joey looks over at him, eyebrows still pulled together slightly. "you're a jerk, you know that?" they both know that she's referencing several things at the moment, not just his words minutes ago.
"yeah," he tells her, shaking his head and looking a...
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THE LAUGHTER INSIDE OF THE ALAMEDA HOME IS BARELY MUFFLED THROUGH THE CLOSED DOOR AS PETER AND JOEY APPROACH THE HOUSE.
"Hello," Joey announces while she pushes the door open, Peter following her down the hall into the living room. May Parker and Heidi Alameda are sitting on the couch, barely recovering from a bout of laughter.
"Hey, guys!" May greets, wiping the corner of her eye dramatically. "How's school?"
Peter and Joey simultaneously reply with "fine" and "good."
"Good, good," Heidi says. "If you're hungry, there's Chinese in the fridge; we ate a couple hours ago."
"Thanks, Mom." Joey meets Peter's eye while she says this, coming to the silent agreement that they'd get the food and take it back to Joey's room to get some homework done.
May Parker and Heidi Alameda: a pair of unlikely best friends who can also be identified as Peter's aunt and Joey's mom. Even though they've only known each other for a few years, and Joey has no idea how they even met, it feels, to everyone, as if these two families have known each other forever.
While the Parkers have been around since Joey was 17, she still wouldn't exactly call Peter anything more than a family friend. They've never talked much, in school or out, being two and a half years apart. He's a technology geek, Joey's a science geek. Peter's going into his junior year of high school this summer, and Joey's graduating in a week. If anything, the only thing Joey can say they have in common is enrollment at Midtown and the friendship that their parents share.
Joey doesn't bother heating the container of chowmein she pulled from the fridge, and Peter doesn't mind his cold orange chicken, either. So, wordlessly, the two teens retreat to Joey's room where they silently eat and do homework; a mindless routine.
An ambiance of clicking keys and scratching pencils all but drowns out the loud conversation between Heidi and May in the other room, and when Joey's dramatic huffs don't catch Peter's attention, she clears her throat and asks, "Would you revise my code for me?"
Peter perks up and looks off to the side before countering, "Will you finish my chem lab?"
"Deal," Joey responds immediately, and without another beat, they're switching laptops.
*
A couple of hours and one chem lab later, Peter and May have long gone home, and Heidi and her daughter reside in the kitchen; Joey's sitting on a barstool behind the counter with her arms propped up on the surface, and Heidi is pouring a couple of glasses of lemonade.
Joey raises one hand and lazily flicks it through the air— and Heidi startles as the cabinet above her swings open and two straws come floating out.
"I will never get used to that," Heidi swears, grabbing a straw out of midair and sticking it in her cup before sliding the other glass to Joey.
These are Joey's powers: telekinesis, and gravity and force-field manipulation— the result of one of her father's many, many experiments gone wrong.
