Every time Peter looked at a photo of his parents, he tried to see what parts he got from each of them. He looked like his mother a lot. They had similar noses, but not exact which was probably the bits he got from his dad. He had his dad's brown hair, but a little lighter. He definitely didn't have his mother's rich dark chocolate color. It was a little odd that his hair was as light as it was, but hair color wasn't one of those things that could be figured out through a Punnett square. Honestly, who knows. Genetics are weird. Both Peter's mother and father needed glasses so thankfully he hasn't needed those yet. Also, it was very good that he didn't have his father's childhood asthma or his mother's peanut allergy. May didn't have health insurance so any medical expense had to be avoided at all costs. Inheriting pieces of yourself from parents is nice, but sometimes it's for the best if it doesn't happen.

He wasn't always super careful about his health though. Acute stuff he managed just fine. If he got a black eye it would heal in a couple hours. Bruises took half an hour. That stuff was small fry and there was no need for Peter to sweat it. He was after all, the friendly neighborhood Spider-man.

After patrolling on Wednesday, Peter came home to four shoeboxes of old photos stacked on the dining table and aunt May going to battle with a glue stick against some faded polaroids. She stared intently at a photo carefully deciding where and how it should be placed. She put glue on the borders of the photo and then somehow accidently put it down sideways. Aunt May always wanted to be into scrapbooking. She never did it and was never really any good at it either, but every time she went into a craft store, she'd always buy something with the intention of using it, but nothing ever happened with the random borders and baubles.

Peter gently placed his backpack on the couch to avoid the chaos of May's fevered gluing. He always studied at the table, but he could adapt. The couch was way more comfortable than the tall dining chairs anyway.

Okay. Studying. Ready, set go.

Peter pulled out his Calculus textbook and sharpened his pencil in a newly bought hand sharpener that caught all the pencil shavings. He scrunched up his brow and tried to read the page and all the problems. He read the problem and started trying to solve it when he realized that he had to start again because he didn't really read the problem, so he had to see what it was really asking.

Okay, let's try this again. Ready, set, go.

Ready, set, go…

Alright. Peter had to start with different homework. Art was due tomorrow so that had to be done anyway. He could wait until the table was cleared for math.

Aunt May suddenly chimed in cooing at an old photo taken on glossy 4' by 6' photo paper, "Peter look at this one of you. You had such chubby little cheeks."

Peter walked over to see the photo. It was of him as an eight-year-old on ice skates in Rockefeller center. He was clutching the rail as people who could actually skate whizzed past him.

May picked up another photo.

"Aww this one's from when we first met you"

Peter looked over his aunt's shoulder to see a photo of him as a four-year-old in Uncle Ben's arms.

"I thought you guys knew me since I was born?"

"Uh no," May said as her body stiffened into a plywood board, "Ben wasn't speaking to Richard before then. They had a dramatic falling out when they were young. A couple years older than you actually. Funnily enough, Mary and I who reconnected them. We ran into one another a couple times volunteering at the soup kitchen and joked about having the same last name. Turns out wasn't much of a coincidence."

Peter opened his mouth to ask more, but May cut him off.

"I'll tell you the whole story later. I've got to get through at least half of these," She said gesturing to the leviathan of glitter and photos from 2002 as Peter rolled his eyes, "I will get through these. I know you don't believe me, but I will."

"Uh May," Peter timidly announced, "Could I have a space on the table to do my homework?"

"Oh right! Here take these two boxes and put them on the coffee table," May ordered as she scooped up part of the mountain of ribbons and stickers.

Peter took the old shoe boxes and put them down next to the displaced decorations. He took the lids off of the boxes and stole a peek inside.

Huh.

Every time Peter looked at a photo of his parents, he looked, but never saw. He rifled through the boxes some more.

"Aunt May, are these all the photos you have?"

"Yes,"

"Are there any from my mom and dad in here?"

"All of them are in there," May responded.

"Are you sure?" Peter gently interrogated.

"Positive. Peter, what's with all these weird questions?" May asked.

Peter grabbed one of the boxes and handed it to his aunt.

"I can't find any baby photos of me and It's weirding me out."

May looked puzzled at his while taking the box and responding "There's has to be some in there. There's no way there's no baby photos."

She looked through the old shoe container and her eyebrows scrunched to the middle as she concentrated and failed to find what she was looking for.

"Peter, could you grab the one off the coffee table?" Aunt May commanded as she started looking through the shoebox that she was gluing photos from.

After a quick sort, May conceded. There were no baby photos of Peter. Neither of them knew what to make of that. As, the mood for scrapbooking was gone, May packed up all the stuff by putting it into a plastic storage container.

The next day after school, Peter wanted to go superheroing and patrol the neighborhood, but MJ wanted to have a group study session and Ned volunteered Peter's place. It was going to be a small study session with only a couple people: Peter, MJ, Ned, Cindy, and Christopher.

Christopher, joined the school and the decathlon team a couple weeks ago. Peter was 99% sure he was the child of the woman he met that one time in the elevator when he was heading to the Stark internship -the real one-, but he wasn't going to bring that up. That would be weird and he didn't want to come across as weirder than he already was. Meeting that lady was surreal. It was super cool -how often does anyone meet a high up person at Magellan- but the interaction itself was kind of strange. Peter honestly had no idea how to react.

A flock of hungry teenagers descended upon the Parker residence in search of food and academic enlightenment. Instead of trying to cook them something, May had given up and just ordered them Pizza and some chips. Textbooks and study guides in one hand, cheap pizza in the other, they were ready to take on the world. Or at least the afternoon.

"This medieval African kingdom experienced significant economic prosperity due in large part to the gold trade," MJ read out loud.

Cindy rang her bell and answered "Kingdom of Mali."

"Ooh could we answer them Jeopardy style?" Ned asked.

Everyone decided to humor Ned. Besides it was more fun that way. After a truly breathtaking amount of questions, MJ was sitting upside down on the couch with her legs in the air and her head dangling down. Peter and Ned laid on the floor starfish style. Christopher was laying across with his feet up on MJ and Cindy was sitting sideways in the armchair.

"Is there any more Pizza? I'm really hungry," Peter whined.

"You've eaten over half of the pizza your aunt bought for us. How could you be more hungry?" MJ said.

"I can confirm that I am in a food coma," Ned added.

"I dunno. I'm just not full yet." Peter admitted.

"Go get some Doritos then. The bags already open," Cindy suggested.

"I don't really like them," Peter replied.

"Just go eat the food," Cindy said a little more irritated than she could probably justify being.

"It's a texture thing. It really bothers me. I freaked out when I was little when I tried them for the first time," Peter responded trying to say no without sounding like he was as picky as a toddler.

"I get it. I have the same thing with Doritos too," Christopher piped up.

Christopher had been awfully quiet the whole time so everyone was a bit startled when he said something.

He continued, "I just freak out whenever I touch them and I can't handle it. It's a sensory thing. Plus, the cheese powder sticks to your fingers and it's honestly the worst. I totally get it. No judgement coming from here."

The group sat in silence basking in their food induced drowsiness while Peter sat there trying to look normal while still feeling starving.

Out of the blue, Michelle perked up and stared at the faces of Christopher and Peter. She had that look on her face where she noticed something was off, but hadn't put together the conclusion yet. She was quite cute when making that face. Not that Peter was looking. He just thought she was cute in a totally platonic way.

"You two look really alike," She stated staring at the both of them.

Peter turned to look at Christopher and funnily enough they really did. They had similar hair colors; Christopher's was a bit lighter though. Their eyes were the same shape and their eyebrows looked remarkably similar. Weird.

"Wow it's kinda creepy how similar you guys look," Cindy chimed in.

"Their ears are different though. Christopher's lie flat against his head and Peter's stick out a lot more," Ned blurted.

"Thanks Ned," Peter deadpanned.

"Hey Peter, do you still have a DSi?" Christopher wondered.

"Yeah, I'd have to fish it out of my closet though."

"I remember them having this facial comparison thing in the photo app. We could use it to see whether the camera thinks we're related or not."

After a truly minimal amount of peer pressure, Peter got his old game console out of his room and loaded it up. With a hope and a prayer, they managed to turn the thing on and open up the right application. They were a 73% match: siblings. After that observation the conversation went completely off the rails.

"So, our current theories are: alien abduction, changelings, cloning, and Dickens character," Cindy announced recounting the last hour of conversation.

"The most plausible one is that Peter was adopted or that this was all one massive coincidence," Michelle pointed out.

Adoption. Wow, this conversation was hitting a lot closer to home than he was actually expecting it to. Maybe he was actually adopted. Maybe that was why there was no baby photos. That's actually a really reasonable explanation. Him and May just needed to find the adoption certificate then this whole thing would be explained.

"Yeah, but the realistic ones are boring. I like alien abduction," Cindy joked.

"I like Dickens character. We're in an updated Prince and the Pauper thing and there's no explanation for why you guys look alike at all," Ned said.

"Are we obligated to switch lives then? I don't really see the point for either of us doing that," Christopher asked.

"I think it'd be funny if you guys switched classes for a day," MJ butted in.

"We couldn't pull that off. We don't look that alike," Peter said.

"Maybe it's a switched at birth scenario," Ned blurted.

"Peter's two years older than Christopher," Cindy teased.

"There's always Cryofreezing," Ned suggested.

Eventually they moved on to other topics, but the group never really did get back to studying like they intended. Oh well. There was always next time.

Later that night Peter tried to go to bed, but every time he got close, he'd just start thinking about his parents and whether they were actually the Parkers or not. If he was adopted, who were his biological parents? They were probably nobody special, but who knows. Maybe it was a prince who couldn't admit he had a child out of wedlock because he'd lose his right to the throne. Maybe his mother was a farmhand in a far-off village in France. Maybe it was a tech giant who just couldn't have a child for her career. Maybe he was the kid of some kind couple from the Bronx who simply weren't ready for a child. Maybe he was the child of Tony Stark. Who knows? He was making all of this up in his head so it was silly fantasy anyway.

If he was adopted it reflected well on Mary and Richard Parker. Should he still call them Mom and Dad? They were so kind and generous to take a kid in who wasn't a baby. Peter had read about the decrease in adoption rate as kids got older so it was a miracle that he got adopted at all. If he was adopted that is.

He was taking this fantasy far too literally. It was way past Peter's bedtime and he had an early morning that Friday. He took a deep breath in and out and resolved to actually go to sleep.

Every time Peter looked at a photo of his parents, he would try and see which parts he got from each of them, but maybe he was asking the wrong question. Maybe he didn't get anything at all.