Spider-Man:The Other Option

Skip steps forward, takes Emma ' s hand, and guides her out from behind Bea, who smiles at Peter as she takes her leave (he feels himself blush furiously, but he can't do anything about it, as he's currently chained to his spot by Lily). Emma follows Skip without objection, but as soon as the barrier between her and Peter is gone she sticks her thumb in her mouth, making her look much younger than seven. She doesn't take her eyes off Peter as Skip leads her to the living room, where he sits her on the couch and hands her a tablet. Only when it' s on her lap and playing some garishly bright cartoon does Emma look away, though Peter notices her eyes flicker onto him occasionally even as she becomes absorbed in the show. "Don't feel bad," says Lily, "she' s always like that. I wanna show you my room, come on."

Lily unravels her arms from around Peter's knees and takes his hand.

"Um," says Peter, "is it okay with your dad?"

"He's your dad too, silly." Peter's flush deepens, but this time it has nothing to do with Bea.

Skip, who is already making his way back to the kitchen, says,"I'm Peter' s foster father, Lily, but I'm not his dad. He'll call me Skip, like DeMarcus did. And to answer your next question, yes, you may show Peter your room. Dinner's on in twenty."

Lily redoubles her grip on Peter ' s hand and pulls him down the hall. "You and me," she says, "are gonna be best friends."

Peter glances over his shoulder just before Lily drags him around the corner. Emma watches them go.

The rest of the evening passes in a surreal blur. Lily shows him the room she shares with Emma. She introduces him to each of her toys individually, and talks so steadily that there is virtually no pressure on Peter to respond, which he finds is a welcome relief. Despite having slept the night and most of the day, he feels fatigued almost to the point of disconnectedness — like he ' s in a waking dream.

The feeling intensifies at dinner. Skip has made pasta and chicken; Peter notices Skip gives him the most generous portion. Peter is grateful at first, then confused: the moment he begins to eat his mouth goes dry.

He thinks of Felipe and Arnold and his stomach flips.

Peter only manages to finish his plate because he can see Skip checking up on him out of the corner of his eye, and then the pasta sits like cement in his belly. It ' s a relief when Skip excuses them, and not just because of the weirdness with his food: Emma still hasn't said a word, though she did stare at him throughout the meal with watchful, distrustful eyes.

When Peter gets back to his room, he is surprised when he looks down and sees he has a dinner roll clutched in one hand. He doesn ' t remember taking it. But rather than bring it back to the kitchen, he finds a plastic bag in one of his desk drawers and zips the roll inside. He sticks it on the highest shelf in his closet, behind a stack of t-shirts Skip left there for him, and then scrambles into bed and pulls the covers to his chin.

" What ' s wrong with me? " he whispers. For once, the darkness does not reply.

As he hands Peter the stack of tests, Principal Morita says, "I'm glad to give you this opportunity, Peter, but I' m going to tell you the same thing I told Mr. Westcott when he called me: there aren ' t going to be second chances here. Midtown takes academia seriously, but beyond grades, we also expect a level of behavior that reflects the values and ethics of our school. Understand?" Peter understands very clearly: Principal Morita has read his file.

I'm the infamous Peter Parker, he thinks as he nods.

He gets it. He'd probably be wary around himself, too, if he believed some of the stuff Principal Morita has read about him. But still, Peter can't help the flush of satisfaction that rises when Principal Morita returns with a stack of graded scantrons, wearing a faintly-concealed disbelief.

expression

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"This probably goes without saying, Mr. Parker, " says Morita, " but welcome to Midtown."

After they have him sit for his tests, it takes the school another week to set Peter up to actually attend. It takes Peter longer than that to get used to the fact that he can go outside whenever he wants. Every time he approaches Skip to ask if he can walk around the neighborhood or go to the library or meet Ned after school he feels nauseated with worry, and every time Skip says yes it's like someone has pulled a ripcord on muscles he didn't even realize he was holding taut, allowing him to loosen up and breathe. Noticing he does this doesn' t get rid of it, though it does add a healthy dose of shame to the confusing cocktail of his emotions.

The shame isn't aided by the growing pile of food in Peter's closet. After that first night he discovered an attic hatch in the ceiling, and the little crawl space contained therein has become the hiding space for his stash. Peter quickly becomes strategic about what he takes: it's mostly sealed food now, cans of soup and bags of chips or cookies, things that will last and are small enough Skip won't notice they' re missing—even though Peter knows Skip would probably just give them to him if he asked.

He doesn't know why he does this, either. He only knows the little ghoul on his shoulder purrs every time he adds to his pile.

Lately, it's the only time it's quiet.

Yet for all the tension, things are, for the first time in almost as long as Peter can remember, good. He has a room all to himself. He and Ned talk constantly when they aren't meeting up after school, planning all of the things they're going to do when Peter starts his classes. When Peter gets home in the afternoons he reads on his phone and watches TV in the living room and plays with Lily when she gets home from one of the many after-school programs she and Emma are enrolled in. Lily adores him, and Peter adores her back—she's bright and precocious, and she is the only person in his life who not only knows nothing about his past, but doesn't care even one bit. She's a relief he didn't know he needed, but now that he has it, he wouldn't give it up for the world.

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