Lost Home

Planning

When I wake up the next morning I’m fully healed (thanks  super-healing!) , and my voice is back. Err...well it is after a bunch of coughing and water. 

They release me, and MJ too, I guess, since she refused to go until I could. 

She makes a big show of saying goodbye, and makes it seem like she was just anxious that whatever caused the earthquake-tornado-fire thing would come back. 

“Um, okay then! My boyfriend’s probably worried about me, stranger danger and all that!” 

She walks off, and it takes me a second to realize that by “boyfriend’ she meant me, and then a couple more to realize that I should probably get back. 

                          ******

When we do get back to the hotel Mr. Harrington asks us where we were, and MJ explained to him that we got hurt and were sent to the hospital. 

She answers every question truthfully, and still manages to hide the fact that I’m Spiderman.  

Ned’s worried too, but it has less to do with the fact I was in the hospital and more to do with Aunt May.  And the rest of the class has no sense of “I’m dealing with something, keep your questions to yourself”. So there’s that too. 

Mr.Harrison is taking us out to this farm-market-festival thing for the last day of the trip, and lucky for us, it’s loud. And really, really busy. 

Eventually there’s time to slip away, and we do, into the plaza in the centre of it all . We all plop down on a bench and stare at each other for a bit, when Ned blurts out,

“They’re going to come after me next, aren’t they.”

He doesn’t seem very nervous, just resigned to his fate. Which is much worse. For me, anyway.

“Probably,” says MJ, at the same time I say, “No.” 

They look at me like I’m crazy, and I would be looking at myself like that too, if I didn’t know what the reasoning for it was. 

“Okay, so you’re...you’re gonna hate this but it’s what I have to do. I’m going to run away. I can’t just stop going out as Spiderman, he said completely right? And he’ll go after anyone whose even remotely tied to me. Like Morgan, like our entire school. And he’s probably planning how to take down SI in the worst way possible. And he’s probably, definitely planning to kill...” Never mind. I can’t say it. 

I was right in thinking that they’d hate it, as was made infinitely more clear by their reactions. 

We talk for a bit more, and after a while of talking about completely unrelated, and fun, topics MJ brings it up again. 

“This might actually work...but I’m coming with you. I’m less suspicious, and my parents won’t notice if I just go missing. Even if they do think I’ve run away, they probably wouldn’t care.”

I learn more about MJ in that sentence than I did in a whole month of sitting at her table, and I realize that I knew MJ, but I didn’t know anything beyond pretty basic things. Huh. 

“If she’s coming I’m coming, I am your guy in the chair right?” I know I’m not going to be able to get rid of MJ, and I know that the three of us together would be harder to hide, and I know that I need Ned, especially If I want to stop Mysterio from wherever I’m hiding. Time to bull-shit my way out of this mess.

“Ned, I need you to be able to look out for May and the rest of my family. Plus you could probably be a better guy in the chair with the stuff from school and without arousing suspicion about where the two of us disappeared to.”

“And if I’m going with Peter I’m not going to be able to text anyone who could help with my phone incase theirs is being traced.” Ned looked at me with a So-she’s-coming? Look and I nod back. He looks hurt for a second so I explain to him that I wouldn’t be able to get rid of her if I tried. Not that I’d want to, but still. 

When I finish explaining a notification pops up on my phone, Ned has created a group chat:FOS. 

We make some plans on there, not nearly enough as anyone wanted, but enough that we won’t starve the first week.