February 18th 2017
Chapter 49
Their Game For Riding Back
The bus driver was getting an earful of Katy Hart for having yelled that they would be late, while Melinda Friar was off retrieving one missing kid who was still in the bathroom. Just when Maya had considered they'd gotten off without a hiccup… Although the rest of the bus seemed to be taking her mother's side, so they weren't so far gone.
The six of them had gotten back in their seats, just as they'd been on the ride to the museum. There was a hush among them, like they had all decided to wait until the bus had taken off before they'd start talking about how all of their sides of the story of this field trip had gone.
The straggler located, retrieved, and escorted on to the bus, they could now officially take off, which they did, the driver sufficiently humbled by Chaperone Hart. The noise mingled with the rise of conversations all around them, and soon the three pairs sat back to back converged as close as they could get, as they'd done earlier. It was a mess at first, questions piling on from front and back to the pair in the middle. Maya silenced them all, and Lucas turned to the two boys behind them.
"How did it go?" he asked. He'd heard his mother's version, but he wanted to hear theirs, too. He knew that Dylan's bringing up his mother and how hard it was around the holidays wasn't just a story he'd made up. Lucas knew it could have been awkward for his friend to bring it up, but he also knew that the ruse could be as beneficial to one as it would be to the other. His mother would have brought out all those things that made him care for her so much, and she would have given Dylan all of it, given him reassurance and comfort.
"It was fine," Dylan told him. "She asked if Mom and Dad and Kyle and I would come to dinner over the break. I said we would, same as every year."
"I may have emphasized how much 'Dylan' really liked that chocolate pie last year. There will probably be three of them on the table," Asher added.
"Hey, can I get in on this?" Maya asked, having zone out the moment the words 'chocolate pie' had been mentioned. Lucas didn't even need to confirm she would get a similar invitation; they could hear their mothers laughing at the front of the bus. "By the way, I'm going to have questions later," she told Asher. "Since you know so much about these paintings apparently." Asher happily agreed. "Now you two," Maya turned to Zay and Nadine in front of them.
"Oh, we messed up," Nadine told her. "Not me and him, you and I. He thinks he's found his calling now."
"What, it's not my fault I have this natural stage presence," Zay defended himself, shortly before getting a playful shove from Nadine that almost sent him into the aisle.
"What stage?" she laughed before turning back to Maya. "They just went on and on. First she asked him if he had experience, and no, playing a tree in our fifth grade play didn't count," she added before he could bring it up. "Then it was diction, and volume, and posture, and motivation, and practice, practice, practice. As soon as he got into it, I was in hell!" The outburst silenced, the five looked back at her in amazement. Maya reached out and patted her hand reassuringly.
"Been there," she promised her, and Nadine breathed out. "Otherwise, everything was fine?"
"Oh yeah, sure," Nadine spoke quietly, before turning back to Zay. "If it's what you really want, I'll be there, front and center. If you wake up tomorrow, next week, next month, and you still feel the same, even though you had this face," she pointed to her own, "Then fine. If not, then… well, I'll give you the I-told-you-so song and dance, okay, Tall Z?" Zay gulped, then nodded. "Good. So what did you guys do?" she turned back to Maya and Lucas. "I saw you once, you didn't even notice." As surprised as the two of them were to hear about this missed close call, it was nothing compared to the three boys' curiosity over their two friends there in the middle having been so caught up in whatever they'd been doing that they hadn't seen how close they'd come to the group.
"Oh I can't wait to hear this," Zay grinned, earning a second smack from Nadine, who this time had the forethought to then reach out and keep him from tipping sideways.
"Yes, continue," Asher added, and Nadine looked like she would have smacked him, too, if he hadn't been out of reach. But then she also looked like she was as curious as them, so it now fell to the two in the middle.
Maya looked to Lucas, asking herself maybe the same thing he was asking himself. Had they really not noticed? They guessed it wasn't completely ridiculous, with how the time had gotten away from them and they'd run back with only seconds to spare. Now she looked at their mothers sitting in the front, talking and laughing, and she didn't know anymore, had they really fooled their mothers, or their mothers fooled them? They could have seen them and decided to play along, just waiting to spring the trap on them, right when they didn't expect it. She looked back to Lucas, who caught on to her concerns and took a look, too, before turning a shrug to her. What was done was done, right?
"Well?" Nadine asked.
"We looked at the paintings," Lucas told her. "We took our time, to really look at them," he went on, turning back to Maya, who chimed in with a nod. "Then we saw the time and we came back." They left out the part about the near miss with the statue.
The bus arrived back in the school lot, and as the others started climbing out, Maya held him back, asking if he was sure his mother had no idea they'd run off.
"I… I don't know anymore. I didn't think she did, but now…"
"Maybe she didn't," Maya pondered aloud. "Maybe she didn't, but mine figured it out and told her, maybe… I-I don't know…" It sounded ridiculous, but she had gotten it in her head that the slightest misdeed might cost her the chance to go home for the holidays. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe we should just come clean. It's not that bad, I mean we looked at the art, that's what we came here to do, right? We looked at it longer than they did, probably," she tried to reason with herself as they started out of the bus. She couldn't appear guilty, that was a rookie move right there.
"We don't say anything," Lucas offered. "Not unless it looks like we should." Maya said nothing, but he saw her head give a small nod and that was good enough for him.
So they said nothing, and as each of them went their separate ways, off home with their respective mothers, they saw no sign that they knew anything which might have been the truth, but it was just as possible that they knew and chose to let them both stew in their own concerns as punishment.
All this aside, what kept them from losing their mind was to think about running around the museum, looking at one painting after another, and then there really was no reason for either of them to feel out of place. Maya was still thinking about getting some paint of her own, while Lucas wondered if he might find a print of the piece that had kept her captivated for so long. He could give it to her for Christmas… he still had to bring her the shelves for her wall.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
