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Cindy slipped her backpack onto the ground beside her chair. Her newest mission: stealth and observation.
So far, the results were unsuccessful.
In the back of the notebook that held her conspiracy theories on one resident confusing, puppy-eyed, disaster (Peter Parker, in case that description wasn’t clear enough); she had a list of thirteen scribbled-over bullet points.
1. He’s selling ass to rich people Denied.
2. He’s a robot made by Stark and released into the poor unsuspecting world to gather data That’s stupid. Although it would make a good science-fiction movie.
3. He’s a secret agent / undercover spy Also vaguely stupid. Why would a spy come to Midtown, to make sure nobody cheated on their exams?
4. A drug dealer. That text is too suspicious. Agreed, but MJ set fire to that theory pretty bluntly and if anybody would know, she would.
5. Maybe we’re all just living in a simulation or a movie or a fanfiction I don’t even know anymore This theory is ridiculous PETER YOU’RE DRIVING ME INSANE.
6. Tony Stark’s secret son ONCE AGAIN, APPARENTLY NOT although really there’s no evidence to the contrary and plenty backing me up
7. What if he’s in a gang? I mean, his neighbourhood… Doesn’t seem like the sort, honestly. Ooh what about the mafia. Or CIA or something. I don’t even know. I should research these things before I write them on the list, probably.
8. Hmm. Maybe it’s a totally mundane reason. Perhaps he has a part-time job dogsitting or something and one of the dogs is really large. Huuuge. And… he gets injured trying to take care of this massive dog. Maybe that’s why he’s flaky, he’s always got to rush off to earn more money. He should maybe get a new job. No. Definitely not.
9. Does he have a secret kid? He knows Morgan Stark? What the fuck, Peter.
10. What if he’s a time traveller, from the future! I swear he can’t actually be that smart, he falls asleep in class all the time.
11. He’s a werewolf. I reread Harry Potter and it got me thinking, what if Peter was like a real-life Remus Lupin? Weirder things have happened. This is New York after all, we’ve already had an alien invasion. I wonder which Marauders Ned and MJ would be. They really don’t fit the character archetypes. I sent him a video call on the full moon at eleven o’clock and he picked up (without his camera on, weirdly). Sooo, concerning sleep habits (also, the wind was whistling??? he should have been in bed), but definitely not a werewolf.
12. Oh god I hope May doesn’t abuse him Denied. Phew.
13. I’m half convinced at this point that he’s a mysterious ghost who died at Midtown a hundred years ago and is haunting us all just to fuck with me. It actually makes a little bit of sense, I mean MJ would totally be friends with a ghost, and Ned is too obsessed with Star Wars to be worried about the ‘dark side of the force’ or whatever they call evil spectres in nerd-land. (As if we aren’t all nerds, we go to Midtown, seriously—) Maybe I should check the old newspapers in the library and see if I can find out if anybody died at school It was a good theory, but no deaths as far as I can tell.
Cindy was lost. It was time to call in some backup.
She recruited Abe, Sally, Betty (aspiring journalist that she was), and showed them the less-stalkerish half of her notebook. Sally spent a good fifteen minutes wiping away the tears she’d cried from laughing so hard at Cindy’s theories (which, rude, she’d put a lot of thought into those). Betty wanted to know whether it could be something simple but not so silly (again, so rude! Her friends were such dastardly people!). But then none of them had any ideas of what it was.
They were, effectively, back to square one.
Cindy said that the first thing to do was to gather evidence. They’d be like a teenage spy club or something. Abe said teenage spy clubs were stupid. Sally disagreed. Betty backed Abe up reluctantly when called upon and somehow, it fell to Cindy to break up the furious discourse.
“Hey,” she offered. “Come to my house after school, we can make one of those conspiracy boards with the coloured pins and the photos.”
It was a bit depressing how fast they all perked up. (Seriously, were they all this deprived of entertainment, Cindy included?)
“Can we do the red string?” Betty asked eagerly.
“Yeah,” Cindy said. “There’s some wool in the bottom of my closet that’s been waiting for a good conspiracy. It’s not the same making a board by myself, y’know?”
They all assured her that they did know.
After school, Cindy poured a bowl of popcorn and they brainstormed for a good twenty-two minutes before getting distracted by a movie. Then Abe remembered the string and they spent the following hour trying to build a conspiracy board. It wasn’t as fun without spooky monochrome polaroids of crime scenes, and it was slightly offset by the fact that Cindy had marked the edges of the corkboard a few years ago with neon-pink sharpie, but it looked pretty damn cool when it was done. Abe and Betty squabbled over the red wool until Sally snatched it away from both of them, knocking over the half-empty bowl of popcorn almost cinematically. Everyone in the room froze just to watch it cascade over and scatter on the floor in slow motion. Cindy just groaned and then laughed so hard she ended up rolling under the bed.
The conspiracy board didn’t really help them, though, and then Cindy’s sister came in to say it was time for dinner.
The next day at school, something miraculous happened.
Cindy got detention.
Granted, it didn’t seem miraculous at the time. It was an utter disgrace. It was a blemish on Cindy’s existence. It was a right fucking pain. Just ‘cause she was doodling again and didn’t hear the teacher talking to her didn’t mean she deserved to stay in for an extra twenty minutes after school. If she could turn the corners of her mouth down like a cartoon character, they’d be down by her ankles.
She grumbled her way through explaining to her friends that if they still wanted to come to her house they’d have to wait longer, and stalked down the hallway into Mr. Hewitt’s classroom. It was fine. She’d just do some more doodling and then she could go home. No biggie. She’d survive.
There were two people already in the room.
One, infuriatingly, was Peter Parker.
Yeah.
That Peter Parker. The subject of the new conspiracy board.
The second?
The second was Michelle Jones.
Michelle Jones who captained the Academic Decathlon Team. Known to her friends as MJ.
“Michelle,” Mr. Hewitt was sighing. “You don’t even have detention.”
She shrugged. Cindy took a seat. (This might be a good show.)
“Oh well, another one for the tally,” Mr. Hewitt said, and pulled a piece of paper out of his desk drawer?
“What’s that?” Cindy asked.
“Oh, the rest of the teachers have a little bet on how long it takes for—” Mr. Hewitt froze. “Never mind, Cindy.” He slipped the paper hastily back into the drawer and slammed it shut with a little more effort than was necessary, sending an embarrassed glance back to the students.
Cindy couldn’t see MJ’s face, but everything in her posture blared not impressed, dude.
Peter grinned.
“Hey, Cindy,” he said. “Didn’t know you had detention today?”
“Maths is a bitch,” she said flatly. “My teacher did not approve of the doodles.”
“Aw, your doodles are so cool, though,” Peter answered, sounding genuinely deflated.
“What’d you do?”
“Tried to skip,” he grinned.
“Got hungry for donuts or something, did you?”
It was hard to imagine Peter skipping for the stereotypical reasons. He wasn’t the sort of kid to go and vape in the park or do coke in the bathrooms.
“Something like that,” he said.
MJ looked over at the conversation and smirked. Peter flushed bright red.
The rest of the detention went pretty smoothly. Cindy drew a birthday cake shaped like a porcupine, with seventeen candles as the spikes. MJ read her book for a little while, and then at one point Cindy looked up and Peter had dragged his plastic chair across the aisle and was facedown on MJ’s desk, while she slowly drew a patchwork of blossoming flowers and eyes framed with long lashes down his arm. Their feet were touching under the table. Mr. Hewitt was taking side-eyed glances at the two kids out of the corners of his eyes, and adding tallies to the paper.
Cindy mouthed, are the teachers betting on them? And he nodded silently.
She asked, what for? and made sure her expression was confused enough to warrant at least five question marks.
He just gave her a dead-eyed stare and pointed his pen at them. Peter had lifted his head and was having a slow murmuring conversation with MJ. They were laughing softly, heads close, legs tangled, holding hands.
Cindy looked at them.
What were the teachers betting on? How long they’d be there before they realised detention ended two minutes ago? Did MJ come to all of Peter’s detentions? Why?
Cindy’s brain decided to finish this sentence itself without her input just as she watched their faces getting closer and closer. In what felt like slow-motion, Peter’s lips brushed MJ’s cheek.
What, to flirt with him?
Cindy.exe was not working.
From the looks of it, neither was Mr.Hewitt.exe.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
What the fuck.
She pulled out her phone and stared feverishly at the screen for a few seconds. How the fuck do I say this.
Hey guys, she typed, heart racing. D’you think Peter and MJ are actually dating?