"What do you think?" Cindy asks Shuri. "Of the Decathlon I mean, not about boring American history."
Shuri tilts her head, thinking about the offer.
"I'm not sure. I don't know what it's like." She says finally, then adds, "But it sounds really fun."
"It is! Decathlon is like, a great event because it looks so good on your report, plus it's basically just a group of us hanging out and nerding out on some questions." Cindy grins. "You can come along just for a bit, if you want, and if you decide you like it, then you can stay!"
"Okay," Shuri smiles, excited about the idea of meeting some other students. Being new whilst school was online isn't ideal, no one seems to notice if you're there or not. "I hope they don't think I'm crashing the party."
"No way! I'll message our head, Michelle. Have you met her by the way? She's pretty cool, and so smart!"
"I don't think I've met her." Shuri ignores the instant flashback to Peter telling her that he was partnered up with Michelle.
"That's okay, she'll be fine with it anyway. Well, I'll see you this lunchtime, so excited!" Cindy logs out.
"Okay, another class down. Only one more to go." Shuri swivels around on her chair. Catching sight of her make-up free and comfortably dressed reflection in the desktop mirror in the corner of her desk, she internally sighs. Being Sadie was such a relief compared to the stresses of royal life. No intrusive questions, interviews or strange glances to be seen. At least, not that Shuri could notice. Being invisible was a big change from everyone noticing you. At the same time, she sympathized with everyone who had to deal with this for their whole academic life. Being ignored constantly couldn't be great for your mental health, and Shuri could easily see how ruthless some people could be. Maybe that's what I'll add to the Wakandan Outreach Center, a way for people to be recognised, she thinks while clicking onto the link for her next class.
"Hi guys, it's me again. Welcome to online Art class! Today, we have a new student with us, Sadie Fitzgerald. If you don't know my name, it's Miss Kramer. You can also call Miss K, I don't really mind. Glad to see you picked Art, what kind of style do you do, Sadie?"
"Um, I mostly do digital drawings, but I like painting too." Shuri answers.
"That's great, we're always happy to see more artists around here, five is a very small class. But that's okay, we support each other and are always open to peer feedback. For this first lesson, we're going to get straight into hands on work. Your inspiration is a fantastical hero, so what are we thinking here? Cool, two hands up, Hugo, let's hear it."
A boy dressed in an oversized band T-shirt says,
"My mom, she's totally saving me whenever I need to eat. Otherwise, I'd just die from hunger."
"Cool, parents can be our heroes, and sometimes our enemies. What about you, Carla?" Miss K smiles.
A round faced girl beams at the camera, a ginger-coloured dog perched on her lap.
"My dog, Henry. He helps me regulate my blood sugar levels for my diabetes. He's saved my life a few times."
"Aww that's adorable. Okay, now that we've all got some inspiration, I can dismiss you to spend the rest of the period creating a rough sketch or outline of your artwork. Any questions, feel free to stay behind."
The other four classmates leave and Shuri decides to stay behind to ask about the assignment.
"Miss K? I'm not sure about what to do, I haven't been in many dangerous situations." Shuri lies, knowing full well that the Dora Miljae had saved her on countless occasions when she had strayed s little too far into an unknown area.
"Well, can you think of a time that you've needed saving?"
"Uh, not really."
"What about someone you wish could save you? Or maybe the superheroes you see on the news?"
"Like the Avengers or something?"
"Yeah, that's perfect. Do you have a favourite member?"
"I don't know them that well."
"That's okay, I can assign you one. How about…Spiderman? He's on the newspaper next to me." Miss K flashes Sadie an article on Spiderman's latest rescue.
Shuri fights to suppress the smile growing, she remembered Peter's complaints of that mission well. And then they pulled out a can of bug spray and tried to throw it at me!
"Okay, I know him."
"Not literally, I'm sure." The oblivious teacher laughs. "Great, you can get started and you can show it next week."
Shuri nods, smiling to herself at the irony in Miss K's statement and the meeting ends.
What could I draw about Peter?
Instinctively, she taps on her screen to open a new internet tab. Shuri types in Spiderman, and millions of results pop up.
The first few links are to popular blogs of Spiderman, mostly run by teenage girls with obvious crushes. She scrolls down further to find websites with the topic lines, Who is Spiderman?: Clues to his identity.
With a shudder, Shuri quickly passed those, knowing how scary it is to have people following your every move, searching for a single detail to pull your life apart.
She clicks on a video of Peter fighting at the Leipzig-Halle airport, a shot of him mid-swing as the tiny thumbnail to entice viewers.
Though she'd seen brief clips of the brawl on the news and the state of T'Challa's wreaked suit, there was nothing to prepare Shuri for the ferocity of the way they struck at each other. If she didn't know the team now, Shuri would've thought they never could have reconciled. Each hero fought with brutal determination, as if the person they struck at wasn't someone they had spent nights eating dinner and watching movies together.
Loud exclamations in German are heard in the background as the phone camera follows the attacks. Shuri covers her mouth in shock as she watches Peter launch himself at James and the Falcon, slinging webs and tackle them. No wonder the identity of Spiderman remained a secret, she could never have connected to sweet but bashful Peter to the skilled fierce athlete the hero was. A smile grows as a flicker of pride rushes through Shuri, thinking at how he trusted her with his precious secret. She wouldn't let him down.
Shuri opens a new document, flips her laptop onto it's back like a notebook and grabs her stylus to start drawing. She projects a frame of the video, a shot of Spiderman mid-swing, onto her monitor, sitting to the far left of her desk and begins sketching. Shuri draws the outline of Peter's slim figure, and carefully selects the right shade of blue and red to shade his suit in carefully.
"If you ruin your suit, Peter," Shuri murmurs to the sketch, "I'll have to make you a new one." She smiles at the idea of designing a new suit, with the added challenge of being without her lab. What other features could she add? Maybe Peter wanted a tracking device, something that he can easily shoot at a target and follow along.
Whilst Shuri is thinking deeply about all the amazing advancements she could use to improve the Spiderman suit, an alert pops up on her computer screen. Distracted, Shuri opens it, finding an email from Cindy. Hi, it reads. If you're still interested, join the meeting using this link! Hope to see you there! If all her class invite emails sounded as excited as this, Shuri might be tempted to show up to class happy to be there. Taking a deep breath to shoo all her worries out of the way, she presses on the link and joins the call.
Immediately, the sound of two people arguing plays.
"No, if Newton had thought of it that way, then of course he would have agreed!"
"How? It doesn't even make logical sense! Maybe if Franklin had decided on-"
"Hi Sadie!" Cindy's smile is the center of her face, large, bright and happy. "Welcome to Decathlon!"
Sadie waves on camera, as the others peer curiously at their screens.
"Uh, hi?"
Michelle's chill grin appears.
"Hey, Sadie. Thanks for joining us, it's cool that you were interested in joining the Decathlon team, we're a member short since our old leader left. I'm Michelle Jones, but you can call me MJ, and there's Abe Brown, Sally Avril, Charles Murphy, Flash Thompson, Ned Leeds, Cindy Moon, and look who's joining late, here's the one and only…Peter Parker."
As it happens, Peter had just joined the meeting, late and totally unaware of what was going on.
"What's going on?" He asks, squinting at the screen.
"Great to see you finally joined, loser." Flash sneers.
"Shut up, Flash. Peter, you came just in time for introductions. We have a new potential member, Sadie Fitzpatrick."
The sip of water Peter had taken the moment before becomes life-threatening as he chokes upon hearing Michelle's announcement.
"W-what?" He stares confusedly at the screen.
"Sadie and I have History together, so I invited her along. You should know Sadie, she's in our class." Cindy says.
"Oh, right." Peter blinks.
"Yep, now enough wasting our time. Let's get practicing, people." Michelle claps her hands together as everyone prepares to answer the tough questions posed by the Decathlon authorities. "Sally, can you share the question sheet?"
"Done."
As Shuri waits patiently, playing the role of the confused new student, her phone beeps with a message from Peter.
What are you doing here?
Is it against the law to join an extracurricular class? Besides, its not like I knew you did it either
Fair enough, but r u seriously thinking of joining Decathlon tho?
If I can, yeah, it seems pretty fun
Well don't forget to remember that you don't know me
Easy-greasy, is that the right expression?
Close, it's easy-peasy
Damn, Shuri sends a photo of a sad looking llama.
On-screen, Peter's second encounter with a cup of water is just as ill-fated as the first. He coughs loudly, eyes aimed downwards at his phone screen.
"Peter, are you paying attention?" Michelle asks.
"Nope, I bet he's texting some girl. Is that right, Poor Parker? Nah, he'll never be able to get a girlfriend." Flash taunts.
"Sorry, MJ." The tips of Peter's ears blush a furious red.
"Alright, now take a look at Question 8, how would you think about answering that?"
Shuri moves closer to her screen to read the list of problems. Damn, these kids were smart. Not as smart as her, of course, but still it was very admirable.
Time passed quickly as the group discuss various answers and solutions.
"Okay, let's finish there. Great job, everyone. We'll meet again next week, same time. I'll send the meeting code to the group chat."
"What group chat?" Shuri asks.
"We have a group chat from the time we went to Nationals." Abe says.
"Can anyone add Sadie to the group chat?" MJ asks.
"Sure, I can. What's your number, beautiful?" Flash winks suggestively.
Shuri suppresses an internal horrified recoil, but forces herself to compose her face into a look of embarrassed blushing.
"Hah…" Shuri recites her new American number, linked to the fake Instagram account she had set up. It looked just like any normal, everyday school-going, phone addicted girl's social media feed. Peter had helped write some captions and took photos of Shuri in different positions for her photo timeline. She'd also set up an algorithm to look like she was active on it during school times and afterschool, interacting with other computer-controlled accounts.
"Aaaaand, you're added." Flash smirks triumphantly and adds suggestively. "Feel free to text or DM me whenever you want you know, for school or…anything else."
Shuri plasters a nervous smile on her face, internally suppressing an eye roll, nods and logs out. Time for business now. She had a talk scheduled for the next hour and a half at Oman High-School in London. Shuri swivels around in her chair and grabs her bag of makeup, dabbing on some concealer, dark purple lipstick, and shimmery eyeshadow. She steps over to the closet, opening the door to reveal the stunning gold dress she had bought online. Dressing quickly, Shuri appraises herself in the mirror. She knows that whatever she does, it's always reflected back on her country, and ultimately her brother, so Shuri must dress the part whether she likes it or not.
Grabbing a pair of heels and the rest of her items, Shuri makes her way downstairs.
"Sadie Fitzgerald? Are you here?" Mr Donner's cranky old voice crackles through the speakers of Peter's computer. "Eh, another idiot I don't need to teach." He mutters.
"Sir? I saw her before, she must be late or something." Cindy says.
Peter bites back a groan, right Cindy expected 'Sadie' to show up. What excuse could he come up with?
"Uh, I think her cat's sick, so she can't make it to this lesson." Peter says quickly.
"Well," Mr Donner grunts. "Which one is it? Is she late or is she sick?"
"It's her cat that's sick, sir."
"Right, now don't bother me about it anymore."
"Peter, how do you know?" Cindy asks.
"She told me before, Ms Warren assigned me as her buddy." He smiles nervously.
"Okay…"
Sighing internally, Peter wonders how her talk is going. He decides to send a quick update to let Shuri know what happened in case she needed to corroborate his flimsy excuse for her absence.
Hope the talk is going okay, just letting you know that everyone thinks you have a cat by the way, who's sick and that's why you're not here. Sorry, that's the best I could come up with.
The lesson drags on and Peter picks up his phone a couple of times, silently wishing that Shuri would respond or tell him some other obscure nomenclature fact about their grumpy History teacher. The past few couple of days, it was so nice to have her in his classes, someone who made witty jokes and was always ready to laugh. Sometimes he even found himself staring at her screen, watching her forehead crease as she answers the questions, some purposely wrong to throw off the teachers. Every now and then, she'd peek at the camera with a knowing look and Peter swore Shuri somehow knew what he was doing, but he didn't care because it was their secret to keep. Them against the world of American High school.
"Alright, finish the next forty questions and you're done." Mr Donner orders and ends the meeting.
"Sheesh, you're real charming," Peter grumbles. He opens the assignment and flicks through the endless list of questions. Bored and unmotivated, Peter hops out his chair, now on a mission to find where Shuri was hiding.
He pokes his head into the meeting room. Nope, nothing. Peter checks the spare offices and the other rooms he knows she liked to frequent. Huh, where could she be? I wanna show her the Matrix series and watch her make fun of all their old technology, he thinks. Wait…. Peter dashes off to the movie theater.
Hesitantly, he pushes carefully on the squeaky door and slides inside. The main lights are off, except for the spotlights, that are perfectly aligned with Shuri's position at the front of the room. She's clothed in brilliant rays of gold, the light reflecting off her dress and lighting up the dark room. Peter feels his breath hitch, stopping as he watches Shuri smile widely and enthusiastically answer a child's question from on-screen.
"That's a great question! So, what can we do about global warming? Well, in Wakanda here are some inventions that we have to help fix the environment…"
Strong, confident and warm, Shuri shines up front, projecting her joy toward her audience, unwittingly also to Peter, as she shares the revolutionary technology of her country. He hears the teacher's voice echo over the speakers saying, Thank you for joining us, everyone say thank you, as the students crow their appreciation, and Shuri waves back goodbye.
Peter shifts out of the shadows and casually descends the stairs, calling out,
"Wow, you're popular with the kids."
She looks up from packing away her equipment, surprised.
"Ha, thanks. I learnt from consoling all the children Okoye terrified." Shuri laughs, and he does too, the happiness bubbling up and overflowing in contagious joy.
"So, how was history without me?" She asks.
Peter shrugs,
"It was super boring, actually."
Shuri rolls her eyes,
"I can imagine, especially with that old man. He's so rude, you know?"
Peter gives her a skeptical look.
"This is a public education; we don't all have the finest educators as our tutors."
"I know!" She huffs and he chuckles, delighted to have gotten a rise out of her.
"Wanna go watch a movie?" Peter suggests.
Pursing her lips in consideration, Shuri taps a painted fingernail against her chin.
"What, no homework from Mr Angry?"
"No…"
Shuri casts him a knowing look.
"Fine, finish the rest of the worksheet and that's it."
"Gotcha! I knew he would assign that; I've finished it already." She smirks triumphantly.
Peter crosses his arms over his chest, mock sulking and Shuri giggles at the pout on his face.
"How about I help you quickly finish it and then we can watch the movie?" She suggests.
"Deal!" Peter cries, perking up instantly.
"I'll meet you in 10 minutes." Shuri tells him, slipping out the door and heading to her room.
"Peter?"
A knock sounds on his door and Peter calls back,
"Come in!"
Shuri opens the door and steps through, wearing a casual pair of jeans and an oversized t-shirt, wrapped all in a large grey hoodie.
"Have you started yet?" She asks, flopping down on a beanbag.
"Yep, still got a few to go. When were the Jim Crow laws enacted?"
"After the Civil War."
"Okay, got it."
"I still can't believe that he's teaching us! Did you hear what he said the other lesson? 'Back in my day, it was perfectly fine for the two races to be separated'. Ugh, what a horrible person he is, still believing in all that rubbish."
"True, it's so wrong." Peter agrees from his desk, hurriedly typing answers.
"Surely there's someone we could talk to about it?"
"Who? Like Principal Morita? Like he's gonna do anything about it."
Shuri frowns and pulls out her phone to search for the education law rights in America. After a moment, Peter's phone beeps with a message, Which movie are we watching?
"It's the Matrix." He replies out loud.
"Oh cool! I've always wanted to see that movie. Hey, who's 'IAmTheBest_F'? They've requested me."
Peter rolls his eyes, muttering,
"It's Flash. He thinks he's so smart with that handle."
"Ah, right. Ooh, here's MJ's account."
Shuri taps on the profile and once her request has been accepted, she scrolls through the posts.
"She doesn't post a lot." Shuri notices, staring at the meager 4 posts displayed on the screen.
"Yeah, she's kinda private if you haven't realised."
"I can totally see that. Wait, is that one of her and you?" Shuri shows the post to Peter and under his desk lamp, she notices his ears flush a deep red.
"Um, yeah. She took it after we finished Nationals for Decathlon."
"Cute!"
"Thanks." Peter blushes harder. "I think so too."
"Wait, no way," Shuri exclaims. "You like Michelle!
"Shuri! Stop, we're just friends!" He groans.
"But you wish you were more, right?" She pokes his shoulder with her toe.
"Fine, yes but don't say anything; I've only told Ned. But seriously, she might be seeing someone else. I think this guy called Brad likes her too." Peter admits.
"Huh, I'm sure she'll choose you, you're like one of her closer friends anyway."
"Really? You think so?" He grins, so full of hope that Shuri forced all her secret hurt far away, to the bottom of her heart.
"Yeah, definitely! Now, how's that homework going?"
"Almost done, can you get the movie set up? Was thinking of showing you the Matrix."
Shuri flicks on the TV and pulls the movie up.
"Aaand I'm done!" Peter announces, slamming his computer screen down and diving onto a spare beanbag to join Shuri on the floor. "Don't start without me!"
"Just in time," she laughs, pressing play on the remote.
And as the movie starts, Shuri glances over at Peter, watching the way his hair fell perfectly across his excited face and thinks wistfully, Michelle is so lucky that you love her.