"You do not—Peter, that was so not your fault. And even if it was, which it wasn't, if they're not being… if they're not treating you right, that isn't cool. It's not okay. You need to tell someone, Peter, you need to—to—"
"Who am I supposed to tell, Ned? My social worker just says things are 'adequate' when she comes. And—and they are adequate, I guess. I mean, they feed me, and I go to school, and—"
"Do they hit you?"
Peter flinches.
"Peter!"
"They don't!" Peter tries to backtrack, but Ned already looks scandalized. "It's not—it's not really hitting. It's just… they push me around sometimes, when I'm not… it's not like they actually hurt me."
Ned sets his half-eaten pizza on the sidewalk, looking nauseous.
"You have to get out of there, man."
Peter laughs bitterly. "And go where?"
"Maybe my parents—"
Peter's raised eyebrow slices through the rest of Ned's sentence.
"Fine, so not that. But there has to be somewhere. That's like, against the law. CPS has to find you a good home."
"I don't think they have to do anything, Ned."
Ned gets to his feet so abruptly that Peter startles and nearly drops his own plate.
"Peter," he says, and Peter has never heard Ned's voice so stern. Almost like an adult's. "What do you think Ben would say if he know how they were treating you? Do you think he'd want that? No way, man. You were like, the best thing that ever happened to him. He even told you so."
"That was before I got him killed," says Peter, sharper than he means to.
But Ned doesn't back down.
"I knew Ben too," he says. "And that's bullshit. He loved you, Peter. Of course he followed you, because that's what responsible parents are supposed to do. He wouldn't regret that. But this?" He gestures at Peter, scrawny and pathetic with his broken glasses and increasingly threadbare clothes, face still swollen from crying. "Ben would never, ever want this for you, dude."
Back in his basement corner that evening, dryer clanking next to his head like it's full of silverware instead of towels, Peter listens to his uncle's voice play over and over in his head like scratched vinyl.
"Are you happy, Peter? " the phantom Ben says.
Then, You? You're the best thing that ever happened to me."
Upstairs, a door slams.
"Not everything has a why. Sometimes things are just hard. "
Mr. Arlington starts to shout. His words are lost beneath the clamor of the dryer, but he sounds especially virulent tonight. A second later, Mrs. Arlington's rises to join his.
Ned's voice joins Ben's.
"That's what responsible parents are supposed to do ."
Would Ben really hate him? For the last two months it's seemed like a given, but tonight he isn't so sure.
A third voice joins the shouting upstairs. It's unintelligible, but it sounds like a woman. The neighbor must have come to yell about the volume on the TV again.
"You don't have to let him push you around, Pete," says Ben, handing Peter an ice pack. Peter presses it to his elbow, bruised from when Flash slammed the locker on him. "Why do you?"
"It's just easier," says Peter, shrugging.
"I know for a fact you told him off for calling Ned names last week. Mrs. Leeds called me."
Peter smirks, even though his elbow is throbbing.
"To tell you what a hero I am?"
"Ah. No. To tell me that if my kid gets hers in a fight ever again she'll have you hauled away to juvie. But I read between the lines." They share a grin. Ben's fades first. "I don't get it, pal. You'll defend Ned but not yourself?"
Peter sighs. "It's just different when it's someone else. It's easier. I don't know why."
Ben's expression goes fierce, like it only does on the rarest occasions.
"You," he says, "are allowed to defend yourself. You're just as important as anyone else, Peter Parker. And don't you forget it."
The memory fades. So do the voices upstairs.
"Responsibility is not a choice."
The door slams again.
The fight is over.
Peter starts checking his email after school.
It takes just a couple of days to work out a system. Ned has some allowance saved, which he uses to buy Peter a bus pass, and Peter starts spending two nights a week riding between Queens and his new school, because the Arlingtons don't care what time he gets home so long as he doesn't ask for dinner when he misses it, whereas Ned's mom would throw a conniption if she knew how her son was spending his Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
Through a small period of trial and error, they discover that Midtown High is the least conspicuous place to meet up. The doors are open for after-school activities, and all the students are so nerdy no one questions the extra pair of dorky teens hanging around, meaning they have free reign over the school's many expensive amenities. He and Ned build Lego sets in the band room, blow things up in the chem lab, and shoot hoops in the gym. Peter even uses the shop tools to solder his broken glasses back together.
Ned sneaks him food, too. Bigger meals than he would get at the duplex. And as long as he's not there, there's nothing for Mrs. Arlington to hit.
Life gets better. Bearable, even.