Chapter 3: Afternoon at Stan Lee

The school required a fine arts credit to graduate, so Peter chose the one he thought he would suck least at, which was their entry-level art class. It was even smaller than his English class, at only eight people. They sat four to a table, leaving two of the tables in the classroom empty. Peter sat with Scott, who he now knew he'd be seeing a lot of, plus the blond sleeping guy from homeroom and the one with the red tinted glasses. His lip had stopped bleeding, though a bruise had begun to show.

"Are you okay, Matt?" Scott asked.

"I'm fine."

"You've got to stop scuffling with Frank," the blond guy said. "He's going to beat you to a pulp."

"Nah, I can take him."

"Who's Frank?" Peter asked.

"He's on the football team," Scott said. "Not the kind of guy you want to mess with, but Matt here seems to sadistically enjoy pushing his buttons whenever possible."

"Telling someone to stop teasing freshmen is hardly pushing buttons."

"It is to Frank. You'd be better off just letting him be," the blond guy said.

"Why don't you tell him to cut it out, then?"

Peter could tell by Matt's tone that this was a conversation they'd had before, probably several times.

He sighed. "I told you, he won't listen."

"Sure. You're just too scared to try."

He pounded his fist on the table, making all four of them jump. "I am not. I just think it's hardly my place to tell him what to do."

"Sounds like you're scared to me."

"Guys, guys," Scott said. "You have this conversation every time Matt and Frank have an altercation, can you stop it? You're getting nowhere."

Neither of them had time to respond before Ms. Lewis called them all to attention and explained the day's assignment. They were in the middle of a unit on shading. She dropped off a box of three-dimensional shapes on their table and asked them to pick one and draw it. Peter chose a pyramid with a square base. He watched the other two guys choose their shapes and then pass the box to Matt, who reached out a hand and fumbled around a bit before grabbing the edge of the box to pull it towards himself. He grabbed one of the shapes at random and turned it every which way in his hands.

"Hey Matt," Peter said, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

"Yeah?"

"Sorry if this is an offensive question, but are you blind?"

Matt laughed. "Yeah. That's not offensive, by the way. Most people when they ask don't do so politely."

"Well, the second part might be worse." Peter paused, unsure how this follow-up question would be received. "What are you doing in an art class?"

His face lit up with a grin. "Excellent question. Honestly? I'm here mostly out of spite. They can't not let me take the class or they'd get in huge trouble, but they can't grade me the same as sighted students or they'd also get in huge trouble. I mostly do stuff with puffy paint, or read about the techniques we're learning instead of actually doing them." He shrugged. "The school's proud of their diversity and inclusion or whatever; I like to make them work for it."

Based on everything he'd learned so far about Matt, Peter couldn't tell if he should respect the guy or fear him. Clearly, it didn't take much for him to decide to pick a fight. Don't ever get on this guy's shit list, he told himself. Peter had a lot of practice with staying under the radar, so hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult.

Ms. Lewis smiled when he handed her his drawing of the pyramid at the end of class, so he supposed he didn't botch it too badly. Now, he had to face the trials and tribulations of the cafeteria. Peter knew where it was, but he didn't know anything about the layout or the culture. He walked in with the goal of finding Shuri and asking to sit with her. Of everyone he'd met here so far, she was most likely to say yes. Upon entering the cafeteria, he immediately identified the football table. They'd clearly pushed two tables together to make a bigger one. He recognized the blond kid from his art class and someone from homeroom. Most everyone at the table had their letterman jackets on; they were red with white sleeves and the letters SL on the front.

Peter scanned the room for Shuri and found her sitting with another guy he thought might've been in their chem class. They made eye contact, and she waved him down. He was surprised to find her sitting with only one other person, considering the sheer number of people that greeted her in the hallways. "Hey Peter," she greeted. "How was art?"

"I drew a pyramid that was halfway decent," he explained, sitting down across from them. The guy with her stared openly at him, bright blue eyes almost unblinking. His hands rested on the table, both covered by leather gloves.

"This is James," Shuri introduced.

"Bucky," he corrected.

"Nice to meet you."

"Shuri tells me you're in our math and engineering classes."

"Yeah." Peter squirmed under the intense scrutiny. He opened the bag of pretzels he'd packed for lunch and ate one. Shuri opened a thermos, and an amazing spicy, smoky smell made its way to Peter's nostrils. "What's that?" he asked. "It smells great."

"Beef suya. It's supposed to be on skewers, but those aren't very packable."

"That's true."

"Do you want to try some?"

"No thanks."

"Say yes," Bucky said flatly as he stabbed a fork into a piece of grilled chicken. "She'll keep asking until you say yes."

"Okay." Peter plucked a chunk of beef out of the thermos she offered him and popped it into his mouth. Flavor exploded across his tongue. Aunt May's cooking skills had always been questionable, and Mr. Stark rarely stopped working long enough to sit down and eat food, much less cook it, so his palate had grown used to only the plainest of foods. He almost didn't want to swallow it, because then the experience of tasting it would be over, but he couldn't just keep chewing forever. "Wow. Tastes even better than it smells."

Shuri nodded. "American food is hopelessly bland."

Peter couldn't argue with that. He ate the rest of his lunch mostly in silence while Shuri and Bucky went back and forth about the merits of different types of food. Shuri was not a fan of sushi, which Bucky found borderline sacrilegious. Their table was in one corner of the cafeteria, so he could see almost everyone from here. Ninth and tenth grade ate lunch at the same time, so the few familiar faces from his classes were interspersed with a bunch of strangers.

Fifteen minutes before the dismissal bell rang, Bucky packed up his lunch and swung his backpack over his right shoulder. "I've gotta go," he explained. "I have a timed assignment for comp sci."

"Good luck!" Shuri called after him.

"Thanks!"

Peter wondered why he was leaving so early, but figured it wasn't any of his business. Shuri asked him about people he'd met so far, so he told her about Scott and Matt from art class. "Yeah, Matt's a trip. He wants to be a lawyer. I pity anyone who's going to argue against him in court."

"Yeah, that checks out."

The bell rang, so Peter and Shuri set off for history together. "Mr. Ross is probably the strictest teacher here," Shuri warned. "So be on your best behavior. Not that I suspect you're the trouble-making type."

Peter pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and nodded in understanding. The only 'misbehaving' on his track record was the occasional tardiness, but that was almost always the fault of the New York subway system. He got the sense Happy, Mr. Stark's personal chauffeur who would apparently be driving Peter to and from school, was not the kind of person to let him be late. Mr. Ross had his desks arranged in rows, with all of them facing the front. He stood at the front of the classroom talking to a curly-haired man with scruffy facial hair, the both of them looking at something on his computer. Shuri pointed him to a seat that she promised was always empty. They'd arrived rather early, so he watched the door as the rest of the kids filtered in. He saw only two familiar faces: one of the girls from his art class, and the sleeping blond guy from homeroom again. Peter really ought to find out his name.

Three guys in letterman jackets sauntered in as a group. The one at the front looked like he came straight from military school, with harsh features, a physique like a truck, and a buzz cut. As soon as he laid eyes on Peter, he smirked. Peter gulped. The guy strode right up to him, towering over his desk. "You new here?"

"Yeah." Peter cursed the crack in his voice.

"Where you from?"

"Queens."

"So you're a city boy, then?"

Peter said nothing.

"You seen some shit?"

He had, but he didn't want to talk about it with this guy.

"So you're the shy kind. Okay, okay." He smirked again. "You go to public school in the city?"

Peter nodded silently.

"What did you, win the lottery?"

He shook his head. Peter wished that was the case.

"Did someone die? Leave a nice inheritance?"

"No," Peter nearly growled. He liked to think he was a very patient, tolerant person, but jokes about death in the family pushed him over the edge.

"Come on, Frank. Let him be," one of the other football guys urged. So this was the infamous Frank that split Matt's lip.

Frank plastered an innocent smile on his face. "I'm just trying to get to know the new kid."

"Don't be such a stereotype," said the third football guy. "'Football player bullies new student' is so unoriginal."

Frank rolled his eyes and slumped into his seat without another word. Peter didn't know what to think of the interaction that just occurred. Hopefully, Frank wouldn't continue to single him out. Shuri met his eye from across the classroom and offered a reassuring thumbs-up.

Right before the bell rang, Mr. Ross pinned a microphone to his tie and turned to a kid in the front row to ask if it was working. The kid nodded and gave a thumbs up. From his position a few rows back, Peter could see the kid wore bright purple hearing aids. Mr. Ross began the class, and the man he'd been talking to earlier waved his hands at some of the other students in the front row. It took Peter a solid minute to figure out that he must be a sign language interpreter. Once he solved the mystery, it was a lot easier to focus on Mr. Ross's lecture. Easier by comparison didn't mean easy, though. History had always been his least favorite subject, and Mr. Ross didn't make it particularly exciting. He found himself watching the interpreter just because it was interesting to try and parse out which signs meant what.

The bell couldn't ring soon enough. Peter resisted the urge to pack up early so he could get out of here faster, knowing that a lot of teachers couldn't stand when students did that. He stuck it out until Mr. Ross dismissed them, then walked to math with Shuri. There, they reunited with Bucky. "How'd the comp sci assignment go?" she asked.

"My hand hurts from all the typing," he complained. They walked into the classroom and Bucky sat down at his desk. Peter asked their teacher, Ms. Hill, if there was somewhere in particular he should sit. She directed him to an empty seat at one of the tables. Already seated at the desk diagonal to his was a girl with long, dark hair that he recognized from history. She said hello to him with a polite smile. "I'm Kate."

"Peter."

"Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too."

Another kid came in and sat down at their table: a really tall, thin blond guy. "This is Alex," Kate introduced. "He's way better at math than pretty much anyone in the class, so he's the one whose paper you want to look at if you're cheating on a test. Not mine."

"I—I don't cheat on tests," he said meekly.

"Good for you. But if you ever find yourself needing to," she continued in a whisper, and then elbowed Alex. "This is your guy."

Alex rolled his eyes. Ms. Hill called the class to attention. Peter felt an immense sense of relief when he recognized the kinds of problems she put up on the board. Much like in chemistry, his old school had prepared him well enough not to be behind here. That, and he was generally pretty good at math. There would be no need for cheating off of Alex.

For his last class of the day, he an engineering class in a room connected to the woodshop. Since it was an elective, it was even smaller than his art class. The group consisted of him, Shuri, Bucky, Scott, Alex, and one other person from his math class. Peter overheard his name was Phastos. Their teacher proved to be the most hands-off instructor he'd ever encountered, which probably wasn't a good thing considering they'd be working with power tools. Still, Peter knew he would look forward to this class every day. By the time the class ended, he was exhausted from a day full of navigating unfamiliar hallways and learning names.

Happy picked him up in one of Mr. Stark's Audis, a different one than the car he'd dropped Peter off in this morning. Shuri had followed him outside and, when she saw the car, asked, "You rich or something?"

"Or something," Peter answered cryptically. He couldn't believe there were people who owned enough cars to just switch them out like that. That money could've gone to charity or something instead. "See you tomorrow," he told Shuri.

"Bye!"

~0~

Peter spent a few hours in his room doing homework, then watched a YouTube video on restoring an old PlayStation. May called him down to dinner, and he helped set the table while she finished cooking. He fought to dispel the memory of Shuri's beef suya. The smells currently in the kitchen weren't anywhere near as tantalizing. "So, how was your first day?" May asked, eyes wide with eagerness.

Peter shrugged. "It was fine. Met a few cool people." And some uncool ones, he didn't add. "I don't feel like I'm behind in any of my classes, which is something I was really worried about switching schools so far into the year."

"That's wonderful. Tell me more about these cool people."

Peter told her everything he could remember about Shuri, Scott, Bucky, and Matt. Mr. Stark, dressed in old jeans and a band T-shirt with motor oil stains, bustled into the room and sat down at the place set for him right as Peter talked through what happened in art.

"There's a blind kid in your art class?" he asked.

"Yeah. He says he likes to make them work for their ADA compliance."

Mr. Stark chuckled. "I want to meet this guy." He took a few frantic bites of meatloaf. "So, what do you think of Stan Lee overall? You like it?"

Peter shrugged. "Yeah, it's fine." He didn't want to give Mr. Stark the satisfaction of knowing Peter might prefer this to his old school. He'd known Shuri for less than a day and he'd probably had more conversations with her than anyone at school back in Queens.

"Peter, why don't you tell Tony about your engineering class," May prompted. Peter knew his mood had noticeably changed since Mr. Stark joined the table conversation, and he was annoyed that May was pushing him to fix it. Talking to his aunt who he'd known his entire life and shared everything with felt very different from talking to a man he'd known for barely a year. Peter shared the bare minimum details he could get away with, trying not to convey how uncomfortable he was.

"May I be excused?" he asked.

"Yes. But put all your dishes away," May said.

Peter did as he was told. "Good night," he muttered on his way upstairs.

"Good night, Peter," Mr. Stark and May called back.

Peter collapsed on his bed and pulled his glasses off to rub his hands over his face. He'd actually been in a decent mood after school. Sure, Frank was kind of an asshole, but everyone else he met had been pretty nice. Most of his teachers were great. Overall, he enjoyed that first day more than the average day at his old school. He'd wanted to tell May all about it. But not Mr. Stark. Peter just didn't trust the guy, and why should he? The deepest conversation they'd ever had was Mr. Stark asking to adopt him and Peter refusing. Before that, he made little to no attempt at establishing a relationship with Peter. Did he expect Peter to see him as a father figure just because he was married to May? He found it hard to believe one of the smartest men alive could be so dumb as to think that could happen. It was going to take a lot more than that to establish the kind of trust necessary for Peter to even fathom allowing this man to take legal control of his life, even if that control would only last the few years until he turned eighteen.