Chapter Nineteen

One Week Later

"Mayday! Dinner's ready. And Mom says we can start on the tree. Get down here!" Benny hollered up the stairs.

I turned the page and copied into my history binder, The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal collected the largest library of clay scrolls in the ancient world. "Yeah, yeah, I'll be there in a second," I muttered, having no intention of being down there at all.

Benny kicked my door open with a bang. "Will you stop with the stupid studying? That's all you do now!"

I didn't look up from my history rextbook. "I've got chemistry and history finals tomorrow. I've got to study."

"Damn it, Mayday!"

My head snapped up. Did my eight-year-old brother just say...

"You stay in your stupid room all day and study out of a stupid textbook! You don't talk to anyone! What's wrong with you?" Benny exploded. His face was nearly the color of his hair, and he was glaring furiously.

I stared at him. He hadn't thrown a full-fledged tantrum for months now. Yet here he was, unleashing a torrent of anger that had been building for who knows how long.

"Ever since you got hurt, you act totally different! Did that posion damage your brain or something?" Benny shouted. "Don't you know how much everbody's worried about you? Don't you even care?"

"Get out of my room, Ben."

"All you care about is-"

"You don't know anything!" I screamed, "At all! Not you or anybody! Now get out!"

Benny backed away into the hall and shouted, "I know that you don't even-"

I shoved away from my desk and slammed the door in his face. The room fell quiet, except for the snow pattering wetly against the window.

I stumbled over to my bed and collapsed facedown, not wanting to move or think. Studying about molecules or Mesopotamia all seemed ridiculously trivial. What was the point? What was the point of anything?

Let's see...my mother was in a cast, my little brother hated me, and this December twenty-fourth would be the anniversary of my dad's disappearance.

Merry Christmas.

I flopped over on my back, only flinching a little. The doctors had all marveled at how quickly the gashes had healed. Apparently my spider-powers had done me one small favor before deserting me. I hadn't bothered to go pick up my shredded costume. I had two spares in the back of my closet, but I hadn't even looked at them.

Mom knew. Of course Mom knew. I had told her, the day I was released, and watched pure relief seep over her face. No more Spider-Girl. There had been four months of worry and fear, wondering whether that night there would be a mugger's bullet with my name on it. Four months of her terrified that I wouldn't come home. But it was over.

"What could I have done?" I said to my pillow. "Oh, what was I supposed to have done?"

I could be normal again, with worries no more serious than an upcoming math test. My family was what mattered, and my friends. I should have been relieved. I could be a normal girl again.

But all I felt was emptiness.

The phone jangled right next to my ear. I fumbled for the reciever, knocking several pencils and knickknacks to the floor in the process. "H'lo?" I growled.

"Hey, Mayday."

I sat up. "Harry?"

"Yeah. Look, I need to talk to you. It's important."

"What?" I asked dully.

"I don't think the lines are safe. I'm there."

"You're where?"

"Here, actually."

"Harry, what are you-"

"Go to your window, okay?"

I sighed and got up, stretching the phone cord. The snow had stopped falling. "Going. Looking. Seeing nothing."

"Opening it might help."

I unlatched the window and shoved it up. "So...?"

"Aw, come on, Mayday, it's not that hard. Look left."

I looked left and dropped the receiver. Harry was sitting on the edge of my roof, grinning at me and looking as normal as ever. He shifted, and in the light I could see that he was wearing armored, green gauntlets that reached up to his elbows. He snapped his cell phone shut.

"Harry! What the...what are you doing here?" I hissed. I shoved the window up all the way and gingerly stepped out onto the sill and over the edge of the roof. An action that was second nature seemed unsteady and dangerous.

"Like I said, the lines aren't safe. How have you been? I mean, are you all right and everything?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm fine," I said, sounding more sarcastic than I meant to sound. I felt a stab of guilt. I sat down on the roof.

"I...uh...I never got to thank you for...uh...you know, getting me out of there," I said lamely.

Harry's grin disappeared. "Oh, uh, don't worry about it. Besides, you saved me too. You stopped m...I mean, you stopped Hobgoblin."

I shivered in the cold. "Is he really gone?"

Harry turned and stared out over the rooftops. "Sometimes...when I get angry, I can feel him. He can't talk to me anymore. But he's right here, inside. He isn't gone. He's waiting."

Silence. Harry jerked his head slightly, as if shaking off a thought. "I talked to Doc Hiller. He gave you the treatment, right? He's working on a more permanent one."

I couldn't think of anything to say. Harry turned back to me. "I still can't believe it. You're Spider-Girl." What was that in his voice? Admiration? Or sadness?

"It's a little hand-me-down from my dad."

At the words 'my dad', and expression flickered across Harry's face so quickly that I couldn't read it at all.

"Not anymore," I continued, a heavy bitterness creeping into my voice.

Harry fidgeted, but didn't respond. What was there to say?

"Black Widow," Harry said. "After you left, she said, 'That's the last time that little...'" Harry coughed, "Er...'girl will be webswinging again. Isn't it amazing how history repeats itself?'"

"That's what you wanted to tell me?" I said bitterly.

Harry stared at me. "Mayday, did you hear me? 'Isn't it amazing how history repeats itself'!"

How history repeats itself, I thought dully. Yeah, who knew how many people she had clawed, and sent to the hospital? There couldn't be many people out there that she could rob of their powers...

I sat up straight. Only one other person that she could have robbed of their powers. I remembered a single sentence, from a time that seemed eons ago.

What will happen to Spider-Girl will be the same thing that happened to her father.

My mind whirled, fitting the two pieces together. Black Widow had slashed me, injecting me with a venom that sapped my abilities. The same thing that had happened to my father. I gaped at Harry.

"Black Widow must've attacked my dad! All she would have had to do was claw him once, and-"

"He would have lost his superpowers," Harry said quietly.

"It's just like Black Widow said in Quest Aerospace. When Hobgoblin was smashing the antidote."

"Yeah. Wait a minute, how do you know that?"

I forced a grin and made a little bow. "I currently hold the title for eavesdropping champion of America. I was hiding in a ceiling vent."

Harry groaned. "Oh, man. What else have you been listening in on? Meetings at the Pentagon?"

"Nah, nothing that advanced. Just spider-mutants and armored loons."

"Don't diss the armor! This stuff has its uses." Harry stood up and backed a few feet up the roof. "Observe."

He stretched his arms out in front of him, covered to the elbow in the gauntlets. He closed his fists.

My eyes widened as metallic scales spread from the ends of the gauntlets, unfolding and unfolding with mechanical whirs. The green plates spread up his arms and over his entire body, rippling like water. The armor built itself up to Harry's neck and solidified with a sudden snap.

I blinked, astonished. "I stand corrected. A technologically advanced armored loon."

"That's an improvement. Listen," Harry said, becoming suddenly serious. "This is important. Black Widow doesn't know that I'm not...that Hobgoblin isn't around anymore."

"She doesn't?" I asked.

Harry pulled the Hobgoblin helmet from behind the rooftop gable. "There was a deal between them. Basically, Black Widow would help Hobgoblin go after you, and he would help her get something."

"What?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. Hobgoblin was supposed to meet her tonight, down at the factory at the harbor. The empty one."

"You're going to pretend to be Hobgoblin, aren't you?"

Harry nodded. "I think I can pull it off. Come on, go get your costume on."

I held up my hands. "Wait, wait. What?"

Harry gestured impatiently. "We've got forty-five minutes to get there, and you're going to have to find some palce to hide so you can hear."

I couldn't believe this. "Harry, in case you haven't noticed, Spider-Girl is dead. I can't webswing. I can't climb walls. I can't do anything. Don't you get it?" My voice rose as the dam broke, releasing a week's worth of pent-up anger and frustration. "There's just me! Mayday! Not Spider-Girl! Understand? I'm nothing! I'm a nobody!"

I wrapped my arms around my knees. Harry was crazy to even think about it. Hah, just plain old Mayday, a weak, slow, normal teenaged girl. Not brave, not strong, not smart.

"Don't you get it, Mayday?" Harry said, looking bewildered. "Listen to yourself. What the heck are you talking about? Spider-Girl isn't a costume. She's not a set of superpowers. She's you. You're the one who's saved the lives of hundreds of people. You stop the disasters. You protect New York. You, Mayday Parker, Spider-Girl. Who else is going to take on Black Widow? I can't. Mayday, I don't know what it is, but she's planning something. Something big. It's not just about getting you. It's something worse. And you've got to be the one who's smart enough to stop her."

Harry set his jaw, looking like he was about to say something terrible. "What would your dad have done?" He blurted out.

Dad.

I realized what an effort it must have taken for Harry to say that. He knew that Dad had been Spider-Man. He knew what had happened to his own father, and what he had been.

If Black Widow found me, I wouldn't last ten seconds. One blow could break every bone in my body. Then she would know that Harry was acting, and turn on him. We would both be killed.

I stood up on the roof. "Stay here." I slid carefully back into my window and closed the blinds. I headed for my closet, where the two spares hung in the back. Complete copies of my old costume.

When I had pulled my mask over my head, I grabbed a notepad from my desk and scribbled a message.

"I need to help a friend. Please don't worry. I'll be back as soon as I can. Mayday."

When I stepped out a moment later, Harry was holding the helmet in his hands, staring down at the nightmarish features carved from the metal.

"You know me too well," I said. "Harry, I can't webswing. How am I supposed to-"

Harry raised his left wrist in front of his face and flipped open a tiny keypad from the gauntlet. I turned and saw the Hobgoblin glider rise dramatically over the edge of the roof, completely silent.

He grinned lopsidedly. "Osborn. Harry Osborn."

"You have got to be kidding."

Harry lifted the helmet, hesitated for a split second, then finally lowered it over his head. His voice was muffled. "There's room for two." The glider floated over to hover a foot above the rooftop, right between us. Harry stepped aboard. "I'm pretty sure I know how to work this thing."

"Pretty sure? Pretty sure?"

"Yeah, I wasn't the one flying this thing before."

"Oh, great," I inched forward over the sloping rooftop. The tiles were slippery underneath my feet. I think I missed my wall crawling ability most of all. Harry pulled me up behind him.

"Okay, hold on."

"Whoa!" I barely had time to grab Harry's shoulders as the glider blasted straight up twenty feet into the air, whirled dizzingly, and jetted off at an incredible speed towards the lights of Manhattan.

"I can't wait until Jameson gets a load of this."