Spiderman 1 Read Online Free Page A

Friday morning?
    Probably because he'd seen her the previous day, late in the afternoon. This wasn't all that unusual an occurrence,
    considering that she lived in the house opposite his, their backyards adjoining. Nevertheless, even though he'd known her for twelve years, since she had moved in at the age of six, Peter had had occasional bouts of being tongue-tied around her.
    This had been one of those times. She'd been weeding in the garden in the postage-stamp-sized backyard, and noticed Peter coming out of his house to get a hammer from the tool- shed for Uncle Ben. She'd waved to him; he had waved back. Then she had stood up, dusting off her hands with an air of having finished her task, and picked up a small stack of books. But rather than going into her house—an off-white A-frame with red shutters—she'd simply stood there, her arms wrapped around the books. He'd had a feeling she was waiting for him to say something, so he'd said the first thing that popped into his mind: "When are we supposed to be at the school again, for the science class trip?"
    Without hesitation she'd replied, "Half past eight." Then she'd flashed that gorgeous smile.
    "In the morning?" he asked, and immediately mentally kicked himself for such an utterly lame follow-up.
    "Well, yeah, we don't do that many class trips at 8:30 at night."

    "Right, right." He ran his fingers through his dark hair, and shuffled his toe on the sidewalk. You're shuffling your toe? What are you, an infant? This is Mary Jane Watson ... M. J. The woman you've loved since before you even liked girls! Say something, for the luvva God! Something intelligent!

    "Well . . . later," he said, and immediately he pivoted on his heel, ran inside, sprinted up the steps to his room, and thudded his head repeatedly against a wall that already had a bunch of peculiar marks that constantly mystified his Aunt May.

    So it was that 8:30 lodged in his brain. And when he
    arrived at Midtown High at 8:25, it was just in time to see the yellow Laidlaw school bus hanging a left turn out of the parking lot and heading off down Woodhaven Boulevard.
    "Awww, crap!" Peter howled, and he started to sprint. He was grateful that, a year ago, he had actually managed to convince Aunt May to let him start wearing sneakers to school. Through his junior year, she had insisted that school was where you wore some of your best clothes, second only to your Sunday go-to-meeting clothes, whatever those were. Aunt May had this occasionally annoying habit of talking like she'd stepped out of a Mark Twain book. Every time she'd say something like "Land sakes!" he half-expected to be able to look out the back window and see a paddle wheeler cruising up the mighty Mississippi, instead of the tree-lined streets of Queens that typified their Forest Hills neighborhood.
    So if it had been a year ago, he would have been trying to hotfoot it after a bus wearing a pair of neatly tied Oxfords, slipping like a madman on the highly polished soles. Fortunately enough he was wearing a good pair of running shoes instead, which was what he was going to need if he had any hope in hell of catching up.
    The bus was inching its way up Woodhaven, which gave Peter cause for hope. But then a car, which had been in the process of parallel parking, and thus holding up traffic, finally managed to angle its way into the space, and the bus took off like a rabbit.
    With a choked groan, Peter sped up. The bus driver turned onto Queens Boulevard and started to open her up. Most mornings Queens Boulevard would be choked with traffic. Today, naturally, it looked like the Wall Street area on Easter Sunday. The school bus chugged along the outer road of Queens Boulevard, picking up speed, and Peter's lungs were slamming against his ribs.
    A kid in the bus saw him. He pointed out Peter to another

    kid, and within moments all eyes were on him. For one fleet ing moment Peter Parker thought he was going to catch a break, and then the sounds of