“Stop talking like we’re in a movie, Ganke. The girl has a name.” Miles let his smile shine, but turned his face toward his food so it wouldn’t be so blinding. “And…I think so.”
“You think so? Y’all been doing this weird thing for like a year! And after all that prep work I did this morning. Told her about how you were kissing the paper and all that.”
“What? Ganke!”
“I’m joking, man. Chill out.” Ganke grabbed another fry and dragged it through the ketchup. “What really happened was she came to me talking about how she couldn’t get over the way Chamberlain had treated you and how she’s decided to organize some kind of protest with some folks, but she knew you wouldn’t be with it, so to make you feel better she also called her grandma to see if she can cause a stink on the…whatever board she’s part of, blah-blah-blah.”
“Wait, what? She told you all that?” Miles asked, stealing one of Ganke’s fries. “Well ain’t no need for all that now,” he said, fry in mouth.
“Right. But let me finish. Then, she asked me if you got the letter. Like, she hit me with the Ganke, I know how you are. Did you remember to give Miles the letter? Checkin’ for you, kid.”
“And you said?” Miles asked, watching Ganke eat another fry, nibbling it bit by bit until it was gone. Ganke turned to Miles.
“Does it matter?”
And it didn’t. It didn’t matter when the bell rang, and Miles and Ganke left the cafeteria. It didn’t matter when Miles met Alicia in the hallway, waiting for him to walk to Mr. Chamberlain’s class. It didn’t matter when she told him the plan, the same thing she told Ganke, about the protest—It was the second thing I had to tell you at the party—how she was going to get everyone to turn their desks around and face the wall, force Chamberlain to feel ignored. How she was going to tell her grandmother to try to get Mr. Chamberlain fired, or when Miles told her not to do any of it, that he already had it handled. None of it mattered, because it was Monday, a new day, a new week at Brooklyn Visions Academy. Miles Morales felt full of purpose and hope. Hope for his mother and father, his community. Hope for his cousin, Austin, who he figured today might be being treated a little better in jail. Hope that he’d someday be able to live with what happened with Uncle Aaron, and until then, he’d be able to think about him in the same way he thought about himself—as complicated. As human.
Hope. The spider had done it. Just like Mrs. Tripley said—connected the past and the future, on one hand creating a new strong web, and on the other, tearing an old web apart.
But as Miles and Alicia reached Mr. Chamberlain’s class, every student was diverting their eyes, just as they had done the Friday before. Not because of Alicia. Because of Miles. Because his desk was still on the floor.
“Miles.” Mr. Chamberlain turned from the chalkboard where he was scribbling his daily quote. “What was it you had to ask me?”
Miles didn’t respond. He couldn’t. The magic of this new Monday seemed to vanish immediately. “Well, if you’re not going to answer, at least take your seat.” He pointed to the empty chair next to the broken desk. Miles let out a breath. At least Chamberlain didn’t point at the floor. Miles sat in his chair, his desk on the floor in front of him like a small pedestal. Alicia, still looking skeptical, took her seat in front of Miles. He looked up at the board. Instead of a strange quote from a historic figure, it simply said, MIDTERM EXAM THIS FRIDAY. He started jotting down notes.
“Miles.”
Miles looked up.
“What are you doing?” Chamberlain asked.
“What you mean?” Miles asked, confused.
And then it happened.
Chamberlain pointed to the floor.
“We discussed this. New week, but same rules, son,” Mr. Chamberlain explained, and even though his voice wasn’t as cold as it had been the week prior, he was still saying the same thing. That Miles should work on the floor. “We just don’t damage things and act like we didn’t. We have to live with that. You have to live with that.”
Alicia whipped around in her desk as Miles’s face went numb. He understood what Mr. Chamberlain was saying—what was happening. That despite the mind control of the Warden being lifted, Miles was still Miles Morales, black and Puerto Rican from the “other” part of Brooklyn. The part of Brooklyn that Brooklyn Visions Academy didn’t have much vision for at all. Miles Morales, from a family of criminals. A neighborhood of nobodies, at least to the Mr. Chamberlains of the world.
Miles pushed the chair out from behind him and dropped to his knee. Alicia reached for his hand.
“Miles.” She shook her head. “Don’t.”
He looked up at her, all eyes, all heart. “I won’t.” He grabbed his backpack, his notebook, and headed to the front of the class.
“What are you gonna do, leave?” Mr. Chamberlain asked, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.
Miles stood in front of him. A slight smirk crept onto his face. “No.” And at that moment, Miles walked over to Mr. Chamberlain’s desk, big and wooden in the front corner of the class, covered in papers and books. Pens, felt tip and ballpoint. Pencils, no. 2 and mechanical. And of course, one can of sausage. Miles went behind it, pulled the chair from under it, and had a seat.
A thunder of laughter and disbelief rumbled through the class. Alicia smiled, wide.
“Miles. Get up,” Mr. Chamberlain said, trying to keep his cool.
“Mr. Chamberlain, why would I sit on the floor, on my knees, in your class, a class that I need to do well in, a class that I need to be focused in, when this totally unoccupied desk is just sitting here?” Miles said, cheekily. He immediately thought about how Ganke would’ve loved this.
“You think this is funny, Miles? You think this is a joke?”
“No, sir. I don’t. I really, really don’t.” Miles clenched his hands together on the desktop. “Now, I have a question for you.” Miles looked Mr. Chamberlain in the eye. Mr. Chamberlain stood with his arms folded, scowling. “Do you think I’m an animal?”
“What? What are you talking about? Just get up from my desk, or I’ll have you suspended!”
“Or maybe an insect? Some spider you think deserves to be crushed under your thumb?” At this Mr. Chamberlain paused, just a slight hesitation, a glimmer of something he knew but didn’t know. Something he felt, but couldn’t place. Miles nodded, and before Chamberlain could say anything else, before he could use the intercom system to contact campus police, Miles proclaimed, “I am a person.” He looked at Alicia, now feeling a little embarrassed because his big finish was ruined by his inability to remember the rest of what she said that day in class.
Alicia side-eyed him, then, realizing what he was trying to say, she joined him. “We are people,” she said.
“We are people,” Miles repeated, his memory jogged. “Everybody, repeat after Alicia.” He waved his arms as if he was welcoming the class into something. Into his trouble. And the class, still ready for the protest that Alicia had planned, fell right in line.
“We are not pincushions.”
“WE ARE NOT PINCUSHIONS!”
“We are not punching bags.”
“Class, settle down.”