4

The trip to—and through—the airport had been both dull AND uneventful, which for Peter Parker was pretty unusual. Generally stuff happened. But not today. He had met up with his science class, and their teacher chaperones, Mr. Harrington and Mr. Dell, at JFK airport as planned.

And now? Now he was on the airplane, sitting next to Ned and definitely not sitting next to MJ and that was DEFINITELY NOT PART OF THE PLAN.

“Do you want the first shift or the second?” Mr. Harrington asked Mr. Dell as he walked down the cramped aisle of the plane. “I can take either.”

Mr. Dell didn’t even hesitate before he requested, “Give me the third shift. I took an Ambien.”

Peter noticed that the perpetually put-out look on Mr. Harrington’s face seemed a little more put-out than normal. “Wait, I can’t chaperone these kids alone!” he protested.

But Mr. Dell went right to his seat, and right to sleep.

“Yo, Parker!”

Peter turned to see Flash Thompson standing in the First Class cabin, holding a champagne glass in his hand. “This is called an airplane. It’s like the buses you’re used to, except it flies over the poor neighborhoods instead of driving through them.” He smirked at his classmate.

Peter wasn’t sure if a trip full of Flash was exactly what he would call a “vacation.” It might actually be closer to a prison sentence.

Then, he heard a voice say, “Ma’am?”

MJ.

A First Class flight attendant standing near Flash looked at MJ. “Hmm?” she inquired.

“He blipped,” MJ said, pointing at Flash, “so technically he’s sixteen, not twenty-one.”

The flight attendant looked at Flash with a raised eyebrow, and promptly seized the champagne glass. “I’ll take that,” she told him.

The other Midtown students started to laugh, leaving Flash sputtering. “She’s lying,” he protested, denying the accusation, but by then it was far too late. “I don’t even know this girl!”

“Classic MJ, right?” observed a tall, good-looking student as he walked right by Peter’s and Ned’s seats.

“Did you know Brad was coming?” Peter asked as he watched Brad walk toward the rear of the plane.

“It’s so weird,” Ned contemplated. “It’s like, one day, he’s that little kid who cried and got nosebleeds all the time. Then suddenly, we blip back, and he’s totally ripped and super nice and all these girls are after him.”

Peter watched as Brad helped one of their classmates stow her luggage in the overhead compartment.

“Not all the girls are after him,” Peter disputed skeptically.

“Hm, no, man, they’re all after him,” Ned insisted, as he removed a handheld gaming system from his carry-on. “Anyway. On to more important things. It’s a nine-hour flight. We can play Beast Slayers the whole time! ” He sounded way too enthused about this.

Peter turned around to look over his seat, and he saw Brad.

Talking to MJ.

“I need your help to sit next to MJ,” Peter blurted out to Ned.

Ned banged the back of his head against his seat, closing his eyes. “Seriously?” This was not how Ned wanted to start his European trip.

“Yes, seriously,” Peter maintained. He was going to have the vacation he wanted. And it would include MJ. And Ned was going to help.

Ned looked annoyed. “What about our plan? American bachelors in Europe!”

“That’s your plan,” Peter responded. “That’s a solo plan. Come on, this is MY plan. Please.” He couldn’t accomplish this alone.

Peter looked at Ned, and opened his eyes wide. And just as the puppy-dog look always worked with May, it was equally effective here. No one could resist that face.

Ned sighed.

“Uh, hey, guys, uh, there’s an old lady sitting in front of us wearing a crazy amount of perfume, and it’s kinda setting off Peter’s allergies,” Ned said. He had walked down the aisle and was standing next to Betty and MJ, who were seated next to each other. “Um, you know, Betty, if you could just switch seats with him, that would be—”

“He’s allergic to perfume?” Betty questioned in disbelief.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ned continued, trying to finda way to make the ridiculous story sound remotely believable. “’Cause, um, it—it makes his eyes water and he can’t really—”

“Did you say Peter has a perfume allergy?”

Suddenly, Mr. Harrington was hovering over them, worried.

“Oh, uh—” Ned replied, not knowing what to do.

“Well, I’ll tell you from experience, perfume allergies are no joke,” Mr. Harrington confirmed, and Ned instantly regretted his choice of excuses. “I can feel hives breaking out already. MJ, stand up. Ned, uh, take MJ’s spot. MJ, you take my spot. Peter, come with me, let’s get you out of there.”

It was all unravelling right in front of him, and all Ned could do was say, “No, I was, uh—”

MJ stood up, and said “Sorry” to another passenger as she moved out of the row toward the aisle.

“Zach and Sebastian—you take Ned and Peter’s seats,” Mr. Harrington ordered, still reworking the students’ seating arrangements. “Ned, thanks for bringing this to my attention. Your safety is my responsibility, and Mr. Dell’s, but he’s...”

Mr. Harrington turned to look at Mr. Dell, who was snoring loudly.

“I got it for now,” Mr. Harrington finished. “Let’s go, Peter.”

That horrible clenching feeling in Peter’s stomach returned as he reluctantly picked up his carry-on and walked down the aisle toward Mr. Harrington. The teacher motioned for Peter to move in and take a center seat.

“Yeah, I have a small bladder, so I took the aisle,” Mr. Harrington explained.

It was going to be a very, very long flight.

“So, do you wanna play Beast Slayer ？” Ned offered.

“No,” Betty answered, not even looking up.

“Have you...Have you, like, ever played any kind of PC game or—？” Ned asked. There were other gaming options, after all.

“No,” Betty responded curtly.

“Got it,” Ned acknowledged and went back to playing Beast Slayer .

Sitting next to Mr. Harrington had totally destroyed Peter’s concept of time. He had no idea how long they’d been on the plane. Three minutes? Three hours? THREE DAYS? It was impossible to say.

“Did I tell you how my wife pretended to blip out?” Mr. Harrington continued his one-sided conversation. “Turns out she ran off with a guy in her hiking group. We had a fake funeral for her and everything. Well, the funeral was real. ’Cause I thought she was really dead. Do you wanna see the video?”

Right then, Peter found himself wishing that he could blip out all over again.

Trying to ignore Mr. Harrington, he looked over the seats in front of him, and saw MJ sitting next to Brad.

Brad.

Almost from the start, Peter’s carefully laid plan had gone out the window. And now it was being shredded into little pieces right before his eyes.

“Oh, I got a dual headphone adapter if you wanna watch a movie,” he heard Brad say, and his heart sank.

“Only if it’s depressing,” MJ replied. “Or hilarious.”

THAT WAS MY PLAN! Peter screamed inside. How was this happening？！

“Oh, you have a dual headphone adapter,” Peter heard Mr. Harrington say. “We can watch together.”

Peter hoped they were landing soon. That was when the voice came over the cabin loudspeaker: “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. Our flight time today will be eight hours and forty-nine minutes to Venice, Italy.”

UGH.

After he was forced to watch Mr. Harrington’s wife’s funeral-but-not-really, Peter was desperate. He searched through the in-flight entertainment system for some kind of relief, but was instead confronted with another problem. The offerings were all too familiar to him, with titles like

The Snap

Finding Wakanda

Hunting Hydra

NOVA: Einstein-Rosen Bridges with Dr. Erik Selvig, and

Heart Of Iron: The Tony Stark Story

Peter had hoped that the vacation would help him to take his mind off of Tony, and everything that had happened.

He had hoped wrong.

Suddenly, he felt Mr. Harrington’s head hit his shoulder. His teacher was officially asleep. Peter sighed, then reached up towards the overhead compartment and used that to pull himself out of his seat and over Mr. Harrington, taking the opportunities to stretch his legs.

He walked toward the bathroom, and went inside.

When he had finished, Peter opened the door and was surprised to see MJ standing there.

For reasons he would come to regret later, Peter decided in that moment that the best course of action was to quickly close the door and commence cleaning the bathroom by way of washing out the sink and flushing the toilet again. Then he checked his teeth in the mirror, fixed his hair, and then—ONLY then—did he open the bathroom door, hoping to start up a conversation with MJ.

Except MJ wasn’t there anymore.

But Brad was.

Brad waved at Peter.

Peter wanted to go back into the bathroom and flush HIMSELF down the toilet.