TROUBLE, peter parker

vii. knives

"Bagel," Peter said as he sidled up to Maya.

She was walking behind two students who were talking about the red mask guy. Maya didn't want to have to subject herself to that, but she wanted more information on him without actually having to confront him. Sure, she saw the video of them swinging out in broad daylight, but moving images only revealed so much. She figured she would have to confront him soon.

"Bagel," Maya repeated, still staring straight on and trying to continue eavesdropping on the two guys in front of them.

"No, no, no, I have a bagel," he said.

She looked at him—eyes flashing down to the bagel wrapped in aluminum foil he was holding in his hand—nodded, and gave him two thumbs up.

"It—It's for you," he said.

He held it up to her, and she mouthed an Oh, before taking it from him with a giddy look.

"Thank you," said Maya. "You didn't have to."

"Yeah, but you got me one the other day, so I figured I would pay you back."

She swung her backpack forward and opened it, pulling out her folder and fishing out his chemistry packet that she had copied down the night prior (she promises that she actually looked it over to make sure she understood it all instead of writing the same answers down).

Maya had given up on listening to the two guys ahead of them. They knew just as much as she did, if not less. What else did she expect from two high schoolers?

"Hey, uh, what're they talking about?" Peter asked.

Maya shrugged. "That red mask guy that's been swinging around." She huffed a sigh, and let out a small eye-roll.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what was that?"

"What was what?"

He slumped his shoulders a little and mimicked her small eye-roll and breath huffing.

"I did not—" She slumped her shoulders, rolled her eyes, and huffed a small breath.

"You did, too."

Maya raised her eyebrows. "Okay fine, it's about the red mask guy," she started, and he became even more intrigued than he already was.

"What's so—" he rolled his eyes and huffed a breath "—about him?"

"I don't know," she trailed off. She didn't want to give anything away. "Just seems like a nuisance."

"I thought he was catching criminals."

"Sure, but in a nuisance kind of way," she said.

He scoffed but didn't bother pressing any further—probably because her argument wasn't all that great.

"No wonder you quit the debate team," he said.

"Hey!" She lightly shoved her shoulder into his.

"Extraordinary velocity vector is a function of both mass and acceleration," they heard the guy on the left say.

They both quieted down to listen in, and they were both too focused on eavesdropping to reason as to why the other would be so focused.

"Oh, come on," the other guy said, "you know better than anyone that the weight of the bob on any pendulum has no effect on swing speed."

"It doesn't affect frequency, but it's totally a factor in momentum."

Maya rolled her eyes again before unwrapping the foil from around her bagel and bringing it up to her mouth.