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Sarah set her tray next to mine and sat down. She had a chicken salad with more chicken than salad. Perks of a self-serve salad bar I guess.
"Guess what?!" she said.
I put my phone down, which she took as he cue to go ahead. She schooled her excited expression into one of somewhat downcast sympathy. "You know Peter Parker?"
I debated just saying 'yes' to get whatever this was over with, but if it turned out to be more than just some random gossip, lying might not be best.
"Remind me."
She nodded. "He's that scholarship student."
I raised an eyebrow. "This school offers scholarships?" News to me. Would've been nice to know. Not that I was actually smart enough to get one, but still.
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Yes. Um, let's see," she snapped her fingers "he's that kid who's always getting picked on by Flash."
"Flash?" Probably not the fictional superhero. Was there some kid here going by the name 'Flash'? I couldn't decide if that was cool or not.
"Flash Thompson," she said impatiently.
I tapped a finger to my lips. "Flash Thompson, hmm. Oh, I think I've heard of him before. Which one is he again?"
Sarah huffed in exasperation. "You sit behind him in English!"
I blinked. "I do? Wait how do you know that?"
"I've delivered notes to Mrs. Winterhalter before."
Oh yeah, Sarah worked for the office that period. Or the counselor or something. I tried to picture the kid in front of me in English. All I could remember were the pins on his backpack. One that said "It's from tiktok", another with the name of some YouTube channel, and a couple of spiderman and the other Avengers. I wondered briefly how royalties for Spiderman merch are handled if his identity is a secret. How would that go in the patent office? First name, Spider, last name, Man. Unless he didn't even hold the rights to his own stuff and people were just making straight cash off spiderman merch. At that moment there were two wolves inside of me, one saying "That doesn't seem fair" and the other said "new side hustle idea." Suddenly there was a third wolf that said "you don't pay enough attention to superheroes to make merch of them," which definitely wasn't true. I was like 70% sure Iron Man was now considered a national terrorist. Wait, no, that didn't sound right. Was it Captain America? But didn't Stark used to make bombs or something? Did he make another one or something? Okay make that 60% sure. 57%.
"-that class too, now that I think of it," Sarah said.
Oops. Was she talking that whole time?
"You seriously don't know Peter Parker?" She asked again.
"Sorry, what?" I asked, "I'm still thinking about Flash Thompson's Spiderman fanfiction."
This seemed to make Sarah bluescreen for a moment. "I'm sorry, his what?!"
"We have to peer-edit assignments a lot. One time he wrote a self-insert where he helped Spiderman save the class in Washington DC or something. It wasn't too bad actually, though he got his tenses mixed up a little."
"Oh, wow," she said.
I shrugged. "Lots of people get their tenses mixed up in narrative writing. It's a little annoying to read, but not th-"
"No," she interrupted, "I mean I didn't realize he helped Spiderman on that trip."
It was now my turn to bluescreen, as I processed the possible meanings of that sentence. "Are you saying that Flash actually met Spiderman in DC?"
She stared at me. "You're incredible," she said in a tone that was most uncomplimentary.
"I know, but why?"
"They literally talked about that trip on the announcements the next day at school," she said.
"Really?!" I tried to remember some mention of a trip to DC with Spiderman. All my brain was giving me was a compilation of deadpan news delivery and an unfortunate use of green screen and clip-art out of context.
"You're hopeless," she said.
"Rude," I responded with mock offense.
She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, Peter Parker sits in front of Flash in your class."
I snapped my fingers. "Oh, yeah! He's the kid who always wears funny science t-shirts!"
"You remember his shirts but not his name," she stated more than asked, in a tone that hinted just how hopeless I was proving to be to her. She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts of disappointment and once again adopted a sorrowful look. "Well, apparently he has cancer."
"Oh," I said dumbly.
Sarah looked down at her pile of chicken. "Yeah, sad isn't it?"
"That makes way more sense," I muttered.
Sarah looked up. "Huh?"
"Oh, I thought he was secretly working for Stark Industries," I said, pushing at the watery instant potatoes on my tray. "You know, because he doesn't want to be publicly associated with terrorists."
"Wait wha-"
"My second guess was that he's actually a metahuman, but cancer makes more sense."
Sarah opened her mouth and then closed it. She was silent for several long moments.
"You know what," she said finally, stabbing into her salad chicken, "I'm not even going to ask."