Marvel – I am Spiderman

Betty had reorganized the board.

That was the first thing Peter noticed when he walked into the darkroom Thursday afternoon. The photos were still there, pinned in rows across the corkboard she'd hung behind the developer trays, but the organization had changed. Last week they'd been sorted by date. Now they were sorted by location. And between each cluster she'd taped index cards with handwritten timestamps in her small precise print, and red lines drawn between cards where the timestamps overlapped.

She'd been busy.

"Close the door," she said.

He closed it. The darkroom smelled like developer fluid and Betty's hand lotion, the lavender one, and the red safelight turned everything the color of old blood. The light hit her jaw and the bridge of her nose and left her eyes in shadow.

"I figured out how you get the photos."

His stomach dropped. He kept his face still. He'd been doing this long enough that keeping his face still was automatic.

"Yeah?" Casual. Too casual. Dial it back. "How?"

She picked up one of the index cards. Held it where the safelight caught the ink. "September fourteenth. Spider-Man was spotted fighting two guys near Steinway and Broadway at nine forty-seven PM. You sold Jameson a photo of that fight at ten-fifteen the next morning. The photo was taken from the roof of the dry cleaner's across the street." She put the card down and picked up another. "October third. Spider-Man pulled a woman out of a taxi on the Queensboro Bridge. You had photos on Jameson's desk by eight AM. Shot from a street lamp, looking down."

"I have a police scanner."

"You don't." She said it flat. "I checked the scanner logs. The Queensboro call went out four minutes after your photo's EXIF timestamp. You took the picture BEFORE dispatch knew."

The roll of film in his hand was getting warm. He set it on the counter.

"Betty."

"You're always there before anyone else." She was talking faster now and her hands were moving, shuffling cards, pulling two more from the bottom of the stack. "Every single time. The gap is consistent. Four to seven minutes before dispatch, within two blocks of the incident. Either you're psychic, or you're following him, or you-"

She stopped.

Her mouth was open. The word she'd been about to say sat right there between them.

She looked at him. He looked at her. The red light made the whites of her eyes glow faintly pink and her pupils were large and dark.

"Or you're really good," she said slowly, "at predicting where crime happens."

She'd changed the sentence. He could see the other one still on her face. The tight line of her mouth. Her chin lifting half an inch.

Peter said nothing.

Betty set the cards down. She stepped closer. His spider-sense didn't fire. She reached up and straightened his collar. Her fingers were warm and they brushed the skin of his neck and the touch sent a line of heat down his spine.

"I worry about you, Parker."

Her hand stayed on his chest. Flat. Over his heartbeat. She could feel how fast it was going. She probably thought she knew why.

"You don't have to worry about me."

"You sell photos of a man who fights people with wings and throws them through walls, and you're always there when it happens." Her hand pressed harder. He could feel each finger. "Someone should worry about you."

She held his eyes for two more seconds, then pulled her hand back and turned to the board and started organizing again like the conversation had been about workflow. Her ears were red. She tucked a strand of hair behind one of them and it fell back out and she tucked it again.

Peter picked up the roll of film. "Same time next week?"

"Bring me coffee."

"I always bring you coffee."

"Bring me better coffee."

He left the darkroom and his chest was warm where her hand had been and cool everywhere else.

MJ was at the reception desk.

She was doing the Bugle-day thing where she answered phones and sorted mail for Robbie and pretended she wasn't there to keep an eye on Peter. Hair up with a pen through the bun, leaning on her elbows, and she watched Peter come out of the darkroom and her eyes moved past him to the darkroom door.

Betty came out thirty seconds later. Straightening her cardigan. Cheeks still flushed from the safelight or from whatever had happened before it.

MJ looked at Betty. Betty walked past the desk toward the filing cabinet. MJ looked at Peter.

Her expression was careful. Jaw loose, mouth almost smiling, eyes flat. He'd seen that look before. On the porch when she'd noticed the web-marks on his wrists. In the cafeteria when Cindy caught his hand. At the Bugle two weeks ago when Felicia texted and his ears went red.

She was tracking the girls.

"Hey, Tiger." Light. Easy. "Good session?"

"Sold three photos."

"Mmhm." She looked at the darkroom door again. Then back at him. Her mouth pulled into a smile that was all performance. "Betty's collar game is strong today. Very neat. Very crisp." She touched her own collar, watching him. "Like someone just fixed it."

His ears got hot. MJ saw the ears. Her smile didn't change but her eyes did.

She turned back to the phone and picked up a call and Peter left.

The wind outside hit his face and he walked five blocks before his heart rate came down.

The library was empty at lunch.

It was usually empty at lunch because lunch was for the cafeteria and the hallways and the lawn out back where the smokers pretended they didn't smoke. The library at lunch was for people who wanted to be somewhere nobody would look for them.

Peter sat at his usual table by the biography section. The one with the wobbly leg. He had a calc textbook open and he wasn't reading it.

Jessica came in fast. He heard her before he saw her. Quick footsteps, the squeak of a sneaker changing direction, and then she was in the chair across from him and her bag hit the table hard enough to knock his textbook closed.

She was wearing the hoodie. The big grey one. Her hands were in the pocket and her shoulders were pulled up around her ears.

"Something happened."

He waited.

She pulled her hands out of the pocket. Looked at them. Turned them over. They were shaking.

"I was at Jankowski's. The foster house. The pantry door sticks and you have to pull it hard. I pulled it and the handle-" She stopped. Swallowed. "I didn't pull hard. I pulled normal. And the handle came off."

"Door handles do that."

"It didn't come off. It crushed." Her voice dropped. "I felt it go. Like foil. Like crushing a can. But it was steel, Peter. A steel handle and I squeezed it and it just-" She opened her hands and looked at them like they belonged to someone else. "There was a shape in it. My finger marks."

The library was quiet. A clock ticked somewhere near the circulation desk. The heating vent above them rattled once and stopped.

"Mrs. Jankowski saw it. She thinks I broke it with tools. She looked at me like-" Jessica's mouth pressed flat. "She looked at me like I was dangerous."

Peter closed the calc textbook. Pushed it aside.

"Can I show you something?"

She stared at him.

"Come on."

They left through the back exit near the gym. The loading dock behind the school was poured concrete and a dumpster and a brick wall that faced the parking lot. No windows overlooking it. No cameras. Peter checked both directions out of habit and walked to the wall.

He put his hand flat on a brick. Pushed.

The brick cracked. A line split down the middle and fragments dusted off the bottom edge and the brick broke in half under his palm. He pulled his hand back. Brick dust on his fingers.

Jessica's mouth was open. She looked at the wall. At his hand. At the wall.

"What are you?"

"I don't know exactly." True enough. "A spider bit me at a field trip and things got weird."

"A spider."

"Yeah."

She looked at her hands again. "A car crash. My family's car. There was- I don't know. Chemicals. A truck had spilled on the road. I woke up in the hospital six months later and everything was different and my parents were dead and I could-" She stopped. Her eyes were wet and she blinked hard and the wetness went away. "I bent the bed rail. In the hospital. The nurse said it was already damaged."

Peter leaned against the wall. The broken brick sat at his feet. He put his hands in his pockets.

"I went months thinking I was losing my mind," she said. Quiet. "Months. And nobody- there wasn't anybody to-"

"You're not alone."

She looked at him. The hoodie was big on her and her dark hair was in her face and she was sixteen and scared.

"Nobody can know," she said.

"Nobody will."

She held his eyes for a long time. Then she looked at the broken brick and sat down on the concrete loading dock with her legs hanging over the edge. She didn't ask him to sit. He sat anyway.

They sat there for a while. The parking lot smelled like asphalt and the dumpster and cut grass from wherever the groundskeeper had been this morning. A bird landed on the chain-link fence and left again. Jessica's breathing slowed. Her hands stopped shaking. She put them back in the hoodie pocket.

"How strong are you?" she asked.

"Stronger than a door handle."

The corner of her mouth moved. Maybe three millimeters.

"Me too," she said.

Ben was doing the crossword when Peter got home.

Same chair. Same pen. Same mug, the chipping letters a little more chipped than they'd been in September. May was at her book club and the house was quiet except for the kitchen clock and Ben's pen on the newspaper.

Peter dropped his bag by the door and sat across from him.

"I have a friend," Peter said.

Ben looked up. The reading glasses caught the kitchen light.

"This friend is going through something she can't talk about. She doesn't have family she can go to. She's scared and she's been dealing with it alone for a long time and today she told someone. Me. And I don't know what to tell her back."

Ben set the pen down. He took the glasses off and cleaned them on his shirt. The shirt was flannel. Red and black. He'd worn it so long the elbows were soft.

"What's she scared of?"

"Herself. I think."

Ben put the glasses back on. Looked at Peter over them.

"Sometimes the best thing you can do is be the person who doesn't run."

Peter sat with that for a second.

"Thanks, Ben."

"That's what uncles are for." He picked up his pen. "Eight letters. Starts with S. 'Trust given in confidence.'"

"Security."

"Doesn't fit."

"Safekeep?"

"That's not a word."

"It should be."

Ben wrote something in the margin and went back to the crossword and Peter stood up and crossed the kitchen and hugged him.

Ben went still. The pen stopped moving. Peter's arms were around his uncle's shoulders and the flannel was warm and soft and smelled like aftershave and dish soap and he held on and his throat was tight and he held on.

Ben's free hand came up. Rested on Peter's arm. Squeezed.

"You okay, kid?"

"Yeah." His voice was rough. "Yeah, I'm good."

He let go. Ben looked at him over the crooked glasses. Patient.

"Dinner's in the fridge. May made the chicken thing."

"The good chicken thing or the experimental chicken thing?"

"The good one."

Peter heated it up and ate standing at the counter. Ben went back to the crossword. The kitchen clock ticked.

His uncle was alive and sitting six feet away doing a crossword in blue ink. A girl in a hoodie knew she wasn't alone anymore. A girl in a darkroom had changed a sentence to protect him. And MJ was building a picture out of every collar and every hand.

I can't keep this up forever.

He finished the chicken. Washed the plate. Went upstairs.

His phone buzzed once on the way up. Jessica. Four words.

Thanks for the brick.