Midtown School of Science and Technology, October–November 2012
[PETER PARKER — PERSONAL NOTES]
I am going to tell you something embarrassing.
Actually, statistically, this entire chapter is going to be embarrassing.
Being fourteen is fundamentally humiliating.
You're too old to be treated like a kid.
Too young to be taken seriously.
And somehow expected to survive public education while your hormones treat every hallway interaction like a life-threatening event.
Now add:
secret spider powers,
vigilantism,
alien weapon conspiracies,
and a developing sleep deprivation problem.
That was my autumn.
Anyway.
Liz Allen.
I had a crush on Liz Allen for approximately two and a half years.
This began in seventh grade and continued until the Homecoming Incident, which I am not emotionally prepared to discuss yet because future me is still recovering from it.
Liz was—
Okay.
Look.
She was smart.
Actually smart.
Not "gets good grades because she memorizes everything" smart.
The kind of smart where she asked follow-up questions teachers weren't expecting.
She was funny too.
Quietly funny.
Dangerous combination.
She was class president because people genuinely liked her.
Which is rare in high school because most student government elections are decided by:
popularity,
sports,
or weaponized charisma.
Liz somehow managed all three while still being kind to people nobody else noticed.
Including me occasionally.
Which was honestly enough to sustain an entire adolescent emotional infrastructure.
The problem was:
Liz Allen existed in a different social ecosystem than Peter Parker.
Not maliciously.
Just factually.
She knew my name.
She knew I was "the science guy."
She knew I sat near the front in chemistry.
But the rest of me?
Background radiation.
I existed slightly below conversational resolution.
And honestly?
Fair.
At fourteen I looked like someone had stretched a nervous math student vertically.
MJ was different.
MJ noticed everything.
This was deeply alarming.
Michelle Jones entered my life in sixth grade and immediately started behaving like she'd already read the script for everyone around her.
The first day of homeroom, I sat across from her.
She looked at me for exactly three seconds.
Then wrote something in her notebook.
She never told me what it was.
This bothered me for YEARS.
MJ wasn't a crush.
Or—not in the way I understood crushes at fourteen.
Liz made sense.
Pretty girl.
Butterflies.
Nervousness.
Done.
MJ made me feel like I was missing part of a conversation nobody else realized was happening.
Which I interpreted as:
irritating.
Because I was fourteen.
And fourteen-year-old boys are emotionally equivalent to raccoons with Wi-Fi access.
MJ drew constantly.
Margins.
Napkins.
Homework.
Entire sketchbooks full of architectural structures and faces and things that looked symbolic in ways I couldn't decode.
She read books no freshman should've realistically been reading voluntarily.
Philosophy.
Urban design.
Political theory.
Russian literature at one point which honestly felt aggressive.
And she said exactly what she meant at all times.
No social cushioning.
No fake politeness.
No strategic dishonesty.
Which sounds simple until you realize almost nobody actually does that.
Examples:
INCIDENT #1 — FLASH THOMPSON
Flash spent most of freshman year behaving like he was legally required to narrate his own existence.
One lunch period he spent twelve uninterrupted minutes explaining why Madden football rankings reflected "real leadership."
MJ listened silently.
Then looked up from her notebook and said:
"Your personality has the structural integrity of wet cardboard."
The entire lunch table froze.
Flash blinked twice.
"...What does that even mean?"
MJ shrugged.
"It means exposure to pressure reveals weakness."
Peter inhaled lemonade directly into his lungs.
INCIDENT #2 — NOBLE GASES
Mr. Harrington was explaining noble gases.
Poorly.
Even he knew he was explaining noble gases poorly.
MJ raised her hand.
Harrington sighed immediately in visible anticipation of trouble.
"Yes, Michelle."
"Is it physically possible," MJ asked calmly, "for a person to be so boring they create a localized vacuum?"
Silence.
The entire class turned toward Harrington.
Harrington removed his glasses slowly.
"...No."
MJ nodded once.
"Interesting."
Peter almost fell out of his chair laughing.
INCIDENT #3 — DETENTION
Peter got detention for unauthorized lab access.
This sounds worse than it was.
Technically.
MJ got detention for what the school administration described as:
"disruptive commentary."
Which translated roughly to:
"saying true things at inconvenient moments."
They sat beside each other for forty-five minutes in complete silence.
MJ read.
Peter pretended to read while secretly sketching web-shooter recalibration diagrams inside his physics notebook.
Neither spoke.
The bell rang.
MJ closed her book.
Looked at him once.
Then said:
"Your concentration is good. Most people fidget."
And left.
I thought about that sentence for three consecutive days.
Three.
Days.
[CHIBI PANEL]
Tiny cartoon Peter stands between:
glowing angelic chibi Liz surrounded by hearts,
and chibi MJ sitting in shadow holding a notebook while observing reality itself.
CHIBI PETER:
I UNDERSTAND NONE OF MY EMOTIONS.
Huge floating:
???
The city became obsessed with Spider-Man sometime around late October.
Mostly because of the bank incident.
Videos started appearing online.
Blurry rooftop footage.
Witness accounts.
Conspiracy theories.
One guy on YouTube insisted Spider-Man was:
"definitely three raccoons in tactical gear."
Which honestly explained some of my early landings.
The Daily Bugle escalated things further.
J. Jonah Jameson published editorials daily now.
MASKED MENACE MENACES MIDTOWNWHO WEBS THE WEBBER?IS SPIDER-MAN A MUTANT?
That last one caused approximately twelve separate internet wars.
I tried not to read the comments anymore.
Ned absolutely read the comments.
"Somebody edited your Wikipedia page," he informed me during lunch.
"I don't HAVE a Wikipedia page."
"You do now."
"...Why."
Ned rotated his phone around proudly.
SPIDER-MAN
Species: Unknown
Threat Level: Menacing
Weaknesses:
capitalism?
bug spray?
unclear emotional boundaries
Peter stared.
"...I'm going to delete the internet."
The first real conversation I ever had with MJ happened during detention in early November.
Rain hammered against the classroom windows.
Mr. Morita supervised silently while grading papers.
MJ sat beside the radiator reading a book about urban architecture.
Peter sat three desks away pretending to work on algebra while secretly adjusting a web-shooter spring mechanism beneath the desk.
The left shooter had been misfiring under rotational momentum.
Which was a sentence fourteen-year-olds should not have reasons to think.
Peter glanced up.
MJ turned a page.
Without thinking, he asked:
"You think Spider-Man is real?"
MJ looked up immediately.
Not surprised.
Just attentive.
She studied him for a second with that unnervingly analytical expression.
Then answered carefully.
"I think something is happening."
Peter blinked.
"...That's not really an answer."
"It is if you're paying attention."
She placed a bookmark inside her book.
"The bank robbery in Forest Hills."
Peter froze internally.
"The mugging on Flushing."
Another internal freeze.
"The rooftop sightings in East Queens."
MJ tilted her head slightly.
"Patterns matter."
Peter tried very hard to look normal.
"You're tracking this?"
"I track things that interest me."
Rain tapped steadily against the windows.
Peter leaned back slowly.
"...Why does it interest you?"
MJ considered the question seriously.
Then:
"Because New York is full of things that officially don't exist."
She looked directly at him.
"And I like understanding how things work."
Peter's heartbeat accelerated slightly.
MJ continued calmly.
"The webbing from the bank incident was tested."
Peter's soul left his body temporarily.
"It wasn't synthetic."
Okay.
Panic.
Actual panic.
Peter kept his face perfectly neutral through what should've qualified as an Olympic event.
"How do you know that?"
"Public crime database."
She shrugged.
"Most people don't know how to access police archival reports."
"...You do?"
"I get bored."
Which somehow felt more intimidating than if she'd said:
I hacked the city servers.
MJ tapped the edge of her book thoughtfully.
"The material composition was biologically organic."
Peter slowly slid the spring mechanism into his pocket.
"Meaning?"
MJ looked at him for a long moment.
"Theoretically?"
"Theoretically."
She tilted her head slightly.
"It means whoever made the webbing either has access to advanced biological engineering..."
A pause.
Then softly:
"...or produces it naturally."
Silence.
Rain.
Radiator hiss.
Peter looked at her.
She looked back.
No accusation.
No shock.
Just observation.
Hypothesis.
A person following evidence toward a conclusion she wasn't ready to say out loud yet.
Peter held her gaze carefully.
"Interesting."
MJ nodded once.
"Very."
The bell rang.
Mr. Morita dismissed detention.
Students gathered bags.
Chairs scraped softly across tile.
Peter stood.
So did MJ.
Neither spoke again.
She walked left down the hallway.
He walked right.
Peter didn't look back.
Because if you look back, people notice.
That's just science.
Behind him—
MJ stopped walking briefly.
Opened her notebook.
And wrote something down.
[MJ'S NOTEBOOK — UNSEEN BY PETER]
Peter Parker lies badly when surprised.
Left wrist hidden during discussion.
Chemistry student.
East Queens radius.
Organic web compound.
Watches people instead of crowds.
Interesting.
Underneath it, after a pause:
Lonely too.