Curse of Arachnaman (12 page)

He held my face and kissed me again, this time the usual full-on, wet, tongue-in-throat kind that made me melt. And get so goddamned horny. The fact that it was raining hard kind of added to the swoony, slutty moment. We ended up making out for a couple of minutes in the rain, breaking apart only because moving had grown extremely uncomfortable with a raging boner in a small car.

I pulled away and rested my forehead against his. We were both breathing heavily, and a quick glance down at his mouth nearly drove me into attacking him right then and there. A lot has been written about kiss-swollen lips, but I was there to attest to the truth in all the purple prose descriptions of what those looked like.

"I gotta go before I have an accident in my pants,” I whispered. Peter didn't say anything, but he gave me one more deep kiss for the road.

I couldn't remember getting out of his car, but I wouldn't have been surprised if I just tumbled out and crawled blindly toward the front door of my house. I was just glad that Scanlon wasn't around to catch me all disoriented, half-burned, and totally hard.

The good thing about embarrassing stuff like that was that the heroes were pretty cool about it. Well, after a few hours, anyway. Wade pinged me later that night for a nice chat, and it was like bonding with a really cool gal pal about silly stuff. She was sweet enough to tell me that what happened didn't screw anyone's practice time—merely rescheduled it.

"I'm monitoring the industrial area, Eric,” she said. “That spider thing you saw could be using one of the warehouses for its hideout. Or it might not, if it's smart enough to learn from the Trill's mistakes."

"Hey, don't do it alone. It looked pretty formidable, and God knows how strong it is."

"No worries!” she said. “Magnifiman's on it, too. Then again, he's pretty much spread out over Vintage City, while everyone else has specific areas they're assigned to watch."

Yeah, that sounded pretty reasonable. I figured that Magnifiman wouldn't agree to being limited in his scope. He was such a Type A, and if he could, I was sure that he'd give himself another major city to guard over, in addition to this crummy dump.

"By the way, boyfriend, you should see my fire blades. They're the brand spankin’ new addition to my arsenal. I can kick the Debutantes’ dual butts now that my powers have expanded some more."

Girl fight! I couldn't wait!

I'd been thinking about that retro arcade. Okay, I'd been obsessing about it since I discovered the damn place. Whenever I could, I tried to go online and try my hand at some of these old games. I totally sucked at Frogger. How lame is that? I hadn't tried Super Mario yet, but Donkey Kong was next on my list, and I thought Pac-Man was like crack. I was also seriously whooping major ass with Asteroids.

I'd make sure to tell Peter about it the next time we went out on a date. He was geeky enough to want to take on a challenge from me before, and I'd kicked his hot ass more than once in online games. I guess it was a good sign that superpowers have limits.

I also hadn't forgotten about bingo night. How could I? I'd actually had a dream, fer chrissakes, that involved me stuck in a big hall, surrounded by zombified seniors, playing bingo. The guy calling out the letters and numbers was Jabba the Hut, and he had some strange half-naked undead woman, whose jaw seemed to have rotted away and fallen off, chained to his chair and wearing a tattered bikini. Then anyone who staggered to their feet and squawked, “Bingo!” without any body parts dropping off because of the sudden movement, would go up to Jabba and then get eaten up. I mean, really—crunch, crunch.

I just sat there, freaking out, surrounded by groaning reanimated corpses and completely frozen. I couldn't move a finger, let alone run. Body parts and rotting tissue were dropping around me. It was
gross
. I woke up just at the moment when I turned to the zombie sitting next to me to puke all over him. Or it. Whatever. At any rate, I decided to do something about my predicament.

Sometime after breakfast I went back to the kitchen and started rummaging through cupboards. It was a Saturday, so Liz had to go to work, and Dad went golfing with his buddies. Mom and I hung around the house. Things were pretty quiet and dull, so I went on ahead with Operation Blow Bingo Night and started hunting around in the kitchen.

"Oh, my God!"

I whirled around, startled, a box of oatmeal and a bottle of expired aspirin in my hands. “Hi, Mom. Sorry, I was just looking around."

She stood at the kitchen doorway, jaw hanging, a hand pressed against her chest. It took her a moment to find her voice because I'd apparently shocked her speechless. She actually looked like she was about to faint. I asked her what was wrong while going back to my shelf-scanning-and-rummaging.

"Good grief, Eric, don't ever do that again!"

"What? Do what?"

"Frighten me like that!” Mom took a deep and loud breath before walking up to the sink and filling up a glass with tap water. She scowled at me as she downed it.

I looked around. “Like what?"

She waved a hand around the kitchen. “Like that! Opening every cupboard and drawer and leaving them open! I haven't gotten over the movie, you know!"

Oh, that. I forgot about the movie. I figured that she was still freaking out over the kitchen ghost and all the open cupboards and drawers in one of those scenes. Now if anyone wondered about where I got my tendencies toward drama queen-ness, you know the answer. I frowned at the two items I held and then showed them to her. “Mom, do you think that mixing oatmeal and expired aspirin will make me sick? I mean, like, incapacitated?"

"I don't think so,” she replied as she went about, nervously shutting every open drawer and cupboard. “Why?"

"Do we have expired food that I can eat and get sick on?"

She stared at me. “Eric, what on earth are you trying to do?"

"I want to get sick.” I had to stop myself before I blurted out “because I don't want to go to bingo night with Althea,” knowing the kind of sermon that Mom would likely unleash on me if I did.

Apparently holding back proved to be a bad idea. Or at least being honest didn't pay off
again
. It never did, seriously, even with all those early childhood lectures about being a good boy all year long and getting massive karma points from Santa Claus come Christmas time.

"Okay, I'm going to count down from ten. When I get to one, you'd better have a clear, rational explanation that's good enough to qualify you to be the next Dalai Lama,” Mom said, raising a hand and closing her eyes as she counted under her breath. “Ten...nine..."

"Just kidding! I was only messing with you, Mom. No need to count. Or send me to Tibet."

Mom opened her eyes and glowered at me. “If you see anything expired, Eric, throw it away. There's no need to be so sarcastic about our storage habits and saying things like you want to get sick.” She went back to closing the cupboards before retrieving her mug and pouring herself some coffee.

Okay, things were getting more and more desperate from my end. I threw away the expired pills and thought about finding comfort in toast and Mrs. Horace's “Eric's Special Jam,” but the fact that I was going to eat stuff that Mrs. Horace gave me cut me to the quick. POW! went my Catholic conscience because, apparently, you can take the boy out of the Catholic Church, but you can't take the Catholic Church out of the boy.

I hate my conscience. The Pope has a lot to answer for.

So I just stuffed my face with tortilla chips and racked my brain for more ways of getting out of bingo night without making it look like I planned the whole thing. I'd have been able to focus much better if my thought process didn't veer off every ten seconds and wander into sex-with-Peter territory, which was proving to be a much bigger issue than I'd anticipated.

God, did I just say “bigger"?

I didn't even realize that the phone rang till Mom barked at me. “Eric! Are you listening to me? It's Peter on the phone for you!"

"Oh. Sorry.” I stood up and shuffled over to where Mom stood by the door, her arm extended as she held the phone for me, a really deep, dark frown on her face. Just as I reached for the phone, she snatched it back and covered the mouthpiece.

"Eric, is there something you need to talk to me about?"

"No. I'm fine, Mom. Thanks for asking.” I made a grab for the phone, but Mom swatted my hand away. “Ow! Hey!"

She didn't budge. Covering the mouthpiece again, she said, “I'm not stupid."

"I'm not saying that you are!"

"No, but you're acting like I am."

"What, are you saying that you don't trust me?” Oh, that hurt. Well...yeah...

She cocked an eyebrow. “We've been through this before, mister, and the last time we had a talk like this, it was before you were forced to leave us to join the Trill. You can't blame me for overreacting when I smell something fishy."

I sighed, scratching my head impatiently. “Mom, if I want to talk, I'll talk, okay? Can I have some space, please? I mean, I know you worry a lot about me, even more than you worry about Liz, but I really want to be left alone.” I paused when I saw that hurt look on her face. “I'm okay, really. I'm being very, very careful when I'm out there, and I've been doing exactly what you told me to do. I can't even hang out with my friends the way I used to ever since...you know...It really sucks being alone all the time.” I shook my head, not knowing how else to say what I needed to say. “Mom, I'll be fine. All right? Don't baby me, please?"

Mom's look of hurt eased up, but I could still tell that she was affected by what I said. Nodding and taking a deep breath, she whispered, “Okay, honey. I'll step back a little. I'm sorry."

"It's okay.” I took the phone from her. Then I gave her a kiss and leaned against the wall, waiting for her to leave the kitchen before talking. “Hey,” I said, lowering my voice in case of anxious maternal eavesdroppers. “You should've called and left a message on my machine."

"I tried,” Peter replied. “You haven't cleared up your machine, you dill weed. It's full."

I loved it when he got all sappy. “Want to go out?” I toyed with the coiled phone cord thing, wrapping each coil around one finger till only the end of my finger poked out. I stared at it and pointedly ignored any Freudian reference the whole thing gave me. “Are you, uh, working today?"

"Not now, but I will soon. Tomorrow will be better."

We made arrangements to meet somewhere downtown because I told him about the retro arcade on Sycamore Lane. He agreed to meet there. Being the super-practical type that I am, I told him that we could just walk around and enjoy the time without having to drive all over the place and waste precious minutes.

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So I asked Mom's permission after Peter's call. Naturally, she didn't like it. She was totally not into saying yes when I told her, even going so far as to argue, “Didn't you two just have a date recently?” But I was pushy, and she saw that I wasn't going to back down at all.

"Well, I guess it's okay, seeing as how it's daytime and all,” she said, rubbing her temples and pinching her eyes shut. “Make sure to finish your homework and chores before leaving. Just be home by three, okay?” Three?
Three?
What kind of sorry date was that?

Peter and I agreed to meet at around noon, which didn't really give us much time together. “But that'll give us only three hours or something,” I protested. “That includes all the time wasted, walking around and deciding where to eat and chill out."

"Eric, it's either three hours or nothing."

Damn
.

I really hated being told to come home so early, especially since it was a stupid daytime date. It just plain sucked that Mom went to the other extreme on the maternal scale since my ordeal with the Trill.

I'd been following her orders, of course, of being with Peter only when he wasn't in superhero mode. That was cool. In fact, it gave Peter a good reason to strike a balance between normal teenage stuff and superhero work, and his parents turned out to be pretty cool about it. Even Trent, according to Peter, had to agree that his brother desperately needed to enjoy ordinary stuff, not just get all Type A over keeping Vintage City safe the way Magnifiman was being over-the-top Type A. He even went so far as to say that he could handle day-to-day crumminess on his own every once in a while, giving his little brother extra time for fun stuff. What a braggart. Sheesh.

Now it was like I couldn't do anything without Mom going all crazy over where I was going, whom I was going with, how long I expected to be out, etc. It was sort of like I might as well sign up for monk-hood or something. I didn't know how long this pressure cooker was going to last, but I figure that someday, something had to give. For now, all I could do was to grin and bear it because, well, I didn't want to upset Mom and Dad any more than I already had. Liz, I could still work on because, as you know, siblings were put on this earth to torment. Mom and Dad, no.

The other shoe just dropped! My date with Peter for later had just been rescheduled because there'd been an attack downtown. Guess who was the victim this time? Dog-in-a-Bun! It looked like one of my favorite junk food hangouts was jumped by an army of beagle-sized mechanical spiders. Yeah, exactly like the ones that attacked the mall last time.

Around noon, when the place was swarming with families all getting their dog fix, one of the employees said that she heard something scratching in the ceiling, like somewhere in the vents. She at first thought that it was nothing more than the air-conditioning doing weird things and rattling, but the sound grew louder and louder till everyone began to complain about the racket.

Bambi Bailey interviewed her for the news, and the poor girl looked about ready to throw up all over Ms. Bailey. She was so upset that she couldn't talk straight, but she said something like, “I called our manager and told him about the noise, and when he turned off the AC and brought out the ladder to check what was going on, white stuff started shooting out of the vents."