Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales

by Brittney Morris

  On the floor by the desk, unopened, leaning against another stack of comics almost as high as the desk. How can one guy read so many comics? And why does he need all of them in his dorm room? I roll my eyes and smile. And then I ready myself for Operation Get-My-Suit-Back. I pull myself up onto the sill, bracing one foot on the edge just as Ganke lets out a loud snore and flips over onto his stomach in one swift motion like a human pancake. Then I climb inside as quietly and delicately as a cat and slink across the room. I’m impressed at how silent my feet are, given that my shoes are made of rubber and they’re soaking wet, but I guess spiders are dead silent too, even in the rain.

  Don’t know many spiders who wear rubber-bottomed sneakers either, but whatever, I’ll roll with it.

  I reach the backpack and carefully lower the one I’m wearing to the floor, and then I realize my backpack is way darker because it’s soaked with rain. And then I double panic, because I remember Ganke’s backpack, which I’ve been carrying around in the rain all this time, is full of comics.

  Comics made of paper.

  I carefully, as quietly as possible, unzip the big compartment and touch the top cover inside. I breathe a quiet sigh of relief.

  Dry as J. Jonah Jameson’s jokes.

  I close it back up, sling my own backpack over my shoulder, and head for the window. Ganke lets out another silence-piercing snort in his sleep, and I freeze, staring at him in the dark. He turns on his side and settles under the covers, and I take a deep breath and start back toward the windows slowly, gently. I’m almost all the way across the room when…

  Crash!

  A flash of light radiates through the room, glass flies everywhere, a lampshade hits me square in the face, and I go tumbling backward to the ground and the backpack flies out of my hand. Ganke shrieks and scrambles under the covers, throws his body a little too hard and falls out of bed and onto the floor, still wrapped tightly in the loose duvet cover and sheets, rolling until he hits the desk with a thunk. Somehow I’ve ended up on the floor with the lampshade on my head, and when I hear him shout, “Who’s there?!” he shrieks like he’s seen—or heard—a ghost. I lift the shade gingerly and look up at him. His left hand is on the light switch, and his right hand is firmly grasped around a dustpan pointed menacingly in my direction.

  “Hey, Ganke,” I chuckle nervously, “it’s just me.”

  Alright, Miles, you’ll need a good explanation to wiggle outta this one.

  “Just you?!” he shrieks. “You know how my asthma gets! What are you doing here in the middle of the night, scaring the crap out of me at random hours?”

  “Okay, I can explain,” I say, stepping forward with my hands out like I’m trying to pacify a wild bear. Second time tonight, actually.

  “We got our backpacks mixed up,” I explain, taking mine up again and slinging it over my shoulder. I push to my feet and grab the broom out of the closet while Ganke watches me like I’m a completely different person. “I wanted to get in, grab the bag, and be out again before you woke up, but I uh… I tripped.”

  “I… see,” he says, scratching his head and rubbing his eyes groggily. “But why couldn’t this wait till tomorrow? We would’ve seen each other at school and we could’ve switched bags then.” He stretches his hands over his head and yawns.

  “Uh…” I say, giving myself time to think of an explanation, “I mean, my wallet’s in my bag. You know how I don’t like asking my mom for money. Didn’t want to worry her with a lost bag, you know? She’s going through enough with the move, and I thought I’d handle this one myself.”

  Ganke’s looking at me like he’s thinking, and for once, the last thing I need him to be doing is thinking. What if he puts all of this together? What if he learns who I really am? I quickly think to change the subject.

  “I know you keep your comics in there, though. How can one guy read so many comics, by the way? Where are your schoolbooks at, man?” I ask with a laugh. That gets a smile out of him.

  Then he looks from the door to the open window. Then he tries the door.

  “Wait a minute, if all your stuff is in your backpack, how’d you get your keys to get in here, or your badge to get past the porter? Or—”

  His eyes lock onto the window behind me, and I freeze mid-sweep and look at him.

  “Did you climb through the window?” he asks, lowering his voice to a whisper and stepping closer to me, looking around the room to make sure no one’s listening, even though we’re the only two here.

  “Yeah!” I say, a little too fast. Come on, Miles, think of a solid way out of this. You could’ve lied! That was a perfect time to lie! Then again, if I had lied, what would I have said? I came through the wall? The air vents? The bathroom toilet like some kinda feral clown? “Uh, the ladder was down and the window was open. Convenient, huh?”

  Ganke runs past me and nearly throws himself out the window to look down in a hurry. When he comes back up to look at me, he says, “There’s like a ten-foot drop at the bottom. You’re telling me you climbed that?”

  “What?” I ask, looking out the window and pretending to be just as shocked as he is. “Man, I swear there was just a dumpster at the bottom of that. Someone must have moved it.”

  After several seconds of Ganke staring at me with his arms folded, sizing me up, making me break out in a sweat, I sweep the rest of the glass into the dustpan and empty it into the little trash can in the corner of the room with the basketball hoop painted on the outside, and head for the door of our room.

  “In the last five minutes?” he asks. “You’re telling me someone rolled a whole garbage truck into that alley, lowered the teeth, hoisted that dumpster up and emptied it into the trash compactor, and set it back down… somewhere else… in the last five minutes?”

  “I mean, is it so far-fetched? That’s… kind of how garbage trucks work, right? They’ve gotta move fast. How many trucks do you think there are in Brooklyn? Probably a lot, right? Right?”

  “… at one o’clock in the morning?”

  I can feel sweat beading on my scalp now, but I’m sticking to my story.

  “Fewer trucks on the road out there right now,” I shrug, throwing in a glance out the window for a convincing measure. “Look, Ganke, I don’t know why or how someone moved the dumpster, but all I know is, I got up here by dumpster, and now the dumpster’s gone.”

  Ganke’s arms are folded over his chest and his foot is tapping, and he’s looking at me like my Abuelita does when I insist I took out the trash and didn’t—not because I don’t feel like taking out the trash, sometimes a guy just genuinely forgets. Skepticism is written all over his face. He doesn’t believe me, and I feel the first trickle of sweat down my neck.

  Time to go.

  “I’d better take the stairs this time,” I say, clearing my throat and stepping past him into the hallway, avoiding eye contact the whole time because I just can’t bear to see the I don’t believe you look up close and personal.

  “Miles?” he whispers, freezing me where I stand. I turn around gingerly.

  “Yeah?”

  Please don’t ask me anything else.

  Please don’t ask me anything else.

  Please don’t ask me anything else.

  “If there was something… wrong. Something you’re going through… you’d tell me, right?” he asks, looking up at me like the concerned good friend he is.

  A pang of guilt grips me somewhere deep in my stomach, and I kinda shuffle my feet a little bit, because that’s what I do when I’m nervous, and because lying makes me nervous.

  “’Course, man,” I say with a smile that I hope is convincing, adding a slap on his shoulder for good measure. “Come on, we’re buddies! I tell you what’s up, you tell me what’s up.”

  I give him a dap and turn back down the hall.

  “I’ll see you Monday, okay?” I ask.

  “Alright,” he says, his tone telling me he’s still not convinced everything’s fine. “See you Monday.”

&nbs
p; When I get to the stairwell, I feel a buzz against my hip, and I realize it’s a call from my mom, responding to my initial Hey Ma, I realized Ganke took my backpack by accident so I’m going to get it text. I take a big, deep breath in the stairwell, lean against the wall, and answer it.

  “Hello—?”

  “Miles Gonzalo, you’re lucky I fell asleep on this couch,” she says, her voice frantic but not angry.

  “I’m sorry, Mom! I realized my history book was in there and I have homework this weekend.”

  “We could’ve gone together tomorrow! I have the whole day off! Oh, Miles, you have to stay safe. It’s so late! Where are you? I’m coming to get you in a rideshare, it’ll be faster—”

  “Mom, I’m hanging with Peter, it’s fine.”

  What am I doing? Why did I just lie like that? I don’t even really feel like seeing Peter tonight after what happened at that store. But I just need time. Time for everything. Time to think. Time to unwind. Time to blow off steam.

  I need time.

  “I’ve gotta go, alright?” I ask. “But I promise I’m okay.”

  She sighs.

  “Just come home, Miles.”

  And I know what she means. She just said a whole paragraph in that one sentence. She said, “I need you.” She said, “I love you.” She said, “I can’t lose you too.”

  And she won’t.

  I say goodbye and make my way all the way to the ground floor and out the stairwell to the main lobby, and wave at the porter sheepishly so I don’t look too suspicious, as the guy that never came in, but is definitely leaving. Then I book it out the front door, and just as I’m about to turn back around the corner into the same alley that was supposed to have housed a dumpster only minutes ago, I freeze. Ganke’s head is there in the window, looking down at where the “dumpster” should be. I sigh, hoping my story holds up enough for him to quit with the questions.

  I wait for him to tuck back inside hesitantly, before creeping over to the darkest wall of this alley where I’m safely hidden. I kneel over my backpack and take a deep breath of relief, now that I can finally unzip my backpack in peace and become who I really want to be tonight.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE mask feels cool and smooth against my skin—super breathable and nearly impossible to rip, a really really durable stretchy rubber that’s insulated from the cold. As always, I don the mask first, because if anybody sees me putting this on, at least they won’t see my face and figure out who I am. Then, I hop into the leggings and shorts, shrug into the waterproof jacket, and slip the web-shooters over my wrists, taking a moment to appreciate the weight of them in my palms.

  I take a deep breath and look up at the sky, at the rain still pouring on my mask, and I can’t wait to get up there. My shoes go back into my backpack, my sweatshirt goes around my backpack to hide the Visions Academy logo, all my belongings get tucked away behind an electrical box, and my wrist goes up.

  Zing! Web shoots forth and snatches the top corner of my dorm building, sending me zooming up into the air until I can tuck my feet under and perch on the very edge.

  Way faster than climbing the wall.

  In fact, once I dive off and start swinging, I’m in downtown Brooklyn in a flash, feeling the rain particles drip down my jacket as I swing from building to building, just like Peter taught me. Thwip! and release, thwip! and release, just like he said to do. And it works, just like it always does. I just have to remember to tuck my knees before each release. Makes me go way faster. It’s what I imagine driving a Lamborghini through the streets of Manhattan would feel like if you were the only car on the road and there were no speed limits.

  I’m too high up to pose a danger to vehicles, and I’m too low to the ground to be a threat to air traffic control.

  The only ones who have to worry about me are the birds.

  I fly through the air at light speed, feeling that lifting feeling rise in my chest as I think of something new to try.

  I spot a particularly tall tree in front of me, in the middle of Prospect Park, and I reach for it. The web latches. I grab the strand with both hands and tuck my knees up as high as they’ll go, making me spin round and round and round. The world is spinning so fast around me that I’m afraid I’ll get dizzy, so I shut my eyes and let instinct take over, feeling the pull of the earth below me as I swing down, and the momentum of the upswing into the air.

  I let out a laugh, something I haven’t done in too long, and extend my arms and legs into a perfect swan dive before plummeting down to earth like a torpedo and finding something else to toss my web at.

  Brooklyn feels smaller now that I have these powers, but just as magical. Especially at night. I fly over the lake where I used to feed the ducks as a kid with Mom, and past the basketball courts I used to play at with Dad.

  And I stop swinging once I get to the next tree.

  And I sit.

  And I stare.

  Because there, on a bench under a huge black umbrella, is a Black dad with his arm around his little boy, right by the hoops. This kid is looking up at this man like he can do no wrong. Like he knows everything’s going to be okay because his dad is here. And I know that look, because I used to wear it all the time. I’m sure that’s what my face looked like to my dad as he looked down at me from that podium at City Hall as I sat right in the middle. Even with all those people there, all those faces looking up at him, there were two that mattered most to him, and he made that clear as soon as he walked up the stairs and turned around. I realize my eyes are welling, and I blink back tears under my mask and zip off again into the night before I completely collapse into myself.

  I catch my web on the corner of the post office and whip around the corner, catching onto an eighteen-wheeler and riding through the night for a while, watching streetlights flicker and night joggers stepping out of their homes for a little midnight exercise, smart watches at the ready.

  It doesn’t take me long to spot a quiet roof to chill on—one of the tallest apartment buildings in the area, overlooking most of the city. I rest my behind on the edge of the brick, pull my knees up to my chest, and sigh. Mom says grief has a way of making everything feel hopeless. Purposeless. I think that’s why she encouraged me to volunteer at F.E.A.S.T. with Peter. So I can feel like I still have a reason to go on. A reason to get up in the morning besides school.

  And I have to admit, it’s nice to have a distraction from… well… all of this. All these racing thoughts. All these memories. They’re hiding everywhere, in places unexpected. I cross my legs on the edge of the building and sigh as I stare out at the cloudy sky.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I see a new text from Ganke.

  GANKE: Hey, man, I couldn’t sleep after what I said to ya. I know I asked a lot of questions. Didn’t mean to interrogate you. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.

  I smile. Good ol’ Ganke, always having my back. I pull my feet up tighter under my knees and my fingers fly across the screen.

  ME: Hey, don’t worry about it. I promise I’m okay. Just needed some fresh air tonight.

  GANKE: Alright, if you say okay, I believe you. Just know you can call on me for anything, okay? Not to sound like your mom, but everyone needs a shoulder now and again.

  GANKE: How are you liking the new hood? Suave, right? Not as snazzy as Brooklyn, but it has its own charm.

  I sigh and think. How do I answer that?

  How do I like the new hood?

  I mean, Spanish Harlem is beautiful in its own way—the smells, the music, the stoops, the feeling that people have lived there for generations and become the neighborhood.

  ME: It’s nice.

  GANKE: I’m sure it’ll take a while for it to feel like home. Just do some exploring. Helped me when we first moved there. The people are cool. Mrs. Mak, the gal who owns the comic store around the corner from you? She’s cool. Gives me discounts all the time since I collect her paper for her. The paper guy keeps tossing it too hard and landing it on the ve
randa above her shop, so I just climb up there and get it for her and boom, half off any comic in the store.

  On the one hand, it’s reassuring to know a kid my age can integrate himself so smoothly into Spanish Harlem. On the other hand, Ganke’s been there for years. He’s had time to acclimate like I haven’t yet, and I wonder and kinda dread how long that might take.

  GANKE: Anyway, man, what I’m saying is, as long as I’m here, you’re never really alone. Don’t let the newness of it get to you. It won’t be new forever.

  I smile gratefully.

  ME: Thanks, bro.

  GANKE: No worries. Now that we’ve discussed the important part of why I texted you, check this out.

  He’s attached a picture. It’s dark, and pretty grainy, and whoever took it had rain droplets on the camera lens, but it’s clearly a photo of an alley. I hold the phone close to my eyes as I squint and try to make out the strange black mass off to the left. Crumpled up next to the dumpster is a wad of what looks like a black cloak on the ground. Doesn’t seem like anything very remarkable. I mean, it’s humansized. It’s big, but it looks like junk I see in alleyways all the time in Brooklyn.

  ME: Someone lose a Halloween costume?

  GANKE: Little early for Halloween. Also, it’s too big to be a costume. Looks like a giant person.

  Okay, so some guy had a little too much of something and passed out in an alley in full costume? Still sounds like an average weekend to me.

  ME: Sounds like someone should help him. Did you take this picture?

  GANKE: Absolutely not. I’m in my Spider-Man pajamas under several layers of comforters with a hot cup of tea in our dorm. But someone took that. And a video. Omg look at it!

  A new file comes through with a play button in the middle, and I click it and prepare for whatever weirdness I’m about to see. Sure enough, the alley starts out empty. Just the dumpster in the rain. But then, a large cloaked figure steps into frame. Smaller than I originally anticipated actually, maybe the same height as the dumpster. Like the size of a child. But I look closely at the way this person walks, bent over at the waist and leaned over to one side.