Chapter Five
Olivia

The school Mom and Dad signed us up for is a school that has grades six through twelve, so Stevie and I get to go to the same school despite our age difference. The agent Uncle Everett said would drive us to school arrived at six in the morning this morning, which is the time we had to wake up this morning. In Wakanda, school doesn't start until eight, which is one in the afternoon here in New York. It's only one in the morning back home, so Stevie and I are absolutely exhausted. The agent told us to call him Tim, but I don't know if that's his real name. He's pretty nice, and he likes the Beatles, which is great, he played them in the car the entire forty minute ride to school.

Stevie and I are now standing on the sidewalk in front of the school, staring at the dozens of kids flooding inside. I just now realize that Stevie and I are the new kids, which makes it difficult to blend in like Uncle Everett said to. I feel Stevie slip his hand into mine, forcing some confidence into his voice as he says: "Don't be nervous. We're Barnes's, we can handle anything."

"Here we aren't Barnes's, we're Bransons."

"We'll always be Barnes's."

I squeeze my brother's hand, taking in a deep breath. "Good luck, Stevie."

"You too, Livy."

We let go of each other and make our way into the building, with Steve walking down the sixth grade hall while I make my way towards the ninth grade hall. According to the map I have of the school, each grade has their own hall where all the classes are, all connected by the common area where the front entrance is. Past this area is the cafeteria and the gym, and then the hallways on the other side are a bunch of hallways where the elective classes are. It's kind of confusing, I had to circle the rooms where all my classes are.

My first class of the day is history, which will focus on modern world history this year. My other classes are algebra, modern world literature, biology, gym, and a language class of my choice. I picked German. I figure since I'm fluent in German that class would be a easy.

I find my history class in the third door on the right of the ninth grade hall. There is a name tag with my name on a desk towards the back, so I walk towards it and place my backpack down, trying not to notice all of the other students staring at me. A loud bell goes off that startles me, and once this sound goes off, the teacher comes in and shuts the door. She's a very tall white woman with a lot of freckles and very curly brown hair. She seems warm and welcoming as she greets the class, but I find myself freezing in my seat as she locks eyes with me and asks me to stand up and introduce myself.

All of the kids eyes flock to me as I slowly stand up. I clear my throat and grip onto the necklace around my neck: a little gold paw print that Aunt Shuri made me. It holds a suit just like Mom and Uncle Alex's. I grip onto it whenever I'm scared, it makes me feel like they're there with me.

"I'm Olivia, I'm fourteen, I'm from Nebraska." I say as quickly and quietly as possible, sitting back down in my chair. The teacher smiles at me and nods, thankfully leaving me alone and directing her attention towards the screen behind her.

As soon as she turns the screen on, I realize what modern world history entails. As my teacher puts it herself: this course will cover history from 2000 to today. Since I'm coming into this school a few months into the school year, the class is well into the curriculum. The unit we are on: the blip.

On the screen, my teacher is showing a PowerPoint presentation that is titled: The Survivors. Standing next to the screen, she uses a laser pointer to begin teaching the lesson: "We will talk about the fallen Avengers and world leaders eventually, but for the next week we will be discussing the Avengers and leaders who survived. Who can name all the Avengers who survived?"

Pretty much everyone raises their hands, making our teacher laugh. "Several Avengers survived, but not all of them stayed active during the blip, and we will be focusing on them today. The Avengers active for those five years were Black Widow, who became the co-leader alongside Captain America, War Machine, Captain Marvel, the Savage, Thanos's daughter Nebula, Rocket Racoon, and the two Wakandan generals; Okoye and Khari Chikere."

A girl with purple braids raises her hand and points out: "His name is Khari Roberts-Chikere."

"Yes," The teacher says with a nod. "It is now, but during the blip it wasn't. Alexander Roberts was one of the fallen, he and General Roberts-Chikere were not together yet."

The boy and girl who sit in front of me turn towards each other, with the boy whispering: "Khari Chikere is so hot."

The girl nods in agreement. "He is, so is Alex Roberts. I don't know who's hotter honestly."

"They both could get it."

I think I just threw up in my mouth. This is a nightmare. It hasn't even been an hour into my first day and I'm in a class learning about my family and being subjected to the horny conversations about my family. It gets worse as my teacher begins going into detail about each Avenger, specifically when she gets to Mom. I see almost every boy and many girls sigh and stare longingly at the screen, which shows a picture of her wearing her suit during a photoshoot she did a few years after the blip. That same photo is framed on our wall, she did the photoshoot because she was named woman of the year. She's been given that honor several times.

I try to ignore the other students and focus on the teacher, but that doesn't make me any less uncomfortable. "The Savage became an Avenger during the blip and has been active ever since. She had previously been a HYDRA assassin, but she was cleared of all charges against her and was allowed to serve on the team. It's not entirely known how exactly she became part of the team, but many historians speculate Captain America offered her a spot on the team because she was in a secret romance with his best friend: the Winter Soldier."

That's true, Mom told me that before. The rest of this class consists of me internally judging the accuracy of the lesson, trying to tune out the whispers of my peers, and trying not to be too obvious about doing both of those things. It's clear that everyone loves discussing and learning about the Avengers, if I want to blend in I need to act like I enjoy it too.

Thankfully this class ends after forty minutes and I'm onto the next class. I have algebra next, and after another embarrassing introduction, I am able to sit through class and not have to hear about my family...at least for the most part. My teacher doesn't discuss them, but from different parts of the room I hear some of the other students talking about different Avengers and the problems going on with the enhanced population. One kid who sits close to the door, begins to wonder with his friend if there are any enhanced kids who go to this school. If only he knew. Math is more enjoyable than history, mostly because I'm really good at math. Compared to the curriculum Wakanda has, this math is child's play. I feel the same way once I get to biology. It's a piece of cake.

After biology I have lunch. In Wakanda, we all get to go home for lunch. That isn't the case here. Everything I've heard about regular school lunch periods are from movies and Uncle Alex. According to him, the high school cafeteria is 'the place where you eat gross food and are subjected to the bullshit angst of your peers'. I get into the lunch line and wait patiently, already knowing what they're serving, I can smell it. I smell pizza, old fruit, and stale cookies. Uncle Alex was certainly right about gross food, and he seems to be right about the angst. All around the cafeteria I hear different conversations ranging in topics from hair styles, to makeup, to how annoying these kids find their parents, to how hot or annoying they find other people in the cafeteria or how, it's truly a different world. The kids I grew up with in Wakanda talk about their hobbies, the problems Wakanda is facing, the issues of our world. Here everyone only cares about petty things that don't matter, there's no substance to these conversations, no weight. These kids are so shallow.

Once I get my food, I scan the tables to try to find a place to sit. I find a vacant area at one table, but the moment I approach it, the people sitting there shake their head and block me from sitting. As I walk away from them I hear them call me 'the dorky new girl'. I end up sitting at the end of a table that only has a few people there. They seem nice, one of them even tries to talk to me. A Muslim girl with a floral hijab, glasses, and a really cute matching floral dress pushes her food tray towards me and sits next to me, giving me a warm smile.

"I'm Tahereh. You're Olivia right? I'm in your algebra class."

I nod, smiling shyly back at her. "It's nice to meet you."

"I'm so sorry about your parents, that must be so hard."

I am reminded that my parents are 'dead', burned to death in a fire in Nebraska. Instead of acting sad, I instead ask her: "How do you know about that?"

"Everyone is talking about that, word travels fast, especially since you're new, people are curious about you."

I look down at my feet, and I can't help but laugh to myself as I tell her: "I'm not that interesting."

"I'm positive that's not true. Tell me about yourself, Olivia. Why did you move to Long Island?"

I clear my throat and look back up at her, answering her questions like I'm repeating words from a script. "I moved here because my aunt lives her, she's our legal guardian now."

"What does your aunt do?"

"She's a novelist."

"Would I know her? I like to read quite a bit."

Oh god that's not something Uncle Everett went over with me. He did say to improvise, so I guess I'll just have to wing it. When I get home Stevie and I need to talk this through and get this part of our cover story straight. If we say conflicting information, our cover could be in jeopardy.

"No, she hasn't published anything yet. She's a perfectionist, she works on her novel every minute of every day. Maybe one day she'll get published."

"What genre does she write for?"

I try to think if Steve is asked this question today what would he answer, so I reply to her: "Horror. She's a huge horror fan."

"Oh! I love horror. I'd love to meet her sometime, she sounds awesome."

"I'm not sure that's possible, she's kind of a hermit, she doesn't do well with people."

Tahereh grows silent, not knowing what else to say. I think she's gathering that I'm also not the best with people, just like my hermit novelist aunt who doesn't exist.

Tahereh is the first person I've talked to today that's been nice besides my teachers, but as nice as she is, I'm so stressed out that she will see through my lies and know I'm not who I say I am. But besides that fear, I feel something else swirling inside me, something that's been building all day, and now I know exactly what it is. When Mom and Dad said we would be given new identities to live normal lives, I was so excited to be able to experience a new side of life, one that wasn't filled with danger and chaos. But in order to live this 'normal' life, I have to lie constantly about who I am. I mean I knew that, but now that I'm actually having to do it, I'm realizing that I can't ever have a 'normal' life.

I will always have to hide who I am, I will have to lie to every person I meet. How can I have friends or relationships of any kind if all I ever do is lie to them? My life will always be surrounded by mystery and secrets, no one can ever know the real me, I have to keep everyone at a distance. I also can't help but wonder if Tahereh, or someone else knew the real me, if they knew my real name and knew my powers and background, would they accept me? Would she still act like this, or would she be asking me a million questions about my parents and treat me like a rare jewel she's discovered, or even worse, look at me in fear and hatred. I've heard some kids talking about the Avengers in disgust and saying that them and every other enhanced person are freaks

Yesterday I was so excited that I would have options for the first time in my life. I've grown up with powers, with my entire family being superheroes, and even though they don't expect anything of me, the world we live in does. If you have powers you're supposed to use them to help others, I've always felt that my future was set for me because of who I am. If people found out who I was and knew I wasn't an Avenger like my family, then I would be called a selfish coward. How can I not be a superhero if I have powers? How can I put myself and my wants above everyone else? Above their safey? But if I chose this life, become a doctor or have some other job, I'll always be looking over my shoulder, worried that someone will find out who I am, and every relationship, every aspect of my life will be built on a lie. Nothing good can last when it's built on lies and deceit.

I don't have choices, I was a fool to think I ever would. Steve was right; no matter where I go, no matter what I call myself, I'll always be a Barnes.

Tahereh's warm smile fades as concern fills her eyes. "Are you alright?

"No," I tell her, the first honest thing I've said to anyone all day. "No I'm not alright."