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Thursday was, perhaps, Tonya’s least favorite day of the week.
Growing up her grandparents had told her stories about gas rationing back in the seventies; how her grandfather had gotten a ticket for exceeding the nationwide speed limit of fifty-five miles per hour. How they had taken to walking and biking to work. How they had woken up hours before the sunrise to go park their cars in line on their assigned days to get gas.
They were stories from a vastly different time and, as a young girl in an age where superheroes and gods from other worlds were commonplace, they seemed to be rooted in more myth than fact. They were sepia-colored memories from an age long past.
But then the blip happened and over three billion people reappeared in the blink of an eye and, suddenly, it was the seventies all over again. Only worse.
“Morning Tabitha,” she murmured to the young mother in front of her in line at the corner store as she joined the queue and huddled deeper into her thick winter jacket. Chuck, Tabitha’s four month old, was swaddled in so many blankets only his eyes and red nose were visible from where he was dozing in his stroller. Tabitha’s smile was wan in the watery light of the street lamps - the sun had yet to rise for the day. “Any rumors on the rations this week?”
Tabitha shrugged. “Someone towards the front was saying he heard that there was a shipment of oranges in but you know those aren’t going to us.” Her look should have been thunderous but it was marred by the bags under her eyes. “Probably the same dried goods as always and maybe orange-flavored vitamin supplements instead of flavorless if we’re lucky.”
The world wasn’t handling the sudden reappearance of so many people very well - inflation was at an all time high world-wide. Rent prices were through the roof leaving homeless shelters bursting at the seams, gas was well over twelve dollars per gallon if you could even afford to have a car and the majority of the blipped and lower classes were getting piss-poor government assistance meal boxes biweekly.
Conservative politicians were arguing against progressive actions like stimulus payments and rent caps and were lobbying for bills that protected the rich and non-blipped and left everyone else to suffer. The Texas governor was facing massive backlash and protests from the Democratic Party for his treatment of the blipped in his state. All over the country people were desperately searching for long lost relatives (or hiding from them) and trying to find some stability.
It wasn’t really working.
In his stroller, Chuck whined and Tabitha shushed him and rolled the stroller back and forth slowly to calm him down. “I hope they have some formula,” she whispered, tapping her fingers on her leg. “I couldn’t find any last week and I’m barely making enough milk as it is.”
“It’ll be there,” Tonya whispered back encouragingly as her stomach twisted. She had only met Tabitha four weeks ago when the rationing had started but they had stood in line together for three hours for their boxes and had become fast friends. Tabitha and Chuck had blipped sitting in their home but her husband had been on a plane at the time. A few weeks after they had blipped back she had gotten a condolence letter from the government letting her know they had identified his remains and had cremated him.
Tonya was grateful everyday that she had been single at the time of the blip and that her parents hadn’t blipped at all and were as happy and healthy as they could be in Iowa. Their farm was flourishing and, if it wasn’t illegal for them to do so, Tonya would be happily living off corn and a variety of squashes in addition to the little meat the government allotted her every two weeks. They were only allowed to keep part of their crops for themselves - the rest was seized and harvested by the state to be distributed to those who needed it.
“I wish they’d hurry up,” Tonya groaned, bouncing on her toes to warm up and blowing hot air onto her fingers. “My boss isn’t going to be happy if I’m late to work again.”
Tabitha gave her a sad look. “They can’t fire you if you’re late because you got stuck in the food line,” she soothed. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Tonya replied back a little sharply before apologizing quickly. “Sorry, just a little stressed.”
“It’s okay, I get it,” Tabitha murmured back, squinting at the rising sun. In front of them, the store owner and government employees unlocked the doors and the line started moving forward.
Tonya’s box, when she got it, was just as disappointing as always: dried pasta, rice and beans, a couple cans of assorted vegetables, one pound of ground meat, one pack of hot dogs, cereal and granola and her monthly allotment of fresh fruit (pears and apples this time). She signed for it and took the time to move her food into the book bag and two over the shoulder bags she had brought to make it more difficult for someone to steal from her. Her neighbor had his box stolen from him on the way home once and he’d had a miserable two weeks trying to scrounge leftovers from others and from FEAST.
Tonya wouldn’t let that happen to her.
Her walk back to her government subsidized housing was quiet and filled with others doing the same. Her small apartment was only a ten minute walk away and all too soon she was restocking her pantry and dorm-style fridge. The studio-style home was silent and, not for the first time, Tabitha’s heart clenched in longing for her thirteen year old cat Toby. He had been old with health problems before the Blip and she hadn’t been able to track him down when she came back. There were plenty of blipped animals that had reappeared but Toby hadn’t and she was having a hard time adjusting to life without him.
“Not now,” she said out loud, brushing the tears from her eyes before they could fall. She couldn’t fall down yet another depression spiral before work - she had been lucky to even find a job and she couldn’t afford to lose it.
Marcel, her friend from undergrad, hadn’t blipped and was now the editor at the Queen’s Herald . It had been total nepotism that had gotten Tabitha her job and she had to work her hardest to make sure the other reporters knew she had earned it too. She had been a good journalist before the Blip but had mostly written online blog-style posts exclusively.
They didn’t have time for that level of frivolity in a post-Blip world.
She changed into her work clothes quickly and reviewed her schedule over a quick breakfast of one of her apples and some crunchy peanut butter she had been saving. She needed to stop by work to grab a camera and then she needed to be at the Queen’s FEAST branch by eleven at the latest; they were doing a massive food drive that day and Marcel had heard a rumor that Spider-Man might be there.
Obviously they couldn’t pass up a photo-op and possible interview with one of the supers that had been at ground zero for the final battle that had brought everyone back. He’d only been back on the streets for a little over a week but it had made all the difference in the world for city-wide morale.
Even if she didn’t get the interview she wanted Tabitha hoped she got the chance to thank him.
Public transportation was even worse post-Blip than it had been (if that was possible) so it took nearly an hour for Tabitha to get to work and, thanks to one of her co-workers stopping her to ask a ton of questions, she nearly missed her train. As it so happened, she arrived at FEAST just before eleven and had to eel through the large crowd of volunteers already milling around under the tents.
“May Parker?” She asked, squinting her eyes to read the cramped handwriting on the wrinkled ‘Hello! My Name Is’ tag on the older woman’s shirt. “I’m Tabitha from-”
“The Herald right?” Ms. Parker asked with a smile, holding out a hand that Tabitha quickly took in her own. “Thanks for coming out! All the volunteers were really excited that this event was going to get some press! We need all the help we can get with spreading the word about the donations - so many people need a little extra help these days you know?”
“I do,” Tabitha responded with a smile of her own. “What you’re doing here is so amazing Ms. Parker. We’re just glad we can support the community.”
“Call me May,” Ms. Parker - May - said as she went back to fidgeting with the already perfectly straight pile of flyers and pamphlets that lined one of the tables. “So how do you want to do this?”
Tabitha held up her camera bag. “I’ll take a few pictures throughout and get some statements from the volunteers and any recipients that are okay with an interview. I think you answered the majority of my questions in the e-mail already but I’d love if you could forward any statistics from today to me later to add in.”
“Of course!” May enthused. “Feel free to talk to any of the volunteers - they’ve all signed the photo waiver you sent over so you should be good to go.”
With that, May disappeared back into the crowd of volunteers, directing traffic with ease and smiling and laughing with a few of the FEAST regulars. Tabitha raised her camera to snap a candid quickly before fumbling around in her bag for her tape recorder.
The small group of volunteers were all cheerful and all too happy to talk to Tabitha about their work. Many of them had blipped themselves and, after receiving such generosity from FEAST, had wanted to pay it forward and help out. She spent most of the interviews trying not to tear up - she had seen very little good in the world in the past weeks and seeing such obvious human generosity was heartwarming. So much so, in fact, she found herself tucking one of the volunteer applications into her bag.
“We couldn’t do this without May,” one of the college-aged volunteers was telling her, earnest in a way rarely seen in a post-blip world. “She just brings so much-”
“It’s Spider-Man!” Someone in the dense throng of people shouted and, nearly as one, the crowd whipped around and cheered for the hero that was leisurely webbing his way in their direction. As he reached the tent he dropped his web and did a series of flips before landing in a perfect crouch near a cluster of FEAST volunteers. He straightened and with a wave at the crowd, he made his way through the mass of volunteers and in Tabitha’s direction. Her breath nearly caught in her throat before she realized he was actually aiming for May.
“Ms. Parker,” he greeted, mask pulling up where the corners of his mouth would be and electronic eyes squinting in a grin.
“Spider-Man,” she said back with a knowing smile of her own. “Thanks for stopping by.”
He reached a hand behind his head to scratch at the mask. “I couldn’t resist such a tempting invitation,” Spider-Man joked back, making May chuckle at him before she shooed him over to the donation table with a ‘go mingle!’.
“I’ve never seen him this close before,” the volunteer Tabitha was interviewing said, awed. “I mean I knew he came to help out sometimes but wow! Do you think he’d sign my t-shirt?”
Tabitha, a little star-struck herself, nodded along. “I think I have all I need,” she said, turning off her recorder. “And if I don’t get a couple quotes from him for the article my editor will kill me.” The volunteer, ‘ Robin ,’ Tabitha thinks, laughs and is quickly pulled away to help accept some clothing donations which leaves Tabitha free to join the line of people waiting for a moment of Spider-Man’s time.
It takes longer than she thought it would to get close to him. Spider-Man listens attentively to each person that speaks to him, graciously and shyly signs autographs or does flips when requested, poses for pictures and squats down to have enthusiastic conversations with every starry-eyed kid that approaches. It would probably scream insincere in any of the Avengers but Spidey has always been a neighborhood hero first and foremost and she can’t help but get a little emotional watching him hug and comfort and interact with everyone who speaks with him.
Tabitha fingers her camera and thinks back to the TMZ photos that were released less than forty-eight hours after the massive fight at the Avengers facility upstate. Blurry images of the destruction, a pixelated video of Pepper Potts screaming into Colonel James Rhodes shoulder, Spider-Man with his shoulders dropping with exhaustion and loss but helping his comrades up and to safety.
None of them had spoken publicly about what had happened and this was her golden chance at an interview that could win her a Pulitzer. Not to mention guaranteeing her job for years to come.
But, as she watched Spider-Man show a curious kid his web shooters, Tabitha made a decision that she knew she would never regret.
Spidey’s eyes immediately clocked her press badge and camera and his muscles tensed but he greeted her just as easily as he had everyone else; smiling and shaking her hand and introducing himself (“I’m Spider-man!” Like everyone didn’t already know who he was). “I’m uh… guessing you have a few questions for me huh?” He asked, fidgeting with the FEAST brochures he had been handing out to every person he met.
Tabitha smiled and, mentally throwing away all of her carefully curated questions, asked, “Can you tell me about the best way people can help out at FEAST? Or get help if they need it?”
The next morning her article was on the front page of the Queens Herald accompanied by a list of resources for those that need help post-blip and a full color picture of Spider-Man being tackled by a group of red-faced and laughing children. It would never win her any prizes and, sure, her boss had sent her a sternly worded e-mail about squandering her ‘golden opportunity’ but, Tabitha had to admit, it was her favorite piece she ever published.