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left to my own devices.
Peter can't wait to go to college. That isn't such a strange sentiment, he supposes. Most kids his age are eager to leave high school. But they aren't looking forward to more schooling. In this way, Peter has always been strange, nerdy, whatever. But really, he can't wait. He loves everything about this place. No one cares how old or how tall he is, no one calls him a nerd or tries to stuff him in a locker, no one even knows his name. After years of bullying at Midtown, anonymity was the best that he could hope for at Darrow High. But at the community college, he doesn't feel like such a loser for sitting alone at lunch. Here, people will respect his space. Here, he's unafraid to raise his hand in class when he has the answer. Here, the fact that he's younger than most of the other students makes him envious and impressive. He can stretch his legs and breathe here. This is the place for him.
He would never dream of staying a second longer than necessary at Darrow High. But after class today, he hangs around the college, walking along the path until he finds a place to sit and get started on his homework. He's hard at work, scribbling in a notebook under the shade of a large tree, when the back of his neck begins to tingle. It isn't his Spidey Sense, thankfully. That's all he needs, for some d-bag villain to invade his only sanctuary. No, it's something else. A pair of eyes trained intently on him. He looks up and a woman he's never met is staring back at him, looking very sad. He doesn't know what to do or say.
"Uh, hi?"
Idiot.
He would never dream of staying a second longer than necessary at Darrow High. But after class today, he hangs around the college, walking along the path until he finds a place to sit and get started on his homework. He's hard at work, scribbling in a notebook under the shade of a large tree, when the back of his neck begins to tingle. It isn't his Spidey Sense, thankfully. That's all he needs, for some d-bag villain to invade his only sanctuary. No, it's something else. A pair of eyes trained intently on him. He looks up and a woman he's never met is staring back at him, looking very sad. He doesn't know what to do or say.
"Uh, hi?"
Idiot.
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I knew it wasn't him. I wanted to believe otherwise, of course. That the miracles of Darrow would work in my favour, that Tommy might be allowed a second chance. A first chance, one might argue, was his life even all that lived to begin with? I don't know. But I felt terrible for watching the boy, thinking of how he looked so much like Tommy back when were were at Hailsham. When he was with Ruth.
I probably terrified him. He was only sixteen or seventeen, and I knew that I hated to be looked at like that. Looked at in the way people did when they discovered we were clones. Less than human. Without souls, or so they thought. But I couldn't help it. It was like seeing a ghost, and yet even stranger it was like it had been no time at all. Like I'd just seen him that last time with his silly little smile, like we'd only be saying our farewells mere moments prior. Or not saying our farewells. Some things were better left unsaid, and I'd found goodbyes to be one of them.
It took me a moment to gather my composure. It was strange hearing a voice that wasn't Tommy out of a person that looked so eerily much like him. "Hello," I said, shaking my head, closing my eyes to stop the staring just for a second. "I'm sorry. You just... remind me of someone I once knew."
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The woman before him looked sad, though, not frightened. And Peter knew enough about the doppelgänger phenomena here in Darrow to feel at least momentarily relieved. Miles had recognized him from the papers, his identity posthumously revealed to all. (Still not sure how I feel about that, by the way. Not gonna think about it.) But this woman said she knew him, or the person he resembled. It probably wasn't Peter Parker or Spider-Man that she was looking for.
He climbed to his feet and stood for a moment, stretching out his limbs. "I'm Peter," he said, lifting his hand in a quick wave. "Sorry about my, uh... face."
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"You've nothing to be sorry for. I'm... sorry that I reacted the way I did. I should have expected it to happen here eventually. I've met three men that look almost identical, but none... well, none like the person you look like."
Hearing him speak settled me, though, kept my chest from growing too tight. It was harder, though, to keep the visual of him and that last little wave out of my head. It hadn't been all that long ago.
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He wondered what he would do if it happened to him. In a way, it had, with Abby, but since Gwen was in the city, it wasn't such a painful encounter. Harder to imagine was someone who resembled Mary Jane coming into his life. No doubt he would handle it with far less grace than Kathy here.
"Darrow certainly seems to have a penchant for lookalikes," said Peter. He couldn't figure out why. His best guess was that the powers that be around here got off on thoroughly unsettling the population. He definitely had the evidence to support his hypothesis.
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Of course it didn't. Darrow had a tendency to defy rationality, after all.
I wished it wasn't so hard to leave, but I figured the best I could do was take attention away from his resemblance to Tommy. I didn't want to unsettle him more than I already had. "You've met some of them, the lookalikes?"
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