Chapter Text
chapter 1: not all oddities are accepted
song: 10 feet tall -- cavetown
If there was anything that Cameron E. Granger considered herself to be, it was not normal. Ever since she could talk, she’d been about to list any number of things that set her apart from the average human being. She could even give you a paper copy of the list she had made when she was eight. If you couldn’t tell by now, she prided herself upon being out of the ordinary.
She was fourteen now, old enough move past her obsession with being special, or at least that’s what her mother had said when she was ten. Cameron had just begun school at none other than Midtown High, her foster parents had enrolled her approximately nine days, twelve hours, and forty-seven minutes after they had taken her in. She was in ninth grade, though if any one of the administration had listened to her, she would have been in at least eleventh. She was a slight genius, something her mother had completely overlooked when she was younger. Perhaps if Mary Granger had thought of anything beyond how much she wished her daughter wasn’t such a burden, Cameron would’ve turned out a whole different child. Yet here she was, on her first day of school at Midtown High, a smile on her face, the Cameron that she had always been, even when no one cared enough to notice.
The front doors to the school were made of giant window panes, the exact same as any other school you’d ever go to, and yet even that was interesting to Cameron. As she walked towards the door, she traced the outline of the panes with her eyes and watched the reflection of herself grow bigger as she approached. The metal of the door handle was cold to her touch, a nice sensation against her burning skin. She stepped into the building and felt the rush of confidence push her towards the front office on her left. She watched her footsteps as she went, making a rounded path with her feet, round things had always interested her.
The inside of the office was much the same as the little she’d seen of the rest of the school, bland, industrial, exactly what it needed to be. “Hello, my name is Cameron E. Granger.” She smiled at the inherently bored woman behind the tall desk. “You must be the new student.” The woman replied without much excitement. She stood up and went over to a table in the corner, picked up a few papers and returned to the desk at the front of the small space. “Here’s your schedule and a map of the school. If you need any help, come talk to me later.” The woman said, the same bored tone as before. She clearly didn’t want to be here. This interested Cameron, she had always found the human brain to be most fascinating. She wanted to ask what the woman found so boring about this place, it seemed exciting enough, but her mother had taught her from a young age that it wasn’t polite to ask questions, especially not to those in charge. “Thank you.” Cameron flashed the woman another one of her million-dollar smiles before exiting the office.
The bell had yet to ring so Cameron had time to find her locker before going to her first class. The sheet of paper that the woman in the office had given her told her that her locker was on the first floor. She followed the map to the best of her abilities, and with some smarts, but mostly luck, she found the metal box that had been assigned to her. There was a boy at the locker next to hers, he looked to be at least two years older than her. She attempted to open her locker with the combo provided on the paper, immediately finding out that the code she had been given was not correct, at least that was the only option, she knew she’d put the code in correctly. She tried to pull on the locker, wondering if that would open it to no avail. Her face dropped a little as she discovered a problem she wasn’t quite sure how to fix. Those problems had become more and more rare. The boy at the locker next to her was watching her at this point, curious about how the girl would react. There was something about the girl that set him off, set off his spider sense to be exact. He wasn’t exactly sure what a small-framed girl like her could do that would make her dangerous enough to set off Peter Parker’s spider sense and he was sure as hell going to figure out what. The thing was, he knew exactly how to open the locker so when Cameron huffed in annoyance and turned to leave, he finally decided to intervene. “You just gotta hit it really hard.” He said, kindly, banging his fist into the locker and praying that it wouldn’t leave a dent from his superstrength. Thank Thor it hadn’t. Cameron’s pleasant demeanor returned quickly as she smiled. “Thanks. I was about to give up on the thing.” She replied. “I’m Cameron.” She said, extending her hand. Peter stared at her for a moment before responding, “Peter.” He shook her hand, it wasn’t often that people at this school would even introduce themselves, let alone shake his hand. There was something about this girl he didn’t quite understand, and he didn’t like it.
First period was math, something Cameron found easy. She stepped through the threshold and found the only open seat, somewhere in the middle, right next to the window. This was lucky, of course, because when Cameron inevitably got bored, she could find endless possibilities of things to do while staring out the window. Mr. Glasgow saw the new student take her seat, so of course, when everyone had settled, he called her to attention, “Ah, Cameron, I heard that you’d be joining our class, would you like to introduce yourself?” He addressed her. “No, I wouldn’t,” Cameron said, contently. Mr. Glasgow was taken aback by this. He couldn’t think of a student who’d ever had the courage to deny his request. “Okay, well, everyone, this is Cameron.” He pointed towards the girl and she waved a little before returning to the doodle she had begun on her paper. She caught a few stares, a boy in the back of the classroom, the girl sitting next to her, and someone else in the corner. She didn’t notice though. She was used to the stares, ever since she’d begun dyeing her hair three years ago. People were bound to stare at you if you had bright orange hair.
The class passed quickly, as did Chemistry and English. The classes were as easy as she had expected, there was hardly a need for her to pay attention. She stopped by her locker one more time, on her way to lunch. Peter, the boy she’d met earlier wasn’t there, but she tried his trick anyway. Of course, it worked. She was thankful for the boy, the only person other than the teachers that she’d talked to today. She dropped off her books before heading to the lunchroom with the food she’d packed that morning. She hadn’t packed much, she’d never been much of an eater, only eating small amounts of food at each meal, often skipping one of the three. Today, she simply had a chunk of cheese that she’d cut off of the block that morning as well as the second pancake that she didn’t eat at breakfast.
She found a table that was mostly empty, only a boy and a girl on the other end of it. Through her time studying and being interested in the human brain, she had learned that it was best to let people come talk to her rather than to force herself into other people’s lives. For this reason, she sat alone, hardly touching her food and completely engrossed in the novel she was currently in the middle of. Much to her surprise, a few minutes after she sat down and opened her book, Peter sat down with the two people at the other end of the table. She watched them for a moment before returning to her novel.
Peter sat down with his friends, eager to discuss his interaction with the new girl. MJ and Ned had beaten him to their usual table. He rushed through the lunchroom, hoping to both avoid Flash and reach his friends quickly. He was successful, only running into one other kid. He slid into his seat and sat his tray of cafeteria food down on the table, only to see the new girl perched on the other end of the table reading a book. “Who’s the new girl?” Ned asked no one in particular. “I don’t know much about her, but her name’s Cameron,” Peter said, quietly enough that he hoped she would hear. “How’d you meet her? We’re definitely not in the same grade.”
“Her locker’s next to mine and I helped her open it, she got 106.” Ned understood immediately, no one liked 106, it always got stuck. “There’s something off about her though.” Peter sighed, trying to stare at the girl somewhat discreetly.
“What, are your spider senses tingling?” MJ said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. Ever since she’d found out Peter was Spiderman, she’d found every opportunity to make jokes about it.
“Yes, actually it is,” Peter responded.
“What do you think her deal is?” Ned asked.
“I don’t really know.” Peter said, “But my spider sense is going off again. I don’t really know how some small human could be dangerous. Plus from the forty-ish seconds we interacted, she seemed pretty nice.”
“Maybe she’s hiding a dark past.” MJ joked.
“Could be.” Peter took her seriously again. It was starting to bother MJ how he would do that. She wondered if he was just trying to piss her off. If he was, it was working.
“We’ll just have to watch her,” Ned said.
The girl removed her focus from the book in order to eat a small amount of the food that was sitting in front of her. Peter did his best to find out what it was and his best guess was a pancake. She moved the pancake a few inches away from her and set it on the table. The three friends were fascinated by whatever it was she was doing. She put her book around the front of her pancake so that if you were sitting at the table across from her, you wouldn’t be able to see it. She proceeded to place her finger about four inches about the pancake. Peter stared at her with even more curiosity. It appeared as though she was trying to concentrate greatly on whatever it was she was about to do. It only took a split second for the events to unfold that told Peter exactly why his spider-sense had been going off like mad. Her finger lit on fire, as though it were a match, the bright orange and yellow flames enveloped her finger, warming the pancake on the table. When it was adequately warm, the fire went out as quick as it had come, and she took a bite of the pancake before returning to her book as though nothing had happened.
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