“Oh… my… God. So… effing… cute,” Sydney squealed, brushing a few pink hairs away from her heavily shadowed eyes as she fawned over Peter on his milk carton throne situated on Erica’s lunch tray. The other seventeen-year-olds all giggled, leaning in nearer and elbowing each other in the hips over the account of the tiny teen’s romantic exploits he’d just finished delivering by popular demand. The girl steepled her sparkle-painted fingers together, flashing a grin nearly wide enough to blind Peter with the cheeky luster of her pearly whites, and earned an exhausted chuckle from the boy.

                “Thanks,” he laughed, leaning into the thick straw that was poked into the paper carton and gulping up another swallow of the drink after a heavy inhale.

                “And you sat in the back of the theatre, didn’t you?” a different girl piped in, fighting back another snicker as she scrunched her black hair in her fist. “Did you… you know…”

                All the girls broke into raucous cackling while Peter’s cheeks bloomed a distinctly crimson hue. Of course, Erica, watching all this in barely withheld disgust, finally rolled her eyes so high they nearly disappeared into her skull, and crossed her arms over her chest, releasing a pent-up grunt not unlike an agitated gorilla.

                “N-No, I, uh… w-we just watched the movie,” Peter stammered.

                “Nothing at all? Not even closed mouth?”

                “Uh… n-not really…” The freshman fumbled, hurriedly wrapping his lips around the milk straw again and began sucking up the beverage so aggressively his face was on the verge of turning purple.

                “That’s good, though! She knows you respect her now.”

                “Monica, look, you’re embarrassing him. Don’t be mean,” Lena cut in affectionately as she often did. She reached in, giving Peter a sporting stroke on the shoulder with her thumb that helped relax him out of his jitters.  This, of course, only earned another huff from Erica, whose hand approached the tray suddenly as well, though diverted away from her brother and instead snatched up another green grape from the bunch, which she jerked away from the crusted vine with more force than was necessary.

                “I didn’t want all the details, I just wanted to know if they kissed when-” Monica defended innocently.

                “I swear, if I have to hear about that from him, I will puke all over you. And I will not care at all how much you spent on the shirt,” Erica hacked to break her revolted silence, apparently in a losing battle with her gag reflex as she shot her friend a discerning stink eye as well as an accusing index finger. “You do not want to test my aim.”

                “Fine,” the girl sighed as she slumped back into her chair, allowing her tablemates to lean in closer.

                “You’re gonna go on more dates with her though, aren’t you, Peter?” Sydney wheedled.

                The miniature freshman smirked, his gaze flashing momentarily to his sister’s face above. Though subtle, he noticed Erica’s façade of abhorrent nausea at this story had been let down for just a moment, as her eyebrow lifted slightly with veiled curiosity.

                “Y-Yeah, yeah. We are,” he said.

                The reaction was instantaneous and harped with delighted mewling as all parties present except Erica practically threw themselves halfway over the table to get in closer to Peter. It reminded the boy a lot of the original announcement of his movie night with Lisa, and it was becoming clear that repeats of the event did not in the slightest diminish the adoring reactions of his female public. He was instantly met with a chorus of encouragement and wreathed in dangled hair and salad dressing aroma from rapidly moving lips.

                “That’s great!”

                “I knew you would.”

                “Where are you going?”

                “So… fricking… adorable.”

                “When? When?”

                “What are you doing next time?”

                “It’s on Friday,” Peter muttered, momentarily overwhelmed. “It’ll be at… well, um… I mean, I hope it’ll be at our house. Maybe to… uh, play some games with the family.”

                An eerily synchronized “ooooo” was belted out of the lips of every girl besides the diminutive student’s sibling, and for that second it seemed nigh impossible that this circle didn’t have some telepathic link to one another for such occasions as this. Erica’s mouth opened for a split second, but she immediately shut it again, apparently thinking better of whatever she was going to say. Given the towering encroachment of titanic squealing girls around him, it was difficult for Peter to concentrate enough on his sister’s countenance to read her opinion of this news.

                “Bold. Letting her meet your family all of a sudden. It’s a big move. She’ll like that,” Monica explained, giving Peter a comically obvious wink.

                “I- wait, it… it is?” he choked, having not given much thought to the successful prognosis of his second date with Lisa other than the glorious fact that there, was in fact, going to be one. The idea of grasping the underlying meaning of the gesture hadn’t occurred to him.

                “Ohhh, yeah. She’ll know right away what that means,” Sydney encouraged, cupping her pink locks away from her cheeks again as she loomed suddenly over Peter. “You’ll be getting that kiss sooner than you think.”

                Peter’s head slumped lower against his chest. He could already feel his heart thumping faster against his chin. Though it wasn’t the intention of his personal social life coaches/cheerleaders, this conversation was beginning to pluck at his fragile nerves just a little.

                “Okaaaay, and I think it’s time for a break from the twerp’s soap opera,” Erica cut in loudly, shouldering past all the girls who were leaning in over her lunch tray and shoving her hand onto the plastic surface. She settled her tanned fingers near the base of the milk carton. “C’mon, Loverboy. I’m getting… something else from the lunch line. I don’t know. Are you coming?”

                “Aww, don’t take him away, Erica! We can make sure he’s safe while you go,” Monica pleaded, clasping her dark fingers together and dramatically waving them under her friend’s face.

                “It’s okay, I’ll… be back,” Peter said, hopping down into his sister’s palm and obediently curling up without trying to make it obvious how much he wanted a break from the lunch table. A collective high-pitched moan rang out from the remaining girls as Erica promptly cupped her five-inch sibling into the curve of her fingers and scooped him away from the tray and off between the winding table aisles again.

                “How’re your arms?”

                “My what?”

                “Don’t make me say it again.”

                “Oh. They’re… fine. Thanks,” Peter said, having not quite comprehended that his sister was displaying her version of authentic compassion toward his bruises. A few heads were turned as they walked, but little by little, most were learning to ignore the anomaly of his scale, even in crowded spaces. Another small blessing. Erica meanwhile seemed to be working her way through the awkward unknown of open affection, or at least her closest approximation.

                “Not even kidding, if this stuff about you and your girlfriend-”

                “She’s… she’s not my… I mean, not yet, or… I don’t know-”

                “-like I was saying, if this stuff about you and your not-girlfriend keeps up too much longer, we’re going to start eating lunch on the benches by the football field,” the eldest Clark groaned with grating exasperation, lifting Peter closer to her chin so he could make out her gall above the clamorous din of students gossiping and daring one another to try the mysterious brown sauce on the penne. Her thumb braced itself over his chest, something usually only Jessica bothered doing even in her normal state of overprotectiveness. “It wasn’t exactly my plan to turn you into their new project when you and Mom got this whole thing figured out.”

                “Yeah, I know. I’m not, uh… you know, trying to get them to do it,” Peter offered as Erica inched him nearer to her ear lobe, pressing a hand against her skin for support.

                “They’d still do it even if you never said a word to them,” his sister grunted, leveling her hand back down toward her stomach as they finally cleared the noisiest epicenter of the cafeteria and re-entered the line demarcated by black cordoned poles as though the students were being invited onto a premiere event to pick up their microwaved meat and apple sauce.

                “I know,” Peter repeated with a sigh. He draped his arms over his sibling’s slender thumb, which strangely didn’t shy away like it often would. “I don’t mind, though. I… I know you do, but I could use the help. S-Sometimes, anyway…”

                “Don’t flip out over her coming home to meet us,” the girl responded, immediately sensing the source of Peter’s quiet ire before his head was even bowed again. “You’re fifteen and two weeks into school. You can feel okay to flip out if you’re… I don’t know, twenty-six and engaged.”

                “Twenty-six? Is that when most people get engaged?” the boy peeped. Instantaneously his anxiety kicked in again about the possibility of ever hitting that hallowed place in the hierarchy of human relationships, let alone within the next eleven years. It was a staggering thought and, after the idea had a chance to burn a hole in Peter’s brain stem, painfully humbling.

                “You heard the part about not flipping out, right?” Erica snapped under her breath as she snatched up a banana at random from the pile, obviously having not put much thought into what food she was going to purchase before picking Peter up from the tray. She shuffled past a few students still being indecisive about seconds, along with others trying to stuff a few gum packs into their pockets without being caught. “Honestly. You did the first date by yourselves fine. Just have her come over. Be normal. Because I know you know how.”

                “Right,” Peter gulped, infinitely more soothed by his sister’s refusal to listen to his nonsense than any of the bubbly commentary made by her schoolmates.

                “It’s only weird if you make it weird.”

                “Or if Jessie makes it weird.”

                Erica cleared her throat, even allowing herself a rare snicker that wasn’t saturated with her trademark low-voiced sarcasm. “Good point. Okay, so it’s only… eighty percent weird if you make it weird. Close enough.”

                “That’s… good to know.”