Homecoming: The Junior Novel

by Jim McCann

  “What? No!” I looked around to see if anyone heard my outburst. I grabbed Ned’s arm and started to walk us toward the subway. “Stop asking so many questions, especially with people around. Someone might hear you.”

  “Okay. No more questions,” he promised. “In public.”

  That promise lasted until history class.

  “Psst. Can you communicate with spiders?” Ned whispered. “Are tarantulas cool or mean? You can never tell.”

  I waved frantically at him to shut up. Ned motioned that his lips were sealed. But they became unsealed in the library during study hall.

  “Are all of your senses heightened?” he asked. “Like, can you tell if I showered this morning?”

  “Ned! We’re in the library!” I said, shushing him. Thankfully, the bell rang, and I got up and headed to chemistry class. Ned followed. I hoped we’d make it through an entire class without any more questions, but no.

  “Do you tend to hide in dark corners? Under sofas and stuff?”

  This was getting out of hand. He was my best friend and all, but enough with the questions. Fortunately, gym class was next. We wouldn’t be still long enough for him to ask any more questions.

  A familiar face was on the CCTV screen in the gym. Coach Wilson was playing Captain America’s prerecorded speech about physical fitness. Then Coach started to lead us through the routine. Ned and I started with sit-ups.

  “Looking good, Parker,” Coach Wilson remarked, somewhat surprised.

  Oops! I must have been distracted by all Ned’s questions. I needed to rein it in before anyone else noticed. I slowed down and added the occasional “Nnnngh” for good measure. Good thing nobody was paying attention to me—except Ned.

  “Whoa, so all this time you’ve been faking?” Ned gasped. “So that time when the seniors were all picking on me and you stood up and ended up getting your butt kicked, you just let them?!”

  “I wish,” I said, wincing at the memory. “That was before I got my powers. I was actually trying to win that one.”

  I turned away from Ned and toward the bleachers, where Betty, Liz, and other upperclassmen were sitting, not paying us any attention. They were playing Kiss, Marry, Kill.

  “For me, I’d kiss Thor, marry Iron Man, and kill Hulk,” Betty rattled off.

  “What about the Spider-Man? He lives right here in New York. You could get a shot,” said Seymour, one of Betty’s friends.

  “Okay, first, it’s just ‘Spider-Man,’” Liz corrected. “Did you guys see him on the news last night? He fought off four guys.”

  “Someone’s crushing on Spider-Man,” giggled Betty.

  Liz blushed. “Maaaaaaybe.”

  “He’s probably, like, thirty,” Betty said, looking grossed-out at the idea. I wanted to remind her that she’d picked Tony Stark to marry and he was even older, but Ned got up before I could react.

  Oh no—don’t do it, Ned! I tried to beam the thought into his brain. Unfortunately, spiders aren’t telepathic. Or at least the one that bit me wasn’t.

  “Peter knows Spider-Man!” Ned’s inexplicable words bounced around the gym in one of those moments where it seemed as if every conversation came to a pause. All eyes were suddenly on me. “They’re… they’re friends,” Ned continued, filling the silence.

  A laugh came from behind me. I knew that mocking voice: Flash. Everyone was waiting for me to speak up. Including Liz. I kicked at the floor, unable to meet her curious eyes.

  “I sorta know him through my Stark internship,” I muttered, before turning to Ned. “I’m not really supposed to talk about it.” I was hoping he took the hint.

  “Wow, that’s actually impressive, Parker,” Flash finally said, sounding surprisingly sincere. “You should bring him to Liz’s party tonight.”

  Party? What party? I couldn’t just… crash Liz’s—

  “Yeah, I’m having people over tonight,” Liz said, filling in the blanks. “You’re totally welcome to come if you want.”

  “It’ll be dope!” Flash said. “And if you got Spider-Man to come with you? Real cred, Parker.” He was definitely trying to call my bluff. Liz glared at him.

  “It’s okay; I know Peter’s too busy for things like parties anyway,” she said, sounding slightly… sad?

  Before I could answer, the bell rang and everyone started to exit. I hung back with Ned until everyone else was gone. “What are you trying to do?” I hissed. “You almost—”

  “Helped you out? I know.” He grinned. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  I was lost. “Helped me?”

  Ned sighed and pointed to where Liz had been sitting. “Weren’t you listening?” he said. “Liz has a crush on Spider-You!”

  My face flushed. Maybe a party could be fun. “I guess I could ask Mr. Stark for the night off.”

  “Right—the internship,” Ned replied, nodding in understanding. He had apparently forgotten what I’d told him the night before.

  “Ned, there’s no internship. It was my—”

  “Your cover! That’s right! I meant to tell you, totally sold everyone on that,” Ned said. “You think fast on your feet, Pete. That’ll come in handy tonight when we… par-tay!” He tried a little jig as he spoke. He was even worse at dancing than keeping secrets.

  CHAPTER 5

  This was a mistake. Let’s just go home.”

  My nerves were starting to get the better of me as we pulled up to Liz’s house. A flood of upperclassmen streamed in and out of the house, and my heart raced. I tugged at my sleeve to cover up my Spidey suit underneath.

  “Are you kidding me?” May said, looking up at the house from the driver’s seat. “Go in there and have fun. Just don’t let any girls pressure you into anything you don’t—”

  “I get it, I get it,” I said. She was trying to embarrass me. And it was working.

  I followed Ned out of the car as May continued her hilarious “parenting advice,” and the two of us walked up to the house. The music was thumping in my chest, and everywhere I looked I saw people much, much cooler than me and Ned hanging out. We froze just inside the doorway, Ned fingering his ridiculous fedora, while I kept tugging at my shirtsleeve.

  “I can’t believe you guys are at this lame party.” Michelle’s voice startled me. Looking down, I saw her in a chair, reading a book as if she were in the loudest library on earth.

  “You’re here, too,” I shot back.

  “Am I?” Michelle replied, looking at me for a moment before going back to her book. Man, she could be seriously weird sometimes.

  “Hey, guys!” I heard Liz call out. “Welcome!”

  “You too,” I said before I realized how silly it sounded. “Welcome back, I mean.” C’mon, Parker, find your words! “I mean, thanks for the invite.” Whew.

  Ned was gawking at all the people crammed into the house. “Sick house!” he said. “I can’t believe your parents let you have a party in here!”

  Liz blushed slightly. “Yeah, my parents feel guilty working all the time,” she said, glancing at me. “You guys would really get along, Peter.” Her joke hit a little close to home, and I looked down a little. Liz laughed. “That’s it! That’s the same guilty look they give me!”

  I chuckled nervously, and then there was a moment of silence between us. Super awkward. I finally opened my mouth to speak, when a shattering sound came from the other room.

  Looking over her shoulder as she went to investigate, Liz gave a big grin and said, “I better go check on that. I’m really glad you guys came!”

  “Dude, this is your chance,” Ned whispered after she left. “Just have Spider-Man swing in and say hi. Oh, and if he can also give me a fist bump that would be—”

  I cut Ned off. “This is stupid. Spider-Man isn’t a party trick,” I said a little too aggressively to cover the fact that I was starting to have cold feet about the whole thing. Then I heard a voice behind me that warmed them back up.

  “Hey, Parker!” Flash said. “Where’s your buddy, Spider-Ma
n? Let me guess: He blew you off to go fight crime. Sorry, bud.” His sarcastic tone made my face flush as he walked off with his friends, all of them laughing. Looking across the room, I saw Liz glancing over at us with… was that pity?

  Okay. Enough.

  “Cover me,” I told Ned, sneaking upstairs and out a bathroom window.

  It was chilly out as I took off my clothes and webbed them high in a tree behind Liz’s house. I pulled on my mask and pressed the chest button to tighten the suit.

  “Hey, guys, just swinging by to say ‘Hi’ to my best bros Ned and Peter,” I said, practicing my best Super Hero voice.

  This was ridiculous. I sighed and reached for my clothes to get dressed.

  A loud, booming sound stopped me as I was about to put one leg in my pants. Standing up on the roof, I scanned the horizon to locate where the sound had come from. Holy crap. It was that purple-energy thing again! Its trail was still arching across the sky.

  Okay, Fake-vengers—time for Round Two.

  A few miles away, under an abandoned bridge, I tucked my body into a dark hiding place, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Below me, a few men stood behind an unmarked van.

  Apparently, one of them was named Brice, or at least that’s what the others called him. He held a piece of tech that looked familiar—like the one I’d seen in the ATM fight. From this angle, I swear it looked like an Ultron arm from the attack in Sokovia!

  “I got a ton of great stuff in here, right, Schultz?” Brice said, opening the back of the van. “Take a look, man—RF cloners, black-hole grenades, stun batons, antigravity climbers…”

  What I could see in the back of the van was equal parts impressive and terrifying. Theirs were definitely the wrong hands for this kind of stuff. Time for me to—

  BREEET BREEET BREEET!

  Dang it! Super Hero 101: Always put your phone on vibrate when stalking bad guys.

  “What was that?” Brice asked, looking around. Welp, my cover was blown. No use trying to hide anymore. I jumped down a few feet away from the van.

  “Uh, stop. I am the law and you’re under arrest,” I called out, trying not to let on how much I was sweating under my suit.

  “You set us up!” Schultz yelled, pulling out his gun.

  I quickly webbed the gun to his hand. “If you’re gonna shoot at somebody, shoot at me,” I said.

  KA-BLAMO. Out of nowhere, the Brice guy punched me with some kind of gauntlet, sending me about ten feet in the air. Guess I asked for that.

  Brice and Schultz raced inside the van, as the one they called Alex ran to his car. Groggily, I got to my feet as they started their engines. “I’m Spider-Man!” I said. They revved up. “Guys?”

  Clearly, they weren’t listening. Enough talk. Time for action.

  THWIP! THWIP! I webbed both the car and the van at the same time, and pulled as hard as I could. The back car window came flying off, and I had to duck from getting smacked. I stood up—only to be yanked back down as the van took off, with me doing the worst water-skiing impression ever as it pulled me along behind it.

  I held on as the van turned one corner and then another. Raising my head, I saw Brice grab a weapon from the back of the van and aim it right at me. The purple power core lit up just as he pulled the trigger. At that moment, the van turned another corner, and Brice lost his footing, the weapon flying out of his hands as it blasted wildly. I ducked, and it missed me, but it tore open the side of the van and then hit my webbing, sending me sprawling away from the van.

  No, no, no! These guys were not going to get away from your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man again! Except… I was stuck literally in a neighborhood. No tall buildings to swing from. Time to improvise, I thought, leaping over fences, past dogs, through a backyard campout (Hi, kids; no time for autographs, sorry. Please stop screaming.), and—oh cool—a trampoline. Bouncing as high as I could, I saw the van a few streets over.

  I ran as fast as I could toward the intersection, praying they were headed in the same direction.

  Swinging down from a lamppost at the intersection, I saw the van and breathed a sigh of relief… before realizing that it was heading straight at me. Thinking fast, I flipped onto the top of the van. All I had to do was crawl to the front and—

  Whoa! I was suddenly about twenty feet higher! The wind was whooshing in my ears as I looked up to see what had plucked me from the van. It was… some kind of flying creature? All I could really make out were a set of glowing eyes and an enormous wingspan as we continued to rise higher and higher. Trying not to look down, I wondered whether I could survive a fall from this height. Mr. Demon Wings didn’t seem to care either way.

  A beeping noise caught us both off guard. It was coming from my suit! Next thing I knew, a parachute exploded from my back, tearing me away from the flying monster. He started to dive down, and in my panic to get away from him, I got tangled in the lines. Looking up, I caught a quick glimpse of the creature backlit against the moon. His massive wings and bright eyes were the last thing I saw before—

  SPLASH! Hitting the water felt like being slammed into a building. Better to fall into the lake than onto the ground, I suppose. I tried swimming up, but I kept getting caught in the parachute until I was tangled up like, well, a fly in a spiderweb. Fitting demise, I thought, as the last of the air in my lungs went bubbling up to the rapidly vanishing surface.

  I felt myself go deeper.…

  Deeper…

  With a muted THUNK, I hit the bottom of the lake. The last thing I remembered before my vision faded was the glow of the demon’s eyes, getting brighter and brighter.

  Yup. This was it. This was the end.

  CHAPTER 6

  I gasped for air as I broke through the surface of the water. I wasn’t dead! Hooray! I looked up to see who—or what—was carrying me, and again I saw the glow of inhuman eyes. But these eyes were different, more familiar to me somehow. And this creature didn’t have wings, but it did have propulsion jets that reminded me of…

  Iron Man!

  I’d been rescued!

  We landed next to the lake, and I started talking as fast as I could through chattering teeth, explaining to Iron Man what had happened.

  “And then this flying guy grabbed me—he looked like a monster!” I said, willing myself to play it cool, as if I were an Avenger who saw things like these every day. “I mean, I wasn’t scared. I knew he obviously wasn’t a monster.”

  Iron Man stood, unmoving. “And then this unscary not-monster dropped you in the lake?” he asked, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  Well, technically, it was the parachute in my suit, but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. “Why is there a parachute in this thing?” I asked. “I don’t need a parachute.”

  “Clearly,” he responded drily.

  “How’d you even find me?” I asked. Then it dawned on me. No way. He didn’t.… “Did you put a tracker in my suit?!”

  “Yes, and it’s my suit,” he corrected me. “You’re leasing it at a monthly don’t-get-yourself-killed rate. There’s a heater, too,” he stated, noticing my shivering. He touched a sensor on my suit, and it was like being dry-cleaned in seconds, steam rising around me. It felt amazing.

  “Ooooh. That’s cool—er, hot.” I straightened up a little and put on my best “playing it cool” voice. “I was fine, by the way. You didn’t have to come all the way out here—”

  “Oh, I’m not here,” Iron Man replied, as his visor popped open to reveal nothing inside. No Tony Stark inside. Nothing.

  “Um, your suit’s… empty.”

  “There’s about three million dollars of tech in that suit. That’s not empty.” He was right on a technicality.

  “So where are you?” I asked, looking around suspiciously. I half expected to see a drone in the sky spying on me.

  “India,” came the response. “I thought I’d hit up a Hindu temple. Center myself. That sort of thing.” Wow, I thought. I guess when you have Stark money, you can do stuff li
ke that. “Thank God this place has Wi-Fi or you would have drowned.”

  “I had a strategy.” I did not have a strategy.

  “What, to die and fight him in the afterlife?”

  “Don’t you see?” I pressed, getting a little frustrated. “He’s the source of the weapons. Chitauri, Sokovia. I gotta find him and take him down!”

  I could feel his eyes roll all the way from India. “Take him down?” Tony said. “Easy, junior. Best to just stay out of it and let the people who handle this sort of thing do their jobs.”

  “Who is that?” I asked. “The Avengers? I can help!” This could be my shot.

  “Just trust me. Stay out of it.”

  “But why?” I whined. When was he going to take me seriously?

  “Because I said so.” The Iron Man suit put its hand on the side of its head in frustration. “I really don’t want to sound like my old man here. Look, kid, just forget the flying man. Stay closer to the ground in Queens, build up your game helping the little people. You know, like the old lady who bought you that churro.”

  That churro. Happy had told him everything. “Look, Tony—uh, Mr. Stark,” I started, “I’m done with the ground. I’m ready for the next level.”

  “Really?” he replied. “Because it looks like a mysterious flying guy almost drowned you.”

  “How much longer do I have to wait?” I asked, wondering if there was a minimum-age requirement to be an Avenger.

  “Have you thought about where you’re going to college?”

  “College?!” That was, like, ten years away in Super Hero time.

  “Good-bye, Peter. Say hi to your hot aunt for me.”

  “But—” I reached out to grab the suit, but he was already gone.

  “Mr. Stark is no longer connected,” a monotone voice reported. The suit fired up the boot repulsors and flew off. He’d hung up on me.

  Stay on the ground. Was that supposed to be funny? Wait a minute! The ground! I swung back over to the bridge. Something was gnawing at the back of my mind. I remembered the van turning a corner, and Brice losing his footing, causing his weapon to fall somewhere around…