Chapter Text
“Sup, losers?” MJ said, sitting across Peter and Ned at their lunch table. It was the first week back at Midtown for their senior year. The shackles of high school melodrama were a mere nine months from coming off. Adults already began pestering her about life after graduation, and it was all incredibly aggravating.
“Hey, MJ,” Ned replied, smiling at her.
She glanced at Peter and noticed a large bruise cascading his right arm. It had been two years since she figured out he was Spider-Man, yet she waited for him to tell her himself. She had her suspicions after D.C. their sophomore year, and getting closer to him and Ned had only solidified it. It bothered her more than she’d care to admit that Peter still hadn’t told her about his secret identity. She always thought about confronting him to see him crack under pressure, and she did love teasing her best friend, but she could never find the courage to say anything. She wanted Peter to trust her with his secret, and it hurt her that he didn’t. “What’s up with you?” she asked Peter, snapping him from his trance.
“Oh, uh, I, uh, just didn’t really sleep,” he answered, lowering his jacket sleeve to cover his ominously large bruise.
“Yeah, well, you look like shit, so it makes sense,” MJ quipped, grabbing a book from her bag.
He rolled his eyes and threw a crumpled napkin her way. “Are you still gonna force us to go to decathlon practice the first week back?”
“If you don’t like it, you can always quit the team,” MJ answered. “Harrington says we’re getting a new girl this year anyway, so we’ll still have the same numbers.”
“New girl? What grade is she?” Ned asked while twirling a pencil in his hand.
“Our year,” MJ replied.
“Why is she transferring if she’s a senior?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she got expelled or something from her old school,” MJ answered, pulling a book from her backpack. She’d been working on it for a few days now, but that sucker was 1000 pages with a font as small as a rice grain.
“But why would she be on decathlon if she’s a delinquent?” Peter asked, noisily opening a bag of Doritos. MJ found her eyes lingering on his lips as he was about to bite one, but quickly caught herself and returned focus back to her book.
“Ned asked, and I answered. I don’t see you coming up with anything better, loser.”
“Hey now,” Peter started, “we’ve already established I didn’t sleep last night. Give me a break.”
“You know that’ll never happen,” MJ remarked, maintaining focus on the page she was reading. “You’re basically asking to be messed with, like, all of the time.”
“Okay, MJ. Whatever you say.”
The rest of lunch passed fairly quickly, much too quick for MJ’s liking. There was only one more period left in the day, so she could almost go home, but some cruel soul had decided to make pre-calc her last class. The thought of pre-calc made her brain twist. She was never the smartest with numbers. History? English and writing? Back-of-her-hand easy. There was just something about numbers that got her brain all fuzzy and confused. Luckily, Peter and Ned took the class last year, so she figured if she needed help, she could just ask them.
Pre-calc passed by surprisingly fast, but it was only the first day. Class mainly consisted of Mr. Cooper giving his introductory presentation, even though almost everyone in the class already knew him. He tried to get them to do icebreakers with each other, but the seniors insisted he let them play on coolmathgames for the remainder of the period.
After hiding in the library while waiting for the after school chaos, MJ made her way to the gym for decathlon practice. She didn’t technically have to be there for another ten minutes, and everyone was usually late anyway, but she liked to be early. It gave her a little time to prep and calm her jitters. It may seem like she’s always calm and collected, but everyone has a front they put up. Now, that’s not to say that MJ isn’t incredibly cool if she does say so herself, but anxiety has its ways of chipping pieces of her wall away. That was one of the things she liked the most about being friends with Peter and Ned. They were pretty much the most understanding people in the entirety of Brooklyn, and she never worried they judged her for not being on top of her game.
She sat in one of the chairs next to the folded tables she’d have to set up for practice. Or maybe she wouldn’t. It was the first week back from summer, and nationals weren’t for another seven weeks. Honestly, MJ thought, Harrington can just introduce the new girl and everyone can leave.
MJ sat alone for a few minutes before the team slowly trickled into the gym. They all made small talk with each other about their summers. Flash boasted about his trip to the Hamptons and his cruise through the Caribbean, while Betty and Zach talked about running into each other on their trips to Disney. MJ just sat and listened. Her summer was as ordinary as could be. She worked at the bookstore down the street from her apartment almost every day, and read an oddly low number of books. She was with Peter and Ned the majority of the time when she didn’t have work. She learned much more about Star Wars than she cared to, but it was always nice to see the losers happy. Neither one of them had ever really had easy life circumstances, so who was she to take away something that helped them forget that.
At 3:20 pm, everyone had finally shown up, including the new girl who hadn’t introduced herself yet. “Alright, um, let’s get started,” MJ said, pulling everyone’s attention from their individual conversations to her.
“Please say we’re not running drills today,” Flash pleaded, adjusting the collar of his shirt.
“It’s literally the first week.”
“Well with all that downtime you had on your cruise, Flash, I’m sure you had lots of time to study what everyone else already knows,” MJ surmised, which earned some light laughter among the team. “But no, we’re not running drills today.”
Relief seemed to spread to each member at the knowledge of not having to work their brains at 100 miles per second on the first week of school.
Mr. Harrington cleared his throat from behind the group and stood from his seat. “We have a new member this year,” he gestured to the tall blonde in the chair to his left, “Miss Gwendolyne Stacy.”
“I actually go by Gwen,” the girl corrected from her seat. “Hey.” She gave a nervous wave to the pondering eyes on her.
“What grade are you in, Gwen?” Betty asked, moving in her chair to fully face the other blonde.
“Senior.”
“Why’d you transfer for senior year?”
“Um,” Gwen started, fidgeting with her hands in her lap, “my dad’s station transferred him over here. They needed a new chief.”
“Station? As in like the fire department?” Ned asked.
Gwen smiled. “Close… Police.”
Peter looked at MJ with an I-told-you-so look on his face. Okay so maybe the girl wasn’t an expelled delinquent. It was just the first answer that came out of her mouth.
“Your dad is the chief of police?” Flash asked, baffled, already unlocking his phone to tweet some idiotic blurb about the newfound information.
“Yeah…” Gwen trailed. It was clear she was uncomfortable with all the attention, so MJ called it back to herself.
“Okay, so, um,” MJ began, heads turning back in her direction, “I didn’t really have a plan for today. Just wanted everyone to see each other after summer, I guess. We’ll start actual practices next week, but we’re done for now.”
Almost everyone raced out of the gym as fast as they’d come, but Gwen remained in her seat, rummaging through her backpack. “Where’d they go?”
“Lost something?” MJ asked, walking toward Gwen.
“Yeah, I think I lost my keys. I swear I just had them when I came in here.”
MJ noticed a lanyard dangling from Gwen’s pocket. “Are those them?”
Gwen looked down at her pocket and sighed in relief. “Thanks. It’s just been a really crazy day.”
“Yeah, no worries.” MJ held her hand out to Gwen to shake, “I’m MJ.”
She happily reciprocated the act. “You’re pretty much the only person I do know. Mr. Harrington told me you’re the captain.”
“Yep,” MJ nodded, “it’s basically the only thing I do. I don’t really do the whole ‘high school’ thing.”
“I was super involved at my old school, but I don’t know about here.” Gwen zipped her backpack and stood from the chair. “Just seems pointless since I’ll only be here for less than a year.”
“Well,” MJ started, grabbing her backpack from the floor and taking her keys from the side pocket, “you’re always welcome to not do anything with me and my friends. We normally hang at my place on the weekends.”
Gwen smiled, and the two girls made their way to the gym exit. “I might just take you up on that.”
~~~
“Gwen seems nice,” Peter commented. The three of them were at his apartment watching movies since it was only the first week of school, and the homework loads hadn’t hit yet.
“I invited her to hang with us sometime,” MJ said, biting one of the mango slices May had bought for her. She always stocked up before MJ came over because she knew they were her favorite. “She seems chill enough.”
“Dude, her dad’s the police chief,” Ned stressed. “Are we sure she won’t rat us out or anything?”
“Not if we don’t do anything around her. We’re functioning teenagers, Leeds,” MJ explained, “and we know how to hang without doing anything ‘bad’.” She put air quotes around bad.
Peter’s phone buzzed on the table, and he immediately checked the notification. “Uh, I gotta go guys.”
“It’s like 8 o'clock on a Thursday,” MJ pointed out. “Literally where do you have to go?”
Peter looked at Ned, eyes widening and mouth forming a tight line. Ned silently mouthed “oh,” and nodded his head.
“Peter has a thing with Mr. Stark. He said something about it earlier, remember?” Ned lied through his teeth. MJ knew better than to believe anything they said when it involved Peter making a spontaneous, timely exit.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“You guys can stay here if you want. I don’t know when I’ll be back.” Peter started walking to his room.
“I’ll probably just head home,” MJ said, swinging her legs over the edge of the couch. “We still on for this weekend, though?”
“For sure,” Peter said, slipping into his room and shutting the door behind him.
“Duh,” Ned nodded.
MJ acknowledged she heard them, then made her way out the door to head home. Yeah, Peter definitely has a thing with Tony Stark. It’s definitely not because his superhero alter ego is needed somewhere. Definitely.