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“Well, I think it’s obvious,” Cindy said.
They all looked sceptically over at her.
“What?” she said innocently, adjusting the bag on her shoulder. “You’re talking about Peter, right?”
Abe shrugged. “Yeah,” he admitted, so she sat down next to him and put down her lunch tray firmly, dismissing the cafeteria’s constant buzzing.
“I have an idea,” she told him confidently.
“Are you gonna tell us?”
“Yeah,” she said, “give me a minute.” Her lunch might be gross but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hungry.
Abe and Sally waited patiently.
“Okay. Let’s think,” she murmured a few bites later, leaning forward. “He’s always late to everything, and super flaky. He sometimes comes to school with bruises under his sweatshirt, and I’d swear he secretly broke his arm a few months ago, remember that day he totally hissed in pain when Leeds touched his elbow?” She ticked both items off on her fingers, then took another swift bite of her mac and cheese, which was unfortunately already cold.
They were hanging off her every word.
“Hmfhnhg,” she swallowed, “ugh. Anyway: irresponsible, injured, and he keeps getting picked up from school by all these random, hot, old people.”
“That’s definitely true,” Sally agreed. “There was that guy that looked like Captain America, and the weird loud dude wearing purple, and that scary ginger lady. She was super beautiful.”
“And what about the blonde buff one?” Abe asked. “He gave Peter like the biggest hug, but Peter just shushed him before he could say anything and jumped in the car.”
“He’s never been rich either, y’know?” Cindy continued. “Full scholarship, duct-taped a hard drive to his laptop, wore the same pair of shoes three years straight. But, like, ever since he started this Stark Internship thing that Flash keeps bullshitting about, he’s got new shoes, new shirts, new hoodies. New StarkPhone. I mean,” she scoffed, “those are expensive.”
“So you’re saying he’s a… prostitute.” Sally looked squeamish.
“Guys, I’m not saying anything,” Cindy splayed her fingers and wiggled them. “But.”
Abe looked thoughtful. “What should we do?”
Cindy shrugged. “I don’t know.”
____
By the end of the week, it was somehow all over the school. Peter Parker was a, quote unquote, ‘male escort’. Everybody from Flash to Mr Harrington had heard the rumours, and Peter had been cornered in the bathroom exactly twenty-three times during Friday by people who asked him if he was doing okay. How does that even happen? He wasn’t even in the bathroom for very long!
Sally had thrust a pamphlet on sexual abuse and making healthy sexual decisions into his hand during the hallway rush between periods one and two. It was the fourth one he’d received this week.
And Peter was not impressed.
“What the- how do people even think of these kinds of things?” he shouted at lunchtime when he was finally sort of free from the stares and whispers. Well, he really wasn’t – everybody in the cafeteria was watching him – but at least he could ignore them from a distance instead of having to listen to their hushed conversations through bio and English lit. The school seemed split pretty evenly into people who were genuinely really concerned, and people who thought it’d be funny to ask him whose dick he sucked last night (answer: nobody’s).
“That apparently you’re sleeping with people to make money?” MJ asked flatly, looking up from her book. “It does mostly fit the clues.”
“BUT IT’S WRONG!” Peter screeched and thumped his head on the table. “Ow,” he said in a small voice, face smushed up in defeat, Ned rubbing circles on his back consolingly.
MJ shrugged at the look Ned gave her. “I’m just saying it’s not the most outlandish theory people could’ve had.”
Peter rolled his head to the side and stared at his lunch. He suddenly just wasn’t hungry anymore. “I guess.”
“They could’ve potentially said you were an alien or an AI or something,” she continued, flicking her fringe out of her eyes carelessly. “Honestly, nobody in this school has any common sense whatsoever.”
“Hnph,” Peter replied with distinct dissatisfaction. “’M not an alien or an AI, I’m a human.” He scowled suddenly. “Mostly.”
“Dude,” Ned chuckled. “What is your life, that you’ve gotta clarify that you’re human but you can’t even?”
“Don’t remind me,” Peter pouted. “D’you reckon there’d be a guidebook to this kind of thing?”
“What?” MJ snorted. “How to secretly moonlight as a spider-themed vigilante while your school thinks you’re selling ass to the Avengers?”
“Probably not,” Peter agreed mournfully, then brightened. “Maybe I should write one!”
“Getting Out Of (But Mostly Into) Sticky Situations: A Memoir By Peter Parker,” Ned sniggered.
“Maybe I should make a PSA,” Peter giggled and stood up just to turn his chair around and sit back down in Cap’s classic pose. “So. You were bitten by a radioactive spider.”
Ned laughed, and MJ unearthed a small smirk, which meant she found it amusing too.
“I can’t wait to tell him I can recite all his PSAs off by heart,” Peter smirked. “None of the other Avengers know he did them.”
“They’ve really missed out,” Ned said.
“Saving it for blackmail,” MJ nodded. “Smart.”
Peter and Ned exchanged glances. “Yeah,” Peter replied, “that’s definitely why I haven’t told them yet.”
MJ rolled her eyes.
____
Cindy, who had luckily only managed to catch the rumour-relevant parts of that conversation, groaned. “He’s not a prostitute? Oh, man, I was so sure.”
Sally shrugged. “Isn’t it a good thing, though? That he’s not sleeping with random people? I mean, it’s illegal. And he’s, like, fifteen.”
“I guess,” she said gloomily, “but now we still don’t know what’s going on with him.”
“We’ll find the answer,” Abe promised her.
“Okay,” she sighed.
The mystery of Peter Parker would have to wait another day.