Spiderman 1 (16 page)

He slid one of his hands along the wall, and it continued
to stick. Then, as if jumping and trying to reach something,
he pushed his other arm up and over his head, and that hand
stuck, as well. He was hanging about half a foot off the
ground, his entire weight supported solely by his hands.

He started to climb, his feet not actually adhering, since

they were covered by fairly thick shoe soles, but not needing
the additional support or thrust. He just used them for bal
ance, and climbed higher and higher, each passing moment
bringing more and more confidence. He reminded himself
not to get overconfident; he'd become that way with Flash,
and a teen with a rearranged face had been the result. He
didn't want it to be his turn to have parts of his anatomy re
arranged.

He achieved the flat rooftop. Rather than hauling his legs
up over the edge, he instead vaulted onto the roof, effort
lessly swinging the lower half of his body up and over. He
dropped into a crouch, then stood upright and bowed slightly
as if to a nonexistent audience.

There was a series of rooftops, all approximately the
same height, stretching out before him, and he studied the array with the same eagerness and sense of unconquerable
confidence one usually saw in an accomplished athlete such
as a surfer. And that was, in effect, what Peter Parker became: A surfer. Except instead of searching out waves, he
was going to surf the rooftops.

With total abandon and a sense of fun he previously
thought had been denied him, Peter started leaping from one
rooftop to the next. Just for amusement, he held his arms
outstretched as if he were riding a major wave.

And then he wiped out.

Not entirely, and not terminally, but damned close. He'd
been barreling toward the edge of one roof, preparing to vault
to the other side, when he got to one where he realized, at the
last moment, that the gap was simply too wide. Or, at the
very least, it was wide enough that he didn't want to chance it. So he came to an abrupt halt, teetering on the edge. The
chasm yawned before him. He could turn around, head back
the way he came. Or else he could simply climb down the side of the building. Either option was available ...

...
or perhaps ... there was a third option.

He looked down at the slits in his wrist, pushing aside the
fact that it still looked as if he had tried to end his life. Al
though he had to admit the irony, considering where he was
and what he was doing. One wrong move, one mistake in
judgment, and he'd be putting an end to himself a lot faster than he could by hacking at his wrists.

Still, there was no reason he couldn't try to make this
webbing goop work for him. So he tried to force the web to
spray out by sheer willpower.

Nothing.

Then he tried wiggling his wrists, but had no more suc
cess than before. He saw it as trying to crack a combination
lock. It was just a matter of putting together the right assort
ment of numbers in the correct order.

So he opened and closed assorted fingers, combined with
twists of the wrist this way and that. At one point, he tried, just for laughs, a variation on "bunny ears": His palm facing
up, he extended all five fingers, and then brought his ring
and middle fingers toward his palm.

Even though he'd been trying to achieve the affect, he
was still extremely startled when a loud
thwip
sounded from
the area of his wrist, and a single strand of webbing shot out,
straight up. Thankful that he didn't snag a passing pigeon,
Peter tried aiming at the building across the way, hoping that
the same combination of wrist-twist and fingering would produce the same result. His wish was granted as another
strand of webbing zipped out and anchored to the far side of
the other building.

Peter tugged on it as hard as he could, trying to guess how
much strain it would undergo if his full weight was put upon
it. It seemed solid. Heck, it was more likely that the bricks
would fall out of the wall than that his webbing strand would
snap—now
there
was a cheerful thought. Nevertheless, he

was still understandably apprehensive about what he was
going to do.

He warned himself not to look down, promptly looked
down, and then mentally kicked himself for having done so.
Just to play it safe, he wrapped the trailing end of the strand
around his hand once, twice. Then, muttering a prayer and
fighting an urge to give out a Tarzan yell, he jumped off the
roof.

He had prepared himself for the possibility of the web
breaking free, but it held perfectly. The world whizzed past him, wind in his face, as he held onto the strand and experi
enced something akin to the exhilarating feeling of flight.
This lasted for as long as it took the web line to have its arc terminated by the wall.

Peter slammed into it with jaw-rattling force and hung
there, flattened, looking like the Coyote after an abortive
pursuit of the Roadrunner. Or perhaps one of those plush
toys some people kept suctioned against their car windows.

"Ouch," he muttered.

"Ouch," said Madeline Watson, Mary Jane's mother.
"One punch, you say?"

M.J.'s father was seated at the kitchen table, knocking back a beer. His night shift at the train yard didn't start for
some hours yet, and he was glowering with red eyes at Mary
Jane, who was fixing herself a snack from the refrigerator.

"I don't believe it," he growled.

"She saw it with her own eyes, Phil," Madeline said,
pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"I did. So did everybody else, although a lot of them still
don't believe it," M. J. said cheerfully. She swung a right
cross in the air. "One shot.
Bam."

"You sound awfully chipper about it," Philip Watson ob
served.

"Well, I wouldn't say Flash had it coming, but . . ."

"But you'd think it without saying it?" suggested her
mother. This prompted a ready grin from M. J.

Philip, however, was not grinning. M. J. noticed that he
was scowling even more than before. "I'm glad you both
think this is funny. The fact is that anyone can get in a lucky
punch. Flash was probably taking it easy on him...."

M. J. had been about to bite into her sandwich, but she
put it down as she shook her head. "No way, Dad. No way.
Peter just . . . just took him down, that's all. It wasn't luck.
Flash did everything he could and never laid a hand on him."

Her father harrumphed loudly at this, and then said,
"Sounds to me like Flash needs work on his technique.
Maybe I'll give him a few pointers when he stops by."

Mary Jane's jaw dropped, and she exchanged a look with
her mother, who appeared just as surprised. She didn't know
which comment to process first. She tried the less inflam
matory one. "When is Flash 'stopping by?' "

"Oh, he called. Did I forget to tell you?"

"Yeessss!"
She managed to turn "yes" into a two-syllable
word.

"Oh. Well, he's coming over to pick you up," and he
glanced up at the wall clock, an annoying present from his equally annoying sister, Anna, replete with pictures of birds that gave off birdcalls every hour. "Said he wanted to show
you his birthday present. Just about any minute, he should
be here."

"Thanks for telling me! And what do you mean, you'll
give him a few pointers?!"

Philip looked annoyed that she would question his inten
tions. "What, you think I can't? In my day, I was all-
county—"

"I know what you were, Dad, that's not the point!" she
said in exasperation, pacing the kitchen. "You want to give

Flash some tips on how to pound Peter into the ground? He's
your neighbor, for God's sake! How could you?" She
dropped into the chair opposite him, her sandwich forgotten,
and folded her arms resolutely. "I'm not going out with
Flash tonight. I don't feel like it."

Bristling, Phil shot back, "I told him you were. Are you
trying to make me look like a fool?"

"Not everything is about you, Phil," Madeline snapped.

"In this house, it sure as hell is!" He leaned forward,
stabbing a finger into M.J.'s face. "You better realize this
right now, Mary Jane: Flash Thompson is the luckiest break
you ever fell into. I've seen that boy play football. He's going to be All-American. He's going to make a ton of
money. You could do a lot worse than be married to some
one like him."

And the words were out of her mouth before she could
control them: "Damned right. I could be married to someone
like you!"

Instantly, with a roar, Phil was on his feet, nearly knock
ing the table over. M. J. rolled off the chair, frantically crab-
walking backward on the floor as she tried to put some
distance between herself and her outraged father. Madeline
quickly interposed herself between the two. "Phil, calm
down! She didn't mean it!"

"The hell she didn't!" he bellowed, saving Mary Jane the
trouble of saying much the same thing. "She's got a future
tied up in a perfect bow, and instead she worries about a
loser like Peter Parker!"

"He's not a loser!" Mary Jane cried out defiantly, pulling herself to her feet.

"And you would know about that, wouldn't you!" he shot
back. He was trembling with rage. "You go out with Flash,
as I promised him you would, or don't you bother coming
back!"

"Fine!" she howled, fighting back tears, and charged out
the back door, furiously kicking it shut behind her.

Between the constant practicing and the one or two brief bouts of unconsciousness, the time had totally slipped away
from Peter. It was getting on evening when he finally dashed
into the kitchen of his house, calling out for Aunt May and
Uncle Ben. He immediately sensed that they weren't around,
however. This required no advanced spider-given technique
or nearly psychic ability. He'd always been able to tell when
they were out. The house seemed . . . sadder when they
weren't around, as ludicrous as that sounded.

His nose wrinkled as he smelled something odd. He
turned and experimentally touched the wall, taking extreme
care to do it delicately so that his finger didn't stick to it. It
came away with a dab of fresh yellow paint on it. Then he
noticed, in the corner of the room, some buckets, a neatly
folded drop cloth splattered with paint of a color identical to
what was on the wall, and the ladder.