Penny knows that MJ suspects something is going on.
MJ is dangerously observant; more and more since this whole thing started, Penny's been regretting befriending her at the beginning of the school year. Back when it was just her and Ned, she could get away with anything. Hell, as MJ continuously gives her suspicious glances, Ned prattles on about the latest Star Wars lego kit he got and how he want Penny to come over to help build it with him this weekend. He has no idea anything is wrong.
(Penny agrees to head over to Ned's that weekend for a sleepover. She can handle this, she can, she just… needs a little break.)
Back to MJ: Penny doesn't actually regret befriending her, of course. MJ had been someone she hadn't realized she needed until MJ was there. It turned out, MJ's mom had been in a car accident around the same time Ben was shot. And when May died, MJ had been able to understand so much better than Ned, since her dad had also died when she was young. MJ had been a lifeline that month - the month in the group home, when she still hadn't even processed that May was gone and would be forever and now she was all alone, again, for the second time.
But now Penny is trying to keep a secret, and MJ is observant, and it's irritating.
Also irritating - for all Flash hasn't stopped bullying her (he doesn't dare bully either Ned or MJ - Ned because the one time Penny beat him up back was when he tried to mess with Ned in 7th grade, and MJ because Flash may be an asshole, but he's not an idiot, and MJ clearly scares him as much as she scares everyone else. Hell, even Ned is still wary of her) he has been giving her these looks and they make her uncomfortable, not in a "he's gonna hurt me" way, but in a "he knows more than he should" way.
Penny constantly feels exhausted, for all she tends to get 8 (drugged) hours of sleep a night. Trying to keep up with Skip and make him think she doesn't know and acting like she still likes him, trying to keep MJ and Flash from finding out anything is wrong, and making sure Ned remains oblivious so he can't team up with MJ, all weigh on her.
But she's handling it.
—
When Penny thinks about her parents, she isn't sad or upset. She doesn't miss them and she doesn't mourn them. She feels guilty about it, that she just… replaced her parents in her mind with May and Ben, and now when she thinks "mother" it's not curly red hair or a pale freckled face that comes to mind, it's long dark hair and tan skin and soft eyes and "I larb you". When she thinks of "father", she doesn't think of golden hair or blue eyes or glasses, she thinks of brown hair peppered with grey and hazel eyes that nearly match her own.
Penny does remember them a little, though. Most of what she remembers about their appearances is from photographs, but she remembers her mother's eyes, such a dark brown they were nearly black, strange but beautiful in her Scottish face. She remembers how her nose scrunched up and her tongue poked out when she laughed. She remembers twirling ringlets the color of fire around her little fingers. From her father, she remembers slightly less - he wasn't very good with children - but he used to let her sit on a stool in his lab and explain what he was doing to her, step by step. She didn't understand much, but she loved listening to her father talk. What she remembers most is his look of fierce concentration that nearly never faltered.
She also remembers their faces that night. The night they dropped her off with Uncle Ben and Aunt May so they could go on a trip for work, and they never came back. She'd had a bad feeling the whole night - something deep in her screaming something was wrong, almost like her spider-sense before it had a chance to truly develop (though how that would be possible, nearly a decade before the bite, is a mystery). She doesn't remember her aunt and uncle's faces - she'd had many more years with them to replace their exact expressions - but she remembered the last night she saw her mother and father like a photograph in her mind - the way her mother's forehead had wrinkled, instead of her nose; her fathers tight lips and worried expression. They'd both said they loved her. Then they had walked out the door.
She wonders, sometimes, if they'd be proud of her. How they'd feel about her powers, if they'd think she was doing the right thing.
—
"Are you excited for Valentine's Day?" Ned asks excitedly on Friday morning. Penny feels like she got 3 hours of sleep instead of the 10 she'd actually gotten (she'd nearly been late to school) but musters up an amused grin.
"Ned, I'm not exactly dating anyone. Neither are you, for that matter. And we're too old to expect our classmates to hand out valentines like in grade school. Why are you so excited for Valentine's Day?"
Ned shrugs. "I just like holidays, I guess," he says. Penny can't help but laugh a little, and Ned grins triumphantly. Ah. That's what this was. Ned had noticed she hadn't been feeling well the past few months and was trying to cheer her up. Thankfully, he seemed to think it was just grief.
The truth was, Penny had been feeling strange for a while now. Her whole body felt constantly sore, she got cramps more often as though her intestines were mad at her, nausea came and went regularly and she'd already thrown up more in the last month than she had since… well, since the spider bite.
Penny wonders if her mutation had been a long con, and was now trying to kill her.
She's too tired to really care about the possibility.
But Ned's here, and he doesn't know anything other than Aunt May's death, and she has to make it seem like she's getting better.
(She's handling it.)
—
The nausea she felt in the morning never faded. Penny's felt like she was on the edge of actually throwing up all day, and she's so relieved when the final bell rings and she can finally leave.
Of course, her luck remains as bad as the day she was born.
"Hey Penis!"
Flash Thompson has known Penny since he transferred to her middle school in 7th grade. There's a rumor that he was expelled from his fancy private school, and that's why he'd had to go to public school, but Penny had no idea if it was true. Regardless, he'd picked her out as his best target almost as soon as he'd laid eyes on her, and he'd verbally harassed her ever since. He'd even shoved her a few times, but the one time he tried to shove Ned, she'd given him a black eye and bloody nose and he decided to stick to words after that.
The worst part was that he wasn't even creative. She was being bullied by an uninspired asshole.
"Flash, not today. I don't feel good."
Flash laughs harshly. "What, are you gonna go cry to your mommy? Oh wait!"
Penny snarls. "Tu eres un cabrón. Asshole."
"I might be taking French, but even I know what cabrón means. So I'll go ahead and call you a stuck-up bitch who lost two sets of parents because she was that awful."
"Yo cago en la leche de tu puta madre, chingón!"
Flash pauses. "Okay, you have me with that one. I have no idea what that means."
"It means I shit in your whore mother's milk, fucker!"
His eyes narrow. "You little bitch! I -"
But Penny never found out what he'd do. Because she was too busy losing the fight with her stomach. She heaved, tried to hold it, and then spewed…
…all over Flash's shoes.
He jumps back in shock, yelping. She can only try to breath to prevent another round.
"Ew! Oh my god! You're so disgusting! You threw up on my fucking shoes! These are fucking Yeezy!"
Penny can't help herself. "I told you I wasn't feeling good."
FLash gags. "Clearly! Jesus Christ woman, what are you, pregnant? Who just throws up in the middle of the hallway? I mean…"
But Penny stopped listening after the word 'pregnant'.
Her aches. Her nausea. Her general fatigue. And now that she thinks about it, she hasn't had a period since December. It's February.
It makes sense.
Flash has finally noticed that Penny stopped responding a while ago. "Hey. Wake up. What's wrong?"
Penny shakes her head.
Flash frowns. "Seriously, Penny, what's wrong?" He actually called her by her real name. That's a first. Her mind is laughing hysterically behind the blank wall of shock at the forefront of her head. "I was just joking about you being pregnant, you know. Even I know you're a huge virgin."
Penny turns around and walks away, leaving Flash, covered in vomit, a worried expression on his face, standing in the hall behind her