting her carpet. She groggily walks out of her room and into the hallway. Her hand remains steady against the wall, body still weak from fighting her pain away.

In the kitchen, she opens the fridge and chugs an entire bottle of water in a single pass. Her throat feels marvelous and her entire body seems to strengthen by the gulp. After tossing the bottle, and hoping it landed in the trash, she leans her head against the counter.

While it seems like she still has a migraine, the severity of it has decreased significantly. For that, she's thankful. Amala's body feels like it's been run over by a truck and she's glad she's finally getting a break.

Breathing in and out, the next couple of minutes are spent taking slow, labored breaths. It seems to ground the raven, so she repeats the pattern several more times.

After a couple of moments of her forehead being pressed against the cool marble, she decides to return to her bed.

As she starts walking back, something large passes through her peripheral.

She does a double take and spots an object on the end of the counter, furthest away from her. Walking up to it, she realizes they're flowers. A lot of them.

Lavender stands tall in an assortment of leaves and paperwhites. They sit pretty in a large vase, spilling out from its rim. Even amongst the poor lighting, they still look bright and lively, the shades reacting well against the moonlight.

Confusion sits at the forefront of her mind. Why are there flowers in her kitchen? Who sent them? Who are they for?

So many questions yet not a single answer in sight.

Analyzing the flowers once more, she spots a piece of paper branded with what she can only assume to be the florist logo.

A card leans against the vase. She picks it up.

Amala's curiosity gets the best of her, so she opens it.

Her heart summersaults.

'Amala, thanks 4 everything.

P.S: I know you like lavender. Hope you like them.

P.P.S: you can call me B.

- S.M'

— END OF CHAPTER 9 —

[ NOTE ]
woooo that's a wrap!

time for some 🌈feelings🌈

i wanted the card to have
more written on it but it
wouldn't have made sense.
spider-man doesn't want to
give any info away ab how he
knows amala. so it must be
simple.

anyways !!! hope you liked this
chap!

i appreciate all 172 of you
who have taken time to read
my story :) i'm having so much
fun writing this! can't wait to write
more!!!

have an awesome day / night!

pearl <3