Well, not the first day I met Peter.
The day I met Peter in plainclothes. Had no idea we’d met before under vastly different circumstances, when I was trying to stop two goons from beating up on a third guy in an alley. Even when he’s helping me, Peter never makes me feel like I’m someone to be pitied, or coddled, or babied.
He always makes me feel like I can do more, like I can be more, like there’s more to me than even I’ve discovered yet.
Mom yawns and looks up at me.
“I worry about you, Miles. This neighborhood is great, but it’s new. I just—” she reaches up and brushes her hand along my cheek, and I rest my hand over hers and smile, “—I really don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you. You’re my whole world. Okay?”
I nod down at her, and I mean it when I say, “Okay.”
“Now g’on to bed. Andale,” she says, pushing herself up out of her chair. “We both have big days tomorrow.”
Tomorrow’s my first day of school for the new term, I know that half of what she’s talking about. But what’s her big day tomorrow?
“What have you got going on?” I ask with a smirk over my shoulder.
“Tomorrow is the day I apply to run for city council,” she says. I can hear the smile in her voice.
“That’s awesome!”
“Shhh,” she urges. Oops, I forgot we’re right next to Abuela’s room now.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “But, I mean… that’s amazing!”
Mom would fit right in with all those fancy political people I see on TV. She looks better in a suit anyway. Normally, even now, she’s in a cardigan and a skirt or pants, looking very cozy. But put her in a blazer, and she transforms into someone who looks like she could own the whole block.
“I know you’ll do great, Mom. And… I know Dad would be proud.”
She leans forward to kiss my forehead.
“I love you, Miles,” she says. “Never forget that, okay?”
“I love you too, Mom,” I say.
And we both go to our rooms for the night. I curl up under the covers in bed, staring out the window at the moon as my headphones send melodic remedies through my ears and deep into my brain, lulling me into a deep sleep in which I dream of swinging through the sky.
CHAPTER 6
VISIONS Academy is a comfortable two-block walk from the dorm, but Ganke left twenty minutes ago after his breakfast of an egg cracked over instant ramen. We’re supposed to meet up right outside the school as soon as I get off the M train, which is right now. I meander between bodies weaving around me toward the stairs and something catches the corner of my eye. All of the ads at this station have been replaced with new ones—all by the same company. All white. All hospital-sterile. With that name and logo dead center.
Terraheal.
Again.
Who are these guys, and why are they literally everywhere all of a sudden? First the poster in Harlem, and now the subways? What’s next? A blimp?
Ah well, I chalk it up to the slow inevitable takeover of corporate advertising and keep my morning moving. I rip my teeth into a fruity granola bar and sink into the music blaring from my headphones as I make my way up the front steps into the not-so-warm autumn sunlight. The sidewalk is already crowded with people, even by Brooklyn’s standards. Some guy on the corner is waving a paper in front of a news stand and yelling at people to buy and read the times of the day. As I pass by, I steal a glance and catch the front-page headline: Spider-Man spotted in shorts and a jacket.
I feel a lift in my spirit. Somebody snapped a picture of me mid-swing in Prospect Park last night, and I look good. Both arms are high above my head, hanging onto the web strand, with my knees tucked up against my chest, and I’m spinning at light speed. Just having fun.
Just being a regular kid.
Sorta.
A regular kid with genetically modified spider-powers.
“Yo, Miles!” calls a familiar voice from the haze of white noise outside the audio oasis of my headphones. I spot Ganke just across the street, waving me down, his raised arm pulling his Visions Academy-issue shirt just high enough to see a bit of his belly underneath. My eyes travel from his face down to his other hand. Looks like he’s holding a smartphone with a CB radio jammed into the headphone jack—what the hell is that thing?
“Yo,” I call back. “What’s with the pager, dude?”
Ganke shakes his head with a knowing smile.
“You won’t be making fun of how it looks once you learn what it can do.”
I cross the street, surrounded on all sides by several other VA students getting off the M train—guess they’re from outside Brooklyn too—and step right up for the inevitable demonstration Ganke has planned for me. When Ganke has a new piece of tech, the world had better watch out. He holds it out to me, and I take about five seconds to look at it before passing it right back to him with a, “Yo, man, you’re going to have to explain this to me. What is it?”
“Well, the top is called a Wi-Fi amplifier. It—”
I suck my teeth and wave my hand through the space between us.
“Man, you know I know what an amplifier is.” I laugh. “Quit playing. What’s the app?”
“It’s something new I’ve been working on,” he says, but his dark eyes are twinkling with delight, darting left to right to make sure no one around us is listening. Don’t nobody care what a couple of nerds are talking about. They slink on by as if we don’t exist. “Just a prototype. But…” He reaches forward and holds the phone out to me. “This is called the Friendly Neighborhood App.”
“That’s what you officially named it?” I couldn’t say all of what I’m thinking to him, but… he couldn’t have thought of a less basic name for it? It doesn’t even acronym well. FNA?
“Again. Prototype. Track with me. I haven’t even gotten to the cool part yet.”
“Alright, man, I’m sorry. What’s the cool part?”
“Well, you know how since you got here, you’ve been feeling a little lost? Didn’t know what you lived next to? Couldn’t find a place to get Fizzies if your turntables depended on it?”
I nod.
That’s exactly how I felt, even after walking around Harlem last night. New. Confused. Lost.
“Well, this app,” he says, scrolling across the screen, “has divided East Harlem into a grid. See? With coordinates. You live in E14. My mom lives in F31. If you need to find anything—car mechanic, laundromat, free stuff, or even the best place to get sopapillas—you have the Friendly Neighborhood App.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“How do you know you’ve found the best sopapillas in town, though?”
As someone who’s half Puerto Rican, I’m a resident expert on how sopapillas should taste. This app would be hard pressed to convince me it knows better than I where to find the best ones. All the restaurant review apps I’ve seen will dock restaurants with food that has “too much flavor” or restaurants with menus that are “disorganized” or if the kitchen looks “old like it’s falling apart.”
Those are where you find the best foods. Nonna’s pizza in Brooklyn looks like they haven’t cleaned their ovens since the ’80s, which means you get several decades of flavor in every bite.
He smirks up at me and holds up a finger to request patience while he works. He starts typing away at his keyboard for a while. I look up distracted just as a cop siren yelps from behind me. I glance over my shoulder out of reflex at first, expecting to see my dad’s grinning face behind the wheel, tipping his hat to me as if to say, get on ahead to class. But my heart sinks at the realization that that’s never going to happen again.
The driver isn’t even looking in my direction. Her eyes are focused on the car in front of her that’s being pulled over as it turns the corner at the light.
“Alright, got it!” exclaims Ganke, yanking me back into here and now, where students are walking past us in all directions, and he’s holding out the phone to me. I blink away my mem
ories and focus on what he’s explaining to me. “See these reviews?” he asks. “All of them mention the word ‘sopapillas,’ or fifty-three misspellings of ‘sopapillas,’ in their reviews. Look at all these five-star ones.”
He starts scrolling and I see five gold stars after five more gold stars after five more gold stars.
“You can also search by keywords like ‘flavor,’ ‘atmosphere,’ and by positive or negative adjectives like ‘long,’ ‘wait,’ ‘terrible,’ or ‘delicious.’ Anyway, it’s not nearly done, but I’m already proud of it.”
“Looks great, man,” I say. And I really mean it. I could’ve used a little direction last night. Maybe some sopapillas would’ve done me good. Or even a public bench to sit and just take everything in on. “You gonna put in there where to get Fizzies in Harlem?”
“Aht, aht,” he says with a wave of his finger in my face. “A magician never reveals his secrets, and a contraband carrier never reveals his contacts.”
I chuckle and roll my eyes with a playful punch to his arm.
“Well, anyway, Fizzies or not, the app sounds cool!”
“Thanks,” he says, his smile taking up his whole face. His forehead has gone a little red, probably from excitement. Then I remember something else he said he was working on that I just kinda… never heard about again after he told it to me the first time. Or rather, something else I never asked him about again. Maybe I should now.
“Whatever happened to… Speedmon-uh… Speed noma—”
“Speednonagon,” he beams, remembering it himself. “Still working on it, but it takes a while to make a video game. Plus my time’s been split with school and whatever.”
“I feel that.”
Do I ever. I know all about splitting my time between school and “whatever.”
“Whatever” meaning “swinging through the city, fighting crime and stopping trouble,” but it’s the same general idea.
“Oh hey, Miles, I wanted to ask you,” he says, slipping the phone into his back pocket. “One more question I had. About last night.”
Oh no.
I gulp but smile, hoping he doesn’t catch how unsettled I am right now. I stand here hoping he doesn’t pry too much more.
But he does.
“I know I said I wouldn’t grill you anymore, but… I got to thinking… when you came in,” he says, “you said there was a dumpster at the bottom of the fire escape outside. But… the city doesn’t put dumpsters under fire escapes. It’s against city regulations.”
“Maybe that homeless guy moved it?” I ask with a convincing shrug. “You know, Earl? The guy who lives in our alley that we agreed not to tell the porter about? The guy I’ve been trying to get to come to F.E.A.S.T. for help? Maybe he moved it, I don’t know. I have no idea how the dumpster got there. But it looked convenient enough.”
“More convenient than just calling me?” he asks.
“You once slept through a whole fire drill. No one sleeps through fire drills at the dorms. You know there was no way you were going to hear that.”
Ganke smiles with a nod in agreement, and that seems to pacify him for now. But then his eyebrows knit together and he asks, “But couldn’t you have—”
The bell interrupts him, and we both look up the front steps to the double front doors where a few students are stepping through. Ganke and I sigh together—him at the realization that his questions will have to wait, and me in relief that his questions will have to wait. I know he said he wasn’t trying to pry—isn’t trying to pry—but he is. The questions just get the best of him, I guess. He can’t let a question go unanswered in his head, but just for once, I wish he would.
“Biology’s first,” I say, seizing the diversion with both hands. “Race you to the good seat!”
“Any seat past row four is a good seat in Mr. O’Flanigan’s class!” he calls from behind me as we speed up the steps.
“Why?” I have to ask. New semester, new Biology teacher. I have no idea who Mr. O’Flanigan is, or why rows four and back are the coveted ones, but I’m sure Ganke’s read online reviews from some credible sources. Above anyone else I know, I trust his intel.
“Rows one to three are the splash zone!” he hollers.
I shudder at the realization of what he means, and as I sprint through the main hall and into the East Wing of classrooms, finding room 202 virtually empty at the front except for two seats in row four—the new front row—I slide into the desk closest, with Ganke flying into the room close behind me.
We both manage to snag seats in Mr. O’Flanigan’s class just before the second bell rings, and it’s a good thing too, because the three kids who made it through the door three seconds behind us were promptly handed demerits upon walking in, and they have to sit in the “splash zone.” One of them whispers to the next one over, “Qué demonios,” which I understand fully and have to smile at.
I learn pretty quickly, though, that one thing’s for sure: whoever this “Mr. O’Flanigan” is, he’s not here to play games with us.
He stands at the front of the room at attention, in total silence, surveying all of us like a farmer selecting one of his chickens for dinner tonight. His hands are resting solemnly behind his back. He’s one of those guys who wears every shirt he owns buttoned all the way to the top button. He must. He looks so damn comfortable in it, cardigan over the top or not. His glasses are rectangular and stylish, and his beard has the cleanest lineup I’ve ever seen. Everything about him is buttoned up, actually. Not just his shirt. I wonder if he’s about to keep this class just as tightly managed.
I soon find out.
After about thirty seconds of silence from him, the class quiets down to match his volume, and he clears his throat and adjusts his glasses.
“That’s better,” he says. “The first thing you should know about me is that I won’t waste your time if you don’t waste mine.”
He’s slender, and his fingers are eerily slender and long as he picks up a board marker and begins writing his name on the whiteboard.
“My name is Mr. O’Flanigan. Due to an unfortunate jaw injury, I have a bit of a lisp. It also makes for involuntary salivary expectoration when I speak.”
Confused glances are exchanged throughout the room, including mine.
“Can anyone tell me what that means?”
Ganke’s hand goes up, and Mr. O’Flanigan nods at him.
“It uh…” says Ganke quietly. “It means that you spit when you talk.”
Giggles erupt through the room, and that kind of disappoints me. Here’s Mr. O’Flanigan being upfront and honest about his uh… problem with us, and he’s still getting quietly made fun of. He seems like a chill guy. They’re already judging him, and they don’t even know him yet.
But he seems to be used to it.
“Correct,” he says. “I’ve seen my online reviews, as I’m sure many of you have. If you’re more comfortable sitting toward the back of the class, I do not mind… as long as you sit up straight and pay attention to the content being discussed, answer questions, and turn in your homework on time. Speaking of, I’ll take those assignments now.”
Panic rips through my body, and I start looking around at all the other panicked faces in this room that match mine. There’s homework? On the first day? Did I miss an email?
“Just kidding. Little first day joke,” says Mr. O’Flanigan. No one in the room looks amused, and we all breathe a collective sigh of relief. At least this guy has some kind of sense of humor, I guess. “Now that we’re all awake,” he continues, “please open your books and turn to page fifteen. We’ll be starting our first segment, which covers insects, arthropods, and arachnids, some of which also spit. The family of spitting spiders, for instance, contains over 250 species in five genera, but we’ll get to that later. Our first learning segment will cover arachnids. True or false, crabs are arachnids?”
I sit and quietly count whether crabs have eight legs or not… does that make them spiders? Water spiders maybe? Why don�
�t I know this? I feel like I should, given my uh… job.
Ganke’s hand goes up again, and Mr. O’Flanigan glances at him before he says, “Thank you, Mr. Lee, but I’d like to see if anyone else in the class knows the answer first.” Poor Ganke’s hand sinks down, and so does his gaze. I know he loves answering questions in class. He usually knows all the answers, and if he doesn’t, he’s usually firing back with questions of his own so he can figure out the true essence of the subject at hand. This time, he glances at me, mouthing the word arthropod at me.
What does that even mean?
Are crabs arthropods, then? Does that mean they aren’t arachnids? Or are arachnids a type of arthropod?
Someone in the back of the room gets to the answer before I do.
“False,” they say. “Unlike spiders, crabs have a hard exoskeleton. They’re arthropods.”
Mr. O’Flanigan thanks them and nods in approval.
“That’s correct, Jesse,” he says. “The defining characteristics of arachnids are, as you probably know, that they have eight legs—crabs have ten, by the way—and they have no antennae, claws, or wings…”
I sit there in my chair with my chin resting in my hand, listening to the segment all about spiders, surprisingly disinterested.
I’m bored.
I want some adventure.
The city’s been quiet lately. Guess all the villains must’ve gotten the memo that second-Spider-Man is busy moving and having a bit of new location anxiety and could really use a break.
But what I could really use is a distraction.
Mr. O’Flanigan puts hundreds of words on the board as I fight the urge to daydream out the window. For a split second, I think I see Peter’s webbing go up in the air in the distance, but I realize it’s just a string hanging down from a crane.
“Mr. Morales, is it?” comes Mr. O’Flanigan’s voice from above me. He’s standing right over me, looking down with a blank expression. “Care to answer my question? Or would you like me to repeat it for you?”
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Page 6
