Peter II
P e t e r
It felt like a dream, taking the subway back to Queens. Even with the late hour, it felt like usual, like nothing had ever happened. He would go back to the apartment and May would be there, smiling, pointing at a takeaway box, and exclaiming about how badly the last cooking experience she tried. They’d feast on the sofa and watch Star Wars, or a film May wanted. Sometimes, one of them would fall asleep, and the other would put the couch blanket over them and continue watching, making sure to nudge them awake when it finished. No one wanted neck ache from the couch.
Recently, May had been leaving food on the coffee table when Peter would get back from patrol, often with a little note stuck on top.
How many bad guys did you get today? Love, May <3
Superheroes need their snacks too! Love, May <3
I’m at work, will see you tomorrow! Love, May <3
Love, May <3
Love, May <3
Peter had smiled at all the notes. He’d put them in the bin with the food packaging. Why did he do that?
Why hadn’t he kept the notes?
Why hadn’t he kept the notes?
This thought vibrated around his brain as he moved up the well-trodden path to the apartment block. He didn’t go inside; he wasn’t sure he was allowed, even though he’d never actually given his key back. Instead, he walked around the side, giving the shadows suspicious glances. The street was empty, but Peter still pulled his hood over his head, and the bandana over his nose. He looked like a robber, really, but that was somehow less suspicious than Spider-Man.
Silently he crept up the wall of the apartment block, making sure to go through the passage with no windows. Until he got to a specific floor, that is. Peter peered through the window of his old room in trepidation. It was bare; all his posters, the clothes, and knickknacks he hadn’t wanted at the time of moving were gone. All that was left was a cold, blank room containing a bed, closet, and desk. It was, really, like observing his room back at the Davidson’s. Hollow, like what Peter felt on a day-to-day basis.
He pushed further up the wall, giving furtive glances around him in case of some unexpected witnesses. Hauling himself onto the roof, he noted little change. The suit was exactly where he had left it. For some reason, this left him a little flatfooted. As though it should have been somewhere else entirely.
Moving over the roof, he ducked down to retrieve it.
It was as though a part of himself had been removed for two weeks when Peter picked up the suit. Running a hand over it, Peter thought about the last time he’d worn it.
Without warning, without any indication, a lump drew itself up from the bottom of Peter’s heart and cascaded out in an echoing howl of despair. Clutching the suit to his chest, he fell on his knees as sobs racked his body.
The waves crashed as Peter’s body shook, cascading over and over and over his head with no pattern. It was chaos, and all he could do was to float with the ocean as the grief took over. No matter what he tried, they kept coming; weeks of denial erupting at once. It was needed, it was necessary, it was important.
Peter sobbed into the Spider-Man suit as though it held the answers.
When none were forthcoming, he curled to the side and allowed the tears to taper away by themselves, leaving him hiccupping as the cold air began to filter through his bones. It was December, after all, with the whisper of snow in the air. Peter shivered on the rooftop.
Clutching the suit, he pushed himself up. He wasn’t sure if he could go back out into the city as Peter; not with a face that seemed swollen with tears.
Making a decision that was borderline reckless, he shoved the mask and webshooters on. He deliberated over the rest of the suit but decided to shove it into his backpack and worry about the repercussions later. It wasn’t as though many people were out at this time; he wasn’t sure Spider-Man would gain much notice. Besides, it was cold.
“Hello, Peter,” said Karen.
“Hi,” said Peter.
“Your heartbeat is currently elevated,” said Karen. “I would not advise swinging at this time.”
“I gotta get back, Karen,” said Peter. “I can’t get the train.”
“You’re currently on your apartment rooftop,” said Karen.
Peter choked and yanked the mask off. He glared at it, as though Karen was supposed to know, somehow, that he didn’t live there anymore. She had observed May’s death but had not been activated since.
Grumbling, and still trying to calm his heart, Peter decided that he had to get the train after all. With a rather glum look, he put the mask and webshooters with the rest of the suit and made his way off the roof. He didn’t look through his window again.
Life moved in the Davidson household.
It didn’t move on, exactly. It progressed forward in a monotonal way, never wavering from its mediocre line of blandness that put Peter slightly on edge. After his breakdown on the rooftop he refused to think about May, even with his own bedroom for privacy. Mr Davidson had made it very clear that if Peter made noise, he would be displeased. Crying would definitely constitute as ‘noise’, and Mr Davidson felt like the kind of man who would ridicule crying. Peter, now with the comfort of his own bedroom and not sharing with three others, did not want to go back to the group home, and therefore made sure to be as quiet as possible. That meant, not thinking about May.
He helped with dinner; he made sure his room and the house were clean. He swept the stoop, and the ratty backyard. For an entire week, Peter did what he was told without fuss, and without a retort. He had his purpose, though had had no opportunity to act on it yet. Peter was not about to test disappearing before he’d established that he did all his chores, and getting the suit back was risky enough. For the week, he had no reason to get angry at the Davidsons.
This, however, was contested when, after a week of living with them, the Davidsons told him they were pulling him out of Midtown.
“What?” Peter said, completely dumbfounded. They had dropped it during dinner. Meatloaf that nearly knocked May’s off the number one ‘worst’ spot. Peter had done the potatoes, which were the best part.
“It’s expensive,” said Mrs Davidson.
“But I – I’m on scholarship,” said Peter.
Mr and Mrs Davidson scowled at him. Peter presumed it was because he had, as they liked to say with anything he said, ‘talked back’. Peter would like to see their faces if he actually did ‘talk back’.
His relationship with the couple had not gained much during the week of living there. It was as though he was living with very distant acquaintances who didn’t want to see him. Neither had asked how he was doing, or if he’d gone to the counsellor. Even Miss Turner had asked him that. Mr Davidson had very clear feelings about many things: one was that counsellors, therapy, and ‘help’ were for weak-minded people who needed to get a grip (Peter had heard this one when he had accidently brought up May and had, inevitably, stumbled on his sentence); another of his biggest peeves, was phones. For the first three days, when Peter would text Ned after he was home from school or checked the news to see if anyone had said anything about Spider-Man, Mr Davidson would become irritated. He had snapped about no phones in the living area, which Peter abided, but had even become annoyed when he’d seen Peter come out of his bedroom with it.
With the ways of the foster house still at the forefront of his mind, Peter had decided to take steps so that he would not be out on a limb if anything were to go wrong. For safe keeping, and a simmering case of distrust for the man he lived with, Peter used some of his savings – which he was keeping very securely – to buy a very cheap phone. On it, he copied the numbers he needed, in case Mr Davidson did something weird, like confiscate it.
With Mr and Mrs Davidson scowling at him, he felt that he had done the right thing.
“It’s expensive for you to get there,” said Mrs Davidson, her teeth clenching. “You shouldn’t be going to some fancy school in Queens, you’ll go to a normal high school right here.”
Why were people so insistent that Peter should not be going to Midtown? He had felt that, on occasion, during school, with Flash and his cronies; when he’d gone to Ned’s and realised what it was like to be slightly comfortable, and not having to work overtime constantly. Since May had gone, the boys at the foster house were resentful, and now the Davidson’s had an air of distaste that Peter could ever had something fancy.
“I’ll get a job to cover the fees,” said Peter.
Mr Davidson scoffed. “Doing what?”
“Anything – there’ll be supermarkets,” Peter wracked his brain. Who would take on a fifteen-year-old? Most asked for sixteen, as if one year would magically change someone into suddenly being able to stack shelves.
“At fifteen?”
“I’ll do it,” said Peter defensively.
“It cannot interfere with your chores,” said Mrs Davidson, clasping her hands together in front of her. Her face was hard to decipher; where Mr Davidson’s emotions flashed across his face like a digital advertisement billboard, Mrs Davidson’s face remained like a rock for a solid twenty-three hours a day. The one spare hour was when her favourite television programme was on, and her face melted off the rock for a brief period before returning at eight o’clock.
“It won’t,” said Peter.
A weird sort of smile twisted itself onto Mrs Davidson’s lips as she nodded.
“If I get a job, I’ll get to keep going to Midtown?” Peter said the words out loud carefully.
“Sure,” said Mrs Davidson.
Peter always prided himself in seeing the best in people; some found it naïve, to only attempt to see the good. Perhaps his take on criminals was different (he had yet, though this would not take long, to realise that the world is not black and white. The world was not filled with good people and criminals. There were vague lines of grey, in which the Davidsons lay, that Peter did not realise existed. He did, however, know about trust.) but Peter nonetheless did not harm them. Mrs Davidson had said the words that Peter had wanted, with not indication of otherwise. Yet, in his brain, he had a sinking feeling that Peter could do anything, and the Davidsons would not allow for compromises.
However, Peter had only been with the Davidsons for a week. He didn’t know them very well, not that he had tried either – considering he was a bit preoccupied with the death of his last living family member, which he was avidly trying not to think about – and decided, with an inward sigh, that he could give Mrs Davidson the benefit of the doubt.
“Thank you,” said Peter carefully. “Can I be excused, please?”
“If you do not eat now, there will be nothing later,” said Mrs Davidson.
Peter wasn’t feeling very hungry anyway, so merely nodded and walked back to his bare room upstairs.
Lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, he realised that at least having a job would allow him to get out of the house, regardless of where he went to school. But he didn’t want to leave Ned, couldn’t leave Ned. Not when everything else had been ruthlessly taken away. Peter needed Ned a lot more than Ned needed Peter. He was pretty sure, anyway. That didn’t mean he wanted to leave Ned by himself – what if Flash turned on him instead?
Not that Flash had bothered him much for the last month. In fact, after the first few days, everyone seemed to not know what to do with Peter at all. It was as though he was invisible, except from the few pitying glances that were sometimes thrown his way. Flash, it seemed, was ignoring Peter’s presence as some sort of attempt to stop doing anything at all. Peter didn’t know what he preferred. He’d stopped attending Academic Decathlon when May had died. Mr Harrington had never said anything, and though she looked as though she wanted to, neither had MJ. She’d sat with them at lunch a couple of times, properly (though still with a book) after she’d been made the captain. It had been nice, with another friend, but Peter didn’t know MJ. He couldn’t give a barrage of grief to someone he barely knew.
Peter sighed, watching a cobweb flutter in the wind.
A jab from Flash would at least give a sense of normalcy, he decided. It was getting annoying, the pitying looks every few of years as each of Peter’s family were killed in some of the most brutal ways.
Though Peter did not know the Crown Heights and surrounding areas well (though he had passed through them on his rare occurrences outside of Queens), acquiring a job was relatively simple. The manager of the small supermarket he went into was nineteen years old with bright orange hair and had spent most of the interview popping his gum as he vaguely went through the job description. He’d looked at Peter, and Peter had looked back, had hesitated for about a second before shrugging and asking him to work the next day.
Feeling slightly elated for the first time, Peter had wandered around Brooklyn far longer than he’d meant to, and by the time he’d returned to the Davidsons, dinner had come and gone, and he was directed straight to bed. A dinner of granola bars certainly dampened his mood, alongside the irritation that Mr Davidson hadn’t let him speak before he’d been ordered to his room. He’d accepted that he’d inform them the next afternoon and thought nothing more of it until Ned brought them up at lunchtime after Peter had made an off-handed comment about getting a harsher foster family. He had not spoken much to Ned about anything, and Ned seemed to know not to ask too much, though he would shoot many looks at him, and chatter away aimlessly at lunch whilst Peter sat and played with his hands.
“The Davidsons are OK, though, aren’t they?” Ned asked, his brow puckering as he started his standard worry phase. Normally, Peter would attempt to stop the worry from happening, but the little jump his heart made at the thought there was someone who did still care, made him stop himself.
“Sure,” said Peter. “’cept I might not go here, anymore.”
“What?”
“Said they were going to make me move schools,” Peter slumped forwards and rested his head on the table, pulling the hood tight over his head.
“What do you mean?” said Ned. His voice sounded weird. It wasn’t his usual worry-voice. How odd.
“Said it was too expensive,” said Peter, his voice muffled.
“But … you’re on scholarship?”
Peter placed the emotion in Ned’s voice. It was sad. He sat up rather hurriedly. Ned was looking close to tears. Even MJ had lowered her book.
“I asked if I got a job to pay for travel, I could stay,” said Peter. “I got a supermarket job.”
“That’s … that’s pretty fucked up, Parker,” MJ said.
Peter shrugged.
“Can’t you ask your social worker?”
“What’s the point? I’m already labelled as troubled.”
“But she’s there to –”
“She’s there to pass me off to people who can deal with me,” Peter said snappishly.
Ned and MJ fell silent. Peter avoided looking at them.
“Besides, I got a job, didn’t I?” he put on a faux tone of optimism. “So, really, nothing else will change.”
The first indication should have been when Mr and Mrs Davidson said nothing when Peter told them he’d found himself a job. They’d looked at him, Mr Davidson shifting his head in acknowledgement, before returning to their television show. Peter, in his naïve glory, had bounced slightly up the stairs to do his homework, foolish in the knowledge that he’d be going back on Monday.
The second indication should have been seeing Mrs Davidson tapping irritably away at an ancient computer, and then being on the phone for about an hour, even though both had stated their disgust over technology (that could go online, Peter amended. Apparently, the television didn’t count). Even Peter, notorious dumpster diver, would have left the so-called ‘computer’ they owned in the trash if he’d found it. Mr Stark would have burned it. Peter always remembered the judgmental eye when Iron Man figured out Spider-Man dumpster dived, as though everyone had unlimited money. It had left him feeling prickly.
As it was, Peter had been rather blindsided when, after his second shift on the Saturday, he’d gone back to the house to find Mrs Davidson in the living room, awaiting his return.
“You’ll be starting at George Washington High School on Monday,” said Mrs Davidson, without preamble.
Peter’s heart dropped out his chest.
“Wh – what?”
“You will be starting,” Mrs Davidson looked irritated. “At George Washington High School on Monday.”
“I got – but I got a job! You said – you said that –”
“I said ‘sure’,” said Mrs Davidson. “That was no guarantee, no promise. It’s already been sorted.”
“You can’t – you can’t do that!” Peter’s voice rose. The anger that had been sitting on a precipice was starting to topple over.
“We can do anything we want to,” said Mrs Davidson. “The boy before you was just as insolent. But we got him nice and well mannered by the end. We do not like insolent, ill-behaved children, Parker.”
“What did I do?”
“We had your file before you got here,” said Mrs Davidson. “You’d barely been in foster before being labelled a problem child. That’s our speciality.” She followed this with a nasty sort of grin that made Peter’s hair stand on end. His spider-sense started to hum. “We do not reward bad behaviour. Midtown is too good for you. You broke a boy’s nose so badly it took six weeks to heal.”
Peter stayed silent, the buzzing of his sense and the anger all bubbling up in a messy haze. He didn’t trust himself to speak, and allowed a mantra to replay in his mind as Mrs Davidson told him exactly what was to happen, and why his behaviour had been the cause.
Spider-Man, Spider-Man.
He’d been good, he hadn’t left at night since retrieving his suit. But now, over the entire unfairness of it all – the fact that nothing, nothing would change regardless of what he did – Peter had had enough. The Davidsons could take most of his joys away, but Spider-Man was not one of them. Spider-Man was not just joy (joy was a feeling Peter did not feel much towards Spider-Man anymore), it was a job. The people of Queens might have to share him with the people of Brooklyn now, but Peter was determined to keep them safe. He would not allow another David Swan to kill people just living their lives. Hopefully, the new expansion of location would not arouse too many comments – specifically, Peter’s mind wondered to Mr Stark perusing the internet. Or, more likely, FRIDAY.
With a grim determination, Peter waited until the outside became properly dark, and until he heard the shuffling footsteps of the Davidsons making their way to bed. Quick as a whip, and extremely silently, Peter grabbed his suit. It felt like home, the only one he had left, and it took a lot of self-control not to start flipping in his bedroom. Yanking on a hoodie, just in case there were nosy neighbours, Peter opened his window and slipped into the night.
Living with a yard had its advantages – less people to see Peter leaving, and the shoddy state of it meant plenty of things to climb onto if he was ever caught in sneaking out. Though the yard was relatively sheltered, he still moved carefully up the wall to the roof, keeping to the shadows, and zipping across a couple of houses before leaving his hoodie next to a chimney.
This was it.
Slipping his mask on, he grinned to himself as the lights began to flicker on.
“Hello, Peter,” said Karen.
“Hi, Karen,” said Peter. “I think it’s time for Spider-Man to get back out.”
“OK, Peter,” said Karen. There was a little pause. “We are currently in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.”
“Yeah, uh, we’ll be staying here a while,” said Peter. He aimed his webshooters at a chimney. It was weirder, starting on top of houses instead of a taller apartment block.
“Would you like me to set it as your home location?”
Peter’s heart did a funny sort of skip. “No thanks, Karen.”
“OK, Peter, what are we doing today?”
Peter grinned again, his mind clearing. Running lightly across a rooftop, he launched himself in the air and somersaulted. Whooping, he swung himself down the streets and headed in the direction of Queens.
George Washington High School was a dump. A far cry from Midtown, with the pristine exterior, and exemplary staff. George Washington High School was a place Peter may have gone to if he did not get a scholarship. Though, he would have hoped May and Ben would have chosen a nicer one – if the gaggle of students smoking outside the gates weren’t enough of a turn off, the smashed windows and metal detector certainly were.
The headmaster met Peter on the first day and explained his timetable, how there were no AP classes, and they did not specialise in science. At least they still had a chemistry lab, as it meant Peter could still mix his web fluid. As he found out, once he had been at the school for a couple of days, many students messed about in chemistry, so he didn’t even need to hide it that much.
“It’s not Midtown,” said the headmaster on the first day, walking Peter to his first class. “I see you did very well there, apart from the blip a while ago. It’s very different at this school, Peter, so just be careful.”
Peter didn’t particularly think the advice was very helpful, considering he wasn’t exactly intent on bragging about previously attending Midtown. Besides, going from Midtown to George Washington would surely raise questions that Peter did not want to divulge.
The teacher of his first class provided a student to show him around, a boy named Derek, who looked as scrawny as Peter had before his spider bite.
“That’s where we do shop,” said Derek, who had decided to take his duties in a way that meant he could skive the class after English in order to provide Peter with a ‘proper’ tour. “Mr Roderick is pretty cool. What’s your deal anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you don’t seem like the normal type to come through here,” said Derek. He eyed Peter up and down. “You’re like a cross between a jock and a nerd. How dench are you?”
“Er – I like to work out,” said Peter, tightening his hoodie around himself and feeling slightly self-conscious.
“Hm,” said Derek. “Anyway, most kids here come from fucked up families, or are out of juvie or something. The teachers don’t give a shit, either, most of them don’t even notice if you don’t show up for class. Which is perfect for me.”
“Why?” asked Peter. “What’s your deal?”
“You first,” grinned Derek.
“Foster family,” shrugged Peter. Then, for good measure: “I was too much trouble in the foster house.”
“Interesting,” said Derek. “I could use you.”
Peter said nothing but eyed him as they walked down the corridor. At Midtown, you needed a pass to walk anywhere during classes. Here, it seemed, no one bothered. A few kids were hanging in one corridor and nodded at Derek as he passed by. For a scrawny boy in a school that would not look out of place in a horror movie, Peter was surprised about the odd sort of respect Derek seemed to receive.
“I deal,” said Derek as he showed him the chemistry lab. “Pays for things, you know?” He gestured to his jacket. “Stake out the posh schools normally. The rich kids whose parents think they’re sheltered and little angels. Best thing about it is they’re stupid, too. No concept of money, see? I can rack up the price for them but keep it low for the others.”
That, Peter thought, made a lot of sense. He didn’t quite understand what Derek could possibly use him for, unless it was to beat up people who hadn’t paid, but decided that he didn’t really want to find out.
Luckily, Derek seemed to like attending math (“It’s pretty handy in my job area”), so their tour was cut short. Peter spent the rest of his first day thinking about which class he would have been in at Midtown. Calculus, he thought during math. Chemistry with Michelle, he thought after lunch. He wondered what Ned was doing, whom Peter had not texted about his removal. How did he feel that morning, when Peter had not shown up at the gates? He’d wanted to text him, but every time he retrieved his phone the night before, the words never came.
Thinking miserably of the homework ready on the desk in his bedroom, to be marked by no one, Peter decided to go visit Ned after school to let him know.
“Peter!” Ned exclaimed that afternoon, coming down the steps. MJ was following behind him. “What happened, man?”
“The Davidsons sent me to another school,” said Peter.
“But you got –”
“Apparently, she didn’t make any promise. They’d already sorted it out by Friday.”
“Why didn’t you text me?” said Ned.
Peter shrugged.
“Why don’t we go to a park,” MJ butted in, eyeing some eavesdropping students, who for some reason seemed interested in why Peter had not shown up. Some, he saw, were the members of the Academic Decathlon. “And you can tell us what they said.”
“They didn’t say much,” said Peter. Of course, after they’d got hot drinks and sat on a cold park bench, he ended up telling them, anyway. Ned and MJ, rightfully really, looked rather shocked at the turn of events.
“But – that’s insane,” said Ned. “Are you sure you can’t ask your social worker?”
“She’s meant to come the first Thursday of the month,” said Peter. “So that’s January. It’ll be too late.”
“But she gave you a card –”
“It’s too late now, Ned,” said Peter. “Doesn’t matter anymore. All I can hope for now is that there’s still a chance for me to get a scholarship. Maybe not to MIT or Colombia, but somewhere.”
MJ, who had been silently nursing her coffee, spoke up. “What about the councillor? Surely they’ll have to provide another therapist?”
Peter shrugged. “They barely wanted to get one in the first place.”
“You need someone to talk to, Parker,” said MJ.
“I have you guys!”
MJ pursed her lips.
“It’s unjust,” she said. “You did nothing wrong, yet the system is failing you and punishing you for something that never was. One day, I’ll do something about it.”
Peter did not doubt this at all.
It was remarkably easy to push down the emotions he had once his schedule was fuller. Though he felt nothing most days, apart from when he was out as Spider-Man, Peter couldn’t bring himself to care that much. He visited Ned after school, often at his apartment, and usually for dinner when he did not have his supermarket shift. On the days he didn’t visit Ned, he would spend afternoons in Prospect Park, huddled with hand warmers and hot tea, waiting until the last moment to drag himself back to Crown Heights. After the Davidsons went to bed, Peter would go out as Spider-Man every night until five am, when he would return before Mr Davidson got up at six. It became obvious very quickly that patrolling Queens and Brooklyn was a hard task; so, with a great wrench, Peter focussed mainly on Queens and the northern part of Brooklyn. He didn’t want to go down to Coney Island anyway.
At school, Peter would sit at the back of the class and sleep the majority of the morning until lunch, where he would hole up in the tatty library and eat his lunch when the librarian wasn’t looking. Not that he seemed to care, as Peter was one of the only students to use the library. Though Peter had expected some sort of bad attention for being the new kid, the rest of the students pretty much ignored him. Derek seemed to want Peter to go with him on some sort of deals he had, but so far, he had managed to beg off without getting in the boy’s bad graces. On the whole, it seemed that everyone else had their own problems to deal with, and no one had time to take on someone else – or bully them, for that matter. Perhaps Flash had always been bored with nothing to do.
His lunch usually consisted of the meagre offering from Mrs Davidson and whatever the supermarket had given him at the end of the shift. Though a lot of it was sandwiches, a lot of the longer-lasting items were now building up underneath a floorboard in Peter’s bedroom. Now that Spider-Man was out every night, his metabolism was working overtime, and nothing seemed to satisfy his stomach. Ned, one of the only joys in Peter’s life, would meet him outside Midtown’s gates with as many cereal bars he could buy – or take from his house. He would often ask, tentatively, if going out as Spider-Man every night was a good thing.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked.
“It’s just – it’s, ah, it’s running you down, dude,” said Ned. “And surely Mr Stark –”
“Who cares about Mr Stark?” Peter snapped. “He doesn’t care, Ned.”
“I’m sure he –”
“No, he doesn’t. He hasn’t contacted me once,” said Peter roughly. “Not even to say sorry about May.”
“Maybe Happy –”
“Just leave it, Ned,” said Peter. Once Ned’s face fell, he added: “Please? I just – what’s the point in reaching out if I’m just going to be let down again?”
Ned had nothing to say to that but ordered him an extra-large chocolate shake.
As the weather got colder, the Davidsons’ mood toward him turned more hostile. Peter tried very hard to spend most of the time (when he was at the house) in his bedroom when he wasn’t doing chores or eating dinner. Mrs Davidson seemed to like to add another chore every week for him to do, and Mr Davidson liked to point out the places he missed when cleaning. The upping of the attitude, from what Peter could tell, was because of Mr Davidson’s job being on the brink.
Instead of waiting to be yelled at, Peter took more shifts and the supermarket and kept his visits to see Ned. This, it seemed, did not sit well with the Davidsons, especially once the holidays started. For two people who hated it when he was around, it was extremely weird to Peter that they insisted he be in the house. It seemed that though they didn’t want him around, they still liked him in the vicinity as some sort of scapegoat.
Several days after Christmas, during which Peter had spent the entire holiday at Ned’s house (he had never overly celebrated Christmas, as it wasn’t something he personally celebrated but May had. May had always attempted to continue her traditions from childhood but it ended up that they went out for dinner in a slightly more upscale restaurant), he returned to Crown Heights on one of the later trains. It was fast approaching nine o’clock when he managed to get to the front door. Upon entering, he found Mr Davidson in the hallway.
“Where have you been?”
Peter looked at him warily. “My friend’s house. I told you last week I’d be staying there –”
“Where?”
“In Queens,” said Peter. The back of his neck started to hum slightly. It had been tingling a lot more than usual, which he didn’t like that much.
“You cannot leave Brooklyn without permission,” said Mr Davidson.
“Er – why not?”
“Because we forbid it. You don’t live in Queens anymore. You don’t go to school there anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” Peter asked incredulously. “I told you I was going to my –”
“We don’t want you off running truant! We saw your files!”
“Did you read anything else?” Peter said loudly. His neck buzzed. “You can’t tell me where I can and can’t go!”
“We can if it makes you miss curfew!” said Mr Davidson. “It’s three minutes past nine. You are late.”
“Barely!” Peter was getting cross now. “Can’t you just be happy I’ve been away for three days?”
Mr Davidson reacted. Peter’s head moved instinctively left as his fist dove into the wall. Bits of plaster fell onto Peter’s shoulder as the other man leant in, breathing heavily. Peter, his mind blank, froze.
“I’ll show you what we do to misfits who miss curfew,” he said, baring his teeth. Peter tried not to gulp.
Yanking him by the collar of his coat, Mr Davidson went back down the hallway and shoved Peter back through the front door. The cold air blasted him, the air fogging with his breath.
“You want to stay out with your little friends? Fine. Don’t come back until morning.”
Mr Davidson slammed the door.
Peter, left outside in the cold, gaped at the door in shock.
What the fuck?
What the fuck?
Did he just –
What the fuck?
The cold disappeared quite suddenly as the burning anger suddenly tore his insides.
Fine, he thought. Fucking fine.
He could do this; he didn’t need to go inside at all. Besides, he’d left his window unlocked. So, as silent as a shadow, Peter crept round the back of the house and stealthily climbed the wall to his bedroom window. Inside was dark, and after opening the window, he could hear Mr Davidson yelling about him downstairs.
Quick as a flash, he’d retrieved his suit and flitted back into the night. He webbed his bag that he took to Ned’s on the roof – just on the off-chance they decided to scope through his bedroom whilst he was out.
This arrangement suited Peter just fine, really, as he yanked himself over the rooftops in an angry haze. He’d wanted to be out for longer anyway – this was the perfect chance. He didn’t have to go back until the Davidson’s had gone out to work. He could sleep the day, and then get away as soon as they returned. He was planning on going to an event with Ned and MJ over New Years, which was only a couple of days away, and after that he could escape to school again.
Besides, the long night would give ample opportunity of the job he planned to do, and had been avoiding mentally, because it brought the thoughts of failing as Spider-Man to the forefront of his mind.
So it was that Peter found David Swan’s apartment with relative ease, thanks to the vast capabilities of Karen. She had tried, twice, to get him to phone Mr Stark. Peter had said no both times and started to think about getting Ned to hack into Karen so that she couldn’t call Mr Stark. However, Peter had a feeling that somehow, that wouldn’t exactly go unnoticed.
For now, Peter used Karen because Mr Stark was not his priority. David Swan was. Swan lived in a very neglected part of Queens. The outside of the apartment block had a loose line of police tape, fluttering carelessly in the breeze. It seemed to be a rather pathetic attempt of investigation.
They may have put tape on the outside, but they had completely avoided the inside (which Peter accessed by convenient vents). The entire apartment was seriously neglected. Everything was oddly unrifled, untouched, with a layer of dust covering messy surfaces. Dishes were piled by the sink, the coffee table, and the floor. Nobody had been here for a while, Peter could presume, as he eyed the disgustingly brown floor.
A foul stench was in the air, filling Peter’s mouth and making him choke.
“Karen – what –”
“I’m sorry, Peter,” said Karen. “I can’t detect smell.”
Coughing, spluttering, and cursing over an AI’s luck to not have smell (or taste) functions, Peter stumbled forward, a hand slapped over his mouth in some vain attempt to stop the smell from permeating into his brain. His stupidly thin mask did not seem to have a gas mask system.
Where was the smell coming from? What the heck was it?
Eyes watering slightly, Peter walked around the dingy apartment, poking around for clues. The living room held mouldy pasta in a dish that Peter could analyse in science for new species of life. The kitchen was not much better. When entering the bedroom at the back, the smell – especially for Peter’s senses – intensified.
In a moment that Peter would later ponder over how he could possibly have known, his eyes centred on the wobbly wardrobe off to the side.
With great trepidation, he webbed the handle and yanked.
As if waiting for a release, the door was pushed open easily. It wasn’t just Peter’s web that helped fling it open: with a hefty thump, out fell a body. A badly decomposing body. It landed on the carpet at a weird angle; the head twisted sideways. The smell wafted over, causing Peter to retch, nearly emptying his already inadequate dinner, which had been a couple of snacks in Ned’s bedroom (they had really got into the game).
“Holy –”
“Are you alright, Peter?”
“No – Jesus – Karen, scan the body!”
“Without a DNA test, I cannot state for certain, but from the databases this body is David Swan,” said Karen, her cool voice stopping Peter from completely losing it. “From the state of decomposition, he has been dead for a couple of months.”
Peter’s heart shuddered slightly.
“Be – would this be before or after the car crash?”
“What car crash are you referring to, Peter?”
“The one – the one that killed May,” said Peter.
“From my database I can find May Parker’s obituary stating the 5th of November.”
“Yeah – uh – before or after that date?” Nearly two months ago, now. One month and three weeks. It felt like May had been gone forever.
“From the state of decomposition, David Swan has been dead for a couple of months. My estimate is October, or early November.”
“Huh,” said Peter. The stench wafted again. “I’m going to put him back in the wardrobe. And then we need to contact the police. Anonymous, I think. Can you pretend to be a neighbour?”
“Of course, Peter,” said Karen. “Would you like me to call Mr Stark, Peter?”
“No thank you, Karen.”
“Would you like me to inform him that May Parker is deceased?”
“No, NO, no,” Peter’s brain went fuzzy.
“I said no, Karen,” said Peter firmly, controlling himself as he haphazardly pushed the body back in the wardrobe. He tried not to think about it, or use his webs, because he didn’t want to arouse suspicion.
“OK, Peter.”
Eventually, when everything was back to normal, Karen had sent a message asking for a welfare check due to a ‘foul odour’ to the police, and Peter had slipped out a window, he debated his options.
“So,” he said to himself and Karen, walking along the edge of a tower block. “David Swan dies in October or early November, but his car goes out of control at the end of November and smashes into Volpe’s. The question is, how did Swan die, and who took his car?”
He continued his walk along the roof, giving a flip for a civilian below who asked.
“Karen, can you hack the CCTV? Of the night of the accident?”
“Yes, Peter,” said Karen. “However, the police reports state there was a distinct lack of CCTV evidence because of broken cameras around the time of the accident.”
“What about before? Any on the streets surrounding?”
“Three blocks up, from the time before the accident,” said Karen after a brief pause.
“Show me,” said Peter. He knew that this was a break of some law-or-other, however, considering the shit job the police managed to make of the entire case, Peter couldn’t bring himself to care.
The camera was located on the road parallel, focusing on the alleyway which joined the two roads together. It was very brief, the image of the car flashing past, but held some extremely important information.
Firstly, the footage managed to catch a glimpse of someone jumping – or falling or being thrown – out of the car and tumbling into the alley. It was hard to decipher, so Peter strained forward to see. The man who had leapt out the car staggered slightly in the alley and slumped against the wall.
He wasn’t alone for long; at the entrance of the alley that the man had come from was another figure. The darkness obscured them, but Peter could make out a suit when he saw one. As the figure came closer to the light, he found this to be true; the man was dressed in a red suit similar to Peter’s.
The two engaged in some sort of conversation – if Peter could tell from the dramatic gesticulations of the red suited man. After about a minute, the man in the red suit whipped out a pistol and shot the other in the head at point-blank range. The man flopped to the ground. Red Suit dragged the body further down the alley and launched it into an open dumpster with surprising strength. Soon after, Red Suit disappeared up the fire escape.
“He put the body in a dumpster?” Peter did not know why he picked this out.
“It was taken the next morning,” said Karen. “There are no records of it being noted.”
“How did the police not see this footage?” Peter asked.
“The owner was unavailable,” said Karen.
Peter tried not to scoff.
He bubbled with frustration as he leant back on the rooftop, thinking. His main lead, Swan, was dead. Dead before the entire show had gone down. The actual assailant, whom the police never found, was also dead.
The only other person who knew that was the man in the red suit, whom Peter had never seen before. Was he another vigilante? Villain? Who went and shot people in alleyways anyway?
You said a nasty little voice in his head.
I wouldn’t use guns, Peter thought back.
He tried to pause his brain, but words kept coming back at him, until there was only one thing that stood out:
Whoever this man in the suit was, he was the only one with the answers Peter needed to get May justice.