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“The shrimp is bad.”
At the sound of Peter’s quiet comment, May stops crossing items off her shopping list and glances up at him. “What was that?”
“The shrimp,” Peter repeats, keeping his voice low. He tilts his head subtly forward, indicating the grocery conveyor belt—three customers ahead of them in line. Upon it is riding some assorted produce, a jar of salsa, a bag of pistachios, a 6-pack of Hershey bars, and, finally, three bags of frozen shrimp. “The middle bag that guy is buying,” Peter whispers. “It’s spoiled. I can smell it from here.”
May sniffs the air and frowns. Every time she starts to think she’s getting used to her nephew’s enhanced senses, he pulls something like this. “You’re telling me you can smell frozen shrimp from fifteen feet away?”
“Um, yeah?” Peter quirks an eyebrow at her. “You can’t?”
May shakes her head.
“Oh.” He pauses, watching the cashier continue to ring up the man at the register. “Um, should we, like, tell him about it?”
May blinks at him. “You want to tell a random stranger that his shrimp smells bad?”
“Well, I mean, not really, but… what if he eats it and gets sick?”
“He’s buying clearance-priced seafood at a Walmart, Peter,” May says, giving her nephew an amused look. “I think risk is part of the game.”
Peter looks conflicted. “Yeah, but… I could do something about it.”
May shrugs and nods toward the register. “If you feel like you need to tell him, be my guest. But either way, I don’t think this one is on you.”
Peter hesitates for a moment, and then heaves out a deep sigh. “May, when you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen? Then they happen because of you.”
May furrows her brow. “What? No they don’t, that’s way too much pressure to put on—”
“With great power comes great respon-shrimp-bility!” Peter interrupts before slipping past her shopping cart and heading towards the register.