"Andrew!" His mother greeted as soon as he walked into the door, giving her son a tight hug. "We are so glad you came back alive and well. We watched all of the footage with your voice commanding those fleets, it was so brave! But of course, it must have also been terrifying knowing that our fate was in your hands."
Ender watched her with blank eyes, for a moment not remembering that they all thought he'd known about it when he was playing the "game" against "Mazer." They didn't know that the whole thing hadn't been real for him. After a while, he simply nodded a little but still stayed silent. No, not because he was afraid to do so but rather because he didn't feel like telling them everything he had done in great detail.
"Oh and everyone at school will be so jealous!" Valentine added in an excited voice, a huge smile on her face.
He would've been happy about that except for the fact that he had to go to school still. Back to Miss Pumphrey and Stilson and the rest of them? Ender bit his lip and looked away quickly.
Didn't Battle School count as anything? There, he'd done far more dangerous and advanced things, but he didn't care. He enjoyed being challenged, something that had never happened down on Earth. In Battle School, he hadn't been treated like a freak, or a Third. Yes, people may have disliked him, but that was nothing unusual. It was only natural to be wary of those who have a faster, cleverer mind than you did. Any threats that were taken seriously were almost always taken care of in the relatively safe null gravity rooms and not the bus stop after school where there was no one else around to help him.
However, Ender could not tell his family about any of that. To them, he was simply a genius who was supposed to have everything he wanted and never got harassed by his schoolmates. So he simply nodded little and made a weak attempt to smile, but he was sure it looked more like a grimace.