Spider-Man: Five Issues In Search Of An Arc

Mary Jane never gave much thought to the boy next door, despite the fact that their houses were built so close that his bedroom practically opened up into her bedroom, only a few feet of space between her Oriel window and his. If you held an apple between those two windows and dropped it, odds are it would land right on the white-picket fence that divided the two properties.

He never gave much thought to her either, which was a relief. As much as she liked being the life of the party, sometimes a girl needed some alone time. Peter never intruded on that; never even played the radio loud. And when he was fifteen, he went from being a background player in Mary Jane’s life to a complete nonentity.

His curtains were always drawn. She didn’t see him reading outside on his family’s patio or doing chores in the yard anymore. He was always off somewhere, doing God knew what. Mary Jane was feline in her curiosity, but put off by the odd smell that came out of his room and prompted her to shut her window and turn on her fan.

Chemistry experiments, was the word that filtered from his aunt and uncle to Mary Jane’s family. Which had to be an euphemism for something—Mary Jane was sure she didn’t want to know what. But the last thing she needed in her life was a junkie burn-out, so goodbye Peter Parker, you have left the D-list, welcome to the Z-list.

Shame. He was kinda cute. But Mary Jane wasn’t about to hitch herself to some guy, especially one who loved a needle more than her. Diamonds were a girl’s best friends. Boys were fun but, well, worthless.

Mary Jane was fifteen herself. Her world was predictably unpredictable. Nothing could be trusted—parents broke up, houses were left in the middle of the night, people who took you in kicked you out. But there were constants.

School was boring, but if you did alright in it, everyone assumed you were fine, left you alone. Music was loud. Dancing was fun. Aunt Anna was old, set in her ways, but they were good ways. She couldn’t do much to protect Mary Jane if life decided to swerve her, but what little she could give was all out there.

The swerve took a form Mary Jane couldn’t have expected, the way it had to. She came home from dancing her feet off, early because someone had spilled a Tom Collins all over her, and the reassuring flicker from the streetlight that needed servicing—two little blinks and then a harsh buzz as it settled back into working order—was replaced by strobing blues and reds.

Police cars in the street in front of the Parker house. Mary Jane walked up the steps to her own house, trying to keep a steady pace, not wanting to be another turned-head passing an accident. She had enough tragedy of her own.

The news was already making the rounds. Peter’s uncle was dead. Shot and killed by a mugger. Mary Jane usually put up a façade, tried to pretend nothing affected her, but imagine it. Having good parents, a good life, and then it going out the window. She couldn’t say anything. One look at Aunt Anna told her she understood. That much her aunt could do. She could understand.

They hugged fiercely and then Mary Jane needed to be alone. Her room was upstairs and she could cut off the world with a pair of headphones and the volume turned up until her skull vibrated too much for thoughts to take hold. She’d fall asleep once her iPod died and in the morning, it would all just be a signature on whatever card Aunt Anna wanted her to send.

Only it wasn’t. The swerve was too smart for her. Having feinted by going for Peter, it now tapped her on the shoulder and let her have it.

Peter was in his room. The curtains weren’t down. He was half-naked, but he wasn’t undressing, he was putting on something, a costume, and as more of it covered his body, Mary Jane made out the shape that was coming together.

Spider-Man. He was turning into Spider-Man. He was Spider-Man.

The look on Peter’s face was one of rage shaking determination, like battering rams trying to knock down a wall. She could see he was maybe one second away from breaking everything in his room to kindling, from tearing the house down to its foundations. He held his mask in his hand and Mary Jane wondered how all that pain and anger and need to do something could possibly fit in that fragile-looking covering.

Then he turned to her. The look on his face gave, and thank God, because MJ felt like she would’ve been incinerated if she was included in that anger. There was surprise in his expression now, and sorrow. Sorrow that dwarfed the sadness Mary Jane acknowledged—that matched what she felt when even her own coping mechanisms were too much for her and she had to be alone, had to let the tears pass with her only comfort that no one knew they’d been shed but her.

Mary Jane wanted to say something, tell him something. That things got better. That the pain faded. That people would still like you even if you admitted how much the hurt covered you. But she didn’t have it in her to lie.

Funny as hell: the one time she felt ashamed of how she dealt was when she had to admit it barely worked. She was still the little girl whose daddy yelled. The only other thing she’d managed to become was someone who didn’t care about that. Who said she didn’t care.

Then the connection broke. Peter gave a shrug, a dismissive snort, like it was all one more stone heaped on top of him, and pulled on the mask.

Mary Jane knew that shrug. She spent three-quarters of her life around teenagers, of course she knew it. The you’re too stupid to be worth arguing with shrug. Mary Jane’s opinion was not required. She could tell what she’d seen, pretend it had never happened, paint a picture of it on someone’s wall… none of it mattered to him. Whatever he was going to do, he was going to do.

Which pissed Mary Jane off, frankly. Because she hadn’t said anything, he’d barely even noticed her, and now he was ignoring her? But that’s what happened. His mask was on and he was flying out the window and Mary Jane was still there, like nothing had even happened. And nothing had—to her. She just knew now what before had been a blissfully unexamined secret.

Mary Jane turned on the news. She needed some noise and music didn’t seem appropriate. Plus, this seemed like the night for other people’s troubles.

Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man. She’d heard of him, of course. Liked him, even. The cool outfit. The way he could swing through the air like an acrobat with a trapeze that took him anywhere he wanted. Even the girls who only gave a shit about Doja Cat and Becky G would at least look at the videos he posted, maybe send a few bucks to his stream.

Flash Thompson had put in a hundred dollars, the football team a couple thousand, and they’d gotten Spider-Man to livestream climbing up the Empire State Building and diving off it like it was nothing.

Mary Jane was just realizing how her attempt not to think about Peter had turned into thinking very heavily of Peter when her TV completed the trifecta and talked about Peter. Not by name, of course.

“This just in… Dennis Carradine, the felon wanted for questioning in the shooting death of a Queens resident this evening, was holed up in a standoff with police on the waterfront when costumed celebrity Spider-Man intervened.”

Mary Jane watched in shock. The broadcast had video, a correspondent doing a report to the camera interrupted by the cameraman whirling to catch a glimpse of Spider-Man swinging past, only discernible by red and blue blasting brightness as they passed through the police searchlights.

“Authorities raided the building moments later, only to find Carradine subdued and held in place by the same web-like substance the internet icon uses in his act. Certainly, a bizarre turn in this night’s tragic events. But at least we can say the situation has been resolved with no further loss of human life. Our hearts go out to the family of the man killed tonight, who we can now confirm is electrician Benjamin Parker, sixty-two, of Queens, New York…”

And Mary Jane had no idea what else she was supposed to think about when now ‘New York’s new superhero’ was on every channel.

So she went dancing. Anna was over at the neighbors’, comforting May; she didn’t notice Mary Jane slipping out. And on the dance floor, with the music shaking her like the breeze shakes a leaf and every man in the club trying to get close enough that it would count as dancing with her…

Nothing had happened. She hadn’t seen anything. If it wasn’t the music she was hearing, wasn’t the way she was moving her body, then it didn’t exist.