Cake
Michelle’s locker was right next to Cindy Moon’s, which meant she got a face full of streamers when she opened it that morning.
The day was already off to a great start.
Michelle had never understood why everyone insisted on making such a big deal out of people’s birthdays. Everyone was born, it wasn’t really much of an achievement.
That would make a great birthday card.
She muttered a quiet happy birthday to Cindy as she walked past, returning her smile. She was cynical but she wasn’t a complete bitch.
Cindy grinned back, arms full of gifts. ‘Are you coming to decathlon today? I brought a cake!’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Michelle backed away, not entirely certain how to get out of the conversation. Not looking where she was going, she bumped right into Peter.
‘Hey!’ He grinned immediately. ‘Did Cindy tell you? She’s bringing cake to decathlon today.’
‘I’m not really a cake person.’ Michelle admitted. ‘Or a birthday person.’
Peter shrugged. ‘At least Harrington will give us a break from studying for Nationals.’
‘Yeah. Look, Peter, I have to get to class.’
‘Oh! I’ll walk with you.’ He smiled, genuinely excited at the idea. Michelle slowed, letting him fall into step beside her. He started rambling about his latest project and the science homework he needed to catch up on until Michelle excused herself to her Spanish class.
It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy his company. She did. But Michelle had never been the best at socialising. Her main survival tactic was pushing people away before they could do it to her. Deciding she didn’t like them before they figured out they didn’t like her.
It was easier that way.
Academic decathlon was starting to feel like the bane of Michelle’s existence. She knew it was her own damn fault for joining in the first place but she wasn’t sure she would be able to hold back from punching Flash for much longer. The kid just didn’t know when to shut up.
Cindy grinned as she walked in, white-frosted cake balanced on a plate in front of her. She placed it on the table, stepping back to let Betty poke sixteen candles into the buttercream, unlit to avoid setting off the ultra-sensitive smoke alarm, which made the birthday song very anticlimactic.
It just wasn’t as excited when there was nothing for her to blow out.
Cindy sliced the cake, carefully avoiding touching the bottom, and handed out slices on paper plates. Michelle passed hers on to Peter without a second glance. Cindy looked slightly hurt at that and Michelle looked away before her stupid conscience could kick in.
She scanned the room, watching everyone else eat their cake.
Everyone except Peter.
He stopped after one bite, leaning over to Michelle. ‘Does this taste weird to you?’
‘I didn’t eat it, dumbass.’ She whispered back. ‘Hey, Cindy?’ She called. ‘What kind of cake is this?’
‘Vanilla.’ Cindy glanced over at them. ‘With lemon frosting.’
Peter set his plate on the table, pushing it away slightly like the smell grossed him out.
Michelle stared at him. ‘What’s going on, Parker?’
‘Nothing! I just don’t like lemon, that’s all.’
Michelle knew Peter was weird; she’d known it for a long time. She wasn’t even surprised at this point. She knew most of her class had just accepted that he had a tendency to disappear out of nowhere and avoid questions about it but she just couldn’t let it go. It seemed like all of a sudden everything was a secret with him.
She knew he was hiding something. She just wasn’t sure what.
‘That’s funny.’ Michelle said. ‘Didn’t you eat the same cake on her birthday last year?’
The colour drained from Peter’s face. Subtle. ‘What?’
‘Last year Cindy brought in the exact same cake. And you ate it, I saw you.’
‘I, uh, I don’t think that was the same cake.’
‘I’m pretty sure it was.’
‘No, it definitely wasn’t because if it was this cake, I wouldn’t have eaten it. I mean, it’s not like I suddenly stopped liking lemon or something. That would be so weird.’ Peter rambled.
Michelle decided to put him out of his misery. ‘You know what? I think I’m remembering wrong. It probably wasn’t the same cake.’ She lied.
‘Yeah.’ Peter laughed nervously. ‘I’m going to, um, go to the bathroom?’ He said it like a question. ‘Yeah, I’ll see you later.’
Michelle knew some weird facts. It was the main reason she joined decathlon in the first place. Her parents liked to say she had a ‘vault of useless information’. She was quite proud of her collection; it was always fun to bring up a slightly unnerving fact in the middle of a conversation.
She had a tendency to absorb information, but only the most useless kind. She knew that one of the authors of the paper that introduced the big bang theory to the world was only added as a joke but she couldn’t for the life of her remember when the paper was written.
She’d had a small obsession with Spider-man for a while when he first appeared. Not in a weird way. Not like Flash.
After she’d researched everything she could about him—and found absolutely nothing other than a few videos of him on YouTube and a Twitter thread explaining his origin story— she’d moved on to actual spiders.
Michelle had always been good with spiders. She kind of liked them. Both her parents were scared of them which meant she was always the one to take them outside when they got in the house. Her dad kept a can of insect repellent on his desk just in case he found one when he was home alone. Michelle thought it was funny.
She knew that there were almost ten thousand different species and that one of them was almost entirely herbivorous. She knew that females could lay up to three thousand eggs at a time and that most of them were nearsighted.
She knew that some tarantulas flung hair at their predators and that all spiders hated citrus.
Michelle blinked suddenly. All spiders hated citrus.
Peter had liked the Cindy’s cake last year; she knew that for a fact. She also knew that Spider-man had appeared sometime between then and now. She also knew that Spider-man’s DNA was altered by a radioactive spider bite, which, logically, meant he was part spider. Did that extend to taste?
Peter didn’t like lemon anymore. Which had to have happened at around the same time that Spider-man appeared.
Michelle was either crazy, or her classmate was Spider-man.
She just had to figure out which.