“No. I was … just taking out the trash.”
She paused to note the obvious lack of garbage bags in his hands and raised an amused eyebrow. Well, at least she was capable of finding humor in the situation, no matter how uncomfortable. “You always do your chores, don’t you, Peter?”
“Well …”
When she spoke to him next, she wasn’t looking at him. Perhaps she was too embarrassed. “I’m sorry we do that all the time,” she said softly. “Your aunt and uncle never scream.”
“Oh … they can scream pretty good, y’know,” Peter assured her, and that much was true. Granted, they’d never screamed at him. Their patience with him, and for him, bordered on the infinite. But he’d heard Uncle Ben scream enough at blind umpires on televised baseball games, and Aunt May scream back at him that it’s just a game, for pity’s sake, grow up, and let’s turn this silly thing off because there’s an interesting program on the Discovery Channel about the lifecycle of the luna moth. That kind of thing. He certainly didn’t want to rub M. J.’s nose, however, in the fact that he was better off without parents than she was with parents.
“So … where to after you graduate?” she asked, obviously ready to change topics.
A real live conversation. How about that? Peter strolled forward, suddenly feeling at ease, his hands in his pockets as he approached the fence. “I thought I’d go into the city, get a job as a photographer. Work my way through college. What about you?”
“Headed for the city, too,” she said, matching his steps as she approached the fence as well. “I can’t wait to get out of here. I thought I’d …” Then she looked down, embarrassed. “Oh, I don’t know …”
Obviously she had some sort of career in mind. Figuring he could see her in just about any profession except for the oldest one, Peter said, “Try me.”
He’d never known Mary Jane Watson to look as vulnerable as she did at that moment, as he realized that she was concerned he would laugh at her. “I want to … ,” and she lowered her voice as if afraid her parents would hear, “… to act. On stage. Be an actress.”
“Hey, that’s great! You were really awesome in all the school plays, Mary Jane.”
“Really?” She cocked her head eagerly, like a cocker spaniel needing to be petted.
“Yeah. I cried like a baby when you played Cinderella.”
Mary Jane blinked in confusion, and then she barely suppressed a smile. “Peter, that was in first grade.”
“Well … even so,” Peter said, rallying. He was leaning up against the fence now, and she did as well, just to his right. He could smell the perfume wafting from her. He wanted to vault the fence in one jump. He knew he could do it, so easily, but he felt—correctly—as if he was dealing with something very delicate, and such an overt move would only shatter the mood. Trying to stay focused on the topic, Peter continued, “You know how sometimes you can know something, like what’s going to be? Like … tell what’s around you, what’s coming?”
He wasn’t sure if that had sounded at all coherent, but M. J. simply nodded and said, “Sometimes.”
Encouraged, he continued, “And you can just see things coming that aren’t exactly there, but you just believe …”
Again she nodded, apparently fancying the thought that Peter had been able to see a first grade performance of Cinderella and intuit, from that moment on, that she belonged in the theater. “What do you see coming for you?” she asked.
Lately? Fists and brick walls.
“I’m not sure … but it feels like something I never felt before, whatever it is.” That much was true enough. However, at that moment, he couldn’t have said whether he was referring to his newfound spider abilities … or to the fact that he was talking to Mary Jane and she was actually listening to him, and even seemed interested in him.
“And what for me?” she asked.
“You?” He laughed as if the answer was self-evident, a foregone conclusion. “You’re … why, you’re gonna … light up Broadway.”
She smiled, and then the silence fell between them. There was so much he wanted to say, but as was usually the case at such times, he couldn’t even begin to know where to start. M. J. was eyeing him, and after a moment she said, “Y’know, you’re taller than you look.”
“I hunch,” he said.
She reached out and put her hands on his biceps.
In all the years he’d known her, it was the first time she’d ever touched him. It was as if someone had touched a live wire to him, and he stood bolt upright, a small gasp emerging from between his lips.
“Good. Don’t hunch,” she told him.
For all his newfound physical prowess, for all the liberating feeling he’d had when vaulting rooftops, never had he felt more energized or alive than he did at that moment. Whereas before his heartbeat had remained steady, no matter what sort of physical exertions he’d been subjecting himself to, now he could feel it pounding like a trip-hammer against his chest.
Suddenly there was a loud, irritating aah-oooo-gahh from the front driveway. And Peter heard an all-too-familiar voice calling, “Hey, M. J.! Come take a ride in my birthday present?”
Stay. Stay with me, he urged her with such force that he was positive she could hear the words in her head. And indeed, for a moment she did seem torn. There seemed to be more to her indecision than just not knowing with whom she wanted to hang out. When she looked in the direction of Flash’s honking, Peter detected, or thought he detected, fear. But … fear of what? Fear of being with Flash? Or fear of not being with him?
He had no time to inquire or figure it out, though, because suddenly Mary Jane’s uncertainty was replaced by her “party girl” face … a face Peter was slowly starting to realize was a mask she slipped on whenever she wanted to confront the world without letting it know what was going on in her mind.
“Thanks, Pete,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “I gotta go.”
She dashed around the side of her house, and thankfully Peter couldn’t see her as he heard her ooh and ahhh over what was obviously Flash’s new car. Then there was a grinding of gears—apparently Flash didn’t have the hang of it yet—and the car peeled out of the driveway. It roared away, and he caught the briefest glimpse of Mary Jane, laughing, her hair streaming out behind her.
Peter watched the car disappear, and then he sagged against the fence like a puppet with its strings severed. He hung there for a time, feeling sorry for himself, and then he reached over and gingerly touched the bicep that she had rested her fingers on. He raised his arm, flexed it, and made a muscle. Made a considerable muscle.
And the wheels started turning.
Dear Mom and Dad:
I’ve been getting a heck of an education lately. Learning about how these new . . . gifts, I guess, I hate saying “powers,” it sounds so pretentious . . . work. And also learning about girls. About Mary Jane, especially.
I’m starting to realize how much she’s hurting. And I think that she likes me, or could like me . . . but she also desperately wants to be happy. And Flash’s folks are loaded. He’s got money. He can make her happy. I mean, jeez, he got a car for his birthday. My last birthday, I got a sweater, not to be confused with the birthday before, when I got a sweater, or the birthday before that, when I got a sweater and that weird knit stocking hat that pulls down over my face . . . a baklava, I think it’s called.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, Uncle Ben and Aunt May are great, and I remember when he blew a bundle to buy me my camera and I know it set him back. So there’s no way they’ll wind up getting me a car. And a photographer doesn’t pull in big money either, and if I do get into a career with science, it’s not like the starting salaries of research assistants are anything to write home about.
And M. J. deserves to be happy. She deserves to have a guy who can surround her with fancy stuff. She’s had such a crummy home life, it’s the least she deserves. I think that’s one of the reasons she still hangs with Flash. That and some other re
asons I don’t really have to go into now.
Anyway, I think I’ve got a plan how to make some serious money. Uncle Ben always says things happen for a reason. Well, when I was cleaning up the kitchen, putting away the drop cloths and getting ready to toss some of the old newspapers he’d been drying the brushes on, I found an ad. I’ve got it right here. It says, attention amateur wrestlers! three thousand dollars! for just three minutes in the ring! colorful characters a must!
Let’s face it: I didn’t just beat Flash. I clobbered him, and it was no effort at all. None. I wasn’t even trying. Sure, I don’t have any wrestling experience, but if I was able to do that to Flash when I wasn’t trying, imagine what I can do to someone when I am trying.
So I’ve been putting a plan into motion.
They want colorful characters? I’ll give them one they’ll never forget.
The first thing I needed was a costume, of course. I’ve got to have a mask. Anybody sees my teenage face that I shave maybe once a week, and they’ll be too busy laughing to take me seriously. Besides, I’ve seen pictures of those Mexican masked wrestler guys, so no one should think anything about it. So I started with costume designs. I must have gone through a hundred different kinds, with wings, and antennae, and extra legs hanging off it . . . anything you could imagine. I finally came up with a design I liked, with web lines and a spider design on it. And I’ll just use that baklava as a mask.
There’s so much to do, though, and I’m doing it all alone. I also started practicing with the webbing. It’s going to be of absolutely no use to me if I can’t find a way to make it go where I want, when I want. Heck, it could wind up hitting me in the face, and I don’t think I’m ready to depend so completely on my weird “spider sense” that I’d want to get into a fight with my eyes closed.
So I set up two empty glass bottles on a bookcase, went to the opposite side of the room, and tried to hit them with a web strand. Didn’t even come close. I tried again, and again, thwip and thwump, thwip and thwump, and inside of five minutes I’d managed to cover nearly every object in my room with webbing except for the freakin’ bottles. Luckily it dissolves away to nothing after a while. Aunt May must’ve heard it, because she came knocking on my door and asked me what was going on. I told her I was exercising and wasn’t dressed. “Well, don’t catch cold,” she said to me. She didn’t have to worry. With my aim, I couldn’t catch an elephant, much less a cold. It was like trying to precisely aim water while using a broken hose.
But after a while, I got the hang of it. It went just where I aimed it. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was. I started shooting right and left, like a gunslinger taking out bushwhackers. And it wasn’t enough to just “shoot” stuff with the webs. I snagged stuff with pinpoint precision and pulled on it, sending it flying across the room. I was totally into it, not thinking about what I was doing. I don’t know, maybe I kind of blanked out or something. All I know is that suddenly Uncle Ben was pounding on the wall, calling to me, “What are you doing in there?!” That snapped me out of it, and I looked around at my trashed room and said, “Studying! Hard!” Which sounded so incredibly lame, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Mom . . . Dad . . . God, I wish you could be here to see this. I mean, I know, I know, if you had lived . . . if I’d been with you . . . then this whole accident could never have happened. And don’t get me wrong: I’d trade all the wall climbing, all the feats of strength, all this incredibly exciting bizarreness that I’m experiencing right now for eighteen years of mundanity with you guys.
Like I said before: Uncle Ben claims things happen for a reason. Well, maybe my winding up here, and everything I’ve been through . . . maybe this was the reason for all of it. I’d be lying if I said I’d figured out all the ramifications and long-term ins and outs of these powers, but as far as the short-term goes, I’m on the verge of making some serious breakthroughs. And wherever you’re watching from, all those times you’ve had to sit there in frustration while people walked all over me and called me Puny Parker . . . well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore. Things are changing, starting today . . .
. . . as soon as I get my room cleaned up.
VIII.
THE TEST
Norman Osborn, standing just outside the glass-enclosed isolation chamber, deep in the bowels of OsCorp, checked the readings for the third time in as many minutes. Incongruously he was wearing only a pair of green trunks. A gurney lay nearby, with restraining straps hanging open and waiting for an occupant. He thought about the number of times he’d seen movies with mad scientists trying out some sort of formula on themselves, transforming themselves into human guinea pigs. And he’d always shaken his head and wondered, how could any scientist ever be that dumb? It was like the old advice about never investing with your own money; use someone else’s. Same thing. Never test formulae on yourself. Always use volunteers, cat’s-paws … whatever is available.
Yet here he was, realizing that for such a scenario to play out, one didn’t need to be a scientist, or stupid. Just someone who was desperate. And as he checked the latest printouts for the fourth time, he realized that he, himself, was just that desperate.
His head snapped around and his eyes narrowed suspiciously as he realized that Doctor Stromm was looking over his shoulder, checking the results as well. Stromm looked positively ill. And to think that not long ago, Stromm had been the picture of confidence and heroic defiance as he’d advocated starting the project over from scratch. Yet now here was Osborn, ready to put his own butt on the line, and Stromm was showing a marked lack of nerve. That just went to show who was a real man, when it came down to it.
“Mr. Osborn, please,” Stromm said, “I’m begging you for the last time… .”
“Don’t be a coward,” Osborn said disdainfully, drawing strength from Stromm’s fear. “Risks are part of laboratory science.”
Stromm’s brow was soaked with sweat, and it wasn’t because it was hot in the room. “Let me reschedule this with a proper medical staff and a volunteer. If you’ll just give me two weeks …”
Osborn put down the pages he’d been checking and fixed a level gaze on Stromm. “In two weeks, this project, this company, will be dead,” he said in a flat, implacable tone. “Sometimes you have to do things yourself. Now give me the barium phosphate.”
Obviously Stromm was confused by the sudden change in direction. “Sir?”
“Decreases nausea when the vapor hits the bloodstream.”
Stromm let out a heavy sigh, apparently realizing that nothing he could say would dissuade Osborn. This was of great relief to Osborn, who had a lot to accomplish that evening and didn’t have time for misguided debates. Stromm handed him the bottle of phosphate.
Osborn stared at it for a long moment, as if he were about to drink from the Holy Grail. “Forty thousand years of human evolution, and we’ve barely even tapped the vastness of human potential.” He drank it down and then offered a belated toast: “To the realization of man’s true physical and intellectual capability.” Stromm simply nodded in response and offered a weak smile.
Osborn took one, final deep breath, then lay back on the gurney. Obediently, Stromm went to it and—in quick motions—buckled one strap across his legs and another across his waist. Then he stepped to the control console, breathed a silent prayer, and hit an array of switches.
The gurney, with Osborn still strapped to it, was lifted up, up, and slid neatly into place in the glass tank. As frantic as Stromm obviously was, Osborn could not have been more calm. It was as if he neither knew nor cared where he was or what the possible consequences of his actions might be. He was convinced of the rightness of what he was doing and was perfectly content to let all other aspects of the adventure play out.
There was a petri dish in the middle of the tank, and from it a thick, noxious, white gas arose. Osborn could imagine that the gas was forming faces; demented specters with their mouths twisted into sneers. But instead of fear, all he felt was
rage, even challenge, as if he were more than willing to take whatever was thrown at him, by all creatures real or imaginary.
The gas, lighter than air, crept over Osborn’s body, starting with the feet and working its way upward. Despite the fact that he’d asked for this, despite the fact that he wasn’t afraid, Osborn reflexively took a deep breath. The white cloud enveloped him and—for just a moment—he felt a surge of fear. But then he reminded himself of just how sniveling, just how useless the emotion of fear could be. Newly resolved, he opened his mouth and forced himself to take in a tiny bit of air.
It was no doubt his own vivid imagination that made it look as if the gas were leaping, like an entity that had developed intelligence, into his mouth. It was that selfsame imagination that caused Osborn to choke on the gas for a moment, but then he calmed himself and forced himself to breathe normally.
The gas flowed in and out of his nostrils; he could actually see it moving. He saw Stromm looking in on him, felt more relaxed than he’d ever been, and started to speak to Stromm, to tell him not to worry.
And suddenly his entire body was seized by convulsions. From his fingertips to his teeth, it was as if someone had touched a hot poker to his every nerve ending. His body shook violently, straining against the straps, and if he’d been able to see his eyes at that moment, he would have seen only white.
He heard frantic beeping, alarms, and distantly realized that it was the body monitors. He heard flatlining noises, which he couldn’t understand because those would only be going off if someone were dead. And that certainly couldn’t be applying to him, because he definitely wasn’t dead. Hell, no, he’d never felt this alive before, every fiber of his being, every pore of his skin, wide-open and receptive to everything it could possibly experience. He felt bigger, stronger than his body, as if his skin couldn’t contain the amazing sensations that were hammering through it.
That was when he heard a ringing that soared above everything else. It was the panic button, the emergency abort button. Stromm had hit it. Stromm, the lily-livered, weak-kneed insult to the human race. Stromm had displayed a complete lack of vision and conviction in hitting the panic button, and Osborn felt a surge of fury at Stromm’s weakness.