Arena Mode Read Free Page A

a beautiful, porcelain-skinned girl with a sweep of pink tresses, but there she was: sitting perfectly still, absently twirling a loop of hair with her finger as her eyes scanned the pages.
    “ Peyton ,” I shouted, “is that my book you’re devaluing with the acidity of your finger prints? I think it just went from ‘very fine’ condition down to ‘fine’.”
    “No way!” she replied with a tiny giggle, holding the comic up for my inspection. “This is totally mint.”
    I shook my head and tried to suppress a smile as I approached. “No, it was close to mint before you started rubbing your greasy little paws all over it. Then it dropped from ‘very fine’ to ‘fine’ condition when you dented the cover three seconds ago.”
    “Whatever, Matty,” she said with a huff. “It’s not like you’re gonna read this before you bag it and box it anyway. Someone might as well get some use out of it.”
    In all the years I’d know her, I’d never seen Peyton crack open the cover of anything aside from a veterinary textbook. “I didn’t even know you read comics?”
    “I usually don’t,” she said brightly, “but it was so weird ... I had this dream about spiders last night, and as soon as I sat down behind the counter it was just lying here – Spider-Man. Totally fate, right?”
    “That is totally fate,” I smirked, “because today my horoscope said that a crazy girl with pink hair would ruin one of my books, so it looks like we both had a date with kismet.”
    Peyton just smiled back. “You were always up my ass about getting into comics, and now that I finally read one you’re gonna be this much of a douche? You should be happy! Why don’t you read it after me and we can talk about it over coffee?”
    “Save your time,” I said. “I’ve already read The Amazing Spider-Man number seven hundred, and it’s complete bullshit.”
    “Then why do you want to buy it?”
    “Because I have the six hundred and ninety-nine issues that came before it.”
    “And also because you have a crippling case of OCD?” she replied, now wearing a smirk of her own.
    “No, it’s because I’m a collector.”
    “A compulsive collector,” she snapped back without missing a beat.
    I shrugged. “It’s redundant to say ‘compulsive collector’.”
    Peyton folded her arms loosely across her chest. “All right, I’ll bite. Why is this book ‘bullshit’?”
    “Well first of all, it’s unrealistic.”
    “A story about a guy who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and sticks to walls isn’t living up to your expectations for realism?” She let out a short laugh. “I’m pretty sure that’s why it’s a comic book and not a documentary.”
    “It’s because of the ending.” Peyton had a way of agitating me. “At the time it was advertised as ‘The Death of Spider-Man’, but it’s not really a death at all. Peter Parker and Doctor Octopus just swapped brains like they were in some stupid Disney movie. And then a month later an all new Spider-Man title goes on sale, and Parker is back as a goddamned ghost.”
    Peyton crinkled her nose. “Hey, spoiler alert.”
    “That’s the thing: it’s not a spoiler because the heroes never die. They just come back to life in another comic with some ridiculous explanation about how they survived, and go about their business like nothing happened.”
    “So the hero is just supposed to die at the end? That’s pretty bleak.”
    “It doesn’t have to be,” I said, waving the comic in front of me without even realizing it. “What if the protagonist accomplished everything they’ve set out to do? Maybe they reach their ultimate goal, or sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Wouldn’t it be better to go out in a blaze of glory than to linger on for decades, rehashing the same tired storylines month after month? To have their legacy diluted by cookie-cutter plots chosen by creatively-devoid editors, who wouldn’t know a good story if it shot them in the ass