Wonderful. Now Scott was going to think he was a jerk for silently getting on his case over the screw. The best he could do now was shrug uncomfortably and provide himself with a lousy defense. "Well if you're going to stick things through your head they had better be pretty special."

He needed to end this conversation. Pronto. His hackles were raised and he did not trust Stein even in a public venue with a shmuck in a nametag peeking into their aisle every five minutes to make sure the crazies weren't stealing anything. (Hello, who was the bigger freak here? The two well-behaved boys or the man patched together by medieval science? Everyone in Doyleton was stupid.) The man had pinged his spider-sense before. If he was dangerous enough to do that when the thing was this broken, that meant he was a genuine threat. Maybe not now, but it was getting closer to nightfall. Peter didn't want to deal with both zombies and psychopants surgeons. That just wasn't fair.

"It's been all right," Peter said shortly. His voice was clipped and polite, as if this were an accidental meeting with his school principal rather than a ten point creeper. "Wet, but I think we missed most of it."