Gravity
Betty had a corkboard.
It was behind her desk in the supply closet she'd claimed six weeks ago by putting furniture in it. The closet still had printer paper and toner cartridges and a box of Bugle pens nobody had opened since 2003. Now it also had Betty's desk, Betty's corkboard, and red string connecting forty-seven photographs in a web that would get her fired or promoted depending on which direction Jameson turned when he walked out of his office.
"Close the door," she said.
Peter closed the door. The closet was small enough that closing the door put him two feet from her. She was standing in front of the board with a printout and her sleeves pushed to her elbows and the pen behind her ear.
"Every Spider-Man photo you've sold us," she said. "Mapped against NYPD dispatch logs. Public record." She pinned the printout. Another red string. "There's a five-minute gap. Every single time. Spider-Man arrives five minutes after the incident starts, before dispatch goes out, before first responders. And your camera is already set up."
"I know where he patrols."
"He doesn't have a route. I checked. The incidents are scattered across four boroughs." She tapped a cluster of pins in Queens. "But if you map response time from a single starting point in Forest Hills, traveling at a speed that would require, say, swinging between buildings on some kind of-"
"Betty."
She stopped. The pen was sliding from behind her ear and she caught it. The fluorescent light hummed.
"You're either psychic," she said. Quieter. "Or you're following him. And if you're following him, I need to know which kind of reckless you are because I-" She pressed her lips together. Tried again. "You come in here with bruises. You take photos nobody should be able to take. You're eighteen and you act invincible and I worry about you. I do."
Her ears were pink. She was looking at his chin instead of his eyes.
"I'm careful," he said.
"You're a terrible liar."
"You keep telling me that."
"Because it keeps being true."
She reached out. Her hand wrapped around his forearm, above the wrist. Firm. Her thumb pressed into the tendons on the inside of his arm. She held on. Her grip was warm through his sleeve and it was specific, five fingers, deliberate, and she held it for three seconds.
"Be careful," she said. "Whoever you are."
She let go. Stepped back. Picked up a folder from her desk.
"Your check's at the front. Three-fifty. I talked him up." She sat down. Opened the folder. Didn't look at him.
He left the closet. His forearm was warm where her grip had been. The shape of her hand, specific. Still there.
The pamphlet landed on the library table.
Glossy paper, red and blue, a cartoon Spider-Man with crossed-out eyes. THE SPIDER-MAN MENACE in big type. Underneath: PUBLIC NUISANCE IN LONG UNDERWEAR. AN EDITORIAL BY J. JONAH JAMESON. At the bottom: Distributed by the Daily Bugle. Free.
Peter looked up. Jessica was in her corner. Same chair, back to the wall. Her bag was on the floor, not on the empty chair next to her. The empty chair had been available for weeks and Peter had never sat in it and she'd never told him to.
She was reading. Hood up but pushed back enough that her eyes were visible. The page hadn't turned since he'd sat down.
"Where'd you get this?"
"Found it."
"Where?"
"Around."
The pamphlet was crisp. Center fold only. Still smelled like ink. The Bugle's address was on the back: 39th and 2nd Avenue, Manhattan.
39th and 2nd was a forty-minute subway ride from Queens.
Peter read the first paragraph out loud, quiet. "'Spider-Man represents the single greatest threat to the moral fabric of this city since the invention of the selfie stick.'"
The left corner of Jessica's mouth pulled up. Barely.
He kept going. "'This masked vigilante, operating without oversight, accountability, or, apparently, a tailor-'"
A sound came out of her. A breath through her nose that was adjacent to a laugh. She caught it. The corner of her mouth settled back but not completely and she was looking at her book hard and the page still wasn't turning.
"He called me a public nuisance in long underwear," Peter said.
"He called Spider-Man that."
"Right. Spider-Man."
He folded the pamphlet and put it in his back pocket. "I'm keeping this."
"It's free."
"I know."
She turned a page. The wrong direction, then corrected. Her hood slipped forward and she pushed it back and her face was open for a second, unguarded, younger than the hoodie and the wall suggested. Then the hood settled and she was reading again.
Peter opened his book. The kid in the back of the library coughed.
Cindy caught his hand between third and fourth period.
Her fingers closed around his wrist, slid down to his palm. Her hand in his hand in the middle of a hallway with two hundred people in it. Callused palm from hockey and from webbing. The compass went from three to four and held.
She looked at him. Dark eyes, ponytail, his sweatshirt that she was never giving back. She didn't say anything. She held his hand for two seconds where people could see and then she let go and walked to class.
First time at school. A sophomore bumped his shoulder going the other way. Peter went to fourth period.
"Saturday," Harry said.
Cafeteria table. Harry was eating a sandwich from the deli on Parsons because Harry Osborn didn't eat cafeteria food. Pastrami. One hand eating, the other gesturing. Juice dripping onto his tray.
"The gala. Oscorp Tower. I told you."
"You mentioned it."
"My dad mentioned it. Specifically. He said 'make sure Parker comes.' Not invite, not see if he's free. Make sure." Harry shrugged. "That's him being interested."
"That's him telling you to fetch."
"Same thing." Harry put the sandwich down. Wiped his hand. Missed a spot. "Black tie. Saturday. You need a suit."
"I have a suit."
"You have a blazer and khakis. My tailor's on Lexington. Friday after school."
A girl walking past tripped on a backpack strap. Her tray slid. Harry caught the milk carton one-handed without looking up. She said thanks. He said no problem. She walked away.
"He also asked about your grades," Harry said. "And whether you'd looked into ESU's biophysics program. He mentioned it twice. My dad doesn't say things twice unless he means it."
Norman Osborn wanted him at a gala. Had asked about grades. Mentioned ESU twice. Peter's foreknowledge gave him green mask, pumpkin bombs, a bridge and someone falling.
Harry was eating his sandwich. Pastrami juice on his chin. His father's name sat differently in Peter's head than it did in Harry's.
"Friday after school," Peter said. "The tailor."
Harry grinned.
He searched for her from nine to midnight.
Chelsea first. The rooftop where she'd cased the jewelry store. Empty. Dust on the ledge. No boot prints. The ventilation unit humming.
Hell's Kitchen. The fire escape route from their first chase. He traced it building by building. The gap between ventilation ducts. The window she'd swung through. The orange cat was on the kitchen counter in a different apartment, watching him with the same lack of interest.
Diamond District. The alley behind the Forty-seventh Street exchange. Empty. Somebody had thrown out a box of silk roses. Bright red, spilling from the dumpster onto the wet ground.
The water tower in Chelsea. Their water tower. Where she'd kissed him twelve days ago and bitten his lip and said it didn't happen.
Empty. Grime undisturbed on the platform. Nobody had been up here in days.
She wasn't hiding. She was erasing. Every rooftop he knew, every route she'd shown him. Gone. He didn't know her apartment. Didn't know her civilian name. He knew cherry lipstick and the sound of a grappling hook catching brick.
He sat on the water tower with his legs off the edge and looked at the river and Felicia Hardy was nowhere in it.
The feeling started between his shoulder blades.
A weight. Being watched by someone who knew how to watch. Steady, professional. The kind of observation that came with a long lens and a report filed afterward. He tracked it: east-northeast, rooftop height, roughly three blocks.
It followed when he moved. He swung north, slow, residential route. The feeling stayed at three blocks. Patient. It didn't close, didn't fall back.
He swung until the rooftops turned residential. Astoria. Walk-ups and apartment buildings. The weight between his shoulder blades faded. Whoever it was didn't follow into neighborhoods where a figure on a roof would get noticed.
Peter crouched on a water tower that wasn't his. Astoria was quiet below. A pizza place still lit on the corner. A man locking a bike to a street sign.
Ezekiel's card was in his dresser drawer at home. Cindy had pressed it into his hand two weeks ago. "Just in case."
Somebody was watching. And it wasn't the first somebody.