Some days the Suit of Magnificent Indifference was easy to wear. She'd get out of bed, listening warily for signs of movement elsewhere in the apartment, and there it was, laid over a folding chair or just pooled on the linoleum at her feet: her cloak, her protection from the crappiness of high school, ready to slip over her shoulders.
She'd shimmy into jeans, hoodie, high tops - and then thrown on the Suit. A frozen waffle for breakfast, snatch up her current book, and she was done.
By the time she reached the school bus, the Indifference Suit had molded itself to her form: invisible, but anyone who spoke to her knew it was there. They felt its power, and they kept away.
She could get elbowed on the bus by the Mean Girls, have foul-breathed Jocks laugh in her face for reading a book, so lame, or cringe as people from her class walked right past her without a word, no hey, no nod, nothing - and none of it mattered. She could give the middle finger to all of it.
One time she sat in the only empty seat, right next to Peter Parker, and he was so focused on something out the window, or maybe so traumatised at benign seen with her, that he never even looked round. And even then, the Suit did its work and she stuck her nose in her book and allowed the sneer to settle over her lips, and it was all OK.
Even though Peter sat at the next desk to hers in Spanish class and right in front of her in Math, and usually he would at least give her a nod, if not a soft Hello - even then it was fine, because she wore the Suit.
The Indifference Suit, once you put it on, protected you from everything - bullies, jerks, the daily injustices of life aged sixteen, all of it. It even shielded you, pretty effectively, against love.
On other days, the metaphorical Suit lay on her bedroom floor like a useless rag and would not be worn. Today was one of those days. She tied back her hair and tried to grimace at herself in the mirror glued to the wall above her desk - kind of a reverse of the horrendous I Love Myself affirmation rituals - but the indifference, the carelessness, would not come.
It was like a stuck zipper on a hoodie - the more you tried to force it, the less it worked. She bet this never happened to actual heroes with powers. No way would their figure-hugging lycra have zippers that stuck, because if you can't zip up your look-at-my-abs superhero suit, what use are you? Just a loser hopping around in their bedroom with one leg in the suit and one leg out, trying to get the damn suit to fasten before the world set on fire.
Those guys that relied on tech for their powers - one wardrobe malfunction and they'd be out of operation. Sorry, Iron Man here, I'll try to make it but my suit jammed. It doesn't matter where! Just gimme a minute -
Personally, she preferred heroes with innate powers. Where some freak radioactive accident or tyrannical parental experiment had gifted them their abilities - with or without the primary-coloured costume.
Actually, when she thought about it, she preferred people without any powers at all.
It takes more courage just to go to school every day with no special abilities, no steel-melting eye lasers or whatever, no magic mallet, than a superhero could ever imagine.
That was why she had invented the idea of the Suit. "You might be an overworked metaphor but i like you." And on days when the zipper stuck, like today, well, those days she kept her mouth shut and her book nearby, and she watched her fellow students and tried to appreciate that they were like her, just people, trying to make it through another horrible day.
Some of her classmates achieved this with pure aggression, like turning over the smaller kids' lunch trays or throwing a fully loaded burrito into the faces of the Chess Club. Some did it with Fashion Armour - branded makeup, designer handbag, fierce levels of glamour and cool to keep off the losers like her. But, she noticed, most people just used Invisibility, or Niceness, to try to get by. That was cool, she supposed, but those things didn't stop the hurt. For that, you really needed a Suit.
He was sarcastic, like she was, and that was why she first noticed him. It was at school, and they were doing a Planetary Attack Drill: the usual BS about seeking shelter and waiting for heroes to save you, calling your parent or guardian as soon as cell service was operational, blah blah blah. And she caught Peter Parker giving the TV screen a look of pure disgust - like he'd never heard such crap in his life. He despises this, she thought. Despises it.
Without thinking she caught his eye and grinned. Off guard, he grinned back, and there it was - a shared loathing of pointless flim-flam, the very start of how she felt about him.
He was smart, no doubt of it, and seemed to find classes as one-hand-behind-the-back as she did. But she'd never thought he had attitude. Until now.
"What's so funny, Parker?" barked the teacher. "You think emergency drills don't apply to you?"
MJ really thought for a second that Peter Parker was going to say what was written in his face - No, they really don't. But he blushed furiously and said, "No sir. I mean, yes sir. Emergency drills apply to everyone."
"And what do we do?" The teacher was one of those types who enjoy labouring a point to extort maximum pain from everyone in the room.
Peter said, "We wait for the superheroes, sir."
The teacher grunted. "That's right. -Jones!"
She had trained herself long ago not to jump when an adult yelled her name. She deliberately closed her book and met the teacher's gaze.
"If you could tear yourself away," said the teacher. "What's the first rule of Planetary Attack Drill?"
"Demonstration of humanity's total helplessness in the face of external threat," she said, and Peter sniggered.
"Excuse me?"
"Stay calm and wait for rescue," she said, rolling her eyes.
"That's right. Unless you have superpowers. Do you have superpowers, Jones?"
"If I did would I be sitting here?"
"In theory, yes," said Peter, surprising her again.
The teacher's eyes narrowed. In his dim, blundering way, he must suspect insolence.
"Even superheroes have to attend school," Peter said mildly. "Or they used to. Education isn't a luxury, it's a necessity."
This was so obviously true that it earned Peter a detention - and MJ too, for laughing at it. She spent that detention, which she weirdly thought of now as the first one, drawing a ruined graveyard and watching Peter chafe at the injustice of it all.
After that she took more notice of him. He was in a few of her classes and also on the Academic Decathlon team with her, so there was ample opportunity.
Turned out, he was clever, funny, quick on his feet - all that dodging the morons' slushies - and unfailingly polite. And kind.
It was the kindness that stood out in her mind, although his brown hair and nice eyes didn't hurt either. And although he clearly resented time spent in organized sports as much as she did, he wasn't as hopeless as you might expect a geeky guy to be. He's fast, she observed, walking past Senior Boys' Enforced Teamwork one afternoon and through the open gymnasium door, spotting Peter Parker on the basketball court. And strong.
These were all unusual thoughts, and potentially dangerous. They were precisely why she wore the Suit.
It didn't matter, though, because even if Peter Parker had slipped past her defenses, he wasn't immune to her superpowers. When he caught her standing in the doorway with her gaze fixed unmistakably on him, and she gave him the death glare, he flinched like he'd been shot. Good. The Suit showed that she cared nothing for the opinions of others, their reactions, their feelings.
She didn't stop watching him, though.
It was pretty obvious that she liked Peter Parker, and that only the Suit prevented her doing something stupid like telling him. The Suit, and Peter's massive crush on another girl in school.
That was fine. It was all fine. Even when this girl was on the Academic Decathlon team alongside Peter and MJ - for those not in the know, Academic Decathlon roughly translates as Brain Olympics - and even when this girl was a senior girl, and beautiful.
MJ refused to be jealous. Jealousy was petty and useless, and also the primary reason why people killed other people. She had a shelf full of paperbacks to demonstrate that. You're looking at a chalk outline on the sidewalk outside a perfectly normal house in a nice neighbourhood, you're looking at jealousy.
Besides, she had no claim to Peter Parker. What was it to her that in Decathlon club he answered Physics questions with two percent of his attention while using the other ninety-eight percent to blush whenever his crush glanced at him? Nothing, hissed the Suit, wrapping itself tightly around her. None of this matters to you.
The study hall where they practised for competitions was dusty and stale, like school in general. The practice questions were ones she knew. She passed the time reading about complex weather events.
She jumped up the moment the club meeting was over. The others, including Peter, were gathering up their books and bags at a glacial pace and she couldn't stand it. "See you next time for more Brain Olympics."
She strode away, the Suit intact, the only thing on her mind the questions that might be asked at Nationals. Oh, and the new issue of Conspiracy Weekly that was sitting in her virtual inbox. It was fun, seeing the weird news and the plain crazy ideas people had about it.
I mean, come on. We have actual gods and aliens, and people are still convinced that the president is running a global cabal of secret lizard people? Haven't we moved on?
She reached the exit, and the fresh air of spring in New York City, and fastened the invisible suit up tight, ready for the bus ride home.
Well, lucky MJ hadn't worried, because it so did not work out between Peter Parker and that senior girl. Turned out her father was a criminal mastermind funding a lavish lifestyle with stolen alien tech. Ouch.
The family moved away after his arrest, and MJ's life became a little simpler, and a lot less likely to involve her local convenience store being vaporised by an alien rocket launcher. The complications were ones she could handle, like being the new Brain Olympics team captain, and a dense web of interconnected freak weather events building up on the wall map of NYC in her bedroom.
As for Peter's broken heart - well. Not your problem, said the Suit. Why would it be? Damn right.
The thing was, Peter had been in love with that girl, like really in love with her. Not a passing crush, some summer thing or this week's fantasy. He had looked at her with big sad eyes full of adoration and regret, like he just wished he knew how to tell her without ruining everything. Like how MJ might have looked at Peter, if she'd been less careful.
So she loved him and he loved someone else and that was her junior year in high school.
In a movie, after it all went wrong, Peter might turn towards MJ in a big brother sort of way, and they'd grow closer, real buddies, until one day he realised the woman that was right in front of him...
That didn't happen. He spent a lot of time working on his grades, and hanging out with his best friend Ned and his aunt. Yeah, his aunt. His only family. MJ guessed it was cute. She was not much for judging familial bonds.
She guessed she could have said something to Peter about the heartbreak, a few condoling words to let him know she knew he was hurting. Because every guy longs to be pitied by women after his heart has been ripped out, right?
Uh, no. Plus, I'm sorry I'm not her was not MJ's idea of a good start to a partnership of equals.
She didn't say a thing. Of course she didn't.
But that summer wasn't all teenage angst. There were plenty of plus points. Firstly Peter was not a douchebag, so he never mocked her for being a geek, friendless, awkward, alone. When they ended up in detention together, which was pretty often given that he was forever missing class, and she couldn't stop herself speaking her mind when teachers were stupid, Peter would sit at the next desk and get on with his homework, sometimes turning his head to grimace at her in solidarity.
When school was out he wasn't around so much; he had an internship with Stark Industries and kept being called away on jobs. He called them missions, which was dorky. She organised some Brain Team practice sessions, the team taking turns to host, and started to think of the club as her friends. Or at least, reminded the Suit, her minions.
She wrote a joke article for Conspiracy Weekly about the usefulness of self-delusion, and it got published.
Across New York State it rained and thundered all summer, and only stopped on the first day of senior year.