March 7th 2021

Chapter 66
Our Night of Art

He wished he could convince her to get some sleep. It made no sense for both of them to be zombies in the morning. But then she'd point out that it could just as easily be him, and that he was only pulling a Huckleberry, which… well, he couldn't deny it. If the choice stood, between him not getting any sleep and her, he would give her the priority without question. He wasn't planning to go over to the ranch in the morning, whether he got to sleep now or not. It would be pointless; he'd be thinking of nothing else but Marianne. Either way, there was nothing to be done for right here, right now. They were in for the long haul, Maya and him. And the longer it went, the rougher it would be. They needed to keep talking.

"How'd the diaries look this week?" he asked her. She turned her eyes up to him.

"Huh?"

"The diaries," he repeated.

"Oh," Maya blinked, ran a hand across her face. "I'm going to have to leave a note in case we're sleeping when… I don't remember who's doing pick-up this week," she groaned as she moved to sit up again. "Morgan," she nodded, remembering. "I should leave a note for her. Bonus, we might get a delivery from Ma Maggie's at lunch time," she chuckled lightly. It was her own way of lightening the mood, as shaky as the landing felt to her.

"The day she gets to have her first pancake, you're going to take pictures, aren't you?" he teased.

"Pictures, portraits… nice big painting for the kitchen," she played along, nodding. Lucas smiled.

"So… What are the kids drawing lately?"

She'd spent the whole weekend looking through the diaries. She had a system. It wasn't a matter of just opening one diary, looking at the newest filled page or pages for a minute and closing it again before moving to the next. No, she would take the sketchbook, look for notes in the 'communication section,' respond if necessary. Then she would find the newest entry, and she would carefully consider what the given student had done, working through her personal checklist and taking notes. She would take it all in and allow this to guide her in giving the next assignment. All in all, it would take ten to fifteen minutes per diary. And she had nearly a hundred of them. She would do one box on Fridays, one and a half on Saturdays, and the other one and a half on Sundays. She'd just finished the last of them before heading to bed earlier.

It took her right back to Marianne for a moment. She looked at her, still sleeping… She had to take a breath, focus herself again. It would pass, the fever would break, she had to believe it, but…

"Okay, here, look," she resolved herself and rose from the bed as lightly as she could without disturbing the mattress too much. In the low light of the room, she opened the freshman box. It wasn't as though she went and showed the diaries to everyone. They were not exactly private, but there was a sort of… unspoken understanding. Lucas stood as her sole exception to this rule, only because she knew she could trust him to be held in confidence.

It felt like a lifetime ago that she'd been going through this box, not a mere handful of hours. She'd gone through the senior box last of all this week. She didn't go through them in the same order every time, liked to mix things up, but the further they got into the school year, the more she found herself keeping the seniors for last. They were graduating… so soon… She couldn't keep herself from feeling regret over missing their last year, still, and the closer they got to that point, the more she felt it. There was nothing to be done for it, and she was doing everything in her power to be involved with them, even if from a distance.

The nearing end of this school year did also call up the fact that, in just a few months, there would be new seniors, her once upon a time freshmen, the very first of those… and she would be there. She would be back in her classroom instead of acting from a distance. This was a great thing, one she'd been looking forward to… easily since she'd even gone on leave. She loved her job, loved her kids… and her kid… All this time she'd been looking forward to going back, and one feverish night was enough to make her feel the opposite, for the very first time. It would pass, like the fever, she had to believe that, but until then…

"Had my first filled up diary," Maya told Lucas, reaching for the sketchbook on the end of the line. It had been bound to a second, blank book with ribbon.

"Bodhi?" he guessed.

"I give him one assignment. He does it. Then he gets another idea, a different interpretation, so he does that one, too," she smiled.

"That'll fill up a sketchbook," Lucas chuckled.

"Sometimes he'll do it a third time, too," Maya added, looking to the bundled books.

If it were up to her, she'd keep the boy stocked on sketchbooks and pencils and any other material he might need for all his years in school where she would be his teacher. Knowing his history, knowing he'd ended up repeating both the seventh and eighth grade, she'd been doing her best to keep up to date with how he was doing on the whole with the ninth grade. There had been any number of factors which led to his ending up held back as he'd done, but they had to look to the future now, and Maya knew that Bodhi worried about having the same thing happen to him another time. But then she would remind him that he was part of the quiz team, and that he was doing great there, just as he was getting by in his classes. She saw no reason for him to end up back in ninth grade again in the fall. And if he needed more tangible proof, well, there were his grades. He was doing a lot better than he had done in past years. If he kept going on this way, well… there was no reason why he couldn't sail through high school, was there?

Maya put the bundle back, closed the freshman box and looked to the others. The sophomores and the juniors… they'd be juniors and seniors in the fall, just as they would be the only two classes who would have been there when she left and again once she returned. She was really glad for that, for having them to return to and continue, even if there was a gap in the middle. She had the diaries, so it wasn't a total break in between, was it?

"I wanted to show you before," Maya reached into the junior box and sought out the sketchbook belonging to Missy Sanderson. After pulling it free, she flipped the pages until she reached the latest assignment. She hadn't actually done what Maya had asked her to do, and she acknowledged this in a small sticky note, saying she'd just felt the need to do something else instead and she hoped she didn't mind. If she did mind, then Missy would do the missing assignment along with another the next time around. As far as Maya was concerned, she would happily accept the substitution.

"Oh, wow…" Lucas smiled at once as he took the book to find a sketch of what was clearly meant to be Trooper in his stable at the Sanderson Farm. It looked like Missy had worked on it for a long time, to make it as detailed and correct in its representation of the late horse as she could make it. "Do you think she'd mind doing it over again? I'd love to have a copy, for the clinic."

"I think we can call it her makeup for skipping the assignment," Maya suggested. She crouched and knelt next to the bed, the better to look in on Marianne. She held her little hand in hers, watched her sleep. "She might even throw in colors if we ask nicely," she added. Her attention was about ninety-nine percent on the baby here.

"Sounds good," Lucas nodded, closing the sketchbook and moving to return it to the box. Much as he'd hoped to get her talking through this, he doubted that her head was going to really get in it, for tonight at least. They'd just have to find another way to keep awake. Or maybe he would see about getting her to fall asleep anyway… for kindness' sake. "Is Mr. Day going to take them on a field trip at the end of the year?" he asked as he came back around and sat again. Maya had not moved from her spot. Possibly, she'd stay there a while, until she felt the need to do something else. He didn't see how he'd get her to sleep this way.

"Started talking about it," Maya nodded. She looked back up at him, even as she kept hold of Marianne's hand. "If it all comes together, I'd definitely like to accompany them. You could come, too," she added, and there was little to no need for her to wonder if he'd say yes. "The first year, that one was easily my favorite… batch of trips," she stated. Lucas was right there with her on that one. Some of it had been a bit chaotic, but that was easily to be expected under the circumstances, wasn't it?

"Do you think she's too young for us to bring her along?" Lucas wondered, nodding down to their sleeping child.

"I don't know," Maya admitted. It didn't stop her smiling as she looked at Marianne, too. "If she's big enough I still don't think I'd bring her though. Her first time at the museum? Come on, that's a family outing, just the three of us," she pointed out.

"Okay, you have a point," Lucas grinned.

"We dress all nice and proper, we check the weather forecasts…" Maya nodded down to the sleeping girl. She'd feel at her forehead from time to time, as though she expected her to be miraculously back the way she was supposed to be. She knew it wouldn't happen that fast, but the reflex was just so strong, and so she checked, and the disappointment would still be there.

"Maybe sometime this summer," Lucas suggested.

"Yeah… That sounds like a good plan," she quietly spoke toward Marianne like she fully acknowledged the fact that, awake or not, she would not be any closer to understanding what her mother was saying, but she needed to say it anyway.

Not even a minute after that, Marianne woke up again, and it compelled Maya to get up and return to sit on the bed with her, where she could pick her up and hold her. She needed to get back to sleep, but also, she was giving every indication of being hungry, so that would have to take priority for now. Morning was inching toward them, and the longer they were awake, the more it felt like they were literally crawling toward it. At least that was the way it felt to Lucas, and he hated to think what it had to feel like to Maya. She hadn't even really been able to talk about her students and what they'd been up to, which said a lot about where her head was at right about now. With any luck, they'd be able to get Marianne back to sleep quickly enough and, once that was done, well… they would figure something out.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners