CHILD'S PLAY, quentin beck

II. SHENANIGANS

Peter Parker had no idea how many people really knew about his secret identity.

Ned knew, of course, Peter's best friend figured it out a long time ago. He wasn't meant to, but Peter accidentally revealed himself in his superhero costume. His aunt, May, discovered it a few years ago when Peter had forgotten to close the door to his bedroom. The Avengers and their allies most likely knew exactly who was hiding beneath the Spider-Man mask.

But Peter often wondered if any of his classmates secretly knew they went to school with a superhero. Flash, of course, didn't know about it, or else he wouldn't talk with such admiration about Spider-Man. Peter suspected his history teacher, Miss Colby, of knowing about his secret identity. Miss Colby was one of his favorite teachers and he often went to her classroom just to chat.

He once made the mistake of swinging past in the city and accidentally greeting her. Hopefully, she was too busy trying to figure out why Spider-Man knew her name to recognize his voice.

Josephine Colby would never admit it to him, but she knew all about Peter's crime-fighting shenanigans. She didn't mean to find out about it. It didn't happen when Spider-Man randomly greeted her on the street, it happened during school, when Peter and Ned thought there was no one else in the classroom and they discussed nearly everything that went down at an airport in Germany.

Unfortunately for them, Josephine was still sitting at her desk and she was able to hear everything.

As soon as the two boys realized their history teacher was at the other end of the classroom, they quit talking and hoped she hadn't heard a thing.

Josephine figured that Peter must have been keeping his identity a secret for a reason. Her student was an actual superhero and she knew it wasn't up to her to share this information with anyone. She figured that as long as it didn't affect his schoolwork or his attendance, she wouldn't let him know that she was aware of it.

After nearly eleven hours of flying to a different continent, six of which Josephine had spent asleep, her colleague, Julius Dell, was so kind as to wake her up. The female voice coming from the intercom announced that the plane would be landing soon.

One of the two flight attendants walking past had noticed that Josephine had just woken up and took the liberty to let her know that she needed to fasten her seatbelt before the plane could begin descending.

'Okay, kiddos, since my two colleagues over there are still half asleep, I will be your guide this afternoon,' Mr. Harrington announced to the group as they walked through the airport, about to pick up their luggage. 'Welcome to Venice!'

The hotel was absolutely awful. That was all Josephine, and most likely all of the students could think when they entered the building. It was a high school group so of course they were on a budget. But no one had expected to be staying in a place that was so run down. However, they would only be staying here for a little while, so no one bothered to complain about it.

Most of their time would be spent discovering the city anyways.

'So,' Josephine said as she walked up to Roger. He was carefully reading through the map that he constantly carried with him. 'What is on the itinerary for today?' Roger was the one in charge of planning most daily activities, he seemed to be very pleased with this task. He wouldn't even allow any of the students, or even the other two teachers, to make any adjustments. Josephine didn't mind all that much, she was just happy to finally be in Italy.

Roger quickly flipped back to the very first page. 'Eh, let me see,' he mumbled. 'When everyone finishes unpacking we will take a walk around the city and go on a gondola ride. That will take about 45 minutes,' he told her. 'After that, there is some time for souvenir shopping before we head to the restaurant.'