“Oh no!” I say, and try to pull the pot away before it pours. Too late. Coffee splatters all over the table and I stand there petrified.
“I’m so sorry, Dreeny!” I say.
“S’okay, Miles,” she says, tucking some of her blue hair behind her ear and looking disappointedly down at the cup.
“I’ll get you some new tea and clean this up,” I offer.
“No need,” she says. “It was getting cold anyway, and I was just about to step outside for some air.”
She gets up, bundles her shawl around her shoulders, and steps toward the front door, walking right past the kid who just walked in with his dad. Clifton takes the older guy’s coat and the younger guy’s jacket, leaving his hoodie exposed.
I look for something to do as they shuffle into the room and get comfortable. I pick up Dreeny’s saucer, spoon, and mug, and head into the kitchen.
I dump what is now her tea-and-coffee monstrosity down the sink and see the steam rising from the metal basin.
Knowing I have to go out there eventually to offer them coffee, I peer around the corner of the kitchen and steal a peek at them. My heart is still pounding. For all I know, this guy could’ve tracked down my name and where I volunteer and want revenge for not taking the blame for what he did. Wait a minute, why is he even out of jail already? Did his dad post bail and that’s why he’s here just forty-eight hours after getting booked? Because they’re strapped for cash now and could use F.E.A.S.T.’s help?
I think of what my mom might’ve done. Mom loves me, I know she does, but she might just be harsh enough to let me spend one night in jail to teach me not to do whatever I did again.
But she’d also believe me if I told her I was innocent, so who knows?
They sit side by side in the front row of metal folding chairs facing the TV, the dad watching the news and the son reclined with his hood back up, staring down at his phone intently. I take a deep breath and brace to go back out there, coffee pot in hand. As I approach, stopping to hand Mr. Flores the creamer he ordered on the way, several ideas strike me, none of them good.
Maybe I could avoid eye contact? Nah, they’ll think that’s weird. Maybe I should disguise my voice? Nah, they’d figure that out. I decide to just keep it short instead.
“Coffee?” I ask. The dad looks up at me and shakes his head with a warm smile.
“None for me, thanks.” Then he looks at his son, who hasn’t said a word or looked away from his phone since I started this conversation. A gentle shoulder nudge gets his attention. “Coffee, son?”
The kid rolls his eyes in annoyance at being interrupted and then looks up at me.
“Nah,” he says with a quick glance at me before looking back down at his phone screen, “I’m good.”
“Okay,” I say. “Well, let me know if you need anything.”
And I turn to go back to the kitchen, relieved that my tending to the people in the lobby—including that guy in the hoodie and his dad—seems to be over for now. Next up on my volunteer to-do list is watering the plants. So many of them were left here by Aunt May, I take special care to make sure they’re watered just enough, always near the sunlight they need, and perky. It’s one of the most therapeutic chores around here, and I find myself genuinely excited to immerse myself in the mindlessness of it.
But, then.
“Hey,” calls the dad. I wince inside but I turn around to see what he needs, hoping the son isn’t really paying attention, and that I can answer a quick question and go back to watering the plants in peace. “Where’s the restroom?”
Oh, thank god.
I nod toward the corner of the room where the gigantic “RESTROOM” sign hangs over a hallway.
“Thanks,” he says, doing that weird apologetic run-walk to the bathroom that people do when they’re jaywalking all slow in front of your car. I turn back to the son, who looks up at me and raises his eyebrows in disgust.
“Can I help you?” he asks.
“No,” I say a little too quickly. “I mean—that is, I don’t need anything. Just… let me know if you’d like some coffee. Or food, or… anything else we’ve got.”
“I don’t need anything,” he mutters, returning his attention to his phone. “Nothing y’all can offer here.”
That doesn’t sit well with me. That sounds like a cry for help, a subtle one, almost invisible to people who aren’t looking for it. He does need something. He just doesn’t know how to ask for it. This kid sounds like me in therapy. Maybe he just needs… a friend?
“Can I ask what your name is?” I ask.
“You just did,” he says, glancing up at me before going back to his phone. “And it’s Steven.”
“Miles,” I say, holding out my hand for a shake. He glances at it and then turns back to his phone, but just when my heart sinks at the thought that he might leave me hanging, he reaches out and takes my hand and shakes it. I can feel a strange roughness to the underside and the fabric of a Band-Aid right across the pad of his palm, and I wonder if it’s covering up an injury from last night. Maybe he scraped up his hand scrambling to get away from the robbery scene.
I force myself to smile at him.
Despite the fact that his antics almost landed me in jail last night, he deserves to know he’s not alone in whatever he’s going through. I wonder if a joke might soften him up a bit, although I know every minute I stand here is risking another moment of him possibly recognizing me from last night. But that’s my job at F.E.A.S.T. To make everyone feel welcome. And who better to welcome a lost Black kid than a… not-so-lost-anymore Black kid?
“Try me,” I say, pulling up a chair from the row in front of him and sitting in it backward to face him. “We offer a lot here. Including personal space. Or a listening ear. Just let me know.”
“I’ve got therapy for that,” he says bitterly.
“You don’t sound happy about that.”
“Is anyone happy to be a thought experiment?” he says with a glare. “Psychoanalyzed for the benefit of the scientific community.”
I’m confused and a little surprised at that idea. What’s he talking about?
“Pretty sure there are laws against giving away your info,” I say. “Confidentiality and all that.”
“That’s what they want you to think,” he says. “We’re all walking experiments. It only becomes obvious once they know you’re not going to make it. Then they can drop the act and stop pretending they want to keep you alive. It happened to my mom.”
My chest constricts when I hear that.
“You… lost your mom? I’m sorry, man.”
“I didn’t lose her,” he hisses, “she was taken from me. By men in white coats with no souls who are only concerned with profits.”
His words are scathing, but there’s something else in his voice now. Something softer, colder… sadder.
Grief?
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
His eyes are locked onto the wall behind me, and I follow his gaze to realize he’s focused on the TV, where I find a completely new program. I wonder if someone changed the channel while my back was turned, because this isn’t the news anymore with J. Jonah Jameson. It’s now an interview between an evening news anchor and a polished-looking man in a navy blazer with silver glasses and a million-dollar smile. He’s grinning at the camera like he’s selling something. On his lapel, I spot a tiny pin with a logo that looks familiar, but I don’t have time to read it before the camera cuts to the interviewer.
The subtitles at the bottom read, “So, Mr. Griggs, Terraheal has made some startling developments in recent years and seems to have popped up out of nowhere. Why don’t you tell us what your organization is all about, and this exciting new cancer research program that’s just opened up in your department.”
And the guy with the glasses comes back on screen with that too-big smile and adjusts his watch on his wrist just slightly.
“Sure thing, Greg, I’d be happy to. Terraheal, as our name suggests, is o
ne hundred percent committed to healing the earth, one scientific breakthrough at a time. You know, humanity is now suffering from so much environmental pollution, much of it admittedly caused by the sheer quantity of waste we produce, our eating habits, our less than sustainable energy sources, as well as decades—even centuries—of toxic waste dumping back into the environment. We’re now seeing this come back to bite us in the medical world with diseases such as cancer at unprecedented levels, which, thanks to the scientific community, we’re learning about more and more every single day. With this new cancer research initiative, we hope to gain clarity around how specific environmental factors, as well as genetic, have an impact on cancer cells and metastasization, and how we could possibly reverse the growth of cancer cells using the very same environmental elements that have aggravated these ailments in the first place. It’s a perfect circle of life, really.”
Interesting take, I decide. Nothing extraordinary. Sounds like whoever Terraheal is, they’re on the right side of history. I notice the blue and green Earth logo on the doctor’s lapel, and I recognize it immediately from my night in the alley—the night Steven tried to frame me for robbery. I saw it in my neighborhood, on that huge white billboard, covering up all that precious street art like a corporate Band-Aid. They seem to have a good cause, but maybe… their tone could sure use some work.
I hear Steven suck his teeth loudly behind me in disgust.
“Thugs, all of ’em,” he says. I look over my shoulder to find him slouching in his chair, arms folded angrily over his chest and tapping his foot on the floor. “They took her. They told us they’d heal her, but nah. Just… took her away from us and she turned up dead days later. Healing the world? Straight-up liars.”
These people on the TV in white coats who claim to be healing the world through a new cancer treatment? Confusion ripples through me, and I stare at Steven, studying him. He truly believes this—that these people stole his mother from him, which I can relate to. More than he knows. When the Demons took my dad away from me, up there on the City Hall steps, all I wanted for a while was to hunt them down and make them feel the pain I felt that day. The loss. The knowing that I’d never hear my dad’s voice again.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, not knowing what else to say.
“Everybody’s sorry, and nobody has answers,” he mutters, arms folded, refusing to make eye contact with me.
“It’s true, they don’t,” I say. “My dad was taken away from me in a terrorist attack while he was being honored for his service, before I’d even graduated high school, and I’m pretty sure no one on this planet has an explanation that would make it all okay. Nobody’s going to have answers for you. Trust me. There aren’t answers for what’s happened… to either of us. So we’ve gotta stop looking for them, and put that energy back into just being okay.”
“Pretty hard to do while these guys walk the earth,” he says, nodding up at the TV again. I glance up at the screen to see Greg, the newscaster, furrowing his brow and asking the Terraheal doctor, “Can you speak a little on the recent allegations that medical professionals with Terraheal memberships have been touting untested treatments as definite cures to the general public?”
“Certainly, again, I’d be happy to,” replies the Terraheal guy. I fold my arms and adjust my weight on my hip, and prepare to settle in for a lengthy explanation. But to my pleasant surprise, he keeps it short.
“Allow me to clarify something first.”
“Aw, here he goes reframing the question first, watch,” interrupts Steven. I glance at him before turning back to the screen just as the Terraheal guy continues.
“It’s true that several thousand optimistic individuals are members of Terraheal’s vast network of medical professionals. Most believe in the power of medicine and science to create a brighter and more hopeful tomorrow. We at Terraheal fully believe in the power of free speech and efficacy on social media, even when those opinions differ from our own. By cultivating a diverse membership base with a healthy blend of ideas, we’ve created a colorful melting pot of brilliant forward-thinking minds full of ideas many of us never could’ve imagined. Terraheal backs strictly peer-researched, thoroughly studied and proven methods of treating cancer and other chronic diseases.”
“See?” continues Steven, leaning over and grabbing the remote from a few chairs away and clicking the mute button. “Liars. That’s how they do it. They rephrase the question, twist all the words around to make them look better, and then answer the version of the question that makes them look like the good guys. They weasel outta responsibility for everything. All the while, they’re out here ruining lives, stealing people away from their families off the streets. Why don’t the Avengers do something about them?”
I don’t feel equipped to answer for the Avengers, although I hope one day I’ll be one and can speak for them. The newest one. And the youngest.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “All you and I can do at this point is make sure we’re both okay after what happened to each of us. That’s the most important thing.” I shrug. “I wasn’t big on therapy either. The idea seemed a little white-coats-and-beakers to me too. You know what I mean. I felt like a test case from the beginning. So that’s why I came here.”
I motion around the room, and Steven follows my gesturing to look around.
“Here?” he asks, sounding genuinely intrigued now. “What’s here?”
“Company,” I say. “Love. Hope, if that’s not too cheesy. Volunteering here makes me feel like I’m making a difference. Sure beats sitting around and watching the world go by without my dad. You shouldn’t have to watch the world go by without your mom, either.”
His brow furrows, although whether deep in thought or in frustration, I can’t tell.
“Here,” I say, walking over to a basketball I’ve spotted sitting on a pile of toys in the kids’ corner. I palm it and toss it in his direction. I know there’s a rule about not throwing things in here, but it was gentle, and I think this situation warrants some extra rule-breaking room. “One-on-one later if you’re up for it.”
He drops his phone into his lap and catches the ball with both hands. Then he looks up at me and gives me a nod, so faint at first I’m not sure I saw it.
“Thanks,” he says. “I just might. Just, um… I’m used to looking out for myself, you know? Just a word of advice for you, since you seem a little too happy-go-lucky for your own good. Don’t trust anyone, man. You gotta look out for you.”
Then he sets the ball down next to him on the chair and takes up his phone again. And I nod, hold the coffee pot to my chest, and turn to go back into the kitchen, thinking about what he said.
You gotta look out for you.
What a lonely existence that would be. Feeling like you can’t depend on anyone? No matter how hard things get, I don’t think I’ve ever felt like I had no one looking out for me, although last night came pretty close. I set the coffee pot back into the machine and rest my hands on my hips in thought. No idea if I’ve made a difference for Steven, but I hope, at least, he knows someone’s not out to get him, or analyze him, or use him and his family for corporate profit.
In fact, I really hope he knows. Because if he doesn’t, I could see him taking a turn for the worst. Navigating grief is like walking a tightrope. Much easier with people there to catch you if you fall, and much harder with bad influences making you lose your balance.
I just hope he has enough of the former. I’ll be one if he’ll let me.
CHAPTER 9
I’M lying in bed staring at my Abuelita’s ceiling. My ceiling. In my room. But I can’t sleep. Steven’s words play over and over in my mind. Don’t trust anyone, man. You gotta look out for you.
It’s just… so sad.
And all of this from Terraheal. A company that… I don’t know, I guess sounds like it’s doing some good. I mean, they’re focused on cancer research, right? How terrible could they be? I decide I have time to investigate, so I reach for my phone
on my nightstand and boot up the Butterfly app. I look at the trending tab, and what do I find right at the top?
Ongoing disturbance at Terraheal. Live footage!
Oh?
Well, I set out to find more info and here it is!
I click a link in the first post I see promising live footage, and I find the stream easily. Although, nothing much is happening. The feed is a little hazy, and a little bit grainy, but I see two dark figures slip into the shadows along a fence, just before they each reach up and grip the chain-link fence in front of them. They’re both dressed all in black, and as they each reach the top they clip the barbed wire with wire cutters and leap over.
And that’s when I see them.
Wings.
Huge, black, feathery wings that spread wide as the two figures drift gracefully to the ground. I sit up in bed and pull the phone closer to my face. My heart is pounding. This looks just like the video Ganke sent me! I wonder if they have beaks too, or if it’s just the—
I get my answer before I can even finish my thought.
Six more figures, these ones with their wings out and haggard, full of gaps where feathers should be, like they’ve been ripped apart, tear over the fence with way less care, tumbling into the open yard like gargoyles and scrambling after the first two like skeletons. They drag their limbs behind them as they run, some of them hopping all over the yard as they trip over each other.
Once they get their bearings, they rip into the facility, smashing windows with their bare fists, diving through the newly made cavities and throwing furniture out of them. One of them rips the side door off its hinges and walks right through it. I gasp, glancing up at the door to my room, hoping I didn’t wake anyone.
That’s it.
Suit time.
I can’t just sit here and watch this break-in happening without doing something. Besides, it’s too much of a coincidence that Ganke picked up on a viral video of a creepy bird-human guy in an alley, and a day later, bird-people are breaking into a Terraheal facility.
In just a few minutes, I’m out of my shorts, into my suit, out the side window, and into the night.
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Page 10
