Michelle is observant.

Everybody knew that. While her nose remained deep in the pages of her latest read—An Introduction to First Year Psychology textbook, from the college library down the road—her ears were set on high alert, and her eyes were peering over the top of the book, roving the halls like a security droid. The halls themselves were packed with students, the clock hand striking noon signaling lunch. In a few short moments the congested hallways of students quickly dispersed, most of them heading for the cafeteria.

Most of them. Most of them, except Peter Parker. While everyone else headed in one direction to the cafeteria, Peter Parker was walking in the opposite direction. Michelle watched him closely; he was headed for the Computer Science Lab. But before he opened the door and took a step inside, he checked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. He didn't see her, of course, because no one ever did, and that was her advantage.

Thinking himself alone, Parker quickly flung open the door to the lab and wandered in, closing the door quietly behind him. These were obvious symptoms of a guilty man. Guilty of what was the question.

Michelle was on her feet before the door clicked shut. Her textbook had been left behind in favor of her new study: Peter Parker. The sixteen year-old basket case was a mystery wrapped in an enigma, dropping decathlon then picking it back up almost the next day, before disappearing in Washington and reappearing moments after a rare disaster, then disappearing from Homecoming the night that Liz's father was apprehended by Spider-Man. If one was smart enough, all of these clues pointed to a very obvious conclusion.

But none of that was admissible evidence; Michelle was looking for was conclusive, solid proof that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

"Sup, nerds," she said after kicking open the door to the Computer Science Lab, nearly shattering the wooden frame. Peter literally jumped out of his seat while Ned threw his hands into the air and shrieked, "It's just porn, I swear!"

"Ned!" Peter groaned, shooting his best friend a chastising look. Ned, hands still in the air, could only shrug.

"What're ya boys doing in here?" Michelle asked casually, sauntering into the room with the confidence of someone who had just almost broken a fucking door. Peter and Ned were on the other side of the room, and while she approached, Ned hurriedly closed every tab on the monitor before shoving some tossed papers into his bag.

"Us? We're just, you know, just playing some computer games and stuff," Peter said, scratching his nose nervously. He made sure Ned has stuffed all the important stuff away before shooting Michelle a disarming smile.

"Oh yeah?" She pressed.

"Yup."

Michelle nodded, unconvinced. "So you two don't mind if I catch up on some reading in here?"

Peter glanced at Ned, who was still cleaning up all the mysterious evidence.

"It gets pretty noisy," Peter said, getting more comfortable in the lie. "You know we were going to use the, uh, the speakers, the surround sound, because it sounds cool."

"Crisper audio," Ned added.

"Yes! Much crisper audio," Peter affirmed excitedly, patting Ned on the back for the ingenious cover up.

Michelle could hear his foot tapping from across the room.

"That's fine," she said.

Peter cleared his throat. "What?"

"That's fine," she repeated, taking a few more steps into the room, closing the gap between them. Ned had cleaned up the table they were sitting at, stopping just short of wiping their fingerprints down. Peter, meanwhile, was choking on some words in his throat.

"Look, Michelle—"

"MJ. My friends call me MJ."

"Right, MJ. Look..."

He hadn't thought very far ahead. By this time Michelle was standing across from them at the table. She pulled up a stool and sat down, leaning across the table as far as she could. Despite the now accentuated height advantage Peter held over her, he still felt small and distressed under the girl's icy glare. Michelle reminisced on the thought of those old detective movies, where the detective would interogate the culprit in a dark, smoky room with nothing but two chairs and a table.

Of course, the detective always won in those movies.

"Nice turtleneck," she said pleasantly.

"What? Yeah. Thank you."

"Did May get it for you?"

"No actually I bought it from this store on Fifth Street just across from the—wait, how do you know my Aunt's name?"

"I went and saw her this morning after you left. I told her you forgot a textbook and that I was getting it for you. She's nice."

Ned's jaw was on the table, and it looked to be more from awe than shock. Peter, on the other hand, didn't seem to know how to process this information.

"I—I—I—"

"Also I snooped around in your room for a bit."

If Ned had been drinking something he would've spit it out dramatically. "What!"

"What!" Peter echoed, missing the full sync by a brief second.

If she was capable of it, Michelle would be smirking. "Do you want to know what I found, Parker?"

Peter was visibly sweating now. The bitter October weather had forced him into wearing layers which, coupled with the 68°F climate that the school was kept at, had him soaking through his new turtleneck. Michelle's cold glare did little to cool him down, ironically.

"Look, MJ, I know what it—"

"Nothing," she said. "I found nothing. But now..." She squinted suspiciously at the both of them. "Now I think I missed something. What are you hiding, Parker?"

The sixteen year-old stood motionless, face unwavering as his brain processed every possible lie he could use in that moment. Thankfully his best friend came to the rescue in the nick of time.

"Peter's gay."

Rescue in a broad sense.

"Ned!"

"He's hiding a Men's Warehouse Catalog under his bed."

"Not true!"

"You must've missed it but, yeah, that's it. Case closed, right?"

"Not right! The case is not closed!"

"So there is a case?" Michelle interrupted.

Peter's eyes were as wide as they could be when he gaped at her. His hands were scrunched up in his short hair, threatening to rip it all out.

"No...?" Ned answered awkwardly, unsure of what the right answer was. "Unless it's already been closed, in which case yes there is a case, but it's closed, so you can just, you know, forget it."

"What? No! There's no case, there's no secret, I'm not gay, I'm not hiding anything, we're just...we're just..."

"Playing computer games," Michelle finished for him.

"Playing computer games," Peter confirmed meekly. He let out a shaky breath that he had been holding in for some time.

This is exactly where Michelle wanted him: shaken, disturbed, nervous, completely off his guard and unprepared, essentially the perfect conditions for secret-spilling.

"What kind of computer games?" Michelle asked, unraveling their story at the seams.

"DOOM." Ned quickly offered.

"Show me," Michelle replied just as quickly.

Ned had no response to that. He looked at her, then his laptop, then her, then Peter, then his laptop, then her again. "Show you?"

"Yeah. Is there a problem? I mean, if you were just playing DOOM, you should still have it open, right? Or at least you should have it downloaded. So, show me."

It was Ned's turn to sweat now. "You want me to show you DOOM?"

"Yeah. Yeah that's what I just said."

Ned froze, which made it Peter's turn in the ring.

"Yeah, easy," he said, trying to feign casualness but instead radiating nervousness like the sun radiates heat.

He grabbed the laptop from Ned and typed away for a few seconds before turning the screen to Michelle. On screen was a snapshot of DOOM, shitty 90's graphics and all. There was a watermark in the bottom corner.

Michelle eyed Peter with her patented Are-You-Fucking-Kidding-Me look, eyebrows raised and lips pressed tightly. If Peter wasn't uncomfortable before (which he was, very much, very very much) he was absolutely squirming now. Michelle knew she just had to dig a little deeper before she hit gold.

But Michelle was smart. She knew she wasn't going to learn anything from these two idiots, nothing useful at least. She could sit there all day and argue circles around them, but they wouldn't give her anything. What she needed was a highly susceptible Peter Parker who would spill the secret willingly. Considering, however, the dangers of being a superhero, especially in this day and age, Michelle doubted he would tell just anyone. Ned knew, obviously, and if the bookworm was a betting girl she'd bet May probably knew, too. He'd told his best friend and his parental guardian, but not her, which made sense. Who was she to him?

No one. Michelle was no one, to everyone. She was the silhouette in the hallway, making people check twice just to make sure she was, in fact, there. She was the decathlon captain whose name only half the team could remember—on a good day. She was the top student in her class, school, and district, whose teachers sometimes marked her absent because they didn't notice her. In essence, Michelle was a nobody, especially to Peter Parker.

Which meant she had to become somebody.

She had made her way to the exit before she turned slightly and said, "Hey Parker, you doing anything tonight?"

The sixteen year-old took a few seconds to compose his eloquent response. "Uhhhhh, no—wait! I meant yes. Ned and I are marathon-ing Indiana Jones tonight."

Michelle rolled her eyes at the absolute geekery. "Lame. I'll drop by around seven."

And then she was gone, leaving the two geeks to their "computer games".

Notes:

Death Grips is fucking weird, dude.