I push open the door to my house and quickly shut it, praying that none of my neighbors saw me just walk in with a weird boy who can barely walk and can't lift his head.
"C'mon," I grunt, hoisting his arm up over my shoulder. "We gotta head upstairs. I need your help here. I'm not strong enough to get you up there myself."
He seems to understand, I think, just a little bit, and he works with me to get him up the stairs, lifting his shaking feet and thumping them down again as we go up. His legs and feet are shaking, and he's starting to wheeze. I can hear the air rattling around in his lungs.
"C'mon," I tell him. "That's it, you're doing great. Just a little bit further. You're doing good." I give him encouragement, because he needs it. My god, he sounds terrible. I suddenly realize I need to get him help. I was so worried about getting him out of the school, I didn't even think that he might need help from the attack. And even though he's freaking Spider-Man, I also know that he's just a seventeen-year-old kid, who has no idea what is happening.
Finally, we reach my bedroom, and I drop him onto the bed. He falls like a dead body, curling up into a ball. But, I can see he's still breathing, and he moves his hands up onto his stomach. His eyes are closed, and he's breathing heavily through his nose.
"Listen," I say, kneeling on the ground near the bed and whispering. "I need to get you out of here. I need to get you somewhere where you can get help. Can I call someone? Is there someone I can call?"
He moans and shakes his head no. What do you mean, no?
"Look," I say, a little more urgently. "I need you to hear me. I don't think you understand. You are in horrible shape. I don't know what the Goblin did to you, but…I don't know what's gonna happen if you don't get help soon. Who can I call? What do you want me to do?"
He shakes his head "no" again. I think I know why he's doing that.
"If you're worried about your secret identity or something, you can stop," I tell him. "You're in my bedroom right now, without your mask on. You don't have any costume on at all. You're actually wearing a girl's softball t-shirt, if you wanna know. I've seen your face, and I know you're a teenage kid, like me. You have nothing to hide. So you can stop all that. Now, you have to give me a name. You have to give me a name or someone to call."
I hear the door open and then close downstairs. Are you kidding me?!
"Lydia?" my mom calls, still upset. "Are you here?"
"Yeah, Mom, I'm upstairs." I open my door, just a bit.
"Oh, thank god. Just hearing your voice, Lydia, just knowing you're okay…you don't know what thoughts went through my head."
She starts walking up the stairs. I quickly turn back to my bed and close the door. As fast as I can, I begin whipping pillows, stuffed animals, and clothes onto the bed, in an attempt to cover up the brown-haired teenager lying on my mattress. I open up a drawer from my bureau and dump that on him, too. Soon, the world's most famous superhero—the one who saved New York City last month from a freak with eight arms and a guy made out of electricity—is buried under about sixteen skirts, ten sweaters, nine pillows, several teddy bears, a stuffed yellow rabbit, and—if he only knew—five pairs of panties and two purple bras.
I turn back to the door, just as my mom reaches it. Before she can open it, I lunge at the doorknob and turn it, making sure I only open it a few inches.
"Lydia? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, Mom," I say, totally out of breath. I must look like a lunatic. I'm sweaty from my furious burying of Spider-Man, and also, I imagine, wide-eyed and nervous like a meth head.
"What's going on?" my mom asks, confused. "Why you are in your room with the door closed? Are you sure you're all right?"
"Yeah, Mom," I reply quickly, trying to act normal and totally failing, bouncing up and down nervously. "I'm just, uh, you know, tired, I guess. From everything that happened today, you know?"
She shakes her head. "I'm so sorry, honey, that that happened to you. It's awful. I still can't believe it. Do you wanna come down stairs and talk about it? I got the hot dogs, and dad should be home, soon, too. He was freaking out just like me, so he left work early."
Great. Of course he did.
"Yeah, Mom, I do, I wanna talk about it, I do, but really, I'm fine. I'll tell you what happened and everything, I'll tell you the story, but I'm totally fine. It had nothing to do with me, but it was…it was crazy. Can I just rest in my room for a few minutes, though? I have kind of a headache and just wanna rest for a few minutes where it's dark and quiet and everything."
"Of course, of course, honey. Absolutely. Anything you wanna do, that's fine, and if there's anything you need, just call me, okay? Just come down for dinner whenever."
"Thanks, Mom. I'll be down soon."
She looks at me and smiles, shaking her head.
"Oh, thank god, honey. When I heard—when I heard you were okay…I've never been so…I couldn't believe when I saw the news. I couldn't believe it. I thought—I don't know what I'd do without her. I love you so much."
Suddenly, she pulls me close and hugs me, smiling wide and crying. When she does, I fall forward from the quick embrace, and my foot pushes the door open. Looking over my shoulder, my mom sees into my room.
"Why's all that stuff on your bed?"
I hear Spider-Man groan from underneath the teddy bears and bras.
"Oh, I was just looking for something. Chloe wanted to borrow a skirt tomorrow—you know how she is, ha ha! Okay, be down soon!"
Like an idiot, I fake laugh again and close my door as fast as I can. My mom probably thinks I have a concussion or brain damage from a pumpkin bomb. But I'll worry about that later. Right now, I need to move quick.
As I hear my mom head back down the stairs, I run back to the bed. I begin whipping the clothes off and tossing them across the room.
"Okay," I whisper, "purple gas or not, Spidey, you need to get out of here. You need to help me figure out who to call. There's gotta be someone we can call to—"
When I finally reach Spider-Man, he's not moving. At all. His face is as white as snow. His forehead is covered in beads of sweat, and his arms are dangling uselessly. His eyes are closed.
"Oh my god," I whisper. I reach forward and put my hand on my stomach. He's breathing, but barely. Then I put my hand on his forehead. He's burning up. He has a fever. It feels like my hand is on a hot stove.
My god, Spider-Man is dying. Spider-Man is dying in my bedroom. And there's nothing I can do about it.
Who can I call? Who can I call to help?
What am I gonna do?
