Authors: Peter David
"That'd be good," Peter said.
Ben hesitated, waited. "Anything else you want to say?"
he inquired.
"No. That's all for now," said Peter after thinking about it
a little.
They went downstairs and had cookies and milk while
Aunt May insisted that she would attend to putting away all
Peter's clothes, just to help him feel more at home. Uncle
Ben kept telling Peter how pleased he was to see Peter's
mood improve, and how they were going to be great friends
and a great family, just you wait and see. Peter's spirits im
proved with each bite of a cookie and each sip of milk. It
was the warmth of the freshly baked cookie versus the chill
of the refrigerated milk, and the warmth won out, giving him
a pleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Then he went upstairs, and the first thing he noticed was
that the spider was gone. "Oh, that awful thing," said Aunt
May. "Don't worry, Peter. I vacuumed it right up. That nasty
spider is dead."
For the next hour it was very difficult to hear the shouts
of "Thanks a
lot,
May!" and "How was
I
supposed to
know?" over Peter's pained howls. It took a full day of coaxing and an entire tray of brownies to get Peter to even talk to his Aunt May, and even then there was occasional snuffling or hurt looks. As time passed, the relationship between Peter
and his aunt and uncle smoothed out and became a consis
tent and loving one.
His relationships with the rest of the world, on the other
hand, were a bit more problematic....
II.
THE DEPARTURE
Why did I listen to her?!?!
Peter Parker adored Mary Jane Watson. There was no
question in his mind about that. She was, indeed, hard not to
adore. With that luscious red hair . . . with that exquisite
mouth that could start as a pout that could crush your heart,
then transform into a smile that could send it soaring into the
stratosphere ... with those stunning green eyes that could
evoke a spring day in the dead of winter . . . with that laugh
ter as light as a meringue ... from head to toe, the girl was
as close to absolute perfection as any high school senior girl
could be.
She had just one teensy, tiny little problem.
The girl had no sense of time.
At all.
Not only that, but she could never remember times that
were told to her. Times of meetings, of appointments, of
tests ... there and gone. Her mind was filled with the simple joys of living each day to the fullest, and didn't do well with
being bound by such inconveniences as deadlines. Timeliness was for lesser mortals.
So what in the hell had possessed Peter to believe her for
so much as a microsecond when she'd said that the bus for the field trip left the school at precisely 8:30 that Friday
morning?
Probably because he'd seen her the previous day, late in
the afternoon. This wasn't all that unusual an occurrence,
considering that she lived in the house opposite his, their
backyards adjoining. Nevertheless, even though he'd known
her for twelve years, since she had moved in at the age of
six, Peter had had occasional bouts of being tongue-tied
around her.
This had been one of those times. She'd been weeding in
the garden in the postage-stamp-sized backyard, and noticed
Peter coming out of his house to get a hammer from the tool-
shed for Uncle Ben. She'd waved to him; he had waved back.
Then she had stood up, dusting off her hands with an air of
having finished her task, and picked up a small stack of
books. But rather than going into her house—an off-white
A-frame with red shutters—she'd simply stood there, her
arms wrapped around the books. He'd had a feeling she was waiting for him to say something, so he'd said the first thing
that popped into his mind: "When are we supposed to be at
the school again, for the science class trip?"
Without hesitation she'd replied, "Half past eight." Then she'd flashed that gorgeous smile.
"In the morning?" he asked, and immediately mentally kicked himself for such an utterly lame follow-up.
"Well, yeah, we don't do that many class trips at 8:30 at
night."
"Right, right." He ran his fingers through his dark hair,
and shuffled his toe on the sidewalk.
You're shuffling your
toe? What are you, an
infant?
This is Mary Jane Watson ... M. J. The woman you've loved since before you even liked
girls! Say something, for the luvva God! Something intelligent!
"Well . . . later," he said, and immediately he pivoted on
his heel, ran inside, sprinted up the steps to his room, and thudded his head repeatedly against a wall that already had
a bunch of peculiar marks that constantly mystified his Aunt
May.
So it was that 8:30 lodged in his brain. And when he
arrived at Midtown High at 8:25, it was just in time to see
the yellow Laidlaw school bus hanging a left turn out of the parking lot and heading off down Woodhaven Boulevard.
"Awww, crap!" Peter howled, and he started to sprint. He
was grateful that, a year ago, he had actually managed to
convince Aunt May to let him start wearing sneakers to
school. Through his junior year, she had insisted that school was where you wore some of your best clothes, second only to your Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, whatever those were.
Aunt May had this occasionally annoying habit of talking
like she'd stepped out of a Mark Twain book. Every time
she'd say something like "Land sakes!" he half-expected to
be able to look out the back window and see a paddle
wheeler cruising up the mighty Mississippi, instead of the tree-lined streets of Queens that typified their Forest Hills
neighborhood.
So if it had been a year ago, he would have been trying to
hotfoot it after a bus wearing a pair of neatly tied Oxfords, slipping like a madman on the highly polished soles. Fortunately enough he was wearing a good pair of running shoes
instead, which was what he was going to need if he had any
hope in hell of catching up.
The bus was inching its way up Woodhaven, which gave
Peter cause for hope. But then a car, which had been in the
process of parallel parking, and thus holding up traffic, finally managed to angle its way into the space, and the bus took off like a rabbit.
With a choked groan, Peter sped up.
The bus driver turned onto Queens Boulevard and started to open her up. Most mornings Queens Boulevard would be
choked with traffic. Today, naturally, it looked like the Wall Street area on Easter Sunday. The school bus chugged along
the outer road of Queens Boulevard, picking up speed, and Peter's lungs were slamming against his ribs.
A kid in the bus saw him. He pointed out Peter to another
kid, and within moments all eyes were on him. For one fleet
ing moment Peter Parker thought he was going to catch a
break, and then the sounds of laughter and taunting floated
through the air toward him. The bus, which had started to
slow for a red light, lurched forward when it abruptly
changed to green, and a belch of smoke erupted from the tail
pipe. Peter held his breath as he ran through it; one inhala
tion and it would probably have collapsed his lungs. This
sign of open disrespect from the bus itself only jacked up the
amusement level among the kids, who laughed even harder at his predicament.
His bookbag was slamming against his back as he ran. He
shouldn't have even brought the stupid thing. But no, no
...
he'd had to decide that he might as well bring stuff to read
on the trip. Try to get ahead on some courses. Peter Parker, the big brain who just couldn't get enough of books that he
had to haul them along on a class trip. Part of him wanted to
pitch the stupid things down the nearest sewer, but he continued to clutch them tightly.
His large rectangular glasses were bouncing around on
the end of his nose. Twice they almost slid off, as his face
became drenched in perspiration. With his luck, they'd fall
off and he'd wind up trampling them. Wouldn't
that
cause
unbridled hilarity for the troglodytes that constituted the
senior class.
The bus put its left signal on. It was about to shift lanes,
to move into the Queens Boulevard express lane. If it did
that, he was finished; the only way he'd catch up with it
under those circumstances would be with a rocket.
That was when he heard a female voice—
the
female
voice—and even though the motor of the bus was roaring,
and even though all the kids were hooting and hollering, she
made herself audible over the hullabaloo.
"Stop the bus!!"
came Mary Jane's voice. "He's been
chasing us since Woodhaven Boulevard!"
This caused a collective and disappointed
awwwww
from the kids on the bus. Naturally. Mary Jane had terminated the
fun before it had led to something really entertaining, like a
coronary or a blood vessel exploding in his head.
The bus slowed, and for a moment Peter thought it was
yet another tease, another false hope. But then it glided over
to the curbside, and the doors opened to admit him. Peter
nearly collapsed on the first step, clutching the handrail. The
bus driver looked down at him, not with concern but with
undiluted annoyance, obviously irritated that this
idiot
teenager had disrupted her carefully prepared schedule.
"Thanks ..." Peter managed to gasp out.
The driver grunted, shoving forward on the bar and slam
ming the door shut behind him while he was still in the stairwell. She didn't even wait for him to get into the body of the
bus as she pulled the bus forward, grumbling to herself in a
steady stream of indecipherable muttering.
Peter staggered forward, fighting not only his own ex
haustion and pounding heart but the swaying of the bus as it
practically vaulted into the express lane and hurtled forward.
He bumped against kids who were seated, and muttered,
"Sorry ... sorry ..." to each one as he went.
He got a particularly nasty look from the teacher, Mr.
Sullivan. Peter always got nervous when he looked at Mr.
Sullivan, with his thick glasses, thinning hair, and expres
sion of perpetual pain, because Peter couldn't help but worry
that he was looking at a future version of himself. It was a
disconcerting, even terrifying thought. Mr. Sullivan gestured
impatiently for Peter to go find a seat, then looked down at
his clipboard with such intensity that Peter felt as if he was
in the midst of translating a newly found section of the Dead
Sea Scrolls. Peter glanced over Sullivan's shoulder and saw
a list of the students' names on it. Sullivan was putting a little black X next to Peter's name.