Chapter Text
MJ’s feet ached. She kept glancing at the clock, begging the minutes to move more quickly. She had so much homework to do when she got home. She just willed Ned to hurry up and get there so she would have something to do. She had already wiped down the clean counter eight times over the course of the evening.
The bell dinged and a relieved smile came over her face. Ned rushed in, carrying an enormous LEGO box. “Sorry that I took so long.” He smiled sheepishly and gestured at the box, “It was on sale.”
“I thought you were Christmas shopping?”
“I was… for myself.” He sat down on the counter and put the box at his feet. “How’s your shift going?”
“I am so bored I might actually rip my hair out, so, you know.” She turned away from him and started poking around in the donut case, looking for one he might like. “Do you want something festive?”
“Sure.”
“How was the homework?” She asked as she put the donut on a plate, not paying close attention.
“It wasn’t too bad, to be honest. If you’re really tired, I don’t mind sending you my answers.”
MJ turned back to face him and put the plates in front of him. “I may take you up on that.” She leaned on the counter, “The amount of busywork we’re getting assigned in chemistry is actually getting ridiculous.”
“Literally.”
MJ noticed her boss looking out of his office and busied herself with pretending to refill a napkin holder.
“Aren’t you eating?” Ned asked, holding his donut.
“What?”
“You put two plates down, I figured you were eating.” She looked at the counter in front of Ned and saw a second down, placed to the left of him.
“No, that’s for—” She cut herself off. Why had she put another donut down? “I have no idea why I did that. I’m exhausted, I guess.”
“I’m definitely sending you the answers.” He shook his head, “Is everything okay? I know you haven’t been sleeping much.”
“Yeah, of course.” She smiled in a way that she hoped was convincing.
The bell rang again and a boy around their age walked in.
“Hi, can I help you?” He looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him.
“Yeah, hi.” He smiled tightly, “Can I just have a coffee, please?”
“Sure, can I have a name for the order?” She looked around the empty coffee shop. “I know you’re the only person here but it’s, like, policy.”
“Yeah, of course. It’s Peter.”
A flash of recognition. “Right, Peter Parker.” He was the boy who had come in and formally introduced himself to her. Ned’s theory was that he had wanted to ask her out but chickened out at the last minute.
His face paled, “You know me?”
“Yeah.” She picked up a cup, “You came in and introduced yourself a few weeks ago.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” He seemed almost disappointed. She turned away and poured him a cup of coffee. She put the lid on it and handed it to him. “Thank you so much.”
“No problem, have a nice night.”
“You, too.” He gave her one last gentle smile before he turned and walked out. MJ walked back over to Ned.
“That guy is so in love with you.” Ned smiled, “But he’s so awkward about it.”
MJ laughed, “He is not in love with me, he’s just kind of weird. which I respect.”
Ned shook his head, “He looks sweet.”
“We don’t even know how old he is. He could be a twenty-five-year-old creep.”
“Sure. Do you want to hang out after school tomorrow? We could have a little last-day celebration.”
“I don’t know how much of a celebration it would be, they always pile on the homework for Christmas break. I can’t anyway, I have to go to a family Christmas party.” She frowned. “Maybe I’ll start a good fight this year. Nana and Uncle Jeff are always ready to have a go.”
“Please don’t get yourself grounded.”
She shrugged, “I gotta do what I gotta do.”
MJ was putting away books from her backpack when there was a gentle knock at her bedroom door. “Yeah?”
Her dad opened the door and leaned on the doorway, “Michelle Jones.”
“Father.” She inclined her head.
“We are going to a family party tonight.”
“This is true.”
“I want to make a deal.”
MJ put her hands on her hips, “What kind of deal are we talking about?”
“If you keep your mouth shut and do not cause an argument,” he pulled a twenty dollar bill out of his pocket, “this is yours.”
Her eyes shifted between the money and her dad’s face, “Make it fifty.”
“Absolutely not.”
She shrugged, “Then I can’t make any promises.”
“Twenty-five.”
“Fifty.”
“Thirty.”
“Forty-five.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Fifty.”
“Forty.”
MJ grinned, “You have a deal.”
“I mean it, one political comment and the deal’s done.”
“I’ll keep my mouth shut, don’t worry. I can be bought, that's why I serve coffee every day after school.”
Her father smiled at her, “We’ll leave in an hour, please wear the dress your mom bought you.”
“That’s where I draw the line.”
Two hours later, MJ was sitting on the couch in her grandmother’s apartment, wearing the dress her mother had bought her. She mindlessly played with her necklace while staring off into space. She wished she had brought a book with her, but her parents hadn’t allowed her to take it out of the car.
“Why do you look so glum, Michelle?” Her grandmother came and sat next to her on the couch.
“I’m just tired, Nana, I had school today.”
“Oh, I see.” Her nana looked her up and down. “That’s an… interesting necklace. It certainly makes a statement. Where did you get it?”
“It broke during the whole Mysterio thing in London. Someone bought it for me on the Europe trip.”
“I see. Did your boyfriend buy it for you?”
MJ laughed, “I don’t have a boyfriend, Nana.”
“Then who bought it for you?”
Her mind was blank. She could remember receiving the necklace, remember it breaking, remember a kiss… that couldn’t be right. “Uh— my friend, Betty. I bought her one, too.” The lie came fairly easily, but she was dumbfounded. How could she have forgotten?
“Oh, that’s nice. I like that you have close girlfriends.”
MJ smiled tensely, “Yeah…”
“Ned, I have a weird question.” MJ was lying on her back on Ned’s bed, her head hanging down on the side. He was sitting on the floor, painstakingly building a Star Wars LEGO set.
“Shoot,” he said, without looking up.
“Do you remember me having a boyfriend?”
“Yeah, of course. You dated—” He looked up, his eyebrows furrowed. “Who did you date?”
“That’s the thing, I can’t remember.”
“Okay, that’s definitely weird…” He chewed his lip for a moment, “Was it Brad?”
“Ew, no, he’s creepy.”
“Right, what did he even do again? I feel like everyone hates him and I can’t even remember why.” Ned went back to building his LEGO set.
MJ shrugged, “I don’t know, just a weird vibe, I guess.”
“Did you date Abe?”
“Are you just going to start listing every guy we know?”
“...No.”
“Don’t worry about it, I just thought it was weird. Do you think the Blip screwed up my memory?” She mindlessly cracked her knuckles.
“I don’t know, I feel like stuff like that would be reported. I feel like my memory is off, too, though.”
“Yeah?” MJ sat up and took a drink out of her water bottle. She gazed at all the posters and LEGO sets decorating Ned’s room.
“Well, like, the LEGOs, right?”
MJ tilted her head, “What about them?”
“I just.” Ned stood up and pointed to his Death Star. “I remember building this with someone, but when I try to think of who it is, my mind goes blank. And my Palpatine is missing. We definitely didn’t build it together.” MJ shook her head. “I don’t know, it’s weird.”
MJ pulled out her phone and opened her notes app:
1. Black dahlia necklace
2. Boyfriend
3. Ned’s LEGO buddy
“We should keep track.” She showed him the note. “Do you remember anything else?”
By the end of the afternoon, they had a fairly short list:
1. Black dahlia necklace
2. Boyfriend
3. Ned’s LEGO buddy
4. Ned’s roommate for the AcaDeca DC trip and Europe trip
5. Ned helped Spider-Man
6. Why were we at the Statue of Liberty fight?
“Okay, so something is definitely up with Spider-Man, right? Maybe he would know,” MJ said.
“So we need to talk to him,” Ned agreed. “How do we get his attention?”
“MJ, this is embarrassing.”
“I don’t care.”
Ned sighed, “Spider-Man! Spider-Man, please, I need your help.”
The pair were standing on a crowded sidewalk in Queen’s, near Delmar’s. Spider-Man frequented this area, so they were hoping to find him.
“Spidey!” Ned waved his hands around. People were giving him dirty looks as they walked by and MJ scowled at him. “What if someone from school sees us?”
“We graduate in a couple of months, it doesn’t matter.”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
“And perpetuate the damsel in distress stereotype? I don’t think so. I thought you were a feminist, Ned.” MJ grinned.
He rolled his eyes, “You owe me.”
“You can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better. Maybe you should pretend to faint.”
“He’s not even here, he won’t notice us.”
“Yes he will, he has enhanced hearing.”
“How do you even know that?”
“I don’t know.” MJ adjusted her hat, “Get back to work. Dance, monkey, dance!”
“Spider-Man, help!”
“Do you kids need help?” The helpful voice did not, in fact, belong to Spider-Man, but rather an NYPD cop.
“No, sir, we’re okay.” Ned smiled nervously.
“What are you doing, then?”
“We’re trying to get Spider-Man’s attention.”
“I can see that, why?”
MJ shrugged, “We want to meet him.”
The cop shook his head. “My advice: give up. The asshole only shows up when you don’t want to see him. Go home, and do something productive. Just stop yelling in the street.” With that, he walked away.
“Let’s go home, Ned. We’ll make a new plan.”
Their new plan was… to do the same thing over and over again on different streets, at different times of day. It didn’t work. The closest they came was when Spider-Man clearly spotted them, saw that they weren’t in any danger, and then swung away.
“He probably thinks we’re cops,” Ned pointed out.
“Gross, we’re not old enough or ugly enough to be cops.” She shuddered.
Ned shrugged, “We need an actual new plan, I think.”
“Alright, back to the drawing board. We’ll stop thinking about Spider-Man and go back to the memory thing. A big part is the Europe trip, right?” Ned nodded. “We’ll ask Betty for the pictures she took on that trip when we get back to school.
“Hey, Betty.” MJ and Ned approached Betty after their calculus class had ended.
“Hey!” Betty smiled brightly up at them.
“We were wondering if you could send us all the pictures you took on the Europe trip?” MJ asked.
“Of course. Why, though? I thought you didn’t want pictures, MJ?”
“My mom wants them. She says that I’ll want memories from high school when I’m old.” MJ shrugged.
“Oh, okay. I’ll text them to you. You want them, too, Ned?”
“Yeah,” he answered nervously.
MJ could feel that he was struggling not to talk, so she tried to intervene. “Thanks, Betty. We have to get going, we have chem.”
“Oh, perfect. I’m going to physics so I’m walking that way anyway.”
“Cool,” MJ said, cursing her luck.
They left the classroom together while Betty was sending the pictures. “So many of these turned out weird, though.” She said, “There are so many lens flares. And the amount of random birds in pictures is actually insane. Alright, that’s all of them.”
“Thanks.” MJ smiled at her.
“We needed the pictures because we think we forgot about MJ’s boyfriend and we think it has something to do with the Europe trip!” Ned’s sentence blended together so it was barely intelligible, but Betty knew Ned well enough to understand.
“You guys are doing an investigation without me? I’m a journalist!” Betty pouted.
“You’re not actually a journalist, you just do the morning announcements.” MJ pointed out.
Betty glowered at her, “The announcements are important. You would be totally lost without them.” She looked at Ned, “You two obviously need my help. We’ll all go back to my place after school to work on the investigation.”
With that, Betty skipped off to class.
“What the hell, Ned?”
“I panicked! She can see right through me.”
“Why do you have a giant whiteboard?” MJ asked upon entering Betty’s room. It was pale pink all over and meticulously organized. There were books and newspapers in every corner and a giant whiteboard on wheels next to the wall.
“I usually use it to map out school projects or articles. Today, we’re using it to sort all of our information.” She wheeled it to the centre of the room. “Where are your notes?”
MJ held up her phone. “In my notes app.”
Betty shook her head, “Very amateur, but whatever. Read me everything you have and I’ll write it down.” Betty repeated MJ’s list from earlier onto the board.
1.Black dahlia necklace
2. Boyfriend
3. Ned’s LEGO buddy
4. Ned’s roommate for the AcaDeca DC trip
5. Ned helped Spider-Man
6. Why were we at the Statue of Liberty fight?
“We think that Spider-Man might know what’s going on, but every time we try to get his attention, he ignores us,” Ned told her.
“Are you being obvious about it?”
“What do you mean?” MJ asked.
“Well, if you want Spider-Man’s attention, you should pretend to be in danger. You can’t just stand on the street yelling for him, people do that all day.”
Ned looked sheepish, “Right.”
Betty tilted her head and gazed at the whiteboard. She pointed to Ned’s LEGO buddy and MJ’s boyfriend. “These are obviously the same person.”
“I don’t think I would date someone who builds LEGOs in his spare time,” MJ said. She scrolled through the Europe photos while they were speaking. There were a lot of group photos and selfies, but no one that she didn’t recognize or who might have been her missing boyfriend. She put her phone down in frustration
Betty shook her head, “So you’re saying there are two missing people? I don’t think so.”
“I just don’t understand the connection to Spider-Man,” Ned said. “I remember helping him but I don’t know why.”
“Maybe he’s connected to Spider-Man in some way, like a sidekick, and he had to go into, like, super-hiding.” Betty shrugged, “Stranger things have happened in the last few years.”
“That would make sense, actually. Did you hear about the Scarlet Witch fucking up peoples’ memories in New Jersey?” MJ stood up, “We seriously need to talk to him.”
“I heard you losers were trying to get Spider-Man’s attention.” Flash sat down with MJ, Ned, and Betty during lunch. “You guys do know that I’m his best friend and biggest fan, right?”
MJ rolled her eyes, “Go away, Flash.”
“Who even told you that?” Ned asked.
“I did,” Betty said. “I think that Flash is the only person stupid enough to put himself in actual danger to get Spider-Man’s attention.”
“I’m hurt, Betty.” Flash put a hand on his heart in mock offense. “Meet me after school, I’ll get his attention.” With that, Flash walked away.
Flash’s idea of a smart way to get Spider-Man’s attention was to stalk social media to make sure he was in the area, and then run into traffic during rush hour. Perhaps trusting him was… not the greatest idea.
It was like she was watching it happen in slow motion. One second they were all standing on the sidewalk like idiots, and then Flash was running into traffic. She didn’t even have time to scream. A red blur saved him just before getting run over by a truck.
“What is wrong with you, man?”
“Hi, Spider-Man!” Flash exclaimed.
“Never do that again.” Spider-Man shook his head, “I have more important things to deal with than someone running into traffic to get my attention.” He turned to swing away.
“Wait, Spider-Man!” MJ called out. He turned to her expectantly, “I need to talk to you, I think you can help me.”
He shook his head and swung away.
“He’s definitely hiding something,” Betty said. “Maybe he recognized you.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
MJ and Ned went to MJ’s apartment afterwards to do homework. MJ couldn’t focus. Ned sat at her desk and MJ was sprawled on her bed. Her eyes ran over the drawings and posters on her walls, her piles of books. She was a different person from two years ago, what had happened? How did she and Ned even become friends?
“I still feel like something’s missing,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking about it, like, what is going on?”
“I know,” Ned agreed. “Whoever this mystery person is, they were definitely really important to both of us. I just feel so… lonely, I guess. I have you, but I feel like part of myself is missing.”
“I agree.”
“Do you think it’s magic?”
“Magic?” MJ leaned her head on her elbow and looked at him.
“I just have these weird… flashes of memory. I think there was magic, but there are so many blank spots, it’s hard.”
A portal.
A Spider-Man that… wasn’t their own.
Doctor Strange.
“Something happened with Doctor Strange.” MJ blurted out, “We talked to him… we worked with him.”
“I summoned a portal.” Ned’s eyes were wide.
“There was a different Spider-Man there, he wore a different suit from our Spider-Man.”
“There were three of them. At the Statue of Liberty.”
MJ stood up and her phone went flying behind her headboard. “Shit.” She got down on all fours to retrieve it. “You’re right, though, I remember three. One of them caught me.” She couldn’t reach her phone so she stood up and moved her bed away from the wall.
“Do you need help?”
“No, thanks.” She picked up her phone and checked to make sure the screen wasn’t cracked— it was fine, thank God. A Polaroid photo had fallen behind her bed, so she picked that up as well.
“I just don’t understand how we could have forgotten, that’s huge.”
MJ pushed her bed back into place and looked at the photo. She froze. She was smiling with her head on a boy’s shoulder. He had brown, slightly curly hair and was smiling with her. She knew this boy. His face felt familiar, even if she could not remember it. “Ned.” She handed him the photo, “I think we’ve found our mystery guy.”