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“Rent’s due on the first.”
“Yeah, I know. I know,” kid says, envelope in hand. He looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here, Lenny watching as he takes a deep breath– grounds himself before looking back up at him. “I know this isn’t how it’s supposed to be but–”
“You paying ahead?” Lenny asks warily, eyeing the envelope in his hand carefully. Nothing good ever came from tenants that wanted to pay in advance like this, nothing that Lenny wanted to know about and sure as hell didn’t want the cops to get nosy about.
He ran a respectable building, decent. He had some good tenants and more than a couple assholes but they all paid their rent on time. If they didn’t, he kicked them out. Simple.
Lenny didn’t need trouble and this kid had trouble written all over his face, envelope full of cash in his hand and a faint bruise on his face that looks suspiciously like it was from a fight.
“Yeah if that’s… okay,” he says, Lenny squinting at him as he says. “Just for this month and for the next.”
Lenny frowns, watching as Peter Parker from 4B shifts his weight back and forth– clearly wanting to say something but holding himself back.
Lenny had a rule with tenants, one that’s helped him keep him and his business out of things he shouldn’t.
Tenants came and went, cycling through for whatever reason. As long as they paid their rent on time, Lenny didn’t make a habit of asking–or caring– about anything beyond that.
If he did, that made their business his business.
Lenny wasn’t interested in that.
“Yeah alright,” Lenny says, surprising himself just as much as he surprises Peter as he reaches a hand out. Peter carefully hands the envelope over to him, Lenny grabbing it but his hand at the same time, bringing his other hand up and pointing in his face.
“One time only alright? I don’t want any trouble,” he says for good measure, reasoning it out in his mind that if the worst Peter Peter Parker in 4B could do was to give him rent a month or two in advance, than he could handle that.
Peter just stares at him, nodding once before Lenny lets go of his hand– opening the envelope and rifling through the pack of bills there.
Lenny was a quick count and a better judge of character, squinting at the cash in his hand and at Peter Parker in 4B.
Kid didn’t look like he would get into things he shouldn’t when he first showed up, wrumpled t-shirt and a smile on his face. He looked a little too young to even be renting from him but he had cash and an eagerness about him that Lenny took for what it was– a reliable source of income for however long he’d be staying there.
Standing in front of him, holding himself up like he knows he’s being judged and with a bruise that Lenny’s not even sure is there now, there’s something off about him.
Lenny doesn’t need trouble but he does need this cash, already mentally spending it as he nods in acceptance.
“You’re good for January but February, you pay one month at a time alright?” Lenny says gruffly, Peter nodding a few times with a ghost of a smile on his face.
“I will, yeah. I will. Thanks,” he says before turning away, Lenny eyeing him up and down. He’s walking with a limp, or trying not to– a sliver of curiosity flowing through him.
It flows through and leaves as Lenny shuts the door and locks it behind him.
Curiosity only got you into trouble.
So long as Peter Parker– or anyone– paid their rent, Lenny didn’t give a shit either way.
There was something odd about the guy in 4B.
Charlene took a drag of her cigarette, propped up against the open door of her apartment– waiting for that good for nothing Mikey to get back up here with the booze.
She shouldn’t never sent him out in this weather, knowing he’d sooner fuck off with the cash she gave him than to actually show up with anything they needed.
He probably left just to get away from this dump, the only reason Charlene’s out here with the door open rather than holed up in her apartment being because the heat somehow worked better in the fucking hallway than it ever did in the apartment itself.
It’s how Charlene knows something’s wrong with the new guy in 4B, watching him as he lumbers up the stairs and sighs a few times before shaking himself– walking past her apartment with a half-smile on his face.
“You lost?”
“Huh?” He asks, Charlene coughing a few times as he stops in place.
“Ain’t you a little young to be living on your own?” Charlene asks, blunt and to the point as the guy from 4B just stares at her– a guarded expression on her face that confirms for her enough of what she’s already guessed. “You a runaway?”
He stares, narrows his eyes a little before looking at her up and down. Charlene immediately feels defensive, an arm crossed across her chest and eyes narrowing before he disarms her by saying, “if I was a runaway, why would I be living in an apartment?”
“Lenny’d take anyone with cash,” she counters, seeing the smirk on his face as she presses forward. “So what’s your deal, kid? If you ain’t lost and you ain’t a runaway then–”
“No deal. Just minding my business,” he says, walking away from her and shoving his hands in his pockets– Charlene yelling out after him.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!” Charlene calls out but the guy in 4B doesn’t answer, scowling as he unlocks his door and closes it behind him.
“Fuck it. Don’t know why I even care,” she mutters under her breath before taking another drag of her cigarette. That’s what she gets for trying to make some damn conversation in this place, trying to warm up everyone’s spirits and shit.
Charlene didn’t know why she even tried.
Maybe next time she wouldn’t.
“Mama?”
“Hm?” Miranda asks absentmindedly, rifling through the paper bills she has in her hand. A mortgage bill for a house they don’t own anymore, a credit card bill that she definitely hadn't started, mailers and a bunch of other shit that Miranda was tired of getting– tired of running from.
It wasn’t her fault that two of them had been blipped and that her husband– ex -husband now– had used their names to open lines of credit when the world was turned upside down. Miranda couldn't have ever guessed that the man that she’d said vows to would end up royally screwing them over– even if her own mother tried to defend him.
“It was a hard five years, Miranda,” she’d said tiredly, Miranda reaching the tipping point of her patience before finally hanging up– indignant that her own mother would try and defend a man who had done such a thing.
It didn’t matter to her that he’d helped her when Miranda and Kelly were gone or dust or whatever it is that people wanted to call it– didn’t matter that he struggled or was in pain all those years without them. Not when he refused to accept the reality that his wife and daughter were back again, not when all the debts that he’d accumulated and the financial trouble that he’d gotten in led to them losing their house and their belongings– forcing her to move with her daughter to this little hell hole that made Miranda cringe to think of being.
When Kelly doesn’t immediately respond, Miranda lifts her head up– looking down to her daughter then up to the person that’s captured her attention– ready to dissuade her from staring and causing more trouble than either of them could be in.
What she sees surprises her, Kelly’s penchant for staring at people and dissuaded by the interest that she can see from the way that the kid is standing in front of presumably his own mailbox– holding something in his hand that she can’t decipher from this angle.
Not that she needs to, nudging at Kelly’s shoulder as she says, “come on. Let’s head home.”
“He’s sad ,” Kelly loudly whispers, Miranda inwardly cringing as she looks from her daughter then up to the kid– watching as he sniffs and then glances up, a broken looking smile on his face.
Miranda instantly feels for him, an instinct to ask him how he’s doing or to see if there was some way that she could help.
That instinct is stamped down when she remembers that she doesn’t have anymore to spare, averting her eyes just as the kid wipes a tear away with the back of his hand.
“Maybe he’s having a bad day,” she says, thinking of herself and of the holiday plans that the two of them have– the lack of holiday plans all things considered.
She thinks of the kid and his tears, of the loneliness she hadn’t ever thought would be something she’d understand in her life before— looking at him once more and nodding her head.
He catches her eye, the ghost of a smile on his face before nodding in return— solidarity between strangers before hurrying Kelly out of the lobby and up the stairs.
Life dealt her a bad hand— five years gone, insurmountable debt, and a daughter who still asked questions about the neighbors like she did when they lived upstate.
“Can we get ice cream?” Kelly asks, throwing Miranda out of her thoughts— the sad boy with tears in his eyes long forgotten now as her daughter runs up the stairs.
Miranda’s thoughts still linger before shaking them away.
“Yeah, let’s get some ice cream,” she says as she walks up behind her.
The boy is quiet, too quiet.
Raymond thinks he’s too young to be that quiet.
He’s come in several times in the past three weeks— trying out different things, cans of soda and a grab and go sandwich. He looks a little lost, though how much of that was location or otherwise Raymond didn’t know.
What he did know is that the kid was a new regular, despite coming in at different times throughout the day. Raymond had a good eye for these kinds of things, years of owning this shop telling him the difference between people who were just passing by and those who were moving in.
New kid was quiet, kept to himself— trying to find a new usual. Didn’t look like a transplant from the way he carried himself, Raymond could sniff out those Midwest wannabes in an instant, but he was clearly new here — cash in hand to pay for his purchases and a guarded look about him that Raymond couldn’t figure out the reason why.
He has another opportunity when the kid strolls in again at half past four, bell ringing and his crossword in hand— giving the kid a quick headnod that the kid answers back with his own.
“You ordered gherkins, Ray?” Damian calls out from the back, Raymond seeing the way the kid seems to miss a step— looking to the counter as Ray leans back.
“Marcelo was overstocked!” He calls out before leaning back, kid having resumed his path towards the back to the drinks.
Raymond watches over his glasses as the kid seems to consider what’s in front of him, something fidgety about him through the security mirror. There’s a moment where Raymond wonders if his gut is wrong and if the kid is looking to cause some trouble, only to watch as his shoulders slump and he seems to mutter something to himself– grabbing a drink and closing the door before meandering through the aisle.
Raymond keeps an eye on him but his gut is never wrong, watching as the kid seems to get lost in thought about something as he browses the chip aisle– Raymond not missing the way his eyes seem to glaze over the food as if he’s searching for something that’s not there.
Raymond knows that look, knows what it is to be that quiet and to look so lost. Five years of living on his own, keeping hold over his store when half the world was dust– having a sense of camaraderie with the people who were left behind.
Nearly a year after the Blip and it still didn’t get any easier, still didn’t get better adjusting to a “normal” that everyone who came back wanted to have.
The kid is too young to be looking as he does, too young to be carrying whatever weight is on his shoulders.
Too young, Raymond thinks, to be this particular kind of quiet.
He walks over to the counter, a few bottles of soda wrangled together in his hand and a bag of potato chips.
“Hey,” he says with a nod, Raymond sitting up and putting his crossword aside as he reaches for the stuff on the counter.
“This all for you today?”
“Yeah, thanks,” the kid says, giving a half-smile before looking at the lottery tickets available, Raymond nodding to them as he starts to ring him up.
“You eighteen?”
“Huh?”
Raymond scans the chips before pointing to the lottery tickets. “Gotta be eighteen to buy one.”
“Oh,” the kid says, Raymond confirming what he already guessed from the way that he shakes his head. “No, sorry just– no, I don’t want one. Thanks.”
Raymond doesn’t miss the way that the kid didn’t actually answer the question about being eighteen but just deflected– watching as he digs some bills out of his pocket.
“You like pickles?” Raymond asks, working on a hunch and seeing it confirmed yet again as the kid looks back up at him– eyes big as moons as he blinks at him in confusion.
“Uh…”
“Got a new shipment,” Raymond says, gesturing towards the back. “Looking to get rid of them. Give you one for a dollar, if you want.”
The kid lets out a little huff of laughter, taking his hands out of his pockets and smoothing out the wads of bills– Raymond watching in earnest as the kid’s hands brush over them.
They’re bruised with little crusts of blood as if he’s just gotten in from a fight, the gut instinct that he has that the kid isn’t trouble conflicting with the information in front of him as the kid says, “I’d um, I’d like one, actually.”
“You got it. Hey Damien! Grab me some of the gherkins!”
“Do you um, actually–” the kid begins, Raymond looking back to him. “Do you do sandwiches here?”
Raymond shakes his head, seeing the way the kid’s face falls as Damien comes in from the back with a mini jar of gherkins– looking from Raymond to the kid before settling back to Raymond.
“You wanted one, boss?”
“Two, please,” the kid offers, Damien nodding before handing off the one jar to Raymond– rushing to the back to grab another as Raymond sets it on the counter.
“We used to do sandwiches but our supply chain got all fucked up during the Blip,” Raymond explains, a business decision that he doesn’t have to yet wants to anyway. “Hard to get food licenses now when the people who were in charge were gone. Now they’re back and–” Damien hands him the jar, Raymond scanning it before continuing, “you know how it goes.”
“Yeah, I do,” the kid replies and Raymond can sense that he does– wondering if the sadness that’s radiating off of him had more to do with the Blip than anything else.
Almost a year since everything got put “back together” or whatever the so-called Avengers were calling it and it was still fucking things over. Raymond wouldn’t be surprised if this was the cause for the kid to be so quiet.
“I’m Ray,” he says, taking the kid’s money and dividing up the change.
“Peter,” he offers, Raymond nodding before gesturing to the back.
“That’s Damien. You ever want something special, we can figure something out. You new around here huh?”
“Sort of,” Peter says as Raymond offers up his change, Raymond putting his things in a bag before handing it over.
“You let me know how those gherkins taste, alright?”
“I will. Thanks, Ray,” Peter says with a smile, one that doesn’t quite reach his eyes but it’s at the very least almost genuine.
Raymond watches as Peter takes his stuff and walks out of the store, watching still as he meanders across the sidewalk to the apartment buildings across the street.
He was too young to be that quiet, too young to be living on his own.
Raymond sat back in his chair, sighing as he grabbed the crossword puzzle.
Then again, Raymond thinks as he settles in– when were any of them ready for the world?
You just woke up and did your best. It’s what Raymond’s learned.
It’s all anyone could do anyway.
“Hey Sid!”
“It’s Siddharth,” he mutters under his breath, forcing a smile when he leans over and looks to who is calling him.
It’s Ryan– jackass– a grin on his face as he gestures to the front. “We got incoming.”
Siddharth’s face gets tighter, wondering why Ryan couldn’t just handle it himself since it was his job to handle intake– getting out of his chair and walking towards the front.
“Knew you could handle it, Sid,” he says, clapping a hand to his shoulder as Siddharth narrows his eyes.
“It’s Siddharth,” he repeats, a correction that he knows Ryan will never care about before shaking that off of him– looking to who was at the front and seeing a kid that looks… familiar.
“Hi, how can I help?”
“Hi, I was– sorry,” he says, “sorry, I should go.”
“Do I know you from somewhere?” Siddharth asks, watching in real-time as he freezes.
“No…” he replies, but it’s more of a question– Siddharth shaking his head before it comes to him.
“Laundry guy,” he says, snapping his fingers. “Right?”
The kid relaxes then, Siddharth smirking as he continues, “don’t worry, not everyone in the building knows about it.”
“They don’t?” He asks, Siddharth nodding as he folds his arms over chest.
“Not unless you want to be the one tell everyone that you’re the reason three of our machines are broken,” he says with a knowing look, the kid looking sheepish once more as he scratches the back of his neck. “I have a lot of pink shirts because of you.”
“Sorry about that,” the kid offers, Siddharth feeling a wave of compassion for him– the reason this kid feels so familiar reminding him of what it’d been like for him when he first moved out on his own.
Not knowing how to do his own laundry, scrambling to pay rent in a shitty apartment. Siddharth wasn’t living in a penthouse but their building was an actual step up from where he’d been before– though from the looks of the kid in front of him, this was probably the first place he’d ever stayed at on his own.
“What brings you to FEAST?” Siddharth asks by way of changing the subject, watching as the kid seems to come back to himself.
“I uh, I don’t know,” he says, a wistful expression on his face as he looks up at the logo at the front– a part of him actually glad now that Ryan had called him up to the front.
Ryan only showed up here for community service hours, not because he wanted to help– a part of Siddharth wondering what the point of it was if he wasn’t going to learn anything from it.
He pushes his own thoughts aside and focuses back on his neighbor– looking just as lost as he had when Siddharth had overheard him swearing at the machines before he did his own laundry.
“You need some help?” Siddharth asks kindly, watching as the kid’s eyes focus back on him and searches his face. He knows what he’s asking– something vulnerable and something big, something that it would take a lot of guts to ask for, considering they both live in the same apartment.
The kid in front of him couldn’t have known that for Siddharth, their apartment building was better than he’d lived in before– that not even a few years ago, Siddharth was living on the streets.
FEAST helped him when he most needed it. Even if Siddharth could still see that with a roof over their heads and a shitty landlord, that were they lived wasn’t that much better.
“Maybe,” the kid answers honestly, eyes dancing up over to the logo.
“You came to the right place,” Siddharth says with a smile, waiting patiently for the kid’s eyes to meet his once more.
He smiles, nodding a few times before saying, “yeah, I know.”
Siddharth grins, looking down to grab some papers as he begins to say, “Well as Ryan said, I’m in charge of intake. We don’t need a lot, we just need–”
He looks back up only to see the back of laundry guy– going to call out and say something before he stops.
“What was that about? You running them away now, Sid?” Ryan’s voice booms out as he walks back in, candy bar in his hand and a flare of annoyance running through him at the realization that Ryan had just been waiting for it to be handled before he showed back up.
“He’ll come back when he’s ready,” Siddharth says knowingly before glaring back at Ryan. “And it’s Siddharth .”
“Alright, alright,” he says, putting his hands up– Siddharth ignoring him as he heads back to the back to finish packing up the canned goods for their next drive.
He doesn’t know that for sure, and even if he did– wouldn’t be hard pressed to convince Ryan of that.
Siddharth knows what it’s like to need help.
Thinking back to the kid’s face, the faraway expression in his eyes—
Siddharth hopes he takes it.
Beverly heaved a sigh as she adjusted her hold of her canvas bag, walking forward from the subway steps.
She was bone tired, already dreading the broken heater that she’s going home to and wondering why she hadn’t taken up her Aunt Ida on her offer to move out of the city and with her upstate.
You know why you didn’t , Beverly thinks as she redistributes the weight of her canvas bag– the bulk of the contents being the handwritten essays and exams that she has to grade.
“You went to Yale ,” her Aunt Ida moaned anytime she would call to check in– usually to say that she wouldn’t be able to make it up there for mass or for brunch. “Why are you wasting your time when you could be teaching where you belong ?”
“There’s no one else,” Beverly would say to her tirelessly, reminding herself of this as she walks from her stop to the front steps of her apartment building.
It was true, despite the savior complex that Aunt Ida always used to claim that she was having. It wasn’t that easy to find anyone qualified to take over these classes now that half the universe came back– Aunt Ida having no way of understanding just how difficult those five years were.
“If anyone doesn’t want to do the work to get ahead, then that’s up to them,” Aunt Ida would say with a sniff, Beverly rolling her eyes over the phone and wondering how someone who could spend Thanksgivings at soup kitchens could have so little compassion for those who had fallen on hard times.
Beverly went to Yale but it was chance– luck even, born out of a privilege that her family’s money provided her. She’d been naive, stupid, arrogant even in those first few years out of college– living the kind of life that she could barely recognize for herself now, five years and some change after the universe was changed in an instant.
Half the universe disappeared and all her family’s money had gone with it– foolish investments that her father had made coming to light and the rest of it disappearing with bank errors that no one was alive to fix.
Beverly had spent the past five years scraping the bottom of the barrel for jobs that could help her, fancy education degree from Yale meaning nothing when half the world was gone and no one could make sense of what was up. Teaching community college classes was the only option she had available to her for a time, until it became the thing she looked forward to.
Teaching GED classes was a natural conclusion, an additional help to those who she could finally see needed her more than the private school trust fund kids she used to be.
Now with the world trying to go back to what it was before even if Beverly herself never could, Beverly wouldn’t abandon these people when they needed her– not when Beverly understood exactly what was blocking them from getting further in life.
Not when Beverly understood what it was like to live life forgotten and left behind, as so many of her students were– struggling to keep track of their paperwork or even to have paperwork to begin with.
She’s thinking about her students, these people who need her help and who she’s spent years trying to help, when she trips– hands extended out and about to hit the pavement face first.
Beverly doesn’t even get the chance to think before she’s caught– canvas bag falling hard to the ground even if she doesn’t, righting herself and looking up at the person who’s seemingly caught her from having to deal with her lackluster first aid kit.
“Are you okay?” He asks– Beverly’s feeling of embarrassment rising when she sees that a kid helped her from falling flat on her ass.
“Yes, I’m– thank you,” she says, flustered and her shoulders aching from the quick loss of the weight– the kid being kind enough to grab her bag. Beverly’s stomach drops when she sees that the bottom of it has soaked through, ice from the ground already melting as she shakes her head.
“Oh no. No, no, no, no, no,” she says, grabbing the bag from him and rushing to the stoop of the apartment complex next door to them– the kid awkwardly hovering behind her as she starts to frantically take her books out.
“Is everything–”
“I can’t get any of this wet,” she says frantically, hands shaking and kicking herself for being distracted. Her whole purpose in teaching this class was to help these people and here she was, making it more difficult for them. It’s one thing for them to not turn in any assignments but for her to have destroyed their hard work? When half of them didn’t even have access to laptops or anything that could–
“I can help you carry them, if you want,” the kid offers, Beverly freezing before turning over her shoulder. “We live in the same building, right?”
Beverly’s instinct is to lie, the kid seeing the way she tenses up as he puts his hands up in defense.
“Sorry, I’m– I’m not trying to be creepy, I’ve just– I’ve seen you around. Which… probably doesn’t make you feel any better,” he stammers awkwardly, Beverly standing there and feeling more ridiculous by the minute.
Here she is worried about papers when she’s likely seconds away from getting mugged, feeling her heart skip a beat when the kid reaches for something in his pocket.
“Hey, wait–”
“No, no, I’m–” one hand is still extended out in a placating gesture, the other slowly reaching out of his pocket and bringing out a stub of paper, one that looks familiar as he slowly brings it front of him. “You’re the one who offers the GED classes, right?”
Beverly studies him then for a second, a hot wave of shame for thinking the worst of a person when she had just been priding herself on doing good – the ever creeping wonder if she’ll ever be able to be rid of the privilege she was born with coming back as a stark reminder as her shoulders loosen.
“I do. I’m– these are my student’s papers,” she says forlornly, looking at some of the wilted and frankly destroyed assignments.
“Oh, I’m– I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she says, shaking her head and forcing away the pity party that she shouldn’t be having as she redirects back to him. “Did you want to take a class?”
The kid looks sheepish then, thumb fiddling with the paper in his hand– a tab from the flyer that she’d put up in the apartment’s community board a few weeks ago.
“I did yeah, but I um– my phone’s disconnected so,” he says, tapping the paper against his thumbs and making Beverly feel even more like shit for feeling sorry for herself in all of this. “I was hoping to run into you.”
Beverly smirks, the kid sheepishly smiling at her before he motioning to the sidewalk. “I didn’t do that on purpose.”
“If you did, I’ll have to fail you,” she teases, the kid blinking at her before breaking out into a grin– Beverly extending her hand out.
“I’m Beverly. Everyone calls me Bev.”
“Peter,” he says as he shakes her hand. “Parker.”
“Alliteration. You’re a great student already, Peter. I won’t forget that name,” she says, taking a deep breath then exhaling. “I’ll take you up on that offer to help me with this and then we can figure out about classes, alright?”
He nods, Beverly handing him her grading book which seemed to be the least damaged– small things to be thankful for.
More than that, she thinks to herself as they quietly work to get everything together– Peter being a living, breathing reminder that she didn’t do what she did for herself or even to make herself feel better.
She did it to help .
Peter Parker walking beside her– holding the papers of students that she genuinely hopes he’ll join–
Beverly reminds herself of that.