Spiderman 1 (17 page)

He moaned, remembering that he was supposed to have gotten home early so that he and Uncle Ben could paint the
kitchen. But when he'd fled from school, he'd become dis
connected from everything else he was supposed to be
doing. He'd turned totally inward, and now he'd let his uncle down. He felt like a creep, and even worse when he spotted
the note on the wall that read, in Aunt May's delicate hand,
"Meatloaf and vegetables in the oven. Cherry pie on the
shelf. We've gone to play bridge at the Anderson's."

Great.

Not only had he broken a promise, but also, instead of
leaving an angry note or even being there to chew him out,
they left him a dinner . . . and pie. It was the pie that hurt the most, since cherry was his favorite.

"Aw, shoot . . ." he muttered.

Then he heard shouting from across the street. From
Mary Jane's house.

Peter began to wonder if it had always been noisy over at
her place, or whether—since a single spider had completely
reordered his life—he had just become more attentive, more
aware of the world around him.

He walked out onto the back steps, giving him a plain
view of the back of M.J.'s house, over the fence that separated the two small yards. He heard words being shouted.
Words like "loser" and "future" and, he was pretty sure,
"Flash."
Figures,
he thought sourly, and started to turn to go back inside when Mary Jane stomped out into her backyard. Even from where he was standing, he could see that she was
trembling with fury.

She looked up at him, her eyes wet.

Suddenly he felt utterly mortified, like some sort of dis
gusting Peeping Tom, poking in on other people's lives. The
thing was, he wasn't accustomed to thinking of M. J. as
"other people," but rather as an angel on earth who should, by rights, have no problems at all. He wanted to dart back
into the house, but it was way too late for that. He stood
there, paralyzed, and finally managed to accomplish what
was, for him, a major achievement: To initiate something ap
proaching a casual conversation with her. "Oh. Hi."

It wasn't much of a start, but at least it
was
a start.

She wet her lips, brushed away the tears that were obviously brimming in her eyes. She looked mortified, but also
defiant, as if daring Peter to feel pity for her. "Were you lis
tening to that?"

"No!" he said quickly, sounding very guilty, and when he
realized how obvious the lie was, he quickly tried to amend
it, words tumbling over each other. "Yeah. I
. . .
heard some
thing but wasn't listening. To what?"

Mary Jane blinked at the babble, then seemed to take a bit

of amusement in his obvious discomfort. "I guess you can always hear us," she said, trying her best to sound casual.

"No. I was ... just taking out the trash."

She paused to note the obvious lack of garbage bags in
his hands and raised an amused eyebrow. Well, at least she
was capable of finding humor in the situation, no matter how
uncomfortable. "You always do your chores, don't you,
Peter?"

"Well . . ."

When she spoke to him next, she wasn't looking at him.
Perhaps she was too embarrassed. "I'm sorry we do that all
the time," she said softly. "Your aunt and uncle never
scream."

"Oh ... they can scream pretty good, y'know," Peter assured her, and that much was true. Granted, they'd never
screamed at
him.
Their patience with him, and for him, bor
dered on the infinite. But he'd heard Uncle Ben scream
enough at blind umpires on televised baseball games, and
Aunt May scream back at him that it's just a game, for pity's
sake, grow up, and let's turn this silly thing off because
there's an interesting program on the Discovery Channel
about the lifecycle of the luna moth. That kind of thing. He
certainly didn't want to rub M.J.'s nose, however, in the fact that he was better off without parents than she was with par
ents.

"So ... where to after you graduate?" she asked, obvi
ously ready to change topics.

A real live conversation. How about that? Peter strolled
forward, suddenly feeling at ease, his hands in his pockets as
he approached the fence. "I thought I'd go into the city, get
a job as a photographer. Work my way through college.
What about you?"

"Headed for the city, too," she said, matching his steps as
she approached the fence as well. "I can't wait to get out of

here. I thought I'd ..." Then she looked down, embarrassed.
"Oh, I don't know ..."

Obviously she had some sort of career in mind. Figuring
he could see her in just about any profession except for the
oldest one, Peter said, "Try me."

He'd never known Mary Jane Watson to look as vulnera
ble as she did at that moment, as he realized that she was
concerned he would laugh at her. "I want to
...
," and she lowered her voice as if afraid her parents would hear,"... to
act. On stage. Be an actress."

"Hey, that's great! You were really awesome in all the school plays, Mary Jane."

"Really?" She cocked her head eagerly, like a cocker
spaniel needing to be petted.

"Yeah. I cried like a baby when you played Cinderella."

Mary Jane blinked in confusion, and then she barely sup
pressed a smile. "Peter, that was in first grade."

"Well . . . even so," Peter said, rallying. He was leaning
up against the fence now, and she did as well, just to his right. He could smell the perfume wafting from her. He
wanted to vault the fence in one jump. He knew he could do
it, so easily, but he felt—correctly—as if he was dealing
with something very delicate, and such an overt move would
only shatter the mood. Trying to stay focused on the topic,
Peter continued, "You know how sometimes you can know
something, like what's going to be? Like . . . tell what's
around you, what's coming?"

He wasn't sure if that had sounded at all coherent, but
M. I simply nodded and said, "Sometimes."

Encouraged, he continued, "And you can just see things
coming that aren't exactly there, but you just believe ..."

Again she nodded, apparently fancying the thought that
Peter had been able to see a first grade performance of
Cin
derella
and intuit, from that moment on, that she belonged in
the theater. "What do you see coming for you?" she asked.

Lately? Fists and brick walls.

"I'm not sure ... but it feels like something I never felt
before, whatever it is." That much was true enough. However, at that moment, he couldn't have said whether he was
referring to his newfound spider abilities
...
or to the fact that he was talking to Mary Jane and she was actually listening to him, and even seemed interested in him.

"And what for me?" she asked.

"You?" He laughed as if the answer was self-evident, a
foregone conclusion. "You're ... why, you're gonna . . .
light up Broadway."

She smiled, and then the silence fell between them. There was so much he wanted to say, but as was usually the case at
such times, he couldn't even begin to know where to start.
M. J. was eyeing him, and after a moment she said, "Y'know,
you're taller than you look."

"I hunch," he said.

She reached out and put her hands on his biceps.

In all the years he'd known her, it was the first time she'd
ever touched him. It was as if someone had touched a live
wire to him, and he stood bolt upright, a small gasp emerg
ing from between his lips.

"Good. Don't hunch," she told him.

For all his newfound physical prowess, for all the liberat
ing feeling he'd had when vaulting rooftops, never had he
felt more energized or alive than he did at that moment. Whereas before his heartbeat had remained steady, no mat
ter what sort of physical exertions he'd been subjecting him
self to, now he could feel it pounding like a trip-hammer
against his chest.

Suddenly there was a loud, irritating
aah-oooo-gahh
from the front driveway. And Peter heard an all-too-familiar
voice calling, "Hey, M. J.! Come take a ride in my birthday
present?"

Stay. Stay with me,
he urged her with such force that he

was positive she could hear the words in her head. And in
deed, for a moment she did seem torn. There seemed to be
more to her indecision than just not knowing with whom she
wanted to hang out. When she looked in the direction of
Flash's honking, Peter detected, or thought he detected, fear.
But . . . fear of what? Fear of being with Flash? Or fear of
not being with him?

He had no time to inquire or figure it out, though, because
suddenly Mary Jane's uncertainty was replaced by her
"party girl" face
...
a face Peter was slowly starting to real
ize was a mask she slipped on whenever she wanted to con
front the world without letting it know what was going on in
her mind.

'Thanks, Pete," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "I
gotta go."

She dashed around the side of her house, and thankfully
Peter couldn't see her as he heard her
ooh
and
ahhh
over
what was obviously Flash's new car. Then there was a grind
ing of gears—apparently Flash didn't have the hang of it
yet—and the car peeled out of the driveway. It roared away,
and he caught the briefest glimpse of Mary Jane, laughing, her hair streaming out behind her.

Peter watched the car disappear, and then he sagged
against the fence like a puppet with its strings severed. He
hung there for a time, feeling sorry for himself, and then he
reached over and gingerly touched the bicep that she had
rested her fingers on. He raised his arm, flexed it, and made
a muscle. Made a considerable muscle.

And the wheels started turning.

Dear Mom and Dad:

I've been getting a heck of an education lately. Learning about how
these new . . . gifts, I guess, I hate saying "powers," it sounds so pre
tentious.. . work. And also learning about girls. About Mary Jane, es
pecially.