"Are you really going to use the student council's money to pay for Matthew's surgery?" Nana asked on the way back, still wide-eyed.
"Yes. I don't have money of my own, so who else's would I use??"
"But — that's the council's money. Even if you're president, you can't just spend it without getting approval from the other officers first!"
She was happy Matthew was going to get help — genuinely happy. But she was also terrified. Maya had served four consecutive terms as student council president, longer than anyone in school history. If she let something like this tarnish her record in her final semester before graduation...
Nana didn't want to finish that thought.
The student council at their school operated as a fully independent student organization — separate from school administration, no oversight from the principal's office. Its funding came from a fixed percentage of each student's semester fees, which meant every dollar in that account belonged to the students. Any new expenditure or program required the broader student body's agreement. That was the rule. That was why Nana was worried.
"Relax," Maya said, and lifted her chin. "Other school councils couldn't do this. But I'm different."
She glanced at Nana. "You've been a junior officer running errands — there are things you probably don't know. Let me explain. Our student council technically has no money. Or rather: it didn't, before I took over. Think about it — have you ever paid those fees??"
Nana blinked blankly.
"Exactly. You've never paid tuition. So where was the council's share of those fees supposed to come from?? This isn't one of those private schools where every student's family is loaded and the council gets a generous cut every year for field trips all across the country. I've been at this school for eight years. I've been to exactly one off-site event — the Captain America Patriot Memorial in Washington. And I organized that myself, after I became president, because before that there simply wasn't the budget."
She paused for effect. "So where does our money come from now? I wrote letters. I sent emails. I personally showed up on doorsteps with a group of students and blocked the door until someone cut a check. That's how I got the sponsorships. You think the word Stark stamped on the bottom of every lunch tray is a coincidence?? That's Howard Stark — because I cornered him outside his own building until he agreed to listen. Every year, five hundred thousand dollars for the lunch program."
Nana rubbed her double chin. "That explains why the cafeteria food got so much better. We started getting extra servings of meat."
"The school leadership knows all of this. So do the senior council officers. As long as the money goes somewhere legitimate — and I can explain why — nobody is going to say a word."
That was the real reason Maya's influence at school went beyond just having good grades and winning competitions. She had actually made life materially better for hundreds of students. She could walk up to the building with a megaphone and shout "Who wants to argue with me?" and get complete silence back.
Nana — who'd gotten her junior officer position through a personal connection to Maya rather than any particular merit — finally relaxed, and looked at her friend with something approaching awe.
"Maya, you're incredible. I'm your biggest fan."
Maya nodded calmly. Though the slight upward curve at the corner of her mouth gave her away. It wasn't nothing, getting wealthy New Yorkers to cut checks for a school in Hell's Kitchen.
America operated on a simple principle: once you had real money, you were buried in requests for it. Charities, nonprofits, community foundations — the calls didn't stop, the mail overflowed. The reason Maya succeeded where others failed was twofold: she had a real reputation in New York circles — small but solid, as a recognized young talent — and she made sure donors could actually see where the money went. Howard Stark hadn't sent that half-million annually because he'd miss the money. He'd sent a secretary to inspect the school cafeteria first. When the secretary came back and reported that yes, the students really were eating badly, Howard had personally approved the annual figure. Others had given smaller amounts — two thousand here, ten thousand there. But it all added up.
And of course — though no one said it out loud — Maya was a blonde, blue-eyed white girl from the right side of the demographic divide. In 1993 America, that still opened doors. Michael Jackson had been openly mocked in the press around that time. If Maya had been Black, she might have been turned away at the lobby before she even got to speak. That was just how it worked.
Two years earlier, Obama had earned his law doctorate from Harvard with highest honors and given a speech on racial equality that made it into the New York Times. The comments were mostly sneers referencing his troubled youth. Which was profoundly unfair — his self-destructive phase had been a response to the racism he faced, not the cause of it, and he'd clearly turned his life around. He'd even been student council president at Harvard for a while. The man was clearly capable and driven. His skin just happened to be the wrong shade for a lot of people.
So yes: if you were white, and you'd already demonstrated that you were going somewhere, American society had a tendency to smooth the path. Struggling to pay for school? A benefactor would appear. Medical emergency? Charities that turned away Black applicants would knock on your door.
Every young American billionaire Maya could think of — Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg — was white.
Though if you were white and you were nobody — a white nobody — "white trash," as the saying went, like Maya's biological father — those same upper-class doors would close just as firmly. You'd be looked at like something they'd tracked in on their shoe.
That was part of why Maya had spent eight years staying put and building her foundation at a single school. She had knowledge from her past life — but knowledge wasn't the same thing as demonstrated brilliance. If she'd enrolled in Harvard at seven, which even Tony Stark hadn't managed, everyone would have expected her to be a prodigy. Then when she struggled with coursework appropriate for adults, the fall would have been spectacular.
Knowledge is easy to gain. Wisdom is harder. The gap between knowing things and thinking at the level people would expect from a seven-year-old Harvard student was enormous.
What Maya needed was time — to grow, to let her abilities compound naturally, to build a reputation that matched what she could actually deliver. Moving through school year by year, always a step ahead of her peers but never impossibly so, gave her the space to develop. By the time she hit university, she was confident she'd be exactly what she appeared to be.
Besides — she wouldn't pretend she hadn't enjoyed the slow buildup. Better to score two hundred goals in the second division and stun everyone than to scrape ten a season in the top league and go unnoticed.
She was still young. America, whatever its flaws, was an environment where she could grow.