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Cindy power-walked to school the next Monday, hyped up on caffeine and absolutely determined to discover what the hell was going on with Peter Parker.
There was something vital she was missing, she was convinced of it. Something massive. Something really important.
But for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what.
She walked behind him to class, listening intently to his best friend’s mutterings of, “I saw the news last night.”
“Ouchie,” Peter agreed, and rubbed his shoulder tentatively.
Her first clue! Cindy thought hard. What had been on the news last night?
Spider-Man had a short run-in with the Green Goblin, but no property damage was reported and the vigilante was believed to be safe. Tony Stark released the new StarkPhone model (it looked completely awesome). There was a luckily not-fatal car crash on Main St involving a seven-car pileup, a lamp post, and Spidey, who saved ten people and one cat. Busy night for Spider-Man, then. Oh! And the NYPD had sent out a warning that street corner drug dealers were becoming more common and so pedestrians should be careful. The police “were doing their best to relieve this danger but there was only so much they could do with vigilantism on the rise”.
Hmm.
Last night’s television on her mind, Cindy turned into the chemistry classroom and dumped her bag on the floor at the back of the room.
“Good morning,” Ms. Warren said sternly, eyeing the students. “Page 343 of the textbook, please.”
Peter and Ned chose the seat directly in front of her. Ned retrieved the textbooks from his and Peter’s bag and flipped to the right pages. “Thanks,” Peter said, and opened his desk drawer with a furtive look at the teacher. “I’m running super low, I won’t even make it to Wednesday at this rate.”
“Stupid Goblin,” Ned muttered.
Cindy cocked her head. Surely she’d heard wrong? What did a goblin have to do with Parker- holy shit, he was pouring chemicals into a beaker in his lab drawer what was he doing that for he could kill us all- he wasn’t a terrorist, was he?
Cindy shook her head. No wasting time on fanciful theories, all she was looking for was the cold hard facts.
“Miss Moon?” Ms. Warren asked, and Cindy jumped. In front of her, Peter slammed the drawer shut.
“Uh, sorry, what?” she said. “What was the question?”
“Can you tell us the only halogen liquid at room temperature?”
“That’s,” she blinked rapidly to clear her head, “that’s fluorine, right?”
“Incorrect,” the teacher sniffed. “Mr. Parker, you seem uncharacteristically engaged in my class,” (Peter had a wide-eyed innocent look on that was not fooling Cindy at all) “why don’t you tell us the answer?”
“Bromine?” Peter asked.
“Correct. The most abundant element in the atmosphere?”
“Nitrogen.”
“Correct again,” Ms. Warren said, and damn, Peter really was good at chemistry, wasn’t he? And it couldn’t be from paying attention because the minute Ms. Warren turned her back he had the drawer open again. In the beaker was a white frothing liquid. Peter added some kind of powder from a jar Cindy could have sworn belonged in the ‘dangerous chemicals: do not touch unless specifically approved by a teacher’ shelf and poked the mixture again.
“Nearly done,” he murmured to Ned, who almost laughed.
“Dude, that’s a full batch. You’re going to have so much fun tonight.”
Cindy frowned. Were Peter and Ned doing drugs?
Hold on. Was Peter a drug dealer? Was that what ‘I saw the news last night’ meant? Cindy had so many questions.
____
In her defense, Cindy had only told Abe her new suspicions.
Who then passed it to Sally who passed it to Betty who passed it to Flash, and by then all the context and ‘proof’ had been forgotten and it was all over the school.
(Great job, Flash.)
Once again, Peter didn’t seem impressed. Kinda the opposite, really.
“I’m going to die of embarrassment,” he wailed from a corner of the library after being approached by one of the year’s stoners that literally only came to school like once a week (MJ scared them away with her eyebrows of impending doom. She had very scary eyebrows of impending doom).
“Dude, you seem to spend most of your lunches dying nowadays,” Ned said regretfully. “I thought that was supposed to be an activity reserved for patrols.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “Have you been taking pointers from Mister Stark, Ned?”
Ned widened his eyes uncertainly. “No?”
“You totally have. That’s exactly the kind of thing he always says,” Peter grumbled half-heartedly. “’Kid, you’re giving me grey hairs!’ Hmph. Like he doesn’t already have them.”
A tinny ringtone suddenly blared from Peter’s pocket and he looked at the screen with an enormous amount of guilt and surprise.
MJ laughed. “That’s him, isn’t it?”
Peter nodded mutely and put the phone to his ear. “Uh, hey, Mister Stark.” He paused. “Uh, no, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mister Stark, my patrol was totally normal and boring, y’know? I didn’t even get to fight any supervillains or, um, rescue any people from burning cars either, definitely not. It was the blandest patrol I’d ever been on. Just, uh, eating churros and chillaxing, that’s all I was doing.”
He pouted. MJ raised a brow. “Did he say ‘Peter Parker you are the worst liar I’ve ever met?’ Because you are,” she pointed out.
“Close enough,” Peter frowned. “Uh, yes, Mister Stark. No, I promise I didn’t get injured. Why would Karen lie to you?”
“Oh. Right. But that was one time! And she wasn’t betraying you, she was just—”
“Yeah, that. I was just asking nicely!”
“Mister. Stark. I did not. Get injured.”
“I promise,” he huffed, “I’m just a bit sore,” but Ned and MJ saw the smile. “Yeah, yeah, okay. Bye. See you Wednesday.”
He put the phone down and rolled his eyes again but he was smiling too hard to look properly annoyed.
“Dude,” Ned said. “He’s totally your dad.”
“Yeah, I gotta agree with Leeds on this one,” MJ added. Ned beamed proudly.
Peter screwed up his nose so his friends wouldn’t see how much he was smiling (I don’t even think it needs to be said that it didn’t work).
“Maybe a little bit?” he admitted.
Cindy stormed into the library and the trio dived behind books – with the exception of MJ, who already had a book she was reading absently, and so simply raised it higher to hide her face. “Watch out, Parker,” MJ snorted. “Here comes Cindy.”
The shorter girl stomped towards them and brandished her phone under Peter’s terrified nose. He peeked above the book he was holding out upside-down.
“Uh… hello, Cindy?” Peter asked tentatively.
“Hello, Peter,” the girl replied, still waving her phone in his face.
He glanced at the screen. The app open was the Academic Decathlon group chat, scrolled up far enough so that the date was several weeks back. There was one visible text, from Peter, just saying:
no doing drugs kids they bad
With no context. Timestamped 13:03 in the morning.
“So, I remembered this sketchy text, and I found it – you should be proud, it took three hours of scrolling through memes – and I just—” she shook her head and planted her hands on her hips.
Peter shrank back, intimidated.
“Are you a drug dealer, or are you not a drug dealer,” Cindy asked flatly. “’Cause I’d could’ve sworn you were this morning, but then on reflection you really don’t seem like the type, and also this text: which on one hand, makes it seem like you’re definitely doing drugs at one in the morning or at least selling them, but on the other, why are would caution prospective customers away from your business?”
“Prospective—” Peter spluttered.
“And I’d totally definitely already know if you sold weed at parties or something, which would be way smarter than just standing on street corners, but you and Leeds don’t even come to parties, so I have to know: are you a drug dealer, or are you not?”
Peter opened and closed his mouth several times, his neck bright red, before he seemed to remember how to speak.
“Uh,” he managed, “not. I’m- I’m not a drug dealer. Nope. Not me.”
Cindy narrowed her eyes and MJ snorted. “Shit, Parker, you really can’t lie to save your life.”
“Haha,” Peter laughed, guiltily and more than a little forced. “You know me. Open book.”
“But,” MJ continued, with a nod to Cindy, “I can confirm. He is not a drug dealer.”
Cindy’s posture sank a foot.
“Oh, man, I was like, secretly so sure!” she complained. “Well.” And she whipped around and stalked away.
Peter shuddered. “She terrifies me sometimes.”
Ned wrinkled his brow. “What theory do you reckon she’ll come up with next?”
Peter groaned.