Chapter Text
Peggy was nervous, even though she would never tell anyone that and there was no way anyone could tell by the way she carried herself. Even at ten years old her parents often remarked to each other how confidently she carried herself, and back home in England she was the unofficial leader of her friend group. Peggy could always be counted on to make decisions while the others went back and forth. So when her father had been offered a tenured position at Columbia University in New York City, they didn’t feel too bad about moving Peggy to completely different country. They assumed if there was any ten year old who could handle the move it was their Peggy, who even as a toddler had been able to handle change without batting an eyelash. Her older brother Harrison, on the other hand had put up a fight at the thought of leaving his football team and having to move to a country that referred to it as soccer. Still, the Carter family packed up their home in England just a few days after Christmas and moved across the Atlantic to a nice apartment that they had found in Brooklyn.
Peggy had to start school two days after arriving in Brooklyn, and that’s what made her nervous. Everything here was so completely different from the way things were done back home that even she felt a little lost. For starters the school terms here in America were completely different from back home, and they didn’t even call them terms, instead they simply had first and second semester. And Peggy was starting half way through the school year, with other children who had know each other since year one, or kindergarten as they called it here. To make matters more confusing to the ten year old, they called the grade she was in 5th grade instead of year six. When she had been told she was in 5th grade, she had nearly yelled at the women who had handed her mother her class assignment. Thankfully, Mrs. Carter, knew her daughter well and explained to her they were not putting her a year behind in classes, they just called things by different names here, before Peggy could even say a word.
When her first day of school started, she insisted that her mother simply drop her off at the door, she didn’t need her to come inside. Peggy knew if her mother came inside and dropped her off, she would start crying, and if she started crying Peggy knew she might soon follow suit and she had always been one to maintain as stiff of an upper lip as she could manage. Peggy went to her new classroom, introduced herself politely to the teacher, who sat her down at a table next across from two boys whose name tags that was on the table in front of them read Bucky and Steve. While the two boys looked like polar opposites, one, with the Bucky name tag, had brown hair, a slight tan, and was a good height for his age. The other, Steve, was small and pale, with dirty blonde hair. He was so skinny Peggy could make out his wrist bones from across the table and he looked like he was still getting over a bad cold. Despite how different the two of them looked Peggy could tell they were friends. After taking in a deep breath to calm herself like her dad had taught her when she got nervous and smiled at the two boys. “Hi, I’m Peggy.” She looked between them trying to get a feel for what they were like. Bucky, grinned over at her, clearly he was a person who made friends easily and introduced himself and Steve to Peggy. When Bucky pointed to Steve, he glanced up and met Peggy’s eyes muttering a hi, before looking quickly back down, his shyness coming off of him in waves. Peggy smiled kindly at him, before Bucky pulled her attention away from Steve, by pointing out the important things in the classroom for her. Peggy was about to ask Bucky a question about how the teacher was, when she faintly heard Steve’s voice.
“Where are you from?” Steve’s head was bowed slightly, like he wanted to be looking at his desk but when Peggy looked over at him she could see he was looking at her through his lashes.
“Lambeth. Just outside of London. We just moved here this week.” She told him, shrugging a little and she could feel Bucky looking between the two of them, clearly shocked that his friend had asked a question without any prompting.
“Do you miss it?” Steve’s voice was still quiet and he glanced at Bucky, almost in a way to see if he was doing okay.
“Not yet. But we’ve only been here three days. Not a lot time to be homesick. And New York City isn’t so different from London, or at least that’s what my mum says.”
Steve nodded and it looked like Bucky was about to say something else but before he could the teacher told everyone to be quiet and she started the class for the morning.