◤ chapter ten: ❛ downward slope ❜ ◢

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OF COURSE, WHEN LIFE WAS COMING UP TONI, LIFE JUST HAD TO FUCK HER OVER AGAIN. It was like laugh was laughing in her face like oh, you think this good shit is gonna last? Yeah right! and then all the good shit she's had, all the high feelings she had when she on the Ferris wheel with Atlas, was gone.

         Because when there was a high, there was a fall. A peak always had a valley, and those highs didn't last. They were never forever, they were just a constant turn from high to low and when she felt on top of the world, completely invincible, she came back down and she felt completely mortal and woundable again. Gods didn't stay gods forever, and that invincibility was fleeting.

         Like always, it started at school. Her hair was in a high pony tail because she actually decided to do something with it for once instead of letting it run loose. Her mother always liked it when she did something special, lighting up when she combed through her hair and put it in a braid or something cute, and there was a bit of disappointment when she did nothing – barely running a comb through it. And, of course, because she was Toni and a complete and utter bitch (as everyone at Midtown knew her as), she stopped doing shit with her hair just to piss off her mom even more. Eden Alderson deserved it, honestly.

         Or maybe the low started to rain down upon her when she saw her cousin, going to visit Finn for the first time willingly in years. They used to be as thick as thieves, her and Finn against the world, but that was when they were kids and before Toni embraced their high class lives, being the rich girl, and Finn rejected it. He ran far away from being just another rich kid living off of daddy's money, probably because it wasn't like he and his father had a great relationship.

         Really, Finn was the product of an affair with his secretary turned marriage. So they broke apart. She embraced her stereotypical rich life with lavish and expensive items, never straying away from the privilege she had, but Finn tried to run. He ran so far he ended up a stereotype; the story of a rich kid selling drugs wasn't exactly new.

         So maybe the low came when she finally decided to see him again because, she didn't really know, but it felt right. Because she was sitting on her balcony by herself, smoking a blunt, and feeling so down on herself. The high was gone, the embrace of the pier and the giggling of her friends, the companionship was completely gone, so she felt down and all she wanted to do was complain. And somewhere, because they had already seen each other recently, Finn came to her mind so she went to see him, and ended up complaining about Harry Osborn – the fucking pain in her ass who she couldn't get out of her head.

         Fuck him.

         He was annoying and she should be over him and not thinking about him constantly, but she was and she hated it. And Finn just listened and bit back at her and, for a second, she could remember them when they were younger and the best of friends. Young Toni who believed she didn't need anyone else because she had Finn and he was enough.

         And even though they were so far removed from each other now, she could still see the similarities between them. See how Finn had grown, how he stayed the same, and how she had grown and changed. She could barely see the little girl she used to be in the mirror. That young Toni never would have gotten into drugs or drinking. She had this idea of being a good, golden girl, and now this Toni found that laughable. She was anything but a good girl.

         So maybe the low came because she was still thinking about Harry and she was going thinking about this old version of Toni and contemplating whether or not her younger self would be proud of her before deciding that no, young Toni would not be proud of teenage Toni. Teenage Toni was everything young Toni didn't want to be.

         So maybe that's when the low came crashing, or maybe it came at school when she felt so tired and over all this shit. She remembered the high of the Ferris wheel and the giddiness of finding out the identity of Spider-Man. She felt so fucking invincible then because she knew something everyone else didn't, she had knowledge they could only dream of having, and she wanted to hold that over everyone's head in her mind because she was bitch, but not a big enough bitch to ever out Peter or to tell anyone verbally about what she knew.

         But she went into school now and moving felt like a chore. There was no excitement in school, but that wasn't news because school had never been interesting except for lunch when she had Sabrina or when she skipped with Atlas to go day drinking or meet his dealer. And, though she would never ever admit this, when she had an argument with Harry. Those always fired her up, but now even that was gone.

         Because that's what you wanted, a voice in her mind reminded her. And yeah, she did tell him to stay the fuck away from her, and she wanted that. She still wants that. But there's also an emptiness and a longing to have his infuriating smirk directed towards her, and she hated it. She didn't want Harry anywhere near her, so fuck whatever was going on inside her. It was wrong and corrupt and she needed to straighten it out immediately.

         She was in Spanish, also known as the worst class of the day besides all of her other classes (she really was not a fan of class in the slightest), and she was staring blankly at the teacher, blinking slowly, not paying to her at all until her name was called.

         "– Toni Alderson and Harry Osborn."

         She blinked, fully waking up and looking around to see Harry look back at her and she frowned a little. She looked back at the teacher, who was still calling up names and dread coursed through her body. Oh, fuck – she realized – we're gonna have to work together.

         Harry moved toward her when the teacher stopped talking, smiling at her slightly as he took a seat beside her. "Hey," he greeted her, as if they were still nice and friendly and cozy. Wait – they were never like that, so why the fuck was he acting like they were?

         "Hi?" she asked him confused, because since when did they greet each other and act cordial? This was her mortal enemy! "Um, so what exactly are we doing?"

         He gave her an amused look and she decided right then and there that she hated it on him. "You weren't paying attention, were you?" he asked, a tone full of enjoyment from this and she gave him a look.

         "Who the fuck actually pays attention to her?" she retorted, "So again, what the fuck are we doing?"

         "This worksheet thing," Harry shrugged, "Has a couple pages, I got us copies."

         He then handed her a few pieces of paper stapled together and she looked at it before groaning. Fucking schoolwork? She hated that part of school – actually, she hated everything about school, especially her teacher who paired her with Harry. Ugh, fuck that bitch.

         Toni hummed in displeasure, flipping through it and seeing how she had to conjugate verbs into the past tense and others into the subjective. She really hated Spanish. Like, the language she guessed was fine, but this class was a pain in her ass and she did not care enough to actually fucking learn.

         School was just a joke to her really.

         "Fuck this," Toni cursed, closing the packet, "You can do it if you wanna but I don't give a shit."

         Harry raised an eyebrow, "You're throwing away an easy grade where you have a partner because you don't care? Wow..."

         "Oh, don't judge me," Toni frowned. She didn't know why she cared, because she never did. She walked by Penny Jones earlier when she called her a whore and she didn't even stop to punch her or anything, and she certainly wasn't thinking about it, but this...Harry practically calling her lazy and calling her out on her inability to care about work – she hated it. It went to her, she didn't want him judging her. He didn't deserve to judge her. Fuck that. Fuck him. "Not all of us are golden boys like you who wanna do all their honest work."

         Harry rolled his eyes, annoyed with her, and she couldn't help but feel as though that was good. The more annoyed he was with her, the less he would talk to her. At least, she hoped that would be the case. "The last time I was called a golden boy, I think I was nine," he told her, "The media sure seems to think I'm not golden and doing your fucking world doesn't mean you're a good or golden."

         "Sure, whatever," she brushed aside the comments.

         "You don't even care, do you?" Harry asked her, genuine curiosity as if he had never met a person who cared so little like she did. And yeah, she really didn't give a fuck about school, but she did care about he thought, and she hated that because she was Toni Alderson dammit and she didn't give a fuck about what anyone said about her.

         "That really surprising? I don't exactly scream stellar student, now do I?" Toni sarcastically asked.

         Harry shrugged at that. "Sure, but this...it isn't even homework, it's classwork," he said as if there was a difference, and maybe there was to him because he was looking at his notes and filling out the packet while talking to her now.

         But Toni had a reputation. She never did work, or if she did, it was very rare and the teachers were used to her incomplete and not turned in work. But she balanced that with high test grades because she could study a little and put forth a bit of effort to not be failing and while she wasn't making A's or anything because or her incomplete work, she was still infuriating everyone. Exactly what she loves.

         She was just naturally smart and everyone hated it because it was obvious and she always gloated about it. Unlike Sabrina, she didn't do modesty. She never did work, everyone saw that, and yet she still succeeded unlike others or her peers.

         "I'll make it up when we have a test," Toni mentioned to him, a small smirk biting at her face because she beat that she could get a higher grade than Harry on the test without doing all the work he did. Ha! That'll show him.

         Harry looked at her, making a noise at her conceited statement but didn't say anything about it verbally, which annoyed her. God, why wouldn't he engage with her when she obviously trying to egg him on? She didn't that it would be worth mentioning to him.

         "You know, I don't like you," she said, though it wasn't like she was ever subtle at that.

         "Yeah, I'm aware," he bluntly stated and she glared at him for interrupting her.

         "I'm not finished. I don't like you, and I don't like how you don't bicker back with me anymore. That was our relationship, it was fun and it fired me up. But you just get all silent and let me talk all the shit without doing anything," Toni mentioned.

         "Maybe it's because I don't care enough to do that," Harry shrugged, "You're the only one who wants this to be a bickering and hateful relationship. I'm fine with you."

         "But you shouldn't!" Toni pointed out, "I'm rude as fuck to you and you made me look like a fucking bitch because you don't do the same. It's annoying."

         Harry smiled at her, eyes full of amusement at her position. "Like I've said before, I don't hate you, and I never did. If you wanna have the enemy relationship, go ahead, but I'm not here for that."

         "What's that supposed to mean?" Toni asked him, a frown coating her features, confusion showing through her furrowed eyebrows.

         "Figure it out," he told her, "You're entertaining to me, I like talking to you, and I slept with you. Now you can use that pretty brain of yours to connect the dots."

         Toni glared at him. This was the exact reason why she hated Harry Osborn and everything about him. He was fucking annoying and vague and he didn't hate her like she hated him. She didn't say anything to that, mostly because she didn't know what to say.

         Figure it out, her mind called, in more of a mocking tone than Harry's was. Connect the dots. Fuck that. What did he mean? He called her entertaining, so was she just like a character on Riverdale for him? And her pretty brain – fuck that shit. Men should never say that to women and, yes, this was another reason for her to hate him. Harry was an idiot and she hated him and he was her enemy. He was annoying and she hated him.

         Yep...yeah. That's exactly how she felt about him.

         He was her mortal enemy and all his stupid riddles about her figuring some shit out was completely annoying and not fair. This was her low; thinking about Harry when she shouldn't, and wanting to figure out what he meant even though she hated him. Not wanting him to judge her or think of her in any way but in a good light. Not wanting him to call her a bitch, not wanting him to think she was lazy, but wanting him to call her pretty except not in the connation of it being her brain because that was belittling and she hated it.

         This was the low. When she high, she didn't think of Harry. When she was high, she was content with hating him and him hating her. He wasn't clouding her thoughts and she wasn't going out of her way to talk to her cousin in order to complain about him. Fuck. She hated Harry Osborn so much.