Chapter Text
Bare feet propped against the wall, hands splayed above her head on the linoleum floor, she plays a steady rhythm in time with the record.
Bass—a tap of her right foot, toes brushing against the softened edges of her Fleetwood Mac tour poster.
Snare—a pretend stick, knuckles knocking against bumps in the linoleum.
Hi-hat—another phantom stick to match, too-short fingernails rapping on a chipped table leg.
“… It’s only me who wants to wrap around your dreams,” she sing-murmurs under Stevie’s voice and the drone of the air conditioner on full blast. “And have you any dreams you’d like to sell? Dreams of loneliness…”
Soon enough, the rhythm becomes a part of her.
Her eyes wander across her wall drowned in two-dimensional idols. Her mind too, over the tower of rank clothes in the hamper, to her stick bag atop the cabinet that’s been collecting dust for weeks, out the window as rays of the midday June sun pierce through faded drapes.
Laundry can wait until the weekend. Drum practice, who knows? She’d need to convince Hobie to convince his boss at the club down in Sunnyside first—and why—before she could have at it on their kit.
But there won’t be a warm dinner waiting for Dad if she doesn’t get a move on.
Gwen Stacy has always known her priorities. No choice on that front, see.
With a groan, she hoists herself off the floor and leaves every door she passes open, letting the next track’s guitar riff waft to the kitchen. But no drums on this one. So not exactly a personal favorite.
There isn’t much in the fridge. Handful of chicken drumsticks, two eggs good enough for a breakfast omelet, a half-rotten tomato that’s still salvageable if she’s smart about it.
That one box of Hamburger Helper in the pantry would do, but that would only lead to another night of Dad grumbling into his bowl about “too much salt.”
Unplanned shopping trip it is, then.
Gwen dances back to her room, pirouettes past the cluttered credenza, smirks because she successfully doesn’t knock over the lamp in second position. She ties up her borrowed Chucks, head bobbing in time to the music, sighing when the phone rings and she has to lift the needle from the record.
One foot barely fitted into the other shoe, she reaches for the phone in the hallway.
“Stacy residence.”
“Gwendy Moira Angela Darling,” the owner of said borrowed Chucks himself says over the static.
She rolls her eyes, smiles at nothing. “What do you want, Lost Boy?”
“My trainers?” Hobie scoffs, sniggering to himself. “Nah, keep ’em, they look good on you… You busy Friday night? I’m playing with the band. Same time, same place. Bring the MJs while you’re at—”
“I ditched them.”
There. Said it. Wasn’t so hard, after all, to tell someone. Anyone.
But that someone says nothing, for too many seconds. Then… “What? Did I hear that right, Gwen?”
“You did.”
“Why?”
Well.
She wedged herself into a gap where she didn’t fit. Got in with those Hell’s Kitchen girls, knowing full well it would burn a hole in her pocket, doing it anyway just to get away from the same, old streets she’s walked in Jackson Heights for the last 16 years of her life. Learned fast that those girls were just an excuse to escape, to belong.
Because as long as there’s a hole, you can still fit some parts of yourself in it.
Only Gwen couldn’t.
She deserved better. So did they.
“It just wasn’t working out,” is all she offers. “And a whole dollar from Queens to Manhattan and back is no joke.”
Hobie hums, like he can taste the lie across miles of telephone lines. “Sorry, love.”
“It’s fine,” she replies, too quickly. “Bummer, but… Whatever. I’ll find another band.”
“If my drummer weren’t such a good egg, you’d be it.”
She snorts. “I’ll tell on you.”
“Yeah? Try me.”
Gwen glances at the clock down the hall. Quarter to four.
“Listen, I gotta go,” said with the receiver hanging precariously on her shoulder, hands too busy tightening her shoelaces.
“Oh? Meeting another mate?”
“Nah, more exciting. Buying vegetables.”
“In a fair world, it’d rain vegetables. Metaphorically, of course. But I wouldn’t say no to a literal demonstration.”
She chuckles.
“Gwendy, you know you can always chill at my pad, if you need?” Hobie goes on. “Shoulder to cry on, a good f—”
Don’t say it.
“I can cry on my own shoulder, thanks.”
“Mighty uncomfortable, that.”
“I’ll live.”
“I know you will, strong girl. I’ve still got your toothbrush, by the way.”
“Trade for the sneakers next time.”
“I don’t trade, I share. Friday night, yeah?”
“I’ll be there.”
Dad’s favorite vegetable stand is Mr. Leeds’s on 93rd, across the way from the Blessed Sacrament. Mostly because they both religiously watch Starsky & Hutch on Saturday nights.
But Gwen doesn’t walk the next block over to Mr. Leeds’s. His face is too familiar.
She strides past the row of stands next to 74th Street Station too. Graffiti-swallowed train cars, cig butts on the platform, the exact number of steps on each of the stairs… Everything, too familiar.
Finally, itchy cotton plastered to her drenched back, forehead beaded, nape burning, she settles for a stand outside a notary on 69th. Every last cent she brought is spent on mushrooms and bell peppers.
Lucky there’s that babysitting job tomorrow for Mrs. Brant across the road. And the summer job she’d start come Monday, at that meat shop two blocks down. They promised she could get a few unsold cuts at the end of every week, if she could man the tills well enough.
The walk back is long, exactly like the day has gone. Sun always too high, air withered down to nothing. They do keep saying on the news that this could be the hottest summer in the city on record.
Gwen quickly distracts herself each time another thought about another thing she’s lost screeches for attention in her head. A learned habit she’d gladly call herself a master of. In place of Mary Jane’s and Glory’s and Felicia’s—and Peter’s… no, not his—faces, she watches strangers through grimy storefronts, fogged-up bus windows, doors left half-ajar. Instead of the incomplete bridge in Glory’s last song, she listens to the Billboard Hot 100 hits blaring from restaurants and record stores.
Sometimes, she even laughs to herself that some of them are playing the same station.
Never should’ve glanced at 74th Street Station’s doors, though. She sees it instantly. Her. The ghost of herself, just a few weeks younger, stick bag and practiced rhythms in tow, rushing past the turnstiles every Wednesday afternoon as if crossing the East River were a matter of life and death. As if she’d turn to ash if she couldn’t disappear behind that loaned drum kit and let those rolls and crashes silence everything else in her body that screams.
Shut up.
She never allowed herself these dramatics, then. She still won’t, even now.
But Gwen just can’t resist taking the quickest look at Unit 45’s door on her way up to the apartment. She has no chance of stepping into that place again, now that they finally found a new tenant after the Parkers moved out. Some scientist—and Mrs. Urich from 22 made sure to mention that he’s “an eligible bachelor” like that information would be useful to anyone.
Still, Dad thinks it’d be a great idea to make friends with the guy.
Shame he’s an asshole—
Oh.
Shit.
The asshole’s right there outside his door, gray-laced brown locks practically brushing the ceiling light, the frightening breadth of his shoulders almost as wide as the hallway, sweat forming a dark triangle in his dress shirt between the shoulder blades. He’s turned away from her, at least, clearly too busy entertaining someone.
Dr. Asshole murmurs something, and the other person…
“—if you could, I’d be so grateful. I know you two will get along, she loves science—”
Dad?
The thought is swiftly replaced by No, I don’t.
“Gwen?” Dad asks, craning his neck to get a better look at her. “I thought you were upstairs?”
Her gaze flits from him to the a—
Miguel.
Miguel O’Hara. That’s his name. And she can’t look back at him for long because she knows that look in his eyes, recognizes exactly how he stares. Like most everyone else in New York City these days, hungry. But for what meat, she can’t tell.
“I…” She fixes her eyes on Dad instead. “I went out. We were missing some ingredients… Okay, then, I’m heading up—”
“Honey, wait! Have you two met?”
Of course they have. Downstairs, by the letterboxes. While he was grabbing his mail—for some reason, at 10 p.m.—and she was wheeling her bike to the bottom of the stairs, bracing herself for the inevitable if Dad were still awake to smell the smoke and alcohol—and whatever else—on her clothes. And she tried to be friendly, tried to make her new neighbor laugh because she’d never seen him crack so much as the tiniest smile. And instead, he shot back with, “Why are you still out at this hour, kid? You been watching the news? There’s a serial killer on the loose.”
And he never shut up. Reminded her that most of the victims lived in Queens, that one of them was the kid of an NYPD vet. Like she needed reminding. Like that would scare her. Like it would matter.
If it’s her time, then it’s her time.
But she knows no one—especially not these grownups—likes hearing those words from the young.
All she wanted was to make him smile. So much for that.
“Yeah, we have,” Gwen says, a bitter flavor on her tongue. And because it’s only polite, she adds a forced, “Hi.”
For that, she gets the barest trace of a nod, the downward turn of his lips, lines on his brow. “Hey, kid.”
Stop calling me a kid.
Not that she’d say it often, but thank God for Dad and how he finally thinks to say goodbye and climb the last two floors.
“What was that about?” she asks, fishing for her keys in her purse before he beats her to it with his chained to his belt.
Mouth opening and closing, choosing to sigh instead, Dad simply tells her to wait until after dinner. Sure enough, after the chicken à la king and his compliments that this might be the best thing she’s whipped up yet, his face grows grave as he pulls out a familiar piece of paper from his pocket.
Her last report card.
Gwen bites back a sigh, fights against a groan.
“So…” Dad clears his throat, fingers fiddling with the edges of the paper. “Earlier, I was having a chat with Miguel—Dr. O’Hara. Do you know he’s a geneticist? Has a doctorate and everything, he knows the ropes.”
“Sure…?”
“And, honey… I think we gotta talk about these grades. I know school just ended, but… What happened here? This isn’t like you.”
“What isn’t like me?” she murmurs.
Dad heaves a sigh. “Gwendolyne. Please. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Can’t always get an A in everything. And as long as you did your best, it’s all good… But Cs and Ds in math and science? Your best subjects?”
“Look, they were really hard last year—”
“And you still need to pass them because you’re in the scholarship program. Do you want to lose it?”
“No, of course I don’t!”
“Then you need all the help you can get to keep it. That’s why I asked Dr. O’Hara to tutor you, so you can be ready for those remedial classes next year. He’s game, says he can do it all summer. You can meet him after your work at the butcher’s every day…”
Was there really no one else to ask? Anyone?
“Well, what about the fees?” Gwen asks, swallowing down her desperation. It never lands, only keeps falling in the yawning pit of her stomach. “It’s not like we have much right now. How exactly are we paying him?”
“Don’t worry about that, all right? I’ll handle it… It’ll all be worth it. You’ll see.”
She knows this part, when the conversation with him is done. He averts his eyes, folds up the card again, stands from his place across the dining table.
She knows this other part too, when he walks round to her side and kisses the top of her head, “I’ll do the dishes” followed by “Get some rest, you have ballet tomorrow” whispered into her hair. When she has nothing else to say that he still wants to hear.
Another thing these grownups don’t like to hear from the young—That they’ve changed their minds about what they want to be.