Spiderman 1 (5 page)

That can't be good,
Peter thought.

Seated about three-quarters of the way down was Liz
Allen. She had a mouthful of braces, glasses thicker than
Peter's, and blonde hair so wiry that it could have scoured
clean a pan with two inches of hardened grease on it. She
had books with her. And here Peter had thought he was the
only one obsessive enough to bring along stuff to read. The
seat next to her was empty. Peter, his legs weak, made eye
contact with her.

She promptly slammed the armload of books down into
the space and fixed him with a fearsome glare that could
have chilled the sun. "Don't even think about it," she
growled.

Wonderful. Liz was to the high school social whirl what the fox trot was to a mosh pit. Yet even
she
was concerned
enough about her standing in the Midtown High community
that she didn't want to share a seat with him.

As he made his way down the aisle, he couldn't help but wonder what he'd done to deserve this. Was he really that
ghastly looking? He caught a glimpse of himself in one of
the windows as he passed. Granted, the window was covered
with grime and dead bugs, but even with all of that, he
wasn't
that
ugly. His face was round, his attitude honest and open. He was physically unimposing: Some would call him scrawny, but he preferred the term "svelte" or "lean." And in
his eyes ... well, he thought his eyes were his best feature,
deep blue and filled as they were with quiet intelligence and
authority....

Oh, well, and isn't that just what high schoolers adore: in
telligence and authority. Intelligence blows the bell curve,
and authority is what teens are supposed to rebel against. And here came Peter Parker, the living personification of
both. With all that taken into consideration, it was a wonder
that he was still walking around at all....

And then, without warning, he was on the floor.

At first he had no idea how it had happened; it had oc
curred so quickly that his mind didn't have the time to
process it. All he knew was that one moment he was making his way down the aisle, and the next he was flat on the floor.
Unsurprisingly it was filthy, littered with gum wrappers,
candy wrappers, stray bits of food and detritus that had been
lying there for who knew how long? To add to this joy, he
had banged his elbows severely when he'd hit, and the pain
running up and down his arms was excruciating. More
painful, however, was the humiliation, and the stinging of
the blood rushing into his cheeks was the sharpest pain of
all.

Because Peter knew that he hadn't simply stumbled. He'd
been tripped.

He twisted himself around, shoving his glasses back into place as he looked up with pure, unbridled fury at the occupant of the seat he'd just gone by.

Sure enough.

Flash Thompson.

Flash Thompson, the swaggering, arrogant, overarching, self-confident football hero, with a heart the size of all outdoors and compassion to match, if all outdoors happened to
be the Arctic Circle. As far as Peter was concerned, Flash
was living proof against Darwinism. Because Flash was ob
viously a throwback to an earlier era, and if Neanderthals
were anything like Flash, then mankind could never have
evolved. NeanderFlash and his caveman cohorts would have
made life for any new species an endless torture of trip-ups,
poundings, wedgies, and verbal taunting. "You put the
'homo' in 'Homo sapiens,' " they'd doubtless be shouting,
grunting and howling. The best and brightest future incarnations of man would have scampered back up the trees, never to descend again.

Oh, and they'd get the best women. They'd just over-

whelm them with their raw animal magnetism, sling them
over their shoulders, and swagger away.

Case in point:

Mary Jane was sitting next to Flash.

She clearly hadn't seen that Flash had been responsible
for sending Peter tumbling to the floor, but she was regard
ing him with clear suspicion. Flash, his hands upturned in a gesture of total innocence, was saying, "What?" And why shouldn't he? Even his lowbrow intelligence was enough to assure himself that Peter wouldn't rat him out, and he was right. The only thing worse than the way this morning was going would be for Peter to point accusingly and say, "He tripped me!" How utterly lame, how whining, would that
sound?

No, Peter had to suck it up, which was what he did.

Without a word he staggered to his feet and fired Flash
the fiercest, angriest look he could. This intimidated Thomp
son about as much as could be expected; he curled his lip
contemptuously and turned back to Mary Jane, making a
point of draping an arm around her shoulders.

There was an empty seat toward the back on the right. It was one of the two seats that nobody ever wanted to sit in: Directly over the rear wheels. It hit all the bumps and potholes, jostled constantly, and was in short the most uncom
fortable seat in the house. Peter, sliding into self-pity, exiled
himself there. No one gave him a second glance.

Alone amongst a crowd, Peter did what he frequently did
under such circumstances. He pulled out a small journal
from between two larger books and laid it neatly on his lap,
balancing it with accomplished expertise. The journal
looked identical to the one that Uncle Ben had bought him
over a decade ago, but it had the number 29 neatly inscribed
in the upper right-hand corner of the cover. It was the
twenty-ninth journal that he'd started since his youth. It
was fortunate that Uncle Ben had purchased a common and

popular brand of notebook. It gave him a sort of continuity between the young man he'd been and—with any luck—the
old man he would become. It made him feel almost like a
time traveler.

Writing on the bouncing bus was no easy thing, and this wouldn't be one of his neater entries. Then again, compared
to the chicken scratchings from when he was six and still trying to master cursive style, it would be a masterwork.

He dated the page and wrote:

Mom and Dad:

Well, it happened again. Flash made me look like an idiot in front of
M.J., and she didn't even realize it was him. I don't understand it. I
have about a hundred times his brainpower, but he gets the best of
me every time. Uncle ben says you can beat ignorant people by out-
thinking them, and arrogant people by appealing to that arrogance and
using it against them, but that people who are ignorant and arrogant
are the toughest to deal with.

And the worst is that he sits there with M.J. That's killing me. I don't think he even really likes her... not
really
likes her. He treats
her like she's a trophy or something. Like, since he's the best athlete
and everything, he deserves to have the best looking girl in the whole
school. Like it's divine right or entitlement or something. When it
comes down to it, Flash Thompson doesn't love anyone as much as he
loves himself. She's there to make him look good.

She must know that. She's got to know that. So why the heck does
she put up with him? Why does she even like him? She deserves so
much better than him.

Mom, Dad . . . you know 1 don't ask favors of you, hardly ever. But
the next time you're sitting around, shooting the breeze with God . . .
do you think maybe you might mention Flash to him, and ask for some
divine intervention? Nothing fancy. Nothing extraordinary. An anvil,
maybe. A hundred pounds. On second thought, better make it five hun
dred pounds. With his thick skull, he probably won't feel anything less.
Whatever it takes. In short, any strings you could pull that would

provide just a little balance, a little justice, would be greatly appreci
ated.

Harry Osborn shifted uncomfortably in the back of the
chauffeur driven Bentley, sneaking looks at his father, Nor
man, while fervently wishing that he was somewhere else—
anywhere else—at this particular moment in time.

Norman Osborn, for his part, hadn't glanced at Harry for
the last twenty blocks. Instead he'd been utterly absorbed in
coordinating his day of meetings via his handheld PDA. Harry's attempts at casual conversation had been met with occasional grunts or nods, and not much more.

Osborn the Elder exuded an odd mix of power and barely
controlled anger. Harry had never been able to figure out just
with whom his father was mad, exactly. The world, it seemed.
He was frustrated at all he wished to accomplish ... and able
to focus only on failures rather than successes. And Harry
was often the target of his misplaced frustration. At least, that
was what Harry chose to believe.

He had never forgotten that time, on his sixteenth birthday. His father had thrown a sizable bash, with a guest list
comprised mostly of Norman's friends, with a couple of
Harry's friends du jour tossed in for appearances. It was
more a business opportunity for strategic meeting and greeting, but Norman had gotten himself seriously liquored up as
the evening progressed. That was unusual for him. Usually
he prided himself on his total control.

Late in the evening, however, Harry had found himself
alone in a hallway with his dad hanging with one arm on his
son and speaking in a voice filled with alcohol and con
tempt.

"I look at you, Harry," he'd said, "and I see myself at your
age ... except without the potential for greatness."

Harry had gone to bed shortly thereafter, and hadn't come out for two days, claiming a headache. His father,

mortified over what he'd said while in his cups, finally
coaxed him out of his room with a dirt bike he'd been cov
eting and a vacation to the mountains. It had been a glorious
outing, but the circumstances behind it still rankled.

As the Bentley approached the curbside at Columbia University, Harry could see the kids offloading from the school bus onto the sidewalk. He wished for all the world
that he'd been able to ride along with the other kids. Norman
had put a quick end to that notion, of course. No son of his
rode creaky, dirty, disgusting school buses. What if someone
he knew saw Harry on it?

The limousine window was slightly rolled down, and he could hear the teacher, Mr. Sullivan, shouting in his perpet
ually put-upon voice. "Okay, people, no wandering! Proceed
directly up to the
...
knock it the hell off!"
he bellowed as
the teen horseplay, laughter, and shouting reached terminal levels. For a microsecond he had caught their attention, and
he continued in that same tone,"... up the steps and into the
building ...!"