It's MJ's turn to host the Brain Olympics team study night. This is the only downside of having suggested these little off-campus get-togethers: it's all fun and team-spirit until she has to let classmates into her home. But armed with the steely indifference of the imaginary Suit she can do it.
"Hey, come in. Uh, yeah, hi, hi."
The team troops in. MJ considers asking them to leave their shoes in the hall but then thinks of the stench of half a dozen sets of teenaged feet and thinks better of it.
Her mom is at work and won't finish her shift for hours. MJ ushers the team into the living room, which she has cleaned and stripped of all personal items. Only the clock might draw attention, and surely everyone's mom has a ghastly cuckoo clock-cum-barometer in the shape of a hummingbird?
"Ok," she says, directing them to couches and chairs. The team has brought snacks, as previously agreed, and MJ pours chips and popcorn into plastic bowls ranged in the counter. So far, so good. "I've got cold drinks?" She is not a natural hostess, but how hard can this stuff be? She literally just has to keep the apartment standing until her mom gets back.
She marshalls sodas and team mates until everyone is sitting around the living room with study books and refreshment. This is how you socialise. Pure organisation. And a lanyard around your next with a whistle on it.
"Right,"says MJ, then frowns. "Where's Parker?"
Ned spreads his hands.
"Ok doesn't matter. Question one - "
She's good at this. Firm but fair with the questions, pushing the team on hard topics, but cutting them slack with breaks and snacks. Nobody gives her any shit and she quashes any curious glances at her apartment with a death glare summoned from years of bitter resentment.
There are some new junior boys on the team. She catches one admiring her when he is supposed to be thinking about algebra and lands a deliberately rough question on him which he cannot answer.
His teammates come to his rescue and as MJ finds the next question on her sheet she distinctly hears the boy whisper to his friend, So hot.
Ugh. Why are boys in real life so gross?
The apartment buzzer sounds. MJ calls a break and goes to answer the door.
She presses her eye to the spyhole. Peter Parker is in the hall. He's dishevelled again. It's like a permanent thing with him now. Turn up, clothes look like they've been put on upside down and in the dark.
She opens the door. "Parker."
"Sorry I'm late."
"You look like you fell in a garbage truck."
"The wind is crazy."
"You have a Snickers wrapper in your hair."
"Shit." He instinctively glances around for an adult.
"My mom's not here to call you out for using curse words," says MJ.
He shoots her a relieved look and picks the wrapper from his hair. "That is so gross."
"Yup."
"Can I -"
"Bathroom's right there." She points down the hall. "Come back ready to have your ass kicked," she calls as he heads to clean up.
"It's wild out there," says Ned, peering out of the living room window. "I mean wild."
"Concentrate people," says MJ. "You want us to make regionals or not?"
A trash can lid slams against the glass, shivers there for a moment, pressed in by the force of the wind, then falls.
The apartment is six floors up.
"Whoa." Ned has his phone out. "I have to get this -"
MJ frowns and turns on the TV. Weather channel. NY state shows clear, calm, and unremarkable. But there's a tornado outside.
Study is forgotten. Everyone is taking photos of the miniature hurricane happening outside the apartment.
MJ slips into her bedroom. There's a map of the US taped to the wall above her bed. She takes a marker pen off the night stand and draws a neat blob over New York City, as close to her apartment block as scale allows.
It's the fifth blob in the city. Which is not odd in itself, but because in the same time period, there have only been five severe wind events across the whole of North America. Hmmn.
"Are you marking the weather on a map?"
She jumps, sees Peter hovering in the doorway. He looks a little cleaner, although his brown hair is in full rebellion.
"A hurricane map," he says, peering in.
"Sure," she says. "Don't you have a hurricane map?"
He makes a mouth shrug.
Well this was part of the Suit doing its work. He thinks she's nuts. Outstanding.
"Where have you been?" she says.
"Chores for my aunt," he says right away, but he's had ten minutes in the bathroom to come up with that, and it's still an obvious lie. "Sorry. The wind slowed me down."
Her turn to give the incredulous look. "You're blaming poor aerodynamics for your late arrival to team practice night."
"Uh yeah. Aerodynamics. Not just for wind tunnels." He gives a goofy double thumbs up.
She stares at him. Given the level of dork he's emitting, he doesn't seem nearly enough embarrassed.
Maybe he looked past her shoulder and saw the median daily temperature map.
"We should, uh -" He jerks his head towards the living room.
"Please." She eases into the hall and shuts her bedroom door.
"Why do you have a hurricane map?" he says as they approach the living room. The others are still crowded at the window, taking photos and exclaiming at the chaos. Trash batters the window pane. The room is full of wild energy.
"Climate change," she says. "I'm an activist."
"Cool."
"Is it? I prefer the term essential. And urgent."
He darts a startled-rabbit look at her.
Sometimes the Suit is overkeen. Sometimes the Suit forgets that she does actually like Peter Parker and does not want to crush his spirit in her clenched fist.
"There's snacks," she says. She leads him into the kitchen. It's basically the same as the living room, but separated by a counter. There's not a whole lot of apartment. MJ surveys a scene of snack destruction. "Well, there were."
She hands him a bowl with a few chips in the bottom. "Sorry. -What?"
Peter's mouth has dropped open. "Ned no -!"
MJ swings round.
Ned is kneeling up on the couch in front of the window and the latch is in his hand. MJ yells, "No-"
Too late. Ned flings open the window.
A wall of wind blasts into the room. MJ is swept back, crashes into Peter, who crashes into the kitchen counter. They both drop and land on their asses on the floor, hair whipping back, rain and grit and flakes of potato chip flying into their faces.
"My phone!" shrieks Ned as it's snatched from his hand and away into the street.
All the kids duck and scramble, some trying to escape into the hall, others to the window to try to close it, but the wind is so strong none of them can move.
"Don't,"says Peter. He disentangles himself from MJ - she was kind of in his lap - and tries to stand.
MJ's skin is being stretched over her skull as she faces into the blast. It's like a multi-G take off, or what she imagines that would be like. If it came with Cheetos.
"Everybody get down," says Peter urgently. "There's gonna be debris -"
He's right. In through the window flies a whirlwind of trash, and not just candy wrappers. MJ sees rusty cutlery, broken plastic kids' toys and a brick- -
Peter's hand lands on her shoulders, and presses her down. The brick whistles over their heads and smashes into a kitchen cabinet. MJ gasps, cannot speak. "Stay here," Peter yells into her ear as everyone cowers against the carpet. The wind is slamming heavy objects against the walls, dropping them, collecting them again for another almighty smash. MJ looks around and sees terrified faces. The room is a well of fear.
"We need to shut the window," she says, although how a pane of glass might keep out this assault isn't clear.
Peter removes his hand from her shoulder. "I'll do it. Get everyone into the hall and shut the door. If I can get hold of the latch- "
The latch is attached the the open window which is clanging repeatedly against the living well wall. Outside is a blurring void. "You'll fall." Ned's phone will be dust.
Bizarrely he laughs. "I won't fall." He shrugs off his shirt and catches it before the gale rips it away. He balls it up and shoves it under the couch. It sticks. "I just need to get, uh, get something around the latch and pull the window shut."
The others are crawling towards the front door, their hair whipping about in the wind, cursing as study books and empty snack bowls smack them over the head. MJ lifts her head. The place is trashed, and rapidly becoming more trashed.
"It's ok," says Peter, "just go." She and he are the only people still in the living room.
"My mom will kill me if I leave the apartment except in an emergency."
He gives her a Really? look. The wind is howling above their heads, whistling around the kitchenette. "This is an emergency," he says. "Go!" He's pushing her towards the front door and she's shoving against him and the wind.
"You don't understand." They're on their feet, barely, head to head, hands locked on each others' shoulders as she digs in her heels to stay.
"Is this the wait for heroes stuff?" he says.
"No!"
"Because that stuff, that stuff is a lie."
He's serious. And that realisation throws her off balance. Literally. She loses her footing in the gale and falls against him.
For a moment there's stillness at the centre of the storm, the two of them with hair flying, and any dirt the world can throw at them just whistling over their heads. Peter wraps his arms around her, somehow keeping upright in the blast.
He swings her around and gives her a little shove towards the hall. She staggers back. He says, "I've got this-"
A hubcap flies in and strikes him right in the midriff. He buckles and collapses to the floor. "Agh."
"Peter!" She crawls to him. "You ok-"
"Fine." He tosses aside the hubcap. "Lucky it hit me and not - anyone else."
The hurricane is in the room now, circling, a vicious twist of power casting about for its next target. She's never seen anything like it. Can't blame Ned for wanting a photo. She'd be tempted herself but her own phone is under a tide of trash and living room furniture.
The hurricane howls, and picks up a dining chair. With a roar it hurls the chair at Peter and MJ.
She shrieks, they both duck and slide in an inelegant frenzy of elbows across the carpet, to end up on their stomachs behind the couch, like commandos hiding from a scary TV show. The hurricane bellows.
"Ok?" says Peter
"Yeah you?"
"Yeah."
His arm is over her shoulders. She can feel the warmth of his palm spread protectively above her head. He doesn't seem to be aware of it, his eyes looking everywhere as the storm seeks them here and there around the living room. "Watch out -"
He pulls her close to the floor as a second chair gets the smash treatment. "That was close."
"This is scary now."
"It'll be ok."
His eyes are bright, and although he's breathing hard just like her, the adrenaline is not just fuelling fear: it's excitement too. Fight or flight, and Peter Parker is choosing fight.
Peter reaches inside his shirt collar and pulls out his phone. "Take this. Call 911. I'm gonna close the window."
She wants to argue but his eyes are determined. His phone is warm in her hand.
"Sorry, scuse me..." He shimmies around and over her in a tangle of limbs she's glad nobody else witnesses. He smells of soap and engine grease, like a mechanic before dinner.
Weird thought! She punches 911 as Peter disappears beyond the safety of the sofa. "Uh yeah, emergency..."
How the hell to explain this?
"We're on our way," says the operator. We've already had some calls for myour location."
There's a horrifying crash from beyond the sofa . MJ screams.
"Stay back!" calls Peter.
She peeks around, the gale tearing at her hair, and sees him with an actual lasso around the window latch. How has he even done that? He's braced with his Nikes against the outer wall and heaving with all his might.
She would help but the wind is forcing her back. No way can he do this, she is going to watch him be plucked into the air air six storeys up and fall to his death. Or be pulverised against the kitchen counter.
"Peter-"
The window flies shut, everything in the air drops to the carpet and Peter is propelled backwards to land beside MJ and the sofa.
"Got it," he says.
"Jeez."
The place is wrecked.
"Fire truck's coming," she says as the trash settles.
"Great."
She's about to hand him back his phone when there's a ear-splitting crack from overhead. They look up.
Above their heads the hummingbird clock falls loose and drops like a decorative stone.
Peter shoots out a hand and catches it. He draws his hand in and gently holds the clock in his lap. They both sink back in relief. Peter turns over the ornament. The tiny doors open and a hummingbird flops out with a broken-spring noise. It cheeps faintly and lies limp on Peter's knee.
He looks over at MJ and his eyes are bright with the adventure they just survived. He grins. "Cool clock."