January 21st 2017

Chapter 21

Her Introduction to a First Day

Her mother had been ready to come and pick her up after school if Maya needed her to, being in a new city, even if it meant leaving early from her new job, but Maya had told her she'd do just fine on her own. How long had she run around New York on her own? Austin would be as simple as anything compared to that. The way she saw it, this would be her first chance to kick start… Texas Maya… whoever she was.

She left Lucas and the others as they left school, waving them goodbye until the next day. She watched them go for a moment, the five of them striding off in a mass, talking as they went. She turned back and started for the bus stop, still thinking about them, how fortunate it had been that she should get placed in their path. A part of her didn't want to assume too much too fast, but that part ran right alongside the one who just needed something to hold on to, and it had all the pull.

Now that she was on her own again though, she was left feeling a spell had lifted and she was herself again, with her thoughts, her concerns… As much as the thought of her friends had been running through her mind, a quiet and repeated soundtrack, now they were all she heard and could think about. She hadn't realized how hard she'd tried to conjure up their voices back there. Riley with her bursts of joy and optimism, and Farkle with his drive, his frenzy… What she wouldn't have given for him to call Farkle Time. The way they'd been, Lucas and Zay, Nadine, Asher and Dylan, that could have been her today, back home, with Riley and Farkle.

She rode the bus in silence, looking out the window for the landmarks she'd seen go by in reverse that morning. She got off at her stop, moving slowly up toward her street. Reaching the house, she had the strongest urge to go around and crawl through the bay window, even though her mother had made her lock it before they left for school that morning.

Instead she came through the front door, grabbed a snack, and went off to her room, where she sat by the window. She pulled the book Miss Alcott had given her from her bag and started to eat it while she ate. She found it easier to concentrate somehow, easier than before, now that she needed something to hold on to so much. She disappeared into the pages, into the story of a boy called Jonas, living in a colorless world.

"Maya?" She jumped, looking up to find her mother standing in front of her. "I was calling your name, I started to think you hadn't come home," her mother told her, reaching out to touch her face with a smile. Maya looked down at the book in her hands, nearly sixty pages done. "Is that for school?"

"My English teacher said to read it instead of the one they'd already started," she explained, putting it aside once she'd made sure to save the page. Now that she thought about it, she was almost sure they'd been about to read it back in her English class in New York. Maybe Riley and Farkle would be reading it, too. It made her glad.

"So? How was it today?" her mother asked, coming to squeeze in next to her. "The teachers were okay?"

"Yes," Maya replied, though in her mind she recalled how she'd nearly fallen asleep at the droning sound of her math teacher's voice. "Miss Alcott was nice, she… she kind of reminded me of Mr. Matthews in a way," she admitted.

"Well that's good," her mother smiled. "And the kids, how were they? That boy they brought in to help show you around?" she went on, and Maya frowned at the smirk she gave, but she didn't call her on it, not when she had to admit 'that boy' had led to the best parts of her day.

"The others were okay, I guess. Lucas introduced me to his friends, and we all sat together in class, and the cafeteria… I'm going to the Fall Festival with them, and we're hanging out on Saturday. They're going to show me around a few places I think."

"That is great to hear, Maya, I'm so glad," her mother spoke like she was breathing a sigh of relief at the fact she'd made it through her first day with so much to show for it.

"Yeah, it was good," she replied, putting aside the parts where she felt isolated, where she didn't know who she was or where she belonged, where she missed home and her friends so much it hurt, where she was reminded of her father and how he'd left. "How was your day?" she asked instead, letting her mother talk instead of listen.

Her mother spoke with great enthusiasm of her first day at the theater, and Maya wondered how much of it was truth and whether her mother might do just as she did, covering up the bad spots so she would only focus on the good. But the more her mother went on, the more it became clear to Maya there was not one bit of a lie or omission. Her mother had a fantastic day, and being here made her happy.

"I'm happy for you, Mom," she told her, and her mother smiled, putting her arm around Maya's shoulders and pulling her close before pressing a kiss to the top of her head and looking down at her face.

"And I'm happy for you that you've found friends, and a good teacher. Tell you what, let's go out for dinner tonight, what do you think, pizza?"

When they'd returned from dinner, Maya had gone back to her room and her book. She had always struggled with assigned reading, right up to now, and she wanted to take this turn in stride, to read as much as she could, maybe even finish it all before she went and saw Miss Alcott again. This new, unexpected feeling was not one she wanted to lose. The same went to the feeling she got when she was around those five or, she would say instead, when they were around her.

She would wonder what they thought of her, when she wasn't around. Did they find her strange? She did stick out when she was with them, didn't she? Did they even know who she was, when she hadn't really been able to show them? What would happen when they got to meet the real her? It was going to happen sooner or later, wasn't it? She wouldn't be this way forever. What if she lost them?

She took refuge back in her novel. By the time she had been forced to put it aside, she only had forty pages to go, stunning herself at the realization. Sure, the book was under two hundred pages, but for her it had seemed a lot. She had finally gone to bed, dreaming in little to no time. In her head she found she had cast her new friends as characters in her book, and among them, too, she found old friends. They existed, all of them together, in a world of her creation, or near to it enough.

She would look on to this second day coming in a matter of hours as a brand new experience. She wasn't starting anymore. They had seen her, and they had started to make a space for her, whether she knew what to make of it or not. She would make it through another day, and another, and still another. For what little she had of herself, she still had something in her that told her to move forward, and she would keep on listening to it.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners