Shelter
Three taps on the front door. Quiet. Past eleven.
Peter was in bed with his calc textbook open on his chest and his eyes closed. He wasn't sleeping. He was lying in the dark listening to the house settle. Ben's crossword pen had stopped twenty minutes ago. May was asleep. The furnace, the pipes, the third step creaking even when nobody was on it. The house made its sounds and Peter lay in them and didn't sleep.
Three taps again. Quieter.
He went downstairs. The hallway was dark. He opened the front door.
MJ was standing on the porch.
Grey hoodie, no zipper, hood down. No makeup. Her hair was loose and tangled in a way that meant she'd left fast. Her eyes were red. She wasn't crying but she had been. Her phone was in one hand and her keys were in the other and her knuckles were white around both.
"Can I stay tonight?" Flat. Careful. "My dad-"
She didn't finish.
Peter stepped aside. She came in. Her sneakers were untied. She was wearing sweatpants that weren't hers, too big, rolled at the ankle. She stood in the hallway and the Parker house was warm and dark and quiet around her and her hands were shaking. A small tremor she was trying to hold still.
"Peter?" May's voice from the top of the stairs. She'd heard the door.
"It's MJ."
May came down in her robe, hair in the braid she slept in. She took one look at MJ and didn't ask a single question.
"Come on, sweetheart. Kitchen."
May made hot chocolate.
Milk in a pot on the stove. Real cocoa. A spoon of sugar. She didn't use the microwave. She stood at the stove and stirred and the kitchen filled with the smell and MJ sat at the table with her hands flat on the wood and her eyes on the grain.
May put the mug in front of her. The green one with the faded four-leaf clover. MJ wrapped both hands around it and held it the same way she'd held Ben's WORLD'S BEST UNCLE mug in this same kitchen months ago, when she'd come over for calculus and fashion sketches and the world hadn't broken yet. She held the mug like it was the only warm thing in the room. She didn't drink.
Peter was in the doorway. T-shirt, sweatpants, bare feet on the cold floor. He didn't know what to do with himself so he leaned against the doorframe and stayed there.
May sat across from MJ. She didn't talk. After a while MJ took a sip. Her shoulders came down half an inch. She took another sip and May's hand came across the table and rested on MJ's wrist. MJ looked at the hand. Looked at May.
"Thank you," MJ said. Almost no sound.
"You can stay whenever you need to." May squeezed once and let go and stood up and started cleaning the pot. May Parker processed difficult things by cleaning. She'd cleaned the whole kitchen the night Peter came home from the Vulture fight with cracked ribs and a story about falling off his bike.
May's hand found Peter's shoulder as she passed through the doorway. She squeezed. Her eyes said everything. She went upstairs.
MJ drank the hot chocolate. Peter stayed in the doorway. The kitchen clock ticked. Outside, through the window above the sink, the fence between their yards was dark against the streetlight.
She finished the mug. Put it down. Looked at the four-leaf clover.
"Your aunt makes good hot chocolate," she said.
"She learned from Ben."
"Tell him thanks."
"I will."
She stood up. Pushed the chair in. She walked past him in the doorway and she smelled like soap and cold air and underneath it the smell that was her and his body registered it and he let it go. She went upstairs. He heard May's voice, low. A door closing.
He washed the mug. Put it upside down on the rack. Went upstairs.
His bedroom door was open. He always left it open.
MJ was standing in the doorway.
May's pajamas. Flannel, blue plaid, too big on her. The sleeves past her wrists, the pants pooled at her ankles, the collar hanging off one shoulder. Her red hair against the blue plaid. She was standing in his doorway.
"Tiger?"
"Yeah?"
"Can I just... sit here for a minute?"
He stepped back. She came in and sat on the edge of his bed. He sat at his desk. The chair creaked. His calc textbook was on the bed and she moved it to the nightstand without looking at it.
She pulled her knees up. Wrapped her arms around them. She was looking at the periodic table poster on the wall, the one the original Peter Parker had taped up crookedly and the current Peter Parker had never taken down.
They sat.
Ben's breathing through the wall. A car on Ingram Street, headlights sweeping across the ceiling and gone. The furnace clicking.
"Don't be nice to me right now," she said. "Or I'll lose it."
"Okay."
"I mean it."
"I know."
The furnace clicked on. Warm air came through the vent near the floor and moved the curtain.
She lay down. Curled on her side, facing the wall, her back to him. The pajama top had ridden up and there was a strip of skin above the waistband. Her hair across his pillow, red against white. She pulled her knees tighter. Her breathing went slow and deliberate. Controlled. Trying to sleep.
Peter sat at his desk. The curve of her back under the blue plaid. Her shoulder rising and falling. Her bare feet hanging off the edge because she'd curled up in the middle instead of lying down properly.
He sat at his desk and she lay on his bed and there were six feet of floor between them. He wasn't going to cross it. She hadn't asked him to.
Her breathing evened out. Her shoulders relaxed. The hand gripping the pillow loosened. Asleep.
He waited. Made sure. Then he got up and pulled the blanket from the foot of the bed and laid it over her. He tucked the edge around her shoulders and his hand was close to her hair, close enough. He pulled his hand back.
He got the spare blanket from the closet. Lay down on the floor next to the bed. The carpet was thin and the floor was hard and her breathing was above him.
He closed his eyes. Ben and May asleep. MJ on the bed. The furnace running. The house on Ingram Street doing what it did.
He slept.
Morning. She was gone.
The bed was made. Corners tucked, pillow straight. Made like someone erasing the evidence of having been there.
On the pillow, a note. A piece of paper torn from the notepad May kept by the kitchen phone, the one with the faded daisies on the border.
No words. A small drawing in pencil. A tiger. Simple. Quick. Lopsided, the stripes uneven, one ear bigger than the other. The kind of drawing someone makes in thirty seconds in a dark room trying not to wake the person sleeping on the floor.
Peter sat on the edge of his bed and held the note. His chest hurt. Behind the sternum. It didn't go away when he breathed.
He put the note in the drawer of his nightstand. On top of the cards. Ezekiel's, Norman's, Captain Stacy's, Gwen's with the coffee stain, Bobbi Morse's. The tiger drawing on top of all of them.
He went downstairs. May was at the stove. Ben was at the table with the crossword.
"She left early," May said. "Before I was up. Folded the blankets in the guest room too." She paused. "Her father called the house at seven. Asked if she was here. I told him she was."
Peter sat down. Ben looked at him over the crossword. His reading glasses were crooked.
"Seven letters," Ben said. "Safe place. Starts with S."
Peter looked at the green mug on the drying rack. Upside down. From last night.
"Shelter," he said.
Ben wrote it in.