From The Ice || a Marvel Studios Fanfic

9 - The School Life

Liberty's P.O.V
From then on my life at Midtown High seemingly got easier. I had a father who I didn't know existed and who didn't know I existed, I had the first friends that I had ever had realistically, other than my little sister Lizzie and another person, a boy, who I can barely remember the face of, in over 70 years and they were each helping me in ways that they didn't even realise.

It had been a few months since that first day and that first encounter with the mean girl, Camilla Woods, who apparently acted like that all of the time, believing she was above everybody else around her, bullying those who acted otherwise towards her. But there was one thing I knew; I didn't like bullies, it didn't matter where they came from. Since that first encounter, Ned and Peter had taught me how to completely avoid her, which had worked brilliantly so far, but I knew that if our paths crossed again, I'd end up giving her the what for.

Since that first day, it just so happened that my test scores in Sciences had increased, all thanks to Peter Parker, the master of getting information to stick into my head. I found the subjects that I liked, and the ones I disliked. Art was by far my favourite subject. Mum always said I had a more creative streak than a logical one, she'd get me to create art and we'd have it plastered all over the kitchen fridge, along with all the Captain America newspaper cuttings. I miss her stern encouragement. But, it seemed that now I had dad's encouragement instead, and that was just as substantial and worked just as well.

"I used to be quite the artist myself before all the soldier stuff happened, before the war," He said to me one day when we were eating food one evening.

"Really?" I replied, not quite believing that the Captain America was an artsy kid.

"yes really, I went to art school for a year but then I dropped out to join the war efforts,"  dad replied, his eyes seemed to get sadder, but then he snapped out of it and we kept on talking about our days.

I spent most of my time with Ned and Peter, we studied together, sat together at lunch, spent most of our weekends 'hanging out', it was nice to have friends again. Most times when I was with them, Ned would tell me about some crazy new Spiderman story he'd heard. He loved the Avengers and basically any form of superhero he could get information on, including my father which was kind of bizarre. One day, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the three of us were sat in a nearby park on the grass, ice creams in our hands whilst Ned told us the story of that time they were both at an academic decathlon tournament and they got stuck at the top of the Washington Monument in a lift and this hero who he called 'Spiderman' saved them all.

"It was pretty cool," Ned said excitedly, looking over at Peter who nodded awkwardly,

"I'm sure it was," I said back, licking my simple vanilla ice cream,

There was a short pause where the three of us sat in silence, listening to the park as it lived around us, licking at our ice creams. I hadn't had ice cream for a long time, I didn't quite understand all the bizarre flavours; Butterscotch and Chocolate Oreo and Birthday Cake, so I went with vanilla, which used to be the only one I would every really eat, that and this old Lady Borden Burgundy Cherry ice cream that mum would only get at Christmas and I would eat it by the bucketload if I could.

"So, had- had you heard of this Spiderman dude before you moved here? Or even any of the Avengers?" Peter suddenly said, stuttering slightly but then recomposing himself.

"No, I didn't know about Spiderman, but I knew about the Avengers, kind of..." I replied, trying to think of a way I could carry this on and maybe explain myself without telling them about mum and her entire history with a specific one of the Avengers. Oh, I've got myself in it now haven't I.

"Well, you see," I started, still forming sentences in my head, "I lived in Brooklyn for most of my life, despite my English accent, but both of my mum and my stepdad were-um-are English. I only moved here recently with my dad. My mum was... erm... a... big fan of Captain America, b-but that is the extent of my Avengers knowledge really," I finished. By the time I stopped talking, Ned's mouth may as well have been wide open in surprise.
"So you've never seen the Avengers? Not even on the news?!" Ned exclaimed, sounding extremely flabbergasted. I shook my head. Ned immediately took to the internet and started searching up videos of the Avengers and telling me everything he knew about them. He really did seem to be passionate about the group. He clicked through video after video; The Battle Of New York, Loki, The Avengers vs Ultron, as much as he could find. 

We then went to the nearest library and did some light studying, not really paying attention to the work we had to do, we just talked with pens clasped in our grips. It felt much more like chill than work, which was what I really needed.

"So Liberty, how come we've not studied round at your house yet?!" Ned joked, "We've been to mine, we're going to Peter's soon, where's our invite to yours?!" he laughed. I knew that they were justing joking around, but the questioned shocked me. I hadn't thought of that. Was that a normal thing? Was that still what people did now when they were friends? It must've slipped my mind because we were coated in silence as I thought up an accurate response to his question. 

"Erm...well..." I searched for any plausible answer, anything at all. then I had it. "Well, my dad doesn't really like people very much, he usually works at home a lot and doesn't like to be disturbed, especially with the important work he's doing at the moment," I lied, but I did think it best if I kept my dads location as secret as possible, for both our sakes, even if it was just my best friends.

Both of them seemed to take it well as there weren't any other questions asked about that subject for the rest of our 'study session'. Once we had finished the homework we set out to complete, we all headed home. Well, that was too much of a close call for my liking.