January 30th 2021
Chapter 30
Our Cheers For Bonding
It was really getting to feel like the structure of the week meant more to them now. Monday through Friday would be one way, and the weekend would be another. It wasn't like that hadn't been the case before. For as long as they could remember, almost, with them being in school, the weekend had its own meaning. Back then, it meant freedom, two days where they got to do whatever they wanted. As they got older, it would be fun but also time to work, to make some extra money. And now... Now the week was about work, most of the time, while the weekend... the weekend was about family.
Friday morning had always stood as the final hurdle between duty and release, but it had never felt loaded with so much yearning as it did now. Friday morning, Lucas would hold his baby girl, and he'd just look at her, eager for his return, so he might have two days to look forward to where he spent more time with her in waking hours. It was made no easier by how Marianne would now seem almost aware that he was going away, for how she'd start to cry whenever he'd put her down before leaving for the ranch.
"Here, I got her," Maya told him, eyes lit with understanding. "I have to get her ready to go anyway," she reminded him as he passed her the baby and she set out to calm her again. If anyone could do it, she would be the champion. Lucas brushed at their daughter's hair and kissed her head before sharing another kiss with his wife.
"Can't wait to hear how it goes today," he told Maya, and she smiled.
"Not gonna lie, kind of nervous," Maya admitted. "By now, I don't think there's even a reason, the reflex is just to look for trouble, I guess. It'll pass," she insisted, likely seeking to reassure herself more than anyone.
"I think so, too," he smiled and nodded.
"And I'll get to pick up the diaries myself, so, you know, saving someone a trip. I'll let them load the boxes in the car, but that's it," she joked, sending him off to work with a chuckle.
Lucas stopped up the road at the Sanderson Farm as he would do, most mornings, to go and check on old Trooper. Every time he went out there lately, he would feel more and more like the animal's second wind was bound to let out sooner than later. Maybe it was that he had Marianne now, and he'd introduced her to Troop, and to Chance, and he'd started to think about her growing up alongside the latter. Suddenly, he was so much more aware of time, and it would force him to look at the old horse and face reality. Marianne would absolutely get to grow with Chance, but she'd likely never remember that she'd met Troop.
"Hey, good morning," Lucas went to greet the horse. His stable had been given an undeniable touch of Christmas already, which he suspected to be Missy's handiwork. Trooper looked content, no doubt to it, though at the same time... "Getting tired, aren't you?" Lucas asked, brushing his hand over him. The horse welcomed the touch.
He liked to imagine that, wherever Troop would go after he died, if that was something a horse could do, he would be with his grandmother. He liked to imagine the spirit of Marianne Sullivan, tending her horses even now. It was a comforting idea, if nothing else.
"If you see her, will you tell her about my girl? Tell her about my Marianne?" he whispered. He reflected on the idea, smiled to himself as he admitted the near silliness of the request. It would stay between them. Maybe it was Friday, doing its thing. He longed for the weekend.
X
There were six people in the school who had already met Marianne Friar in person. Of the students, there were two. One was Missy Sanderson, of course, who had not wasted much time to walk the lane up to her teacher and neighbor's house to see the baby in the first week of November. Most of the students had figured out that the baby had been born for the fact that they had been given a very random extra week with their diaries.
Missy on the other hand had returned from a Halloween party to get the news from her parents and grandparents, who had been hanging out with the elder Friars when they got the call to hurry over. Then, Kai had met her, too, and not even through girlfriend Missy. He did live across the street from Thomas and Melinda's, and he'd happened to be outside, shooting at his hoop, on one afternoon when Maya brought the baby on a visit to her grandparents.
As to the faculty, there was Cory Matthews, of course, for obvious reasons. There was Morgan, her closest friend at the school and her bandmate. She was a regular visitor. Then there was Lindsay Alcott, who'd been kindly checking up on her in the days after the surprise home delivery. Maya had invited her over, almost sensing a wish in her colleague and former teacher to meet the baby. Maya had referred to Marianne as her grandstudent, and Lindsay had laughed.
Last of all was Barton Day, as he'd dropped in a couple of times in the last month for class purposes. He had been doing a great job with her classes, especially for how dedicated he was to maintaining communication with her. When he would come, he'd sit there with Marianne in his arms while Maya looked over everything. He would playfully lament the fact that he and his wife had never had a daughter, only sons. Oh, he loved them so very much, and he would never trade a one, but there would always be that road never traveled.
Now she was bringing her to meet the rest, at least the rest of her colleagues and students. It was hard to believe that the first half of the year was nearly behind them. It would still be close on a year before she actually went back to teaching, but this milestone did feel like she was getting closer.
"Don't think I'm so eager not to spend all my days with you, okay, Pumpkin?" Maya smiled as she pulled the car seat and Marianne in it. Soon, she walked along from the lot, careful not to wake her.
Much as she would have wanted to go and see about running into her morning greeting pair, it was still too early to expect that they might be here soon, and it was much too chilly to just sit out there with the baby. Whether or not they would hear that the two of them were here before the end of the day, when they would have their art class, she couldn't say, so they would just have to take their chances, wouldn't they?
And while this day was motivated with a desire to present her baby girl to those people who made up her weekly world, her co-workers, her dearly cared for students, now that she was here, it did feel like she'd wanted just as much to bring Marianne into this place that mattered to her as it did, as a student back in the day and now as a teacher.
"Need a hand?"
"If you want to hold her, you could just ask, you know?" she smirked as Cory walked toward her. "Were you just waiting for me to walk through the door there, Grandpa?"
"Yes. Yes, I was," he freely admitted.
"Fair enough," Maya nodded as she set down the seat. Cory crouched and released Marianne from both the seat and her jacket before lifting her into his arms.
"Where to?" he asked as he carefully fixed the back of her shirt, her hair... He may have become a father again just five years ago when Hunter came along unexpectedly, but now he had that whole future grandfather thing going, bringing memories to Maya of when her own father had been 'stretching those muscles' ahead of Marianne's arrival. Cory still had five months ahead of him for all that.
They went along for a while, finding the rest of the staff where they might have been found, in the lounge, in classes, the administration, the cafeteria... In time, Maya and Marianne landed at the art class, ahead of the students' arrival.
"You're here!" Ariel Su exclaimed, the first of the seniors to arrive. She looked so happy already to see her art teacher, so that when she saw the baby, too, she put her hand over her mouth like she didn't trust herself not to make a noise that would inevitably wake her or make her cry. She walked over now, tipping her head to look at that little face, held against her mother. She was actually awake, just barely, and Ariel spoke to her in whispers.
"Not looking forward to how she'll react to the bell," Maya smiled, even as the notion came to her. "But we wanted to come say hello."
"I was hoping you would," Ariel admitted. There was something in her eyes that said, 'we miss you,' and oh how Maya echoed that back to her. She was never going to like having missed this group's senior year, would she?
It wasn't hard to predict how the others would react to find Marianne here with her. She was one month old, and she had that whole tiny, cute baby thing going for her. So, much as Maya wanted to use this opportunity to check in with her kids in person, ahead of the break in a couple weeks' time, the presence of the baby was just inevitable.
"I knew it," Rochelle declared, smiling, when she walked in for the sophomores' class. "I heard a baby crying before, I thought it would be her."
"Yeah..." Maya chuckled with sympathy as she brushed at her daughter's hair. As predicted, the bell was not her friend, and while she'd done her best to shield her from it, she'd been too late for one of them. Watching Rochelle interact with Marianne, holding her hand, giving warm smiles, Maya imagined her with her brothers. They were that other greatest part of her, that and her thrive for education.
"We haven't started with the quiz team yet," she reminded Maya, who nodded.
"Yes, I know, I've been meaning to see about the freshmen, it's just, well..."
"No, we get it," Rochelle cut in. "But we would like to start in January."
"Right, okay, if you can find Ariel so you two will be back here after last period, I think we can sort this out today. Don't tell Stella, okay? If she doesn't know I'm here yet..."
"Not a problem," Rochelle vowed at once.
Both the sophomore and freshman classes went much as the senior one did, though on the end of the freshmen's turn, Maya called the Shelby twins back before they could leave. She explained it as briefly and directly as she could. She was looking for a new member for the quiz team, a freshman girl, and she had been thinking of one of them, if they would be into it. She was intimately aware of the demands of being on the basketball team, so if they didn't think they could swing one more thing like this, she wouldn't hold it against them.
They couldn't do it. They wanted to, they really did, and they did feel bad for having to say no, but they were responsible enough to know they would have been taking on too much and it would hurt both teams and their own studies. Maya understood. She'd expected as much, but she'd needed to ask anyway.
Now she was stuck... She knew she wasn't wrong about not pursuing Talia for this, but now who would she turn to? She rolled through the rest of the freshman girls in her head, who might be a fitting piece to make the Born Curious team whole again...
"Mrs. Friar?" She turned to find Bodhi standing by, holding his bag strap over his shoulder in a way that screamed uncertainty.
"Hey," Maya smiled, readjusting Marianne in her arms. Bodhi smiled back, tipping his head. The clicking of the beads in his hair seemed to draw the baby's attention. "Do you need..."
"I just... I heard you talking, about the quiz team? Can I do it?"
Maya thought it out as discreetly and quickly as she could hope to. They didn't need to be all girls, did they? That was what they had been, their first year, and they had looked ahead with the idea of keeping that going, but they could make an exception, couldn't they? If the right person, not just for knowledge but for a right fit, happened to be a boy... And now that she considered him, she had to say... He made a lot of sense to her, if she held him up with Rochelle, and Stella, and Ariel. She had a feeling that they would see it, too.
She explained all this to him. She didn't want him to be cornered by this thing and be left to think she didn't recognize him for who he was. It was one of the rare times they had managed to speak in some way beyond the diary, but that had been special, too, and Maya felt that Bodhi recognized it, too. He was ready to go for it if they would have him.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
