Birds of a Feather
MJ doesn't really sleep that night. She's wired from the club, as if she has put her body into some mode that doesn't have an off switch. She is almost relieved when the sun rises and the city starts to whir back to life beneath them and she doesn't have to lie still anymore.
She is lacing up her running sneakers when she hears the door next to theirs creak open and click shut.
She tries to finish lacing her shoes up but her fingers are shaking – she ends up running into the hall with them untied, the laces spitting around her, slapping against her ankles.
"Where are you going?" she bursts, just as Peter is about to head into the stairwell.
He stops. She is sure he is going to be angry when he turns around, or at the very least embarrassed by the volume she just used to accost him, but if he is either of those things he hides it well.
He holds up his skateboard. "Just out."
"Oh," she says. She extends one of her legs, showing him her beat up shoes. "Me too."
The conversation is strained and too polite, the two of them dancing around each other, the rest of it – the hurt and confusion and every part of the last week – smothered in the air between them.
She has to find some way to cut the tension. It's her responsibility. But she is uncertain and self-conscious, wavering in the open hallway, feeling her shoulders curl into her body – she has nothing to say. MJ is full of words except for when they count the most.
"You think you can keep up?" Peter asks.
It takes MJ a moment to understand the implication, and then she laughs. It's dry and a little too loud for the early morning, and she immediately clamps a hand over her mouth, sure that she's just woken up half the hall.
"If you're as bad as I remember then no, I shouldn't have any trouble," she says.
"Whoa. Shots fired," says Peter.
"And mailboxes dented," she says, warming up a little more. There used to be a flow to this. They would tease each other all the time. It feels a little bit like riding a bike with rusty wheels. "How you defied gravity enough to manage that is still beyond me."
"Hey, I was getting better that summer before high school, remember?" he says. "Crash-free since 2010."
"Right," she says, raising her eyebrows. She remembers the beginning of the summer when he was clumsy and bumbling and scraped up his knees enough times to cause an antiseptic shortage in Queens, but she has no memory of him actually possessing any grace on the thing.
For a moment they both stand there, and then, unexpectedly, he loosens up his shoulders and cocks his head for her to follow.
"C'mon."
There is some small forgiveness in it, a quiet in his voice that makes her feel both relieved and a little anxious.
She finishes tying her shoes and follows him. Everything in the stairwell is still and overly bright with the dawn, and when they pass the windows she can feel the heat of the sun on her skin. The echo of their footsteps reaches the tallest parts of the building, and there is something soothing about the rhythm of them, the shared silence between them.
When they hit the street people are already milling around, holding their phones and their thermoses full of coffee like battle armor, quick-footed and tunnel-visioned.
Peter doesn't set the skateboard down, and she doesn't start running.
"I'm sorry about last night," says MJ. She isn't looking at him. The sentiment is so inadequate that it feels like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound, but she takes a breath and adds, "And – and for high school."
Peter shakes his head. "I shouldn't have said that the other night."
"No," she says, "you were right." Her throat feels thick. "I couldn't – I couldn't even tell you why it happened," she says, and as the words fall out of her, as she really thinks about that summer for the first time, it is a struggle to remember it at all. Whatever it was that shifted, that changed between them – she can't remember anything definitive.
Harry left. That's what she remembers most. And after that … it feels like the rest of it just slides away.
Peter lets out a breathy, uncommitted laugh. "I could."
The words aren't accusatory, only resigned. She turns to look up at him and he is staring straight ahead, not into the street but as if he is staring into a void, listless and apathetic.
She has seen Peter upset. She has seen Peter cry, she has seen him throw things, she has seen him rip up pictures and yell and slam his bedroom door. She has seen Peter at his uncle's funeral, beside himself with grief. She grew up beside him. She has seen everything.
But not this. He looks almost hollow, as if she could push him aside with one brush of her hand and he would rise up with the wind. She understands now – he didn't come back because he could manage the pain. He came back because there was no room for it any place else.
"I'm glad you came back," says MJ guardedly. She wants him to know that she cares, but she doesn't want to remind him of his sadness.
His expression hardly changes at all. She imagines the sadness doesn't need reminding – it is just there like a constant companion, closer to him than anything she says will ever be.
He flattens the palm of his hand against one of the wheels on the bottom of the board and pushes at it, moving it back and forth. "I wasn't going to," he admits. He sets his hand back at his side and shakes his head, saying, "It's the stupidest thing."
She waits for him to elaborate, but he seems almost stunned, as if he hadn't meant to say it in the first place.
"What?" she asks after a moment.
He swipes at his nose with his wrist, like a nervous tic. "She would kill me, you know." He laughs and the sound of it, watery and a little desperate, makes her heart seize. He looks at her, his eyes bloodshot and sleepless, and says, "If I quit school, I mean. I just – I was going to leave, I was, and I just thought, no, I know. She'd be so pissed." He stares at the ground. "It's crazy."
"No, it's not," says MJ quietly.
He hums his assent, and she can see his fingers shaking when they weren't before, the vein in his forehead starting to protrude. Reminiscing about high school was safe territory compared to this.
She is struggling to find some way to comfort him but she suddenly hears a clatter. Peter has thrown the board to the ground and has it trapped under his foot, his other foot poised on the pavement.
"You ready?" he says.
The expression on his face is already cracking. She nods before it can, and takes off, slapping her sneakers against the sidewalk, sprinting to keep up with him as he goes. They weave in and out of strangers, staring straight ahead, barely keeping each other in their peripheries as they press further and further away from the campus. She can tell he's trying to keep an even pace with her but even so her lungs are burning with the effort to stay with him, so much that it is her only, all-consuming thought – Run. Move. Go.
She thinks that they'll feel better, miles later when they eventually come to a stop. But when they're finally standing outside the dorm and look at each other, gasping and red-faced, it feels like they are in a race where the finish line is constantly moving, always just a few feet ahead.
They can't outrun themselves.
((()))
"Don't freak out."
"Harry … this is in your house?"
"You said you wouldn't freak out."
"I'm not! Jeez. I'm just saying. There's a room full of spiders in your house."
She is back in the room in the Osborn mansion that she dreamed of before, dark and wide, the equipment around them humming softly. The closer they get to the glass tubes the more compelled MJ is to stare – she has never seen this many spiders in her entire life. They weave and crawl and spin on top of each other, through a landscape of shimmering webs, more taut and thick than any spider web she can remember.
"What is it for?" she asks. She spins around, awed, and sees that there are more of them.
Harry's face comes into focus, his eyes so wide that they glimmer like overly-large moons in the darkness. "That's the thing. I have no idea."
MJ shudders, folding her arms into her chest. "I'm glad I don't live here. Yuck. Don't you ever worry about them getting out at night or something?" She leans in closer to Harry, shrinking away from the glass, and says, "Like, you're sleeping and then all of a sudden something itches and you wake up and find a bajillion spiders in your bed – "
"My dad would never let that happen," says Harry. "Besides. Someone has to let them out. They can't get out on their own. See?"
She squints in the dim light as Harry leads her over to a control panel. There's a monitor regulating all sorts of numbers, temperatures and weights and a dozen other things that MJ doesn't understand. She approaches it warily, grazing her fingers over the screen.
"Don't touch it," says Harry, yanking her back by the elbow.
She stumbles and rights herself. He tries to mask the blatant fear on his face but she looks up at him before he can.
"You're scared," she says.
He scowls at her. "Of course I'm not. I just don't want to get in trouble."
"Since when?"
"I'm not scared," says Harry, louder this time, so that his voice echoes through the room and slaps back at them. He takes a step back from the monitor, cringing.
MJ deflates. She shouldn't make fun of him. He didn't even have to show her this in the first place. "Sorry."
"It's not like it's hard to do," he says gruffly, not quite looking at her. "All you have to do is press this button. It pulls one of them out in a tube."
"You've done it before?" she asks.
Harry curls his lips into his teeth. "Well, no. But my dad let me into a different lab once, for something they were harvesting from worms, and the monitor was almost the exact same." He looks at her from the edges of his eyes and says, "I could do it, you know."
"Harry …"
"It's easy. See?" He steps forward and presses two fingers on the console, dragging one of the icons to the edge of the screen. A question flashes on the screen, and Harry presses "yes" before MJ can even read it.
Instantly she hears the machinery whirring above them. There is a crane attached to a device on the ceiling, and it descends into one of the spider columns the way amusement park prize machines pluck out cheap toys. MJ watches, transfixed, as the crane lowers itself in and sucks one of the spiders up into a clear tube.
It only takes a few seconds for the crane to lower it back down and deposit it on a small raised surface a few feet away from them.
"Whoa," says MJ. Up close it is startling to behold, with a series of red marks on its back, its eyes and each one of its legs perfectly defined. She feels the slightest quiver of fear at the base of her spine. It is both menacing and beautiful. She wants to look away but every time she tries there is some new and unexpected severity to it, the way it moves and watches and curls in and out of itself.
She's had enough. "How do we put it back?" she asks, tearing her eyes away.
Harry sets his fingertips back on the console. "If you just press this – "
"Harry!"
The lid to the tube is lifting. Before it's even raised a centimeter the spider flies out and topples over to the ground, scurrying away.
"Fuck," Harry exclaims, the word sounding ridiculous coming out of his prepubescent mouth. He jumps away from the console.
"What did you do?" MJ demands.
"I didn't do anything!" Harry yells back, his eyes watering, his chin starting to quake. He looks at MJ helplessly, and then back at the floor. "We've gotta find it."
"No. Let's just leave," MJ says breathily, feeling the panic start to seize in her chest. She heads for the door, hugging her arms to herself and trying not to flinch, certain that every phantom brush of air is the spider on her skin.
Harry isn't following her. "I have to, I have to, he's gonna be so mad."
"You don't even know what kind of – "
"I think I see it!" Harry dives down with the tube clutched in his hand, and MJ stops in her tracks when she hears something smash.
She runs back and sees Harry on the floor, blood gleaming from a cut on his hand. "Are you okay?" she asks, skidding to he knees to look at it.
"I'm – I'm fine, but I – I don't know where it – "
MJ feels a sharp, distinct pinch on her ankle. She doesn't scream. She has a grave understanding of what has happened before she even manages to crane her head, before she even sees the spider crawl off of her leg and stagger back onto the floor, scurrying back into the darkness.
She looks back at Harry and his mouth is wide open in horror. He saw it too.
"It bit me," she says faintly, pulling her leg into her chest. There is a red angry mark on her ankle, throbbing dully, radiating out from under her skin. "It bit me."
Harry grabs her hand. It's so clammy with sweat that it almost slides right off of her.
"C'mon," he wheezes, pulling her roughly back up to her feet. "Let's get out of here."
((()))
MJ wakes up with Blake peering over her bed, and immediately screams.
"Ah! Sorry! Shit," says Blake, backing up to the other side of the room.
"What the fuck," MJ exclaims, already embarrassed knowing that the entire hall probably just heard her.
Blake is unrepentant. "You were talking in your sleep. Loudly. In the middle of the day, might I add," she says, somewhat judgmentally.
MJ clutches her hands to her shoulders, shivering despite the sweltering heat and the lack of air conditioning. She hasn't had a dream like that in at least a week, and this one was the most vivid and disturbing by far. What's more unsettling is how the dreams all seem to piece together, that if she sorts them out she can create an almost seamless timeline for them.
Until the past few weeks she has hardly ever remembered her dreams. Now she is remembering them with such startling clarity that she can still feel Harry's sweaty palm on hers, can still hear the hum of that dark lab, can still taste her own fear, acidic on her tongue.
"You sick or something?" asks Blake.
MJ shakes her head. None of it is real. She's going through a weird adjustment right now, so it makes sense, however unpleasant the result is.
"Well, I'm headed to the dining hall, if you want to join," Blake offers.
She swings her legs back over the mattress and glances at the clock. It's almost one – perfect. Second week of school and she has already missed a class.
"Yeah," says MJ, scooping up the phone that she has diligently kept charged despite the fact that nobody ever calls. She is in no position to be refusing friendships. At least Blake's is somewhat built-in.
She jams her feet into her shoes, her legs already aching from this morning's sprint with Peter. She wonders what he would think about the dreams. It would be a silly thing to mention to him anyway, and she remembers clearly the warning that Harry sent in the one letter she received from him, asking her not to mention that they were in touch.
She rubs the spot on her ankle where the spider bit her in the dream. The skin is smooth and unblemished as it has ever been.
"You coming?"
MJ stands back up and grabs her student ID, following Blake out the door and shutting the weird dreams in the room behind her as she goes.
((()))
The rest of the week passes by uneventfully. A few people on her floor are pulled out to interview about the kid who was beaten up on the third floor, and MJ passes a few headlines with blurry pictures of the alleged "Black Cat." For the most part she keeps her head down and spends her days at the library or the computer lab, studying ahead of time so she doesn't have to do it when she's already exhausted from her weekend shifts.
She's exhausted by Friday night. On work nights she heads out around eight, always wearing sneakers and something casual, the rest of her admittedly racy dance ensemble and high heels tucked into her backpack. She doesn't mind the long walks. The further she gets from the campus the more relieved she starts to feel relieved, as if the MJ that she is at school is a strained and poor attempt to become someone else – because this is what she truly is. This is where she thrives, where she shines, where she most feels like herself.
Too bad there weren't college degrees in gyrating on stage in sequins.
Usually she arrives before all the other dancers. She takes her time with her make-up, spreading her supplies neatly in front of the mirror, even singing to herself. That might be the most annoying part of dorm living – She hasn't been able to sing privately for ages. There is something undeniably freeing about knowing she can belt out half the Wicked soundtrack without worrying about somebody kicking the ceiling for her to stop.
She is the youngest of the dancers by far, but besides the occasional use of the nickname "Babyface" they don't treat her any differently. She is included in the gossip and the traditional shot of tequila they all take before they go on, and whenever they have plans to go out afterward she is always invited, even though every night so far she has gone straight home.
There is only one element she has been excluded from, and she doesn't mind one bit.
"Miss Watson?"
It's one of the members of the security team. She has a baby wipe poised in her hand, ready to rub all the make-up and sweat.
"Not Babyface. She's eighteen," says Nora, one of the older dancers. She hoists a leg up over MJ's chair as if to shield her.
Every night the bouncers approach a few of the dancers after the show at the request of clients. MJ has heard that it's for private dancing behind closed doors, that it doesn't involve any contact between the dancers and the clients, but it's hard to know for sure. Especially when so far they have forbidden any clients from requesting her so far.
"He said he'll keep it open doors," says the security guard. "He only wants to talk."
MJ purses her lips. It's always the types that just want to talk that turn out to be trouble.
"Don't go," says Nora.
"Wait," says Toni. She looks at the security guard with a scrutinizing expression. "Did he say how much he was offering?"
The security guard works his jaw impatiently. "He isn't offering anything. Says he knows her. That she'll want to meet with him."
"Who is he?" MJ asks, her interest piqued.
"He didn't say. You're free to say no, but you have to tell me whether or not you're coming."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," says MJ, only because her curiosity has gotten the better of her.
Nora unlatches her leg from MJ's dresser to let her pass. "Be careful." She looks over at the guard and emphasizes, "Door. Stays. Open."
MJ casts her a grateful look, and follows the guard out, shoving her feet back into her heels as she goes. She doesn't know anybody who could afford a place like this. Sure, she knew plenty of guys in high school, some of them more … intimately than others. But this club is way too upscale for any of their ilk, and they are pretty strict about over twenty-one only at the door.
Which leaves pretty much nobody, barring her father.
She is fearing the worst as the security guard leads her down the winding hallways of the backstage area and out toward the front. She is whisked past the lingerers at the bar, the few guests that are still milling out, before any of them can so much as get a glimpse of her.
Only once before has she ever been in one of the private rooms, back when she was getting her first tour of the place after she got hired. She remembers lush velvet curtains and expansive couches, and a tiny elevated platform that served as a stage. Everything in the room smelled expensive, from the thick carpets to the dark wood of the walls.
She steels herself as the door opens this time, weeks later, and the security guard draws the curtain back.
He is sitting on the couch, waiting for her. She is surprised by his obvious youth.
"MJ," he says, and at once her hand flies to her mouth. She is mortified not to have recognized him on sight.
The young man in the crisp suit, sitting with his leg crossed on the couch waiting for her – is Harry.
((()))
Thank you for all your well wishes on the internship! I am happy to report that I survived the first week only humiliating myself like one or seven times. I did not, however, survive seeing The Fault in Our Stars in theaters, and in the event that the nerves that make emotions in my brain ever fix themselves, you all will be the first to know. Shout-out to anyone who took the SATs this weekend! In the meantime, go outside! Chase some fireflies! Drink some lemonade! SUMMER IS ON ITS WAY!
