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"I totally buzzed in first.”
Michelle couldn’t help herself from raising her voice in the library, all her teammates wide and cautious because of her outburst. She holds her exterior demeanor stiff and emotionless, arms crossed as she blows out air from her mouth, making her fringe bounce up and down.
“Are you saying that Liz is making a poor decision as our captain?” Peter raises his eyebrows and smirks at her, cocky grin painted on his stupid face that Michelle can never get out of her head. She rolls her eyes and eventually gives up, not wanting to cause a scene but still wanting to let Peter know she’s close to being over his shit.
“Stop kissing ass, Parker.”
“Ok!” Mr. Harrington interjects, diffusing the tension that’s been building between Michelle and Peter ever since – for some odd reason – he decided to finally pay attention to everything else around him instead of himself. Although Michelle honestly noticed his responsibilities being prioritized more efficiently, she’s still skeptical about the way he jets out of practice the moment Liz dismisses the team.
It’s the kind of skepticism that’s been lingering in Michelle’s head ever since she first noticed Peter no longer taking the same train home as she did, getting out just four stops earlier.
She’s not obsessed with him. Just observant. Like she is with everybody.
Cindy’s eyes twinkle whenever she talks about Abe, and Betty always fixes her headband before talking to Ned after U.S. History.
Flash has different sunglasses for every day of the week, and although they’ve all gone through puberty by now, he never gave up the Axe Spray phase that every boy had in the seventh grade.
Peter always leaves practice immediately, barely even waving goodbye to Ned.
He doesn’t take the train home anymore even though he failed his behind-the-wheel.
In front of everyone, Peter can never stop running his mouth in an attempt to one-up Michelle in Academic Decathlon practices. She’s the only person he acts like this around.
It’s annoying. But it’s intriguing.
“Let’s save the competitive attitude next week for Nationals when we’re not going against our own teammates, okay?” Harrington coughs, fingers pushing up his glasses for the fourth time. He really needs to get the screws in his frames tightened.
Flash slams his head against the library table. “This is what happens when you put Jones and Parker against each other. Every time.”
“It’s Peter’s fault,” she says.
“It’s Michelle’s fault,” his voice overlaps hers.
Liz inhales the wooden smell of the library before saying, “We put you two against each other because your strengths are polar opposites and you need both to practice to find balance with your knowledge. MJ, you answered four out of the ten STEM questions I drilled. Peter, you answered two out of the seven literary questions.”
Michelle smirks. “That means I answered nine overall and Peter answered eight. I win.”
“It’s fine that you won, Michelle,” Peter shrugs, “I’ve won eight times since the semester started. You’ve only won six times.”
“Seven now.”
The team groans, Liz casting both Michelle and Peter aside – on different ends of the library tables – so they could finish their drills. She rushes to tuck herself into the chair next to Ned, stealing Peter’s unassigned assigned seat before he gets the chance to. He rolls his eyes at her and drags himself to the very end of the line.
Liz drills Cindy and Abe now, and Michelle can feel Ned’s muscles tense up next to her. She opens her Academic Decathlon binder and studies the STEM questions that are organized between the two green folders, the fourth subject in the binder. Despite the team groaning at the idea, Michelle volunteered herself to coordinate and distribute a color-coded binder and reference list to Liz at the end of last year when they didn’t place for Spring Nationals.
Granted, Liz was going through a lot with her father getting sentenced to Ryker’s and having to forgo their mansion of a home in the suburbs and dumbass Peter ditching her at homecoming – which Michelle still thought was the strangest thing.
Why would he ditch Liz when he never stopped gushing over her like a loser during lunch?
Could it be the same reason he leaves practice?
Ned pokes at her shoulder. “Do you hate Peter?”
“Does Peter hate me?” she returns, her muscles nearly straining from trying not to give Ned any kind of reaction. Or Peter because she can feel his eyes on him. He’s always looking at her.
She proves herself to be right by glancing quickly in his direction, catching him just by one second before he flicks his eyes back to the binder. He tucks his lips into his mouth. She tries not to assume he’s holding back a smile.
“No,” Ned answers quickly. It’s her turn to hold back that same smile, reserved for him. She only lets herself grin like an idiot in the comfort of her bedroom, where no one can see how embarrassing it is when her limbs turn into jello thinking about stupid Peter Parker. “He doesn’t hate you.”
“Okay,” she accepts. “I don’t hate him.”
“Wait, but do you–”
“We’re practicing, Ned. You should be reading your binder.”
The finger that he lifted in the air before asking his question falls down before opening the binder and sighing.
From the corner of her eye, she tries to catch a glimpse of Peter.
And he’s looking at her again.
When practice ends, Michelle expects Peter to dash out immediately, and although she was about to prove herself right again, Liz asks them both to stay behind. Her arms are crossed, power posing in a way that intimidates and inspires Michelle at the same time.
“Look,” she sighs. “I know it’s competitive. And it’s fun. And you are both Know-It-Alls. I mean it in the best way possible, by the way.”
Peter’s about to interrupt when Liz gives him a stern glare. He backs down.
“But you both need to actually practice your weak areas instead of try to be better at your preferred subjects. Nationals are different this year. We can’t pick and choose which people to go to which subjects. Got it?”
“Understood,” they both say. Liz nods, smiling sweetly at them and wishing them a good rest of the night. Michelle loops her backpack straps around both arms and counts to five, the fifth second being a good measure of when Peter will disappear.
Except he doesn’t.
He’s walking next to Michelle, one strap off his shoulder and his hair disheveled as always.
“What do you want, Parker?” she feigns annoyance, hoping it masks her eagerness to hear his answer.
He stutters for a while, mumbling to himself with such low volume that Michelle doesn’t bother to decipher knowing that Peter always practices what he’s going to say.
“–come over and study with me?” he scratches the back of his neck.
Wait. Rewind.
“What?” Michelle asks out loud as they reach the front of the school.
“You know what? Never mind, I’ll just ask Ned to help. He knows a lot about medieval history anyway, and forget I ever asked such a stupid thi–”
“I’ll study with you.”
“You will?” he smiles for a beat before clearing his throat and pulling out his phone. “I have to leave right now, but I’ll text you?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
His eyes widen. “Both?”
“Weirdo,” she returns. “Text me.”
“I’ll text you.”
“I just said that, Parker.”
“Yeah,” he breathes, ruffling his hair. “I gotta go. Bye Michelle.”
She watches him out of the entrance, rushing to wherever he always rushes to, watching the way his back curves with every step.
Still no notifications.
She tosses her phone to the floor, frustrated and discouraged from ever asking Peter to talk to her outside of the stupid competitions they have during practices.
Michelle’s an idiot for checking every ten minutes for the past two hours.
She tucks herself into bed for a midday nap after finishing Pride and Prejudice for the second time in the past two years, avoiding her homework or Academic Decathlon because her brain hurts. As the sun sets and Michelle drifts into a light slumber, she starts to think about the way Peter teases her every day, trying to get a rise out of her when they try to prove who’s smarter than the other, nothing but trash talking coming out of his stupid mouth.
Then she dreams about kissing his stupid mouth and running her hands through his annoyingly fluffy hair and holding his sweaty hands.
She hates him.
She wakes up to four text messages.
parker: i took a fat nap after going home and i forgot to text you :( :( :(
parker: are you still down to study with me sometime?
parker: let me know
parker: it’s peter btw. parker.
michelle: who’s peter parker?
parker: you don’t know who the smartest person in decathlon is?
Michelle rolls her eyes.
michelle: i do know her. michelle.
parker: eight-seven.
michelle: not for long. two more practices left and i’ll beat you both times.
parker: i don’t doubt you.
She does a double take, rereading his last message like it’s an error – like he was supposed to send this to someone else. She nearly throws her phone out of the window.
parker: r u busy on friday night?
parker: we can do my house.
parker: may can get us pizza
parker: unless you hate pizza
parker: then i don’t want to invite you
parker: :)
Michelle rubs her eyes.
michelle: stop spamming my phone.
parker: lol
parker: is that a yes?
michelle: yes.
michelle: i guess.
She tucks her hair behind her ear after she presses the doorbell. Looking down at her outfit, Michelle confirms with herself that it was a smart decision to stay in the clothes she wore today at school.
Letting her hair down is a good, safe touch. It’s not like she’s trying to impress Peter at all. She knows May is going to be home, and she’s never met May, and she’s never been this nervous to meet an adult. Plus, she knows that – from the few conversations she’s heard between Ned and Peter at their lunch table – May is not just any adult. She’s the woman who raised Peter.
The thought makes the saliva in Michelle’s mouth thicker.
When May swings the door open, she has a wide grin on her face, a twinkle in her eye, and one hand on her hip. “Michelle!”
“Hi, Mrs. Parker,” she extends her arm out to formally introduce herself.
“Hi sweetie, come on in and call me May,” she shakes her hand. “Peter’s still in the shower. You know how overly sweaty teenage boys get. Make yourself comfortable. I can give you an apartment tour, but you’re looking at all of it.”
Michelle sees a cozy living room piled with soft blankets and candles and picture frames. There’s a shelf of books and another shelf of what appears to be Star Wars collectibles. The house smells like freshly baked bread and feels like a warm summer day.
It’s warm and open and loving.
She makes herself space on the couch, hands folding on her lap with her back straight.
“So you and Peter are finally teaming up instead of going against each other?” May starts the conversation, Michelle tilting her head at the question like she’s surprised that Peter talks to May about her.
Michelle hums and says, “We’re really competitive. Liz wants us to channel the energy to our actual rivals.”
May laughs, hand on her chest. “That’s cute. Peter never stops talking about how he’s trying to beat you in practice drills.”
She can’t help but smile. It just slips when May’s radiates sunshine just like her nephew.
“He’s already beating me by one. Peter’s really smart.”
“I heard you are, too.”
The bathroom door swings open, a bit of fog escaping the loud room. “May, can you stitch up my suit? I ripped it when–”
May coughs. Peter looks up from drying his hair and leaves the towel wrapped around his neck. Michelle reminds herself to take a mental picture of this image of Peter wearing a very tight and plain white t-shirt and grey sweats.
“Hi Michelle,” he freezes. “You’re early.”
“You’re late,” Michelle responds. May chuckles as she looks at her watch and nods in agreement.
“Sorry. I had a thing and then I was smelly and then–”
“It’s okay,” Michelle stands up for no good reason, immediately wanting to bury her head in the comfortable pillows scattered along the couch. She sits back down.
“Okay,” Peter crosses his arms. “Do you want to start? We can study in my room.”
Don’t freak out, Michelle. It’s just a room. A very cute boy’s room.
“Door open at all times,” May echoes as Peter rushes Michelle into the room in question.
“Yes May,” Peter shouts back. “Sorry. She always says things like that.”
Michelle takes this opportunity to embarrass the shit out of Peter. “So you always have girls over?”
“What? No!” he stammers. “I don’t… I don’t have girls over.”
She cocks her brow at him.
“Michelle, you’re the only girl that’s ever stepped foot in here.”
“I’m just kidding, Parker.”
He sighs in relief, shaking his head at her while he grins. “You’re always trying to one up me.”
“Trying and succeeding by the minute.”
“You are,” he agrees with a tone that she’s never heard from Peter before, Michelle only familiar with the sound of his cockiness and bravado during Decathlon meetings. It’s a weird feeling knowing that Peter isn’t making fun of her right now.
But it’s a good feeling, too – something Michelle would like to feel more often because Peter’s cute and intriguing and she wants to know how he feels even though she doesn’t have the courage to even ask him. Michelle doesn’t have the courage because she knows it’s all in her head – the looks, the flirtatious banter, and the way he scratches the back of his neck and mumbles to himself before he talks to her.
She feels sweaty because she doesn’t know what to talk about, the both of them never spending more than thirty minutes together alone . Luckily, studying for Nationals is productive, the two of them going back and forth and asking each other on the possible topics that are going to be presented in DC next weekend.
“The California state seal is represented by–”
“Minerva, goddess of wisdom,” Peter answers, puffing his chest out in pride and Michelle giving him a round of applause.
“Good job, Parker. You’ve been doing your studying. A lot more than me with STEM.”
Peter had significantly improved in the topics that he was lacking in, but Michelle was still afraid of answering a few questions about calculus or physics.
“Well,” he shrugs, “I have your binder – specifically the blue folders: section five – to thank.”
Her heart thumps. “You actually read the reference list that I wrote?”
She sees a tinge of pink blossom on Peter’s face, his nose wrinkling as he says, “Yeah, well you kept texting the Academic Decathlon group chat reminders to read it over the summer, so I had no choice.”
Michelle rolls her eyes remembering Peter always finds a way to reel her in and make her guts fall out of her stomach. His cockiness is back. “You’re the worst.”
“Quite the contrary, Michelle Jones, I am the best . Eight wins, remember?”
“Get over yourself,” she rolls her eyes, no longer focused on The Binder. She lays herself on the floor of Peter’s room, staring at the ceiling. There’s faded star stickers scattered across the smooth surface – the ones that glow in the dark after soaking up enough energy from the sun.
The stars remind her of Peter. Like he bounces off the energy from around him, radiating like a meteor that never stops burning.
“I won’t stop bragging until you beat me, Michelle,” he shifts his body so he stares at the ceiling, too. “You know I’m better than you.”
She sits up, squinting her eyes at him. She gives up, sighing. “Okay, I get it. You’re smarter than me.”
He frowns. “I’m faster at buzzing. You just get nervous. You always press the buzzer right when the question ends, but they don’t go through until a second after.”
“Sure.”
“I swear. I know you’re, like, way smarter than me, Michelle. I promise. Today, I walked into a literal wall.”
“Then why do you like to compete with me so much?”
He looks confused. “Isn’t it fun? I kind of thought we were getting close that way.”
“Oh,” her intense stare fades away. She thinks about the bubbling in her stomach when he roasts her and the way her heart feels heavier when she catches him staring. Maybe there is a reason why she can’t stop thinking about Peter all the time. “Yeah, I guess.”
He laughs awkwardly as he sits up. “But if it bothers you I can stop.”
“No,” she says. “I like it.”
I like you, she thinks, but doesn’t dare say.
“Me too,” he looks at her, the same twinkle in his eye that she saw in May’s earlier even if they aren’t related by blood. “So we’re still going to compete for Decathlon Hell Week?”
A genuine laugh escapes her. She snorts, and covers her mouth immediately after. “Sorry. Yes, it’s on.”
“It’s okay. I like your laugh,” he says, but he shouldn’t have because now she’s really convinced she does like Peter.
“You make me laugh,” she shrugs casually.
Peter beams at her.
Peter doesn’t leave immediately after practice for Hell Week. In fact, he asks Michelle to come over nearly every day before they leave for nationals that Friday night. Michelle wonders why Ned isn’t invited, knowing he needs the practice, too. They all did – their nerves getting the best of them and making them slip up during practice drills.
Liz paces back and forth before practice when Michelle arrives early and afterward when she and Peter help clean up the library. It’s her last chance to win one last time, so Michelle understands.
“You both have improved a lot,” Liz smiles when they put up the last chair. “I don’t know what you’re doing now but keep it up.”
Peter and Michelle exchange looks, knowing that the reason they’re both doing well is because of one another. At the same time, they both thank her.
“I’ll see you both tomorrow for your last ever practice drills,” Liz comments. “What’s the score now?”
Only then does Michelle realize that neither of them had really been keeping track anymore.
“It doesn’t really matter anymore,” Peter answers for the both of them. “Channeling all of it for Saturday.”
“We took your advice,” Michelle adds. “Captain.”
Liz nods, smiling. “Speaking of captain. It’s either one of you for the spot when I graduate. I’ve been kind of keeping track of your stats, so whoever has the most impressive stats after Saturday will take over.”
When she leaves, Peter and Michelle both linger in front of each other.
“So, both of us for captain, huh?” Peter grins. “Exciting stuff. Guess I’m going to have to channel my competitive side again. I’ve been taking it easy on you.”
“Oh, so you’ve always taken it easy on me?” Michelle raises her brow, heat rising in her face from both her feelings for Peter and her drive to win. “I’m going to get captain, Parker.”
“Sure, Jones.” She swears she sees him wink with his right eye, but his left eye follows one millisecond afterward. It’s so cute that Michelle can’t physically make a comeback in her head. How annoying.
They walk out to the front in silence, neither of them asking to study because Mr. Harrington strongly suggested a rest before they compete for twelve hours on Saturday. But even if they’re not studying, Michelle realizes, Peter still doesn’t run off to do what he used to do before Hell Week. He even walks with her to the train station.
“You’re taking the train home?”
“Yeah, I get home with the train,” Peter scrunches his face in confusion. “I thought you knew that.”
“I just haven’t seen you take it in a while. That’s all,” she blurts out, immediately regretting the way she revealed herself observing him from a distance. If Peter thinks anything of it, he doesn’t show it, hand clutching the railing for balance instead of sitting in the seat next to Michelle.
“Oh,” he smiles. “Yeah, I used to go to the...gym. Before. But I haven’t had the time because we’ve been prepping for Academic Decathlon.”
“You go to the gym?” she asks.
“Maybe,” he answers quietly like it’s some kind of well-kept secret. Although, it does explain the way his corny graphic tees wrap tightly around his body now compared to freshman year.
She brushes it off and when she stops asking questions, Peter places himself next to her. A few stops pass by before he speaks again. “Hey, Michelle?”
“What’s up?”
“Well, I know they always sneak into the pool for team bonding. And I know you never enjoy it because you always read The Fault in Our Stars with the slipcover off since you don’t want people to know you read John Green as a comfort book–”
She smiles – like a big, cheesy, crush-induced smile that Peter can’t even see because he’s too busy with his eyes glued to the dirty floor of the subway. She can tell he’s nervous.
“What’s your point, Parker?” she teases.
“Oh, sorry, I…” he fiddles with his fingers. She puts one hand on top of both of his, stopping Peter from being so jittery. The touch is intense. Michelle can’t even remember the last time she hugged Peter, let alone (kind of) hold his hand. She lets go quickly. “Did you want to… do something with me instead? Before Saturday?”
“Yes,” she pauses. “I guess.”
His smile shines exactly as hers did moments ago. “Cool.”
They reach the hotel as a normal group of teenagers would, loud and excited and bladders filled to the brim that they race each other to the bathrooms, causing Mr. Harrington to panic. He probably has PTSD from DC.
Michelle remembers DC because it was the first time she met Spider-Man. It was for, like, thirty seconds, but it was still cool. She never told anyone anyways because her friends were actually saved by him, and she also didn’t want anyone to know that she thought he was pretty neat and very much unlike the other superheroes that parade around New York City.
He also felt familiar, Michelle feeling warm and slow but excited and nervous all at once in that half a minute. She has her hunches, and she observes always , but there has never been hard evidence of her confirmed hypothesis for the superhero.
Until tonight.
She dressed up this time, a black floral dress and her favorite blazer outside of the mustard yellow Academic Decathlon jackets that she helped Liz pick out. Michelle stuffs her hands in her pockets, tapping her foot uncontrollably as she waits for the door to swing open.
Whoever said butterflies in your stomach is a nice feeling was wrong. It feels like butterflies are flapping their wings angrily while caterpillars eat the inside of her stomach so that more butterflies can produce and make her throw up.
When Ned opens the door, her nerves fade away. He inserts his head out of the slightly cracked entrance. “Oh, heeeeey, Michelle.”
“Hey,” she tugs her lips. “Where’s Parker? We were going to review more questions.”
“I thought Mr. Harrington said no more review?”
“Of course I’m still going to review, Leeds. Who do you think I am?”
“Noted.” He opens the door just enough to walk through, closing it behind him. He blubbers his answer to her question. “Peter’s… he’s sick. Throwing up. Food poisoning. You know Aunt May’s not that great of a chef?”
She nods to his entire anecdote, though she stops listening halfway through, feeling devastated at herself for getting her hopes up that Peter actually wanted to go on this date with her. It wasn’t even a date. They had no plans. They were probably going to review like she lied to Ned, which is beneficial to her consciousness because she never lies.
“I get it,” she says flatly, hands already reaching her hair to tie it up again. She shoves her hands in her jacket pocket and covers as much of the stupid dress she picked out of her mom’s closet to wear tonight. “I’ll just go.”
“Wait, Michelle,” Ned says, concern burning in his voice like an uncertain flame. She stops walking, but doesn’t turn to face him. “He’s sorry he got sick. He told me about you two hanging out.”
She takes a deep breath, bracing herself for the chilly Washington night as she opts for a walk alone, not walking too far and circling the hotel. She paces and paces, wondering what threw Peter off – why he suddenly decides to ditch her.
It’s the captain thing, definitely. He wants to win, and he doesn’t want to hang out with her anymore because it’ll be weird. Maybe she really did just imagine all of the things that have been happening with Peter for the past few weeks.
She sits on a lonely bench at the back of the hotel, watching crows pick at breadcrumbs scattered along the dumpster. It was probably a terrible place to plot herself in, but the pool was occupied by her rowdy teammates and the front of the building is too public for her to be outrageously discouraged.
Michelle tilts her head back, fighting the dumb tears that are trying to escape the corners of her eyes. She shouldn’t be caught up over some flake – over someone that takes their competition for captain so seriously that he ditches her. She can’t help it anymore, a tear trailing down her cheek.
But before she gets into her sobs, she hears a body crash against a dumpster and a sharp wince of pain echoing near her. She stands up quickly, regretting grabbing her pepper spray from her suitcase because she didn’t leave the hotel. She presses herself against the brick wall near the dumpster alley.
“Who’s there?” she hears a muffled voice call out before she sees the man in the blue and red suit peak out of the alley. Funny that she meets him again in DC. “I can hear your heartbeat. It’s fast. Are you okay? Did someone in a weird goblin suit hurt you, good citizen?”
She hears it, the familiarity in the voice. Even if it’s muffled, she knows who it is, and she feels even guiltier for being upset at him before. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, just a few broken bones. But it’s okay, I can heal. I’m Spider-Man, so.”
“That’s good, Peter.”
“Yeah, I mean I’ve been worse, I’ve fallen off a tall building into a shorter building and slammed against the roof and you just called me Peter and I didn’t say I wasn’t Peter.”
She sighs. “I know it’s you.”
Spider-Man looks down to the ground, fiddling his fingers. It’s strange to see someone who’s soaring through the skies of New York nervous around her. “Sorry I lied to you about being sick.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. But thank you for saying that it is.”
“So, a goblin?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Peter sits on the bench she had just been sulking in. “I neglected hero stuff for a week and I could have taken him down, but I just. Academic Decathlon is so important.”
“I think saving the world is a lot more important than a competition.”
“Both can be just as equally important,” he says, “Plus you really care about Academic Decathlon too. So I care.”
“Okay, you’re right. I care. We still have tomorrow, Peter.”
He shrugs, his bug lenses adjusting in an expressive way. She has to ask about the mechanics behind the suit some other time.
“You’re really not mad at me for ditching you?”
“You can make it up to me.”
“Like how?”
“Like when I get Captain, you can buy me dinner and congratulate me.”
“Or when I get Captain, I can buy us dinner and you can have some because I’ll feel bad for taking it all for myself,” he playfully huffs. Ridiculous.
“We’ll see about that tomorrow.”
“You’re on, Jones.”
“Peter, Michelle – you both have scored the highest as of right now,” Liz announces to them. “Keep it up. You’re both doing so well. As for you, Flash…”
Flash starts waving his hands in the air to protest, Liz eventually walking away from his reasoning against why he should be benched.
There were only a few questions left from the competition, an hour left before they found out if they become champions for Liz’s last semester here. The team had studied tirelessly and with passion, wanting to give it all to their captain as a love letter to her.
Michelle watches Liz as she gives the other teammates pep talks – personalized ones compared to the giant huddle they had done in the beginning and at halftime. Liz is admirable, and being captain requires empathy and control – a combination so rare not even Michelle has fully tackled how to balance them both.
Peter taps her. “Hey. Nervous for points?”
“Not really,” she looks away, not wanting her desire for the position to be read in her eyes. “I’m cool. Fine.”
“Cool,” he mumbles. “Me too.”
Liz groups everyone again in a circle – two minutes left before the last round: sudden death. Somehow, Midtown never beat their competitors by a landslide, but it does make for an entertaining night. The team huddles, Mr. Harrington pacing around them and listening to Liz spitting out team stats and strategies in the two minutes they have to vote who should vote.
It was between Peter and Michelle, to no one’s surprise. Liz pursed her lips in a way that reminds both of them that whoever wins this – if they win this – will be captain.
“Let’s rule out the possible questions,” Cindy suggests, Ned spewing out the different topics that the judges hadn’t covered as much as the others. The topics he lists are mostly science-based or math-based.
They’re going to pick Peter. Michelle isn’t going to be captain.
“I think it should be Michelle,” Peter says. They all look at him, then at Michelle. She’s never felt this many eyes on her. “She’s the smartest one here.”
“What if they ask a math question?” Flash interjects.
“Shut up, Flash,” Peter rolls his eyes before he shifts his gaze to Michelle, staring into her soul and saying, “We’ve been studying math together. You got this.”
She inhales and exhales deeply, remembering the technique Peter had taught her about buzzing in just a beat after the question is asked. She wonders if she’s even going to know the answer.
Everything goes in slow motion, the other school’s volunteer tribute sitting down next to her. Michelle takes a deep breath as the announcer pulls out the last question that could determine it all.
She hears the question.
She feels the wheels in her head turn. The world spins slower and slower and then, she presses the button.
“Zero.”
“Midtown is correct!”
The team comes rushing to her, drowning her in a celebration of hugs and victory. They nearly carry her out of the venue and chant her name. It feels good and she smiles – big and cheesy and full of love for her chaotic team.
When they all get to the lobby, they make plans to hang out in Liz’s room before the curfew ends, all of them rushing to change out of the blazers and into hotel pajamas. She lets herself stand in the lobby to process everything that had just happened in the span of an hour.
She feels a tap on her shoulder.
“Congratulations,” Peter greets her. “Looks like I owe you dinner, Captain.”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s not official yet, Peter.”
“It will be soon.”
“I don’t get it,” she says. “Why’d you let me win?”
“I didn’t let you win. You answered it by yourself.”
“You know what I mean.”
Peter’s face scrunches up, bouncing in thought before he finally answers. “I always knew it was going to be you from the start, Michelle. Like since we first joined Decathlon. You’re like the smartest person I’ve ever met. And you made everyone binders. And I looked at you today when Liz was running the team and… I just know this means a lot to you, so it means a lot to me that you got the chance to take the title.”
The tears are back, welling up in the corner of her eyes – this time around, they’re being pushed by visceral joy.
“I don’t know what to say,” she says.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he replies. “There’s something that I want to do. If you let me.”
“What?”
Peter pauses, shifting his feet – confusing Michelle more than ever until he steps forward slowly, taking her hand in one of his, using his other hand to tuck her hair behind her ear.
“I like when your hair is down, by the way.”
“Thank yo–”
He kisses her. It’s quick. It's a peck. But the tingle on her lips can last forever.
“I probably just ruined the entire friendship that we just made over this Hell Week, but you’re cool and smart and funny and pretty and I–”
She kisses him again, this time slower as a way to memorize what it’s like to be this close to Peter Parker. When she pulls away, he’s looking at her in a way that he’s never done before.
Michelle will probably never get used to the feeling that’s rising in her stomach. Her head feels light and her heart is soft and warm – making her cheeks flush.
It’s like there’s something floating in her stomach that connects to her heart, tugging on the strings and making her feel like she’s damn near flying.
She couldn’t quite name what it was at that moment. It's only years later when Peter and Michelle talk about the night they first kissed that she finally calls them what they truly were.
Butterflies.