Spiderman 1 (21 page)

"Your Aunt May and I don't know who you are anymore.
I wonder if
you
know who you are. Starting fights in
school . . ."

So they did know!
Peter had thought he'd dodged a bullet, that the school hadn't called to let them know about the scuf
fle with Flash. Obviously he'd thought wrong, but his aunt
and uncle had kept the knowledge to themselves, probably trying to determine the best way to approach it. Or perhaps
they'd just been giving him enough rope to hang himself . . .

Or, in his case, webbing.

"I didn't start that fight," Peter said defensively.

"Something new is happening to you," Ben pushed on.
"You're changing."

That froze Peter in his seat. How much did Ben know?
How much had he and Aunt May figured out? He thought
he'd cleaned up all the webs . . . but . . . but there was no
way they could have figured it out, right? No way ... right?

"How would you know?" asked Peter, very cautious.

"Because," was Ben's knowing answer, "when I was your
age, I went through exactly the same thing."

It was all Peter could do to stifle a laugh. For a moment
he had a mental image of Ben Parker scurrying along a wall or vaulting rooftops. "Not exactly," he said. Then he took a
deep breath to steady himself and fight down any other
laughter. "I have to go."

But Uncle Ben wasn't ending it that quickly. "These are the years when a man becomes the man he's going to be for
the rest of his life. Just be careful who you change into.
You're feeling this great power, and with great power comes
great responsibility."

And Peter started to get angry. Here Uncle Ben was lec
turing him about stuff, and he had no clue,
absolutely
no
clue, what was going on. Sure, sure, everyone was entitled to their opinions, but the truth was that everyone was enti
tled to their
informed
opinions. And Uncle Ben simply
wasn't informed on the matter. Plus
. . .
he could have
trusted Peter just a
little.
Even if Peter had been inclined to tell him what was going on, Uncle Ben didn't seem the least bit interested in hearing it. He'd already made up his mind. Didn't all these years of hard work, of good grades, of stay
ing out of trouble, mean anything?

"What are you afraid I'll do, become a criminal?" Peter de
manded in irritation. "Stop worrying about me, okay. Some
thing is different, but I'll figure it out. Stop lecturing me!"

Ben hesitated a moment, and Peter took that hesitation as
an opportunity to push the door open and get out onto the
curb. "I know I'm not your father, Peter
. . ."
Ben began.

And then came the words that Peter would, in later years,

wish that he could call back before Ben heard them. The
words that, if Peter could go back in time and throw a gag
around his mouth to prevent him from uttering them, he
would have done so in a heartbeat. Instead they emerged,
hostile and hurtful.

"Then stop pretending to be!"

Ben's face grew cold then. Peter had never seen him look
that way. So angry, so hurt, so
...
so old. "I'll pick you up here at ten," he said frostily, and then eased the car into traffic.

Feeling contrite, Peter shouted,
"I'm sorry!"
But he
wasn't sure whether Ben heard him as the Oldsmobile drove
away.

His shoulders sagged. That shouldn't have happened, that
fight. He should have been more honest, should have told Uncle Ben what was happening. But if he had, he knew that
Ben and May would never have let him do what he was plan
ning to do. Instead they'd probably just try and take him to
doctors and specialists and clinics to expunge these abilities from him. And then it really would have all been pointless.

Well . . . he'd make it right. That was all. He'd make it
right. He'd make sure that Uncle Ben and Aunt May knew he
was sorry, and he'd make it up to them. Hell, if everything
worked out this evening, he'd make it up to them in a big
way. He'd hold up the three thousand dollars in Uncle Ben's face when Uncle Ben came to pick him up, and the expression would be worth everything. "Money problems solved,
Uncle Ben," he'd tell him, and when Uncle Ben was positive
that Peter was involved dealing drugs or something—be
cause how else could one come by that much money that
fast?—why, Peter would just bend a lamp post or climb up the side of a building.

It would all work out. Things always did.

X.

THE SECOND FIGHT

Every so often at school, someone would accidentally
drop a tray in the cafeteria. At those times, shouts, catcalls
and all-around bellowing from the students would serenade the unlucky clumsy individual. Up until this moment, it had
been the loudest group noise Peter Parker had ever heard.

It was nothing compared to what he was experiencing
now.

The arena was wall-to-wall sound, unending, feeding
upon itself and just building and building, and Peter thought
that he was going to start bleeding out his ears. The place was huge, packed with more drunk people than Peter had ever seen in one place in his life, and they all wanted the
same thing: to see some guys get their heads kicked in.

Every so often, Uncle Ben would watch wrestling on
television. It was one of the few things he did despite know
ing it drove Aunt May completely nuts; indeed, that might have been one of the reasons he did it. Just to keep his hand
in, to let her know he was the man of the house, darn it. And
sometimes Peter would join him, which would send the
tsk tsk
ing from Aunt May to an entirely new level. But seeing it
on TV, nice and safe on a couch back home, had done ab
solutely nothing to prepare Peter for the reality of actually
being there.

He was standing on a line behind other amateur wrestlers,
most of them wearing remarkably garish outfits. At the front
of the line sat a bored-looking blonde with too much

makeup and a bad perm, checking them in and taking down
vital information ...

...
like next of kin,
he thought bleakly. The hallway he
was standing in, along the outer perimeter of the arena, was cramped and smelled like mildew. A pipe overhead dripped
water steadily into a bucket that needed to be emptied, and
soon. When Peter heard another massive roar, he took a step
back and peered through an exit door into the arena itself.

The wrestler in the middle of the ring was known as Bone Saw McGraw. Peter had never seen him in action during any
of the fights that he'd watched alongside Uncle Ben. That might have been a good thing, because if he had, he might
never have screwed up the nerve to come. McGraw was at
least six-feet-nine-inches tall and three hundred pounds of pure muscle. His massive chest was glistening with sweat,
he had long, dark, messy hair and a dark beard, and he had
a look on his face of such dementia that Peter couldn't help
but wonder whether McGraw might not be overdue for a dis
temper shot.

At that moment, McGraw was busy polishing off an opponent who had been billing himself as Battling Jack Murdock. He had flaming red hair and some muscle of his own,
and he was dressed in a costume of yellow and dark crim
son. But if he'd ever had a prime, he was clearly past it, and
McGraw was making short work of him. He slammed Murdock to the ground and delivered a crushing flying-elbow to his opponent's chest so hard that Peter thought he could feel
it from where he was standing.

"Down the hall, to the ramp," said the check-in woman to
the man immediately ahead of Peter. The man was tall and lean and dressed like Robin Hood. "And lose the hat," she
added sourly. He reluctantly removed it but gave her a nasty
look, which only succeeded in earning him a derisive
chuckle. "Yeah, yeah, nice tights, tough guy," she said.
"Next!"

Peter pulled himself away from the exit door and turned
to face her. She looked him up and down once and said
briskly. "There's no featherweight division here, small-fry. Next!"

Watching the three thousand dollars evaporating before his eyes, Peter said quickly, "No, no
...
I know."

She stared at him as if trying to figure out—not
whether
he was insane—but just how insane he was. "Ooookay," she said slowly. "You understand the NYWL is not responsible
for any injuries you may ..." She looked him over one more time and continued, "and probably will sustain while partic
ipating in said event, and that you are at sub one hundred
and fifty pounds, indeed participating under your own free
will."

"Yes," he replied.

Sighing as one would when saying farewell to a con
demned man, she said, "Down the hall and up the ramp. May
God be with you."

Behind Peter, a man dressed as Xena waited his turn. The
blonde rolled her eyes and said, "Let's go, princess."

Aunt May, drawn by crowd shouts from the TV walked into the living room to find Ben sitting there, staring at the screen. She gave a low moan as she realized he was watch
ing wrestling. She hadn't even heard him come home. "How
did the talk with Peter go?"

He grunted.

"That doesn't sound good." She stood in front of the TV "Do you want to discuss it?"

"No," he said. "I want to watch large men pound on each
other."

"Why?" she asked him, for what seemed the thousandth
time in the course of their marriage.

"It vents frustration. One side, May, please."

With an extremely loud
tsk tsk,
she stepped aside. Then,

after a moment, she walked primly over to the couch and sat
down next to him. Ben looked at her as if she'd just dropped
down from Mars. "What do you think you're doing?"

"If you can take it, I can," she replied. "You're not the
only frustrated one here."

Ben moaned softly, then picked up the remote and turned the volume up, hoping the noise would drive May away. In
stead she simply sat there, watching, shaking her head
slowly to display her obvious disbelief that anyone—much less she—would watch this voluntarily.

"Who is this person?" asked May after a moment.