For some stupid, undoubtedly capitalist reason, the shop was open on New Year's Eve, and Michelle's boss told her she had to work even though this time was technically supposed to be her break from school and work.
But because she needed the money and because it wasn't like her dad ever did much by way of New Year's traditions anyway—during the day, at least—Michelle agreed. Ned was amazing as always, though, and he promised he'd sit with her for a few hours during her shift to keep her company.
Michelle had actually given very little if any thought to the enigma that was Peter that day, but Ned made a comment about twenty minutes after he'd come in and suddenly— inexplicably—she was thinking of him again.
"Do you ever get, like, a weird feeling when you think about the new year starting?" Ned asked out of the blue, slack jawed. He didn't even look up from where he was scrolling through his phone.
Michelle creased her eyebrows and finished stocking the coffee cup lids. She turned to her friend.
"I'm pretty sure all people feel weird about realizing another year is gone forever. It forces them to confront their mortality," she said flatly.
Ned looked up.
"No. Well…I mean, yeah. But that's not what I meant."
"What do you mean, then?"
Ned clicked his phone off and put it down, which Michelle took as her cue to come closer and lean on the counter with her elbows.
"It's just like…I don't even know. It's like something is missing, almost. I know it sounds stupid, but I swear every time I think about tomorrow being the beginning of a new year, I just get kind of sad. The kind of sadness I got when Boogie died."
"…Boogie?"
"My dog. She died of cancer right before the Blip," Ned explained, his face crumpling a little.
Michelle bit her lip and reached out, awkwardly patting him on the shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Ned."
Ned shrugged.
"I just mean things don't feel normal this year for some reason."
Michelle propped her chin up on one hand and looked in the direction of the door, out at the snow piled up on either side of the sidewalk, mostly black with gunk from the streets and people's shoes. She thought about how her whole life had hadn't seemed entirely normallately. Between Peter, her lingering depressive episode, and recurring headaches that always seemed to crop up when she came into the shop to work, she hadn't exactly been looking forward to the new year, but she also hadn't really thought about it feeling any sadder than usual.
She'd honestly been attributing any strange thoughts and feelings to the fact that she knew this was going to be her last Christmas as a minor and a high-schooler.
"What prompted you to bring that up anyway?" she asked after a moment. Ned blinked, like he had been just as lost in thought as she had been. He smiled a crooked smile at her.
"My mom has this tradition where each New Year's Eve we all write down at least one good memory from each month of the past year to share with each other. She says it's good luck or something. And that it keeps us happy going into the New Year."
Michelle smiled and picked at the peeling countertop in front of them. She had wished many times as a little kid that her parents were together so they could have traditions like that. It sounded so…cozy.
"So, doing that made you sad?" she asked, prompting Ned for more information.
He shook his head quickly.
"No, not really. It's just that when I started trying to list out memories, I realized that a bunch of the good memories I was listing had to do with Spiderman."
Michelle looked up sharply at his words, her heart suddenly beating faster even though she didn't know why. Her headache grew a sharper too.
"And then I was trying to remember how I even knew Spiderman because he's so cool and I'm literally just a high-schooler and isn't it kind of weird that I've actually worked with Spiderman and he, like, saved me and you on our school trip—"
"I've wondered why he was even in Europe at the same time," Michelle murmured, looking back down at the countertop, where her eyes fell on a brown ring left by the bottom of a mug.
"I know, right?" Ned replied, leaning back on his chair and throwing one arm out as he grew more excited. "But, like, I realized something really weird: I don't even remember the first time I met Spiderman!"
Michelle looked up at him and made a face.
"Seriously? It was…"
She trailed off, her eyebrows suddenly dropping as she realized…she didn't remember either. She had several memories of doing things with him and of talking about him with Ned—she even remembered swinging around the city with him, strangely enough—but she couldn't actually say when she met him or why she was involved with him at all. It was almost as if she'd known him her whole life, but she knew that couldn't be right. She knew nothing about the guy besides the fact that he was Spiderman.
This was…creepy.
Ned's eyes widened fractionally at the look on her face, and he suddenly reached down to rummage in the backpack he'd left at the foot of his seat. He pulled out a thick black notebook that looked like it had taken one too many liquid spills to the cover.
"Okay, so it gets weirder. When I realized that, it made me sad for some reason, like I talked about earlier. And when I blamed my bad memory and the random sadness on sleep deprivation and too many video games, like my mom is always saying, I started trying to remember more stuff about this past year. And guess what?"
Michelle straightened up, and once again she could feel her heartrate spiking.
"What?" she asked, somewhat breathless. Ned didn't seem to notice, or else he didn't say anything about it.
Her friend opened the book to the bookmark inside, scanned the page, and then turned it upside down so Michelle could read it. He pointed to the first entry—handily labeled #1.
"I realized that my memory is really bad. I have all these—these gaps. Like I know something is supposed to be there and that there was something that happened, but no matter how hard I try, all I get when I want to remember them is that really weird sadness."
Ned leaned forward as Michelle ran her eyes down the list he had written in his thin, spidery handwriting, her frown deepening at each note he'd made about things he could remember but couldn't quite make sense of. Then Ned lowered his voice conspiratorially.
"And dude," he whispered. "For some reason, remembering the last time we helped Spiderman—you know, in the creepy dungeon place about a month ago?—it made me actually cry. And I have no clue why."
By this point, Michelle's heart was pumping like she'd just gotten done running sprints in P.E. class, and her head hurt so badly she seriously considered looking for some painkillers. This whole conversation was just wrong somehow.
What Ned was saying didn't make sense…but at the same time, it did. She tried to think of some of the relevant memories she and Ned had in common—meeting Spiderman in Europe and helping Spiderman catch a bunch of superpowered people from different universes, for example—and he was right.
Why had they ever even worked with Spiderman?
Why had they even thought working with him was normal given that the idea of working with him now was unthinkable because they didn't even have a way to contact him?
Why couldn't either one of them even remember the context of so many of these memories they had of Spiderman?
And why the heck did asking all these questions make her feel the same way she felt sometimes when interacting with Peter Parker?
"MJ? You good? You don't look like you feel so good."
Michelle snapped her head up at Ned's question, just now realizing she'd leaned low over her arms, her head almost touching the countertop. She tried to straighten up and was struck by a wave of dizziness. Her vision went patchy for a second.
"I'm…I'm fine. I just don't feel right all of the sudden."
Ned was looking at her with concern written all over his face and seemed seconds away from getting up and coming behind the counter to help her when the door swung open. The little bell tinkled.
Michelle bit the inside of her cheek, cursed her luck, and looked up to see who decided they needed coffee and a pastry at the absolute worst moment.
It was Peter Parker.
Of course.
She watched as he slunk into the shop, his gaze seeming to sweep the entire shop before coming to rest on her. A faint crease appeared between his eyebrows when he saw how she was hunched over the counter, and she quickly stood up straight despite the way her vision bucked. Her legs felt a little bit like jelly as she walked over to the register and tried to calm her heartrate enough to seem normal.
"Hey, Peter. What would you like this afternoon?"
She didn't even realize she'd actually said his name out loud until he froze, his whole body going rigid in as long as it took her to blink. She cussed at herself in the confines of her own head but managed a tight, close-lipped smile as he stared at her with wide eyes.
She noticed his lip was split and swollen.
"W—did you say…did you say Peter?" he asked, and his voice had more life in it than Michelle had heard in weeks. She might have given that fact a little more significance if it weren't for the fact that her head hurt so badly she had to clench her fists on the countertop to keep herself from hissing in pain.
"Yeah," she managed.
And before she could even explain why—that it was because he told her his name and he was a regular and sometimes she learned the names of the regular customers because it always made them happier to be greeted by name—he did something so unexpected that she momentarily forgot her head hurt so badly.
He smiled.
And it wasn't just a small smile—the kind one stranger might give to another on a particularly nice day. This was a big smile, one that completely transformed his face and made his brown eyes seem for the first time ever like they actually had light behind them.
Michelle knew she was staring, and it was only when Peter shifted minutely, as if he were about to speak, that she found her voice again and explained what she should have explained a few seconds ago.
"I learn the names of all the regular customers here if I can."
And in that moment, she knew she'd done something horribly wrong because Peter's smile just…winked out. It left his eyes before anything else. One second, he was the happiest, most alive she'd ever seen him, and the next, it was all gone. It made her want to cry just watching the shift, and she wasn't one to cry easily at anything.
What was even happening right now?
What was wrong with her?
"Oh," he said then, so quietly she almost didn't catch it. He looked down at his shoes, and Michelle frowned through another sharp stab of pain in her head.
She knew she should be incredibly freaked out by how strong his reaction was, but she felt strangely disconnected from the situation—aside from the fact that she felt like she was mere seconds from a panic attack right now, of course.
"Sorry. I thought—I don't know. I was just being an idiot," Peter mumbled. His words sounded tight and angry, though not necessarily aimed at her.
And then, just like that, he abruptly turned around and left, stepping out into the snow like he couldn't get away fast enough. Michelle stared after him, gripping the edge of the countertop.
"Well, that was weird," Ned piped up from his corner.
Michelle barely managed a nod in reply.
A/N: Okay, so maybe this chapter as a whole is a little messier than I thought it was at like 11:00pm last night, but hopefully it gets the point across! I hope you enjoyed the chapter either way. Up next: a dose of Peter's POV.
Thanks for reading and/or leaving a comment! :)
"Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." ~1 Corinthians 13:6-7