Mayday's Hero

Part I of V

Description: Movieverse (AU). Mayday Parker wishes she could meet Spider-Man. (Alternating Mayday and Peter Parker POVs).

Disclaimer: Spider-Man, Mayday Parker (a.k.a Spider-Girl), and pretty much everything else in this story (except for perhaps a few of Mayday's little friends) belong to Marvel. This story about them is for fun, not profit. It's also more than a little silly. Serious comics fans might prefer to avoid it, but, to those who like fluff, enjoy!

A/N: This story is a "What If?" story. What if Baby May had lived? (Grrrr...) What if, while she was growing up, Peter was still running around trying be Spider-Man, trying to hold down a serious job, trying to be a father as well as a husband, while various horrors continually interrupt his life? What if, in addition to all of that, Mayday's biggest hero was Spider-Man?

Oh yes, and it's set in the movieverse – not because I have anything against the comics, but I don't know them all that well, and I have seen the movies.

Thank you to jjonahjameson for excellent hints about this chapter, suggestions for ways to make the children's voices sound more authentic and advice about the story as a whole.

"I'm Spider-Man!" shouted Travis, clinging to the monkey bars with only one hand and swinging himself back and forth. Show off, thought Mayday Parker irritably.

As he swung, his lanky brown hair fell into his eyes. Impatiently, he pushed it away with his free hand and then, as the sudden movement caused him to lose momentum, he hastily used that hand to grab back onto a rung overhead, in order to keep himself from falling to the ground below.

Mayday chuckled a little at that because he was a funny sight, hanging there white-knuckled, with his messy hair still falling in his eyes despite his best efforts. Travis's hair was always messy and his bangs were always just a bit too long. In contrast, Mayday's hair was usually brushed to a glossy sheen by either her mom or Aunt May, who then would put it in the long, straight red ponytail which habitually hung down her back.

"No, I am," said Mayday emphatically. "I can climb the highest." And to prove it she threw a leg over the rung she was holding onto and heaved herself up through the nearest space and over the top of the structure. She crawled nimbly up the side of it until she reached the curving top of the metallic dome. Then, ever so slowly, she spread her feet apart and straightened, until she was standing tall, surveying the playground like a Queen.

It was true, she could climb the highest – and she often did.

"You can't be Spider-Man," said Travis scornfully from somewhere beneath her, "Because you're a girl."

"She can too," argued another girl, a little freckled thing with curly tow-colored hair, who was slowly but deliberately crawling up the other side of the curving monkey bars. Mayday thought her name might be Angela, although she wasn't quite sure of that. She was in the other grade two class and mostly hung around with different kids. Lately, they'd sat next to each other at lunch a few times, but Angela was normally pretty quiet.

"There's lots of girl superheros," the girl who might be named Angela went on. She would know, thought Mayday. Her lunch box had a picture of Princess Power and her team of Star Rovers on the side of it. Princess Power was okay, but in Mayday's opinion she was nothing compared to Spider-Man, because she wasn't real.

"Yes, but Spider-Man isn't one of them," insisted Travis. "Look at his name – Spider-Man. He's a guy, and since I'm the only boy here, I get to be him."

"The best climber gets to be Spider-Man," said Mayday coolly. She wasn't going to let him know how mad he was making her. He'd just laugh. "And that's me."

"You're not – " Travis started to say angrily.

"I don't know why we're even playing this dumb game," interrupted Mayday's friend Janeen in an annoyed tone from the ground. "Spider-Man isn't real."

Mayday's jaw dropped. "He is so real." She stared at Janeen with feelings of mingled disbelief and betrayal. Janeen was her best friend – they even dressed alike some days – and she knew how much Mayday liked Spider-Man. In fact, Mayday secretly wanted to be Spider-Man, although she was careful not to tell Janeen – or anyone – that. However, they did talk about him a lot, and Mayday had told Janeen something she'd never told anyone – that Spider-Man had saved her and her mom once, long ago when she was three. Janeen had been envious and had wanted to know everything that Mayday knew or could remember about the superhero, and they'd spent many a sleepover whispering about him together.

"No way is he real," said Janeen crossly, an angry expression marring her normally pretty face. Her pale grey eyes looked as hard as marbles. "I am so sick of Spider-Man. It's all we ever play and all we ever talk about." She favored Mayday with a fierce glare and stuck her hands in the pockets of her flowered raincoat.

"My dad says he was only a publicity stunt, years ago; he says the newspapers just tell stories about him," piped up a chubby black haired boy whose name Mayday didn't know. "I think they made him up." He'd been watching from the sidelines and now, as he spoke, he approached them.

Suddenly Mayday thought she'd better sit down. She was starting to feel like she might lose her balance if she stood upright on top of the monkey bars any longer, and her heart hurt as she looked down at the top of Janeen's white-gold hair. She poked her legs through two of the triangles crisscrossing the metallic domed structure, and rested her backside on the slanting rung of a third.

"Come on, Mayday, you don't actually believe in him?" Travis asked tauntingly, dropping to the ground with a little laugh. He looked up at her through the bars with a mischievous expression in his bold black eyes and heckled her with, "Mayday believes in Spider-Man, Mayday believes in Spider-Man!" Normally, Mayday liked Travis, except during those moments when she wanted to punch in his face – such as now. He really seemed to enjoy bugging her, mostly about stupid stuff. Spider-Man, however, was not stupid – not to Mayday. "He's not even the coollest superhero, " Travis continued, "there are lots of better ones."

Mayday felt so mad at Travis's last remark, which she knew he had made just to yank her chain, that she didn't trust herself to speak. Aunt May was always telling her that if you couldn't think of something nice to say, it was better to be silent. But she boiled and seethed inside with impotent anger just the same, thinking of a few choice names she'd like to call Travis. Then she thought of something else, something that would prove that Spider-Man was real. "My Dad used to take his picture," she said, lifting her chin defiantly.

"Yeah, right," said the black-haired boy sceptically. Beside him, Janeen huffed loudly, managing to look both bored and annoyed at the same time. Mayday felt another sharp sting of betrayal. Janeen knew that Mayday had actually seen Spider-Man. Not only that, but Janeen herself had once dared Mayday to sneak the scrapbook full of her dad's old Spider-Man pictures out of Mom's closet. She had managed to do it, and the two best friends had poured over it for one whole afternoon. So why wasn't Janeen sticking up for her? Why was she all of a sudden being so mean?

"No he did," insisted Mayday. "My mom kept a whole scrapbook full of them. He even won an award once."

"Well, your dad musta worked for a newspaper," sneered the black-haired boy. "Bet his pictures were fakes. Bet the newspapers made lots of money on those fake pictures. " He looked up at her slyly. "Maybe your dad's a fake too."

"My dad's not a fake ... he's a teacher," said Mayday primly. She deliberately ignored the other insulting comment about her dad's pictures being fakes. "He teaches at a university, and doesn't take pictures no more. But I don't think he made much money from them. We're not, like, rich or anything."

Then she got mad all over again, thinking of the long ago time when Spider-Man had rescued her and Mom. It had been like something out of a horror movie: they'd been attacked by an unbelievably scary lizard-monster in the park on a sunny day. One minute little Mayday had been out of her mind with terror, staring down into the huge, slavering, pointy-teethed maw of the lizard-creature which she was sure wanted to eat her. The next minute she was whizzing up and away through the air, safe in the arms of her mother, who was also held safe and secure by someone who was holding her. He'd had a cheerful voice, she remembered, calling her mother "Good-looking" and asking if they were okay as he'd dropped them off on the roof of their very own apartment-building.

"Spider-Man is too real," she insisted again. "He helps people all the time." Janeen tossed her silvery head at that but remained silent, and Mayday felt a fresh wave of betrayal wash over her.

The little curly-haired girl who'd been slowly climbing up the side of the monkey bars stopped and just hung there. "Even though he did once help people, he's not around any more," she offered in a conciliatory tone, an anxious, tentative smile lighting up her gold-tinged hazel eyes. "He's probably dead or retired ... no one gets pictures of him nowadays."

Mayday once again didn't trust herself to speak, so she just pressed her lips together firmly and shook her head, looking down through the monkey bars to the gravel below. She didn't know how she knew, but she was sure that Spider-Man was still out there, swinging around the city and rescuing other kids and their moms.

"Can we talk about something else?" snapped Janeen. She flipped her blond ponytail over her shoulder and started fiddling with the big barrette that held it in place. "Spider-Man, Spider-Man all the time. Who cares about him?" She popped the barrette open all of a sudden, and shook her long white-yellow hair loose. "I've got an idea ... why don't we play Princess Power and the Star Rovers?"

"Oh now that's realistic," said Mayday sarcastically, swinging her legs with assumed nonchalance. "Who wants to play that they're an intergalactic Princess named Prismilla, with wimpy crystal light powers? Or one of her three dorky sidekicks, with names like Foom, Shoom and Doom? It's so lame." She conveniently forgot for a moment that she and Janeen had spent the whole of morning recess playing just that game with Marcus and Sarah. "Ohhh, I'm the light princess, and all I do is shine pretty colors on whatever I look at," Mayday added mockingly in a high-pitched voice.

The curly-haired girl, Angela, gave Mayday an angry look and retreated rapidly back down the side of the monkey bars. She marched up to Janeen. "I'll play, if I can be Foom. She's my favorite ... I love how she's so fast she sets things on fire." Both girls slanted their eyes up at Mayday with cutting looks.

"Can I play?" broke in the unknown black-haired boy. "I can be Doom. He's the only boy and it's pretty cool the way he shakes the earth."

You're big enough to shake the earth, thought Mayday nastily, but she kept her mouth shut because she knew it really wouldn't have been nice to say that out loud. She could almost picture Aunt May's disappointed face.

Meanwhile, Travis was scuffing the ground with the toe of his sneaker. "That's a girl's game," he complained. "Can't we play something else?" He shot Mayday a look, but she didn't know what it meant.

Janeen sized him up. "You can be Oxyopic Opacity. He's the main super-villain. He's not bad all the time though; sometimes he even helps Prismilla – he helped her save the planet once."

"What can he do?" Travis asked, as if he didn't watch the show himself. Mayday knew he did because they'd watched it together more than once.

"He's got night and storm powers. He makes clouds and darkness," Angela put in enthusiastically. The little group had started to move away from the monkey bars.

"Alright," said Travis reluctantly. Then he looked back over his shoulder. "Come on, May, don't be mad. We still need one more person."

Stubbornly, Mayday shook her head. Her favorite character to play would normally be Shoom, a Soundkeeper with power over noise and silence, but her feelings were too hurt to want to pretend everything was okay. She looked at Janeen's slim, stiff back, walking away from her, and felt another piercing stab of anger.

After a minute, the others walked off in the direction of the basketball court. But Travis came back over the crunchy gravel and stood right underneath the monkey bars.

"Aw, come on, Mayday," Travis said again. "I'll play Spider-Man with you after we're done with Princess Power."

"Thought you didn't believe he was real," said Mayday sulkily. "You can't have it both ways, Travis McGovern. Either he's real or not."

Travis shrugged. "So Spider-Man's not real ... neither is Santa Claus. Doesn't mean we can't have fun pretending." He waited a minute, but when Mayday didn't answer or look up, he turned and walked quickly away to join the others.

"He is too real," muttered Mayday to herself, needing to get the last word even though no one could hear her. She stayed up there on the top of the monkey bars, aimlessly swinging her feet, feeling miserable and alone. Her loneliness was worsened by the sounds of laughter that started to drift over from the basketball court after a few moments, and by the shouts and calls of the other kids who attended the afterschool program run by McVeedy Elementary, PS 159. There were about 50 kids in all – some by the swings or on the teeter-totters, some playing hopskotch and skipping, some playing tag. A couple of bored caregivers leaned against one of the courtyard's high walls, in the shade of the big tree at the far end of the walled-in area, chatting about grown up things.

"Mayday," said a voice. She turned to see her dad crossing the courtyard toward the monkey bars. Wow, she thought in surprise and delight.

It was very uncommon for him to pick Mayday up from school – usually it was Aunt May, and sometimes, less often, her mother, who came to collect her. In fact, it was so rare for Dad to get her that the last time he'd tried to do so, she remembered, he'd had to spend ten minutes arguing with an overly vigilant daycare counsellor that he really was Mayday Parker's father, eventually pulling out his wallet to show her some of his ID cards, and, when that didn't convince her, finally resorting to calling Mom on his cellphone to get her to vouch for him. For weeks afterward, Mayday's mom had teased him mercilessly for looking like a creepy child-stealer. Although at first she had secretly been a tad embarrassed that a daycare worker had thought her dad might be a kidnapper, eventually Mayday had begun to find it funny also, joining in wholeheartedly with her mother's teasing. Her dad was quiet, gentle, safe ... not dangerous at all.

"How come you're sitting up here all by yourself, kiddo?" Dad asked, stopping beside the metal structure and looking up at her. His kind blue eyes, rumpled overcoat and wind-ruffled brown hair were a welcome sight, and suddenly Mayday felt a bit, just a tiny bit, less miserable.

"No reason," sighed Mayday, pulling her legs through the triangles and beginning to climb down the metallic structure. "You're early ... and where's Aunt May?"

Her father reached up and plucked her off the monkey bars as she was coming down, setting her carefully on her feet in front of him. "I was visiting your Aunt this afternoon and she wasn't feeling well. So I said I'd pick you up. Aunt May's building isn't far from your school, and I guess it took me less time than I thought it would to get here." He lifted her chin with a gentle hand. "You sure you're okay, sweetheart?"

"Yes ... no ... it's a long story," Mayday said glumly. They turned and started walking towards the daycare workers, chatting and resting in the shade of a big old oak tree which stood against the courtyard wall at the far end. "Mostly it's just a dumb story," she added. "I don't want to talk about it right now." She looked over at the group of grown-up caregivers, and then gave her father a sly, sidelong glance. "What do ya wanna bet you get in trouble again? Betcha they think you're a childsnatcher, come to take me away."

"I don't know if I care to take that bet," said her father with a rueful little laugh. "But tell you what, since I'm early, how 'bout we go and get some ice cream?" Mayday perked up even more at that. Ice cream was the usual prize that she won off their bets anyway.

---

Mayday was sitting at the kitchen table, doing her math homework. Her parents were making dinner together – another rare occurrence – and talking about grown up stuff in the background. She was having a hard time concentrating on her four-digit adding because she was still thinking about how mean Janeen was being. What made everything worse was that, up until recently, Janeen had always seemed to be nearly as much a fan of Spider-Man as Mayday herself was. Of course, lately Janeen hadn't been much interested in Spider-Man games, but then, she wasn't getting into hardly anything these days. Anyway, today's betrayal took the cake. Imagine saying that there was no Spider-Man after your best friend had shown you exciting pictures and told you secret stories of actually meeting him. The two-faced pure meanness of it was getting Mayday steamed all over again. And Travis wasn't much better, with that remark about Santa Claus ... he knew she'd believed in Santa Claus until only last year, and that she was still a little disappointed that he wasn't real.

"So I called my agent," Mom was saying, as she walked over to the kitchen table with a stack of plates and cutlery in her hands, "And I had him offer them some better photos and maybe even a short interview." She began setting the table, the gold bangles on her wrists jingling faintly as she moved. "Scoot, muffin," she said to Mayday when she noticed her sitting there. "Wash your hands, because we're nearly ready." Mayday closed her math textbook and lifted it out of the way as her mom set a blue plate on the placemat in front of her.

"And this is so important to you that you're willing to talk to these gossip hounds ... why?" Dad asked sceptically while he placed the salad he'd just been mixing in the center of the round table on the lazy susan. Mayday slid down from the chair, and returned her math text and exercise book to her backpack. Then she headed towards the door of the big kitchen.

"I told you," Mom said in an exasperated tone. "I don't mind being featured briefly with Mayday on a show called 'Celebrity Moms.' There's no possible way it can be bad – unless the whole thing is like the clip I saw, which basically made it seem like I was a single parent. I think it's not too much to ask that StarTV actually mention that I have a husband as well, maybe show pictures of the three of us ..."

"I prefer that they don't," Dad said in a low voice, just as Mayday went into the hall bathroom and turned on the light. "Safer that way ..."

"Oh for heaven's sake, Peter. My last name's Parker ... we've been married for ten years ..." the rest of what her mom was saying was drowned out as Mayday turned the tap on full blast and held her hands underneath it. She had no idea what they were talking about, but it was nice that they were all going to be having supper together for a change. Too often Dad rushed off in the middle of a meal or didn't show up at all because he was working late at his lab. Sometimes even Mom had to leave early, when she was acting in a show, and then it was just Mayday with Aunt May or, occasionally, Aunt Anna. Not that she minded being with either of them, but it was somehow more fun when her parents were there.

Mayday dried her hands on a towel and returned to the kitchen. Her mom was dishing her very favorite pasta, angel hair pasta, onto her plate in a generous helping as she climbed back into her chair. Unfortunately, as Mayday eyed the tangle of delicate pasta hungrily, her mom ruined it a second later by spooning some sort of chicken and tomato mixture with – yech – flecks of green stuff in it on top of the noodles. Mayday was too smart, though, to spoil a rare family dinner by complaining about the food. Surreptitiously she began picking the tiny green flecks out of the pasta and leaving them on her placemat. She could see that it was going to be a big job, so she was determined to get started right away.

"I'm still not clear what exactly you want me to do about this," Dad was saying as he set a basket of bread rolls on the table beside the salad. Mayday was distracted momentarily from ranging the yucky little green leaf pieces along the bottom edge of her placemat, because she loved warm buttered rolls even more than angel-hair pasta.

"I don't want you to do anything" said Mom, pouring a glass of milk for Mayday and setting it in front of her. "I only wanted to tell you that I'd like to give them copies of some of our photos – the ones you took of us last summer with the timer –" Quick as lightning, Mayday snagged a roll, and then returned to the delicate operation of separating her dinner from disgusting little green bits.

"I thought we were going to keep Mayday away from your career – limit the public's sight of her," Dad said, pulling out his chair and sitting down smoothly. He put his elbows on the table, folded his hands together and rested his chin on his interlocked fingers, giving Mayday's mother a pointed look.

"It's too late for that," argued Mom. She opened a drawer and took a corkscrew out of it, and then grabbed a bottle of wine from the counter and set them both beside her husband's plate. "They already have shots of Mayday and me shopping, and the clip from the Tonys this year, when Mayday went as my date because you couldn't make it. She's around me, she's going to have her picture taken." Mom paused and gave both Mayday and her father one of her special smiles. It caused her dimples to show and made her look almost as though she were Mayday's older sister instead of her mom. "I can't help it if I prefer that people see Mayday in the excellent pictures taken by her father, and that he occasionally appear along with his wife and daughter in one or two of them."

"Okay, okay," Dad gave in all at once, returning Mom's smile. His blue eyes twinkled as he uncorked the wine and began pouring it into two crystal glasses. "As long as they mention what a snappy dresser, talented dancer, all-around gorgeous hunk I am – for a professor, that is."

Mom snorted as she took her seat, pulled her napkin from its ring and shook it out in her lap. "They're more likely to spend most of the show raving on about Hollywood's latest power couple – Cady Staunton and what's-his-face – with their beautiful twins and the amusement park they built for them on their 6.5 million dollar estate. I'll probably show up in the has-been section at the end ... you know, they'll say 'Mary Jane Parker peaked early ... now she does voice work for animated movies, models a little, dabbles in theatre ... soon she'll be doing Oil of Olay commercials ...'"

Dad rolled his eyes. "She won a Tony last year," he inserted emphatically, while helping himself to some salad.

"Cady Staunton's kids have their own amusement park?" broke in Mayday, having finally heard something she was interested in knowing more about. Then she frowned. "Aren't they, like, babies? How come babies get to have an amusement park?"

"Yes, well, apparently a good celebrity mom gives her kids an amusement park for their first birthday," Mom laughed. The overhead light glinted off her burnished hair as she picked up her knife and began cutting and buttering Mayday's roll for her.

"You finished organizing your basil flakes, kiddo?" asked Dad in amused voice. Caught, Mayday cringed, then nodded. "Okay, then, you want to tell us what was bothering you today after school?"

"Oh, nothing," Mayday said, sighing heavily, her blue funk of earlier descending on her once again. "It's just that some kids were saying mean things." She picked up a forkful of angel hair pasta from the very edge of her plate, and put it in her mouth.

"How mean?" asked Mom in concern.

"That grade four boy, that Bryce fellow, hasn't been picking on you again, has he?" Dad inquired with a frown.

"Travis and Janeen and I fixed him good," said Mayday with satisfaction, remembering the day that he'd shoved her hard in the back, only to have Travis and Janeen gang up on him, kicking him sharply in the shins and threatening to call a teacher. It had been her idea to have her friends lying in wait for the next time he pushed her, and it had worked out perfectly. He hadn't bothered her since, mostly because the three of them were always together. Then she sighed heavily again, remembering that maybe they wouldn't be together much in the future. How could she continue to hang around with two such backstabbing traitors?

She noticed her parents were still looking at her expectantly as they ate. "No, it was Travis and Janeen," Mayday said in a subdued voice, "They were saying mean things about Spider-Man." Her pent-up feelings of injustice and wrong burst out, causing her to raise her voice. "It's so unfair. Janeen knows I've met Spider-Man – she's even seen Dad's pictures – and yet she went and said that Spider-Man isn't real. And Travis was almost as bad, saying that believing in Spider-Man is like believing in Santa Claus ... like he thinks I'm some kinda baby." She took a savage bite from her buttered roll to soothe her outraged feelings. "Some friends," she added bitterly, her words partially muffled by the huge bite of roll she was chewing.

A very odd silence descended. Mayday noticed her mother shoot her father an expressive look. "What?" she asked, confused, swallowing the piece of roll and looking back and forth between her parents.

"Nothing," her mother said quickly. "Eat your chicken, honey; it's really very good."

Mayday picked up a bite-sized chunk of chicken with her fork and eyed it suspiciously. "And then this other girl – I think her name's Angela – said that Spider-Man is dead, because it's been so long since anyone's got his picture." She cautiously inserted the chicken in her mouth, but luckily it didn't taste too bad. It actually tasted good, kinda spicy. Maybe that gross green stuff hadn't ruined it after all.

As she was chewing, a sudden thought struck her.

"Dad, you used to take pictures of Spider-Man didn't you?" Mayday asked eagerly.

"Um ... yeah," said Dad hesitantly. He dropped his eyes to his plate, and began shovelling food into his mouth at a rapid rate.

"And you met him, right? You know him?" persisted Mayday. She thought she heard her mother stifle a laugh, but when she looked back at her, Mom was quietly eating her salad, her eyes downcast and her pretty face expressionless.

"You might say that," said Dad in an odd voice. "In a manner of speaking." He picked up his glass of water and took a long drink.

Grown-ups! Why can't they ever give a straight answer about anything? thought Mayday impatiently. Well, she was going to get something definite to take back to her friends tomorrow. "Have you seen him recently?" she asked. Her father just looked at her silently for a minute and then asked, "What do you mean?"

Mayday scooped up another forkful of pasta, this time with some chicken on top. "I mean, is he still alive? He's not dead, is he?" She shoved the food into her mouth as she waited in suspense for an answer.

"No, I think I can safely guarantee you that he is not dead – yet," Dad said uncomfortably.

"Peter!" said Mom forcefully, looking a little piqued. "Don't be flip."

"And I know that you've met him, Mom" said Mayday positively in between mouthfuls of bun. "Because I remember when he saved us that time." The moment she said these words, she knew that something was up. The atmosphere of the room, which already felt weird to Mayday, altered even more dramatically.

"Did you tell her about that, MJ?" Dad asked Mom incredulously over Mayday's head. "Did you remind her?"

"No!" Mom stated defensively. She shook her head decisively at the same moment, causing her heavy, dangly earrings to swing wildly back and forth. "We've only ever talked about it once, right after it happened."

Mayday was a bit taken aback by the vehemence in her parents' voices. Unsure of what was going on, she looked back and forth between the two of them, blinking her eyes rapidly. They weren't going to start fighting were they? They hardly ever fought, but when they did it was A Big Deal.

Glancing back down at Mayday, Mom said encouragingly, "What do you remember about that day, honey?"

"Well, I remember we were going to the park" said Mayday slowly, relieved that an argument had somehow been averted. "It was sunny and warm, and I think you were pushing me in something. We arrived, you lifted me out and took my hand to lead me to the duck pond."

"You don't remember this," interrupted Dad, almost sharply. "You only think you do."

"Peter," her mother said in a soft, warning tone, shooting her father a look that Mayday couldn't quite comprehend. The temperature in the room seemed to chill noticeably.

"No, MJ," Dad was saying resolutely. "It's called childhood amnesia: cognitive psychologists and neurologists have proved that people do not recall memories occurring before four years of age – they only think they do, because they've been told about them."

"Oh, then I suppose you're accusing me of having told her about all this?" said Mayday's mom indignantly, her own voice sharpening and her eyes narrowing. Her body language showed that she was tense and annoyed. "I still have nightmares about that day ... and all the other days. Do you think I'd want to saddle her with that?"

"No, I –"

"Excuse me," Mayday said with dignity. "I was talking, and it's rude to interrupt."

Her parents exchanged another look, this time one of amusement, and the temperature of the room seemed to warm up a little bit again. "Sorry, Mayday," Dad apologized. "You have the floor."

Mayday puffed up a little bit at finding herself with the leading role in the conversation. Usually she was the odd one out, trying to follow along while her parents talked about stuff she didn't understand or couldn't care less about. "I remember I picked up a long branch," she began again. "I started to poke it into the pond, and Mom took it away from me. Then suddenly this huge thing rose up out of the water. It was sorta like a giant alligator, ugly and scaly and nasty."

Mayday shuddered at the memory, and noticed that Mom had gone all white and shivery as well. "It had a deep, raspy voice and it said something about ..." she frowned, trying to remember. That gravelly voice, she'd heard it many times in her nightmares, "...a lucky day. Then it opened its mouth, and it had all these long pointy teeth. I was sure it was gonna eat me, but Mommy screamed and stabbed it in the eye with the stick."

"Oh, she remembers alright," Mom asserted. She shot Dad another keen look that Mayday didn't know how to interpret. "That's exactly what happened."

"Mo-om. You're interrupting again," protested Mayday.

"Go on, Mayday," Dad said gravely. He did not look happy. He set down his fork, and gave her his full attention. It was a little disconcerting to have his piercing blue eyes fixed on her face so Mayday looked down at her plate as she strove to remember.

"Mom picked me up and started to run. Then something grabbed us and we were flying through the air, above the trees, swinging down the streets. In no time we were on the top of our apartment building, and there was Spider-Man. After, Mom told me who he was, and that he'd saved us, but I already knew..." Mayday smiled broadly at the memory, and gave a happy sigh.

"Do you remember what he said to us?" Mom asked softly. She had stopped eating as well, and was looking at Mayday with new eyes.

"I remember he was cheerful and he joked a little," said Mayday. "He asked you, Mom, what two such good looking girls were doing hanging out in such bad company, then he asked me if I was okay -- and when I said I was, he mussed my hair and said it would take more than an overgrown iguana to scare a big girl like me." She remembered vividly how proud she'd been when he'd said that. His words had made it seem almost as though she hadn't been frightened at all ... even though of course she knew she had been ... she'd been very badly frightened indeed.

Mayday had nothing else to say, so she finished her bun in silence. But when the silence continued, she realized that she had somehow killed the conversation. Dad was always joking about topics that killed the conversation, and apparently Spider-Man was one of them, for reasons Mayday didn't entirely understand. The other part of the usual joke was that whoever killed the conversation had to be the one to revive it. Mayday took a drink of her milk and turned to her father. He was regarding her thoughtfully.

"You know what I wish, Dad?" said Mayday, wistfully.

"What's that, kiddo?"

"I wish I could prove to Janeen and Travis that Spider-Man is real. They're never gonna believe me even if I tell them you say he's still alive." She swallowed another bite of pasta, discovering in the process that she had no more appetite: she was full. "They never believe anything unless it's right in front of them."

"Well, that is a problem," agreed Dad. "But why do you think it is important for them to know that Spider-Man is real? I mean, apart from being able to prove to everybody that you're right and they're wrong."

Mayday thought about it, and then she said, "He's kinda neat, the stuff he can do. It felt really cool when he picked me and Mom up and took us home. And he helps people – he saved me and Mom that day. Travis says there are better superheros, but I think he's the coollest."

Everything was quiet again, yet it was a different sort of silence than before. Mayday noticed that Mom was beaming at her. "I've always wished I could see him one more time," Mayday confided to Mom, as an afterthought.

"I can relate to that," said Mom. She picked up her glass of wine and looked at Dad over the rim of it with laughing eyes as she took a sip.

Dad was looking uncomfortable again as he scraped his plate clean. Mayday gave up. Seemed like she had trouble understanding her parents even when they weren't saying much of anything. She'd had enough. "May I be excused?" she requested in a plaintive tone.

"Hmmm," said Mom, setting down her half-empty wine glass and leaning back in her chair. "Looks like somebody had her dinner spoiled with too much ice cream. You ate ... what? A dinner roll, some pasta, and two bites of chicken. Are you sure that's enough?"

"I'm totally full," Mayday insisted. She was already sliding down from her chair. "And please can I watch T.V. while I'm finishing my math homework? Just this once?" she pleaded. "I had a bad day."

Her parents both laughed at that, but Mom shook her head. "No, homework first, and then you may watch half an hour of television."

"'Kay." Mayday was too smart a girl to fight a losing battle, and she was through the kitchen door by the time Mom had finished her sentence.

End of Part I

A/N: By a weird coincidence, I find I'm posting this father-daughter story on Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to dads everywhere! Oh, and if anyone feels like reviewing, that would be nice. Thanks in advance.