Adventures in Babysitting ↠ Peter Parker [1] ✓

13 | Go Fish

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ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING
xiii. GO FISH

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  RILEY O'DAIR'S BRAIN WAS a fishbowl. The thoughts swirling about in her head continued to rotate to the front of her mind. She was so out of it that it was like she was seeing her thoughts right in front of her face rather than the mountainous stacks of homework scattered about on the table before her. Twirling her mechanical pencil in one hand, Riley pursed her lips and scrunched together her ebony eyebrows.

   A cloud of carbon dioxide was forced out of her lungs, causing her cheeks to puff outward. She tossed her pencil a few inches in front of her and used her free hands to prop her elbows up. Her hands went to the side of her head, her fingers pressing against her temple. All she could possibly think about was a flaw.

   In every spider's web, there are intricate details that take hours and hours to perfect the first time around. With time, the spider grows to perfect spinning its own web so well that it is simply rare to screw up, for every spider's web is its own. There are no flaws in a spider's web because there are no rules to web-spinning. To Riley O'Dair, her work as an agent and Avenger was similar to that of a spider's web: there are no rules, so when you mess up, it means you really messed up.

   In other words, Riley's spiderweb had a flaw.

   Something was wrong with Peter Parker.

   She could tell because she had been all too observant of the boy over the past two months. All week long, he had just been... different. It was clear to her that he was trying to act like his normal self, but she had to have been a terrible agent to not notice the change in his persona.

   It made her wonder if she had slipped up. It's not like it was completely impossible, after all. She hadn't done a fantastic job at masking what her true voice sounded like because she didn't think Valor would end up talking to Spider-Man or Peter as much as she ended up doing. Perhaps that was where she screwed up? Maybe Tony said something to Peter about Riley's recruitment? No—that wouldn't make much sense. Surely, Tony would have told her, right?

   Groaning, Riley slammed her head against the table. JOCASTA's voice came echoing through the condominium Tony had lent to the teenager seconds later, "Are you alright, Miss Valor?"

   Picking her head up, Riley pouted, "No, not at all. I'm just so... I don't know, JO!"

  "You sound agitated," JOCASTA commented. "Would you like some cereal?"

   She paused. What a strange thing to suggest. "Why is that your first response of comfort?"

  "Mr. Stark programmed me to cater to your likes, your dislikes, and your desires," JOCASTA explained. "He knows you very well and he knows that you like cereal."