Marvel – I am Spiderman

"I need help," MJ said, standing on the Parker front step with one hip cocked and her bag over her shoulder. She was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt that was too big for her, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that showed her ears. She had small ears. The flannel was red and black plaid and it wasn't hers. The sleeves had been rolled up three times to fit her arms and the hem hung past her hips.

"With calculus."

"Don't say it like that."

"Like what."

"Like you think I'm making it up." She held up the textbook. It was thick and it had Post-it notes sticking out of three different chapters, yellow and pink and green. "I'm failing. Actual failing. Mrs. Chen gave me a look today. You know the look."

He did not know the look, but he stepped aside and let her in.

May was in the living room watching Jeopardy. She looked up when MJ walked in and her mouth fell open and her eyes got big and she looked at Peter with an expression that said she'd been waiting for this moment since approximately his birth.

"Mary Jane! Come in, come in. Are you hungry? I made meatloaf."

"I'm good, Mrs. Parker. Thanks." MJ smiled. The full one. Performance-grade.

"Don't be silly. There's plenty. Peter, get her a plate."

"She said she's-"

"Get her a plate."

Peter got her a plate.

They sat at the kitchen table with the calculus textbook open between them and MJ's notebook next to it. The meatloaf was good. MJ ate three bites, said it was delicious, and pushed the rest around with her fork when she thought nobody was looking. The kitchen smelled like the meatloaf and the coffee Ben had been drinking earlier and May's hand soap from the dispenser by the sink.

"Okay," Peter said. "Show me where you're stuck."

She opened the notebook and flipped to the calculus section and there it was, the math, but also everything else. The margins were full. Designs. Dresses, jackets, a pair of boots with the stitching marked out in tiny precise lines. One page had a whole outfit sketched in blue ink, a coat with an asymmetrical collar and notes along the side: longer hem, buttons not zipper, lining needs weight. The handwriting was different from her calculus notes. Smaller, more careful. She'd spent time on these. More time than the calculus, probably.

"You draw clothes."

MJ moved her arm over the margin. Casual. Like she was just resting it there. "It's nothing. Just messing around."

"That's a whole coat. With fabric notes."

"It's a doodle."

It wasn't a doodle. It had measurements. A small swatch of color taped to the corner that looked like she'd cut it from a magazine. On the opposite page there was a skirt with four different hem lengths penciled in, each one crossed out except the last. She should have a sketchbook for this stuff. Instead she had margins and a calculus grade that was paying for it.

"It's good," he said.

She looked at him. Straight on, green eyes, no performance. Checking if he meant it.

"Calculus," she said. "Focus."

He focused. The calculus wasn't hard. Not for a twenty-three-year-old brain that had already survived college math once. He walked her through the chain rule and she picked it up fast once someone explained it without making her feel stupid about not already knowing it. She was smart. He'd known that, from the banter, from how she read people. But this was different. She learned fast when she wasn't performing.

Halfway through a practice problem she got stuck and chewed on her pen and then said "Oh" and wrote the answer and circled it and the circle was aggressive, like she was mad at the equation for making her wait.

She was working on the next one when Ben came in.

Ben went straight for the stove. He was wearing a cardigan with a hole in the elbow and his reading glasses were on top of his head and he started pulling things out of the cabinet without saying anything. Milk. Cocoa powder. Sugar. The pot.

"Hot chocolate," he said, to nobody in particular. "Who wants hot chocolate."

"That wasn't a question," Peter said.

"It was a statement of intent."

MJ laughed. A real one. Short. Surprised by it.

Ben made the hot chocolate slow, stirring, the milk warming on the stove. The WORLD'S BEST UNCLE mug for himself. The blue chipped one for Peter. A green mug with a faded four-leaf clover for MJ, pulled from the back of the cabinet where the guest mugs lived.

"Thank you, Mr. Parker."

"Ben."

"Thank you, Ben."

She held the mug with both hands. Her fingers wrapped around it and her thumbs met on the side and she looked at it for a moment before she took a sip.

Ben sat down across from them with his own mug and his crossword. "How's the math."

"Terrible," MJ said. "Peter's trying to save me."

"He's good at that." Ben sipped his hot chocolate. "Harry called earlier. Said something about some gala? Boring, apparently, but the food's good."

"Harry's got strong opinions about buffets," Peter said.

"Norman Osborn's hosting," Ben said. But May, from the other room, said "Fancy," in a tone that had opinions packed into it.

MJ looked at Peter. "You're going to a gala?"

"Apparently."

"At an Osborn thing."

"Harry invited me."

"Huh." She drank her hot chocolate. The flannel shirt had slipped off one shoulder. Her collarbone and the strap of a tank top underneath, dark green against her skin. He stared at the calculus textbook. His uncle was three feet away.

Ben finished his hot chocolate, rinsed the mug, and went back to the living room. "Don't stay up too late."

"We won't," Peter said.

They finished at eight. MJ got the chain rule. Mostly. Enough to pass. She packed up her notebook, closed the designs inside it, and he walked her to the front door and they ended up at the fence. The chain-link was between them and the air was cool and it was dark and the streetlight at the end of the block was turning everything orange.

"Thanks for the help. And the meatloaf."

"I'll tell May."

"And the hot chocolate."

"I'll tell Ben."

"You've got a good thing here, Tiger." She said it looking at the house, not at him. The yellow kitchen light was on behind the curtains and May's shadow moved past the window. "The house, the crossword. Your uncle who makes hot chocolate because you look cold."

He didn't know what to say to that. She'd said it flat, like an observation, but her jaw was tight.

She was leaning on the fence from her side. Forearms on the top rail. He was standing on his side with his hands in his pockets. She was closer than arm's length. He could smell her shampoo, something with coconut, and the flannel shirt that was too big for her. Somebody else's flannel. He didn't ask whose.

"Your uncle's nice," she said. She was looking at the street now.

"Yeah."

"He's really nice. Like, genuinely." She picked at a link in the fence. Her nail polish was black tonight. "Not everybody has that."

He didn't say anything. Distantly, a television from her house. Just the sound of it. No voices.

She took one hand off the fence rail and put it on his arm. Over the top this time. Her fingers on his forearm, on the sleeve of his hoodie, and they were warm from the mug.

"You're easy to talk to, Tiger."

"That's dangerous," she said. She was still looking at the street. Her thumb moved once on his sleeve. "For me, I mean."

"The calculus isn't that hard," he said. "You just need someone who explains it right."

She looked at him. Her mouth opened slightly, like she'd been expecting a different answer. Then the corners went up and it wasn't the performance smile, it was the small one, the one that caught her off guard.

"Mm," she said. "Maybe."

She let go of his arm. Stepped back from the fence. The flannel shirt was slipping off her shoulder again and she didn't fix it.

"Good luck at the nerd exhibit tomorrow."

"It's a radiation exhibit."

"That's what I said. Nerd exhibit." She was walking backward toward her house. The orange streetlight was behind her and her red hair looked darker in it, more brown than copper. "Night, Tiger."

"Night, MJ."

Her screen door opened and closed. The television sound from inside got louder for a second, then muffled. No raised voices. Just the TV.

Peter stood at the fence. A car drove past on the cross street, bass thumping, headlights sweeping the sidewalk, and was gone. The block was quiet after that.

He went inside.

The house was quiet. Ben and May in bed. The TV off. The kitchen clean, three mugs upside down in the drying rack.

Tomorrow was the field trip. General Techtronics. The exhibition. The spider.

He went upstairs. Brushed his teeth. The toothbrush was blue. It had been the original Peter's toothbrush and it was almost worn through and he kept meaning to ask May for a new one and not doing it because it felt like erasing a piece of whoever came before. The mirror showed a skinny kid with toothpaste on his lip and glasses that wouldn't be necessary much longer.

He lay down. The radiator was clicking in the wall. The fridge cycled on in the kitchen. A creak from the floor in Ben and May's room, one of them shifting in bed.

Tomorrow a spider was going to bite him. Two weeks he'd been here. Two weeks of learning this house, these people. Tomorrow all of it changes.