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Every time Peter’s phone rang and he didn’t recognize the number, he answered it like it was a call from the Avengers ... And every time it was like a personal rejection. Two months, three months, four months. Peter rode the subway to school as everyone else did, sometimes watching videos from Leipzig or from the flight over on Tony Stark’s private jet. For just those couple of days, he’d been part of a different world.
And now he was stuck back in his ordinary world.
On this morning, like every other morning, he got off the subway and jogged down the stairs from the elevated tracks to the street. He joined the crowd of overachievers headed into the Midtown School of Science & Technology, still watching his phone. That nearly got him run over when Flash Thompson came rolling into the parking lot in his new car. “ ’Sup, Parker!” Flash called out.
Luckily, Flash was so busy giving Peter a hard time that he hadn’t noticed Peter jumped out of his way a little too fast. Good, Peter thought. It wasn’t always easy to hide his Spider-Man abilities. He went inside, put his phone away, and started fiddling with the combination on his locker. A moment later, he heard his friend Ned pretending to be a movie villain—Ned wasn’t the best at impressions. “Join me, and together, we will build my new toy!”
Spinning around, Peter said, “No way! How many pieces?”
Ned grinned. “Three thousand eight hundred and three.”
“Insane,” Peter said. Peter and Ned had been building these sets together for ages.
“I know! Wanna build it tonight?”
Peter definitely did. But he needed to keep waiting for the call from Tony Stark and for the chance to prove he could be an Avenger. “I can’t,” he said. “I got the—”
“Stark internship,” Ned said, his face falling. “You’ve always got the internship.”
“Yeah, and pretty soon it’s going to lead to a real job with him.” He secretly meant being one of the Avengers, but Ned, of course, didn’t know that.
Ned was happy for his friend anyway. “That would be so sweet, working for Iron Man!” Ned said. “He’d be all, ‘Good job on your spreadsheets, Peter! Here, have a gold coin!’” Then he stopped, seeing Peter’s expression. “I don’t really know how jobs work.”
Peter laughed. “No, I’m sure that’s exactly right.”
“So I’ll knock out the basic bones at home, then swing by your place to finish it,” Ned suggested.
Peter was going to say no, but then he got distracted. Liz walked by with her friend Betty as they were talking over details of planning the Homecoming dance. “Sounds good,” he said absently. To Peter, Liz was amazing. She was smart, popular, gorgeous, and even friendly to nerds like him and Ned. She glanced over at him and smiled, then returned to her conversation. Peter felt like he could live on that smile for the rest of his life.
Ned was still talking, but the bell rang and Peter had to get to class.
In physics, Ms. Warren was drawing a diagram with a series of equations on the board. Peter tried to pay attention but found himself watching old videos of the Avengers’ fight with the Chitauri invaders in New York. He clicked over to videos of himself. Not nearly as many views as the Avengers video, and under most of them the first comment was FAKE!!!!
Ms. Warren finished the equation and turned to the class. “Now, how about calculating thrust? Where do we start?” Flash Thompson raised his hand. “Yes, Flash?”
“With the binomial.”
Ms. Warren smiled. “Peter? Still with us?”
Peter looked up from the screen, closing his laptop. She could have busted him if she’d wanted to, but Ms. Warren usually cut him a break. Right away he saw what Flash had missed. “Uh ... thrust? Yeah, the negatives cancel each other out, so solve for x, then determine the binomial.”
“Right as always,” Ms. Warren said with a proud smile.
Flash stared daggers at Peter, but what was Peter supposed to do? The right answer was the right answer.
At lunch he and Ned sat together at one of the tables far at the back of the cafeteria. At the other end of the room, Liz and Betty were hanging a Homecoming banner. The dance was coming up soon, but Peter hadn’t given it much thought. Liz, on the other hand ... her, he gave a lot of thought.
“Did Liz get a new top?” he asked.
“No, we’ve seen that before,” Ned said. “But never with that skirt.”
“We should stop staring before it gets creepy,” Peter said.
“Too late,” said Michelle from the other end of the table. She’d just sat down. “You two are such losers.”
“Then why do you sit with us?”
“ ’Cause I don’t have any friends,” she said, completely matter-of-fact. “Plus, we’re having Decathlon practice during lunch.”
“What?” Peter hadn’t known about this, but here came the rest of the Academic Decathlon team, Liz, Flash, all the others; they’d formed a sort of academic mob.
“If you’re gonna flake on every practice after school, Parker, we’ll just practice during school,” Liz said.
Flash, standing with the rest of the team, said, “I can’t believe we’re catering to him. We don’t need this dork.”
“As team captain, I disagree,” Liz said. “If we’re gonna win nationals, we need every dork at this table.”
“Let’s get to dork!” Ned said. They all just looked at him. “Like get to work ...?” he added hopefully.
“Oh, we got it,” Michelle said. Her tone made it clear she didn’t think it was funny.
Peter took a deep breath. He’d been trying to avoid this, but now there was no way around it. “About nationals,” he said softly. “I can’t go.”
Everyone except Flash was surprised and upset. “Why?” Liz asked.
“I’m ...” Peter started. Because I’m Spider-Man, he thought. And I have to meet that responsibility first. But he couldn’t ever say that out loud. “I’m just too busy.”
“Doing what?” Michelle asked. “You already quit Computer Club and Robotics Lab.” She looked around at the rest of the team. “I’m not obsessed with him. I’m just very observant.”
“You can’t bail before nationals! We don’t have anyone as strong as you on physics.”
“You have Flash,” Peter said.
“Neil de Grasse Tyson got nuttin’ on me!” Flash said.
It was true that Flash was good in physics ... but not as good as Peter. Liz and the rest of the team didn’t look confident.
Peter leaned closer to Liz and quietly said, “They wouldn’t do a physics challenge two years in a row.” Then, to everyone, he added, “Sorry, everybody. Good luck.”
He got up and started to walk across the cafeteria. Liz came after him. “Peter, look, I get it,” she said. “It’s hard to juggle everything. When I was a sophomore, I struggled, too. We were counting on you.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter said. He didn’t know what else to say.
“Don’t you want to go to D.C.? The White House? Stay in a hotel?”
“I do,” Peter said. And he really, really did. Especially if it was with her. “But ... I can’t.”
Then he kept walking, feeling awful about it but knowing that his responsibilities as Spider-Man were more important than anything he wanted to be doing in high school. If he was ever going to be an Avenger, he had to prove himself.