February 23rd 2021

Chapter 54
Our Plans For a Class

Ever since she'd started working at the high school, Maya had found it inevitable for memories of her time as a student there to come along and be rediscovered. It wasn't so much that she'd forgotten, no. They were always with her, and they were truly some of the best times of her life. Not even those darker times like the loss of the teams, or… the accident… could get in the middle of that. And yet, being in that place every day, in the reverse role from the one she'd occupied before, had a way of making those memories feel stronger, heightened. It was like they had been allowed to go blurry from time, and now she'd wiped that away and returned them to their crisp and colorful glory.

She loved going to the basketball games especially. Those really brought back a specific kind of memory. She may only have been allowed to play through two of her four years here, because of the dissolution, but any one of those other students in her position back then would say the same. Just because the teams didn't exist officially for the school, it did not mean that they had stopped existing for the players. They'd held down the fort for those two years in between, and though only very few of them had remained for the big return, they had carried that old spirit along like a flame that would not be extinguished.

Sitting in the stands, watching all those girls out there, it was wild to think how none of them would really know what that was like or even give a second thought to how quickly this whole thing could be taken away from them. The teams had been back now for… wow… It would be ten years this fall. Ten years since the teams had been reformed. These players really would have no idea.

When she pointed this out to Lucas, he had that same sort of stunned pause, like he'd stopped and done the math, and now he was amazed, too.

"I wish we could do something, all of us, the old teams and these ones here, but that's a whole lot more complicated now than it was back then," Maya reflected with a sigh. So many of their former teammates lived out of Texas, even out of the country, and with jobs, and families now, too…

"Okay, but you know, if that is going to be ten years ago, then we don't need to do anything. We just need to wait however longer it is before…" Lucas slowly pointed out, taking his time, and enabling her to get there on her own. Soon, she gasped. Of course!

"The reunion!" she grinned. "Oh, yes, point for you, Huckleberry," she tapped his arm and made him laugh. Their ten-year high school reunion was not so far away now, and they could definitely count on people showing up then, right? Although… "But that just accounts for everyone who graduated with us, not the ones who were before us," she told him, and he frowned as he realized he hadn't thought about that part. "I guess though… well, we could see if they'd be able to make it anyway. That anniversary, with the teams, our class definitely remembers it, so… I'll figure something out."

"The committee is lucky to have you," Lucas smiled.

"I was an easy pick," Maya shrugged. "I was in the class and I work at the school. Or I will, again, in like half a year…" She knew he could read her face so easily, see her excitement to return mixed with her sadness at not being with Marianne everyday.

When the game ended – a tie score broken in the final seconds, regrettably, by the opposing team – Maya and Lucas made their way down from the stands. It was impossible for Maya to keep from going to check on how the girls were doing. She knew how a loss felt, and there was never one that felt good, but some scenarios did feel different, didn't they? This one was something like packing all your hopes into tipping the scales in your favor until the last second, where it was suddenly taken out from under you.

"You were great out there today," Maya smiled to Daphne Brett as she approached the senior girl, seeing that barely contained disappointment was just on the edge of spilling over. "All of you played a great game, both teams, and I know how much it sucks to end up on this side of things, but it happens. Next time, you use all that to push you forward, okay?" Daphne sniffled, brushing away sweat or tears, and she nodded. She would do exactly that. "Tell you what, why don't you ask the rest of the team how they feel about lunch at Ma Maggie's? My treat."

Half an hour later, they were all out there, spread over a couple of the large tables pushed together, all the players, Maya, and Lucas. Marianne was spending some quality time with her Hunter aunts and uncle and her Clutterbucket great grandparents, or else they might have had her brought over to the restaurant to join them.

Lucas found himself at one end of the table, with Maya at the other and the players making the long ends. He had Phoebe Munroe and Ariel Su as his closest company, the two girls sitting opposite each other at his end of the table, and he suspected both of them had done so out of awareness that he might not have known many of the other girls the way he knew them, from previous encounters. He appreciated this gesture, though at the same time he got to feel something of what Maya had to have been feeling ever since last spring, when she'd found out Phoebe was unbeknownst to all of them – and herself – the younger half-sister of Dylan.

She had told him how much she hadn't realized it before, nothing beyond an underlying affinity with the girl, and how once she'd learned the truth it had all become so supremely obvious that she couldn't keep from noticing anymore. Right now, he was really feeling the same way. He looked at the girl, expressing to him and to her nearby teammates how close she'd been to getting hold of that ball when the clock had run out, and all Lucas could see was his old friend, animatedly going on about any number of things. The resemblance was so overwhelming.

It wasn't just about features. Surely, if she sat there quietly listening, he could see plenty of those parts of her that marked her for her Munroe side more than the other. But then she'd start to speak, and she'd get excited, and suddenly it was like someone had nudged the contrast until all he could see was everything that made her so like her older half-brother. It wasn't just that they were related either. She was Kyle's sister, too, just like Dylan would be Taylor Munroe's brother, and that physical resemblance existed there, too, enough that seeing Taylor had been Maya's eureka moment, but Dylan and Phoebe… They were so very alike. If they ever got to know each other, to form a bond, oh… It would be kind of wonderful.

But how was that going to work unless Phoebe was told the truth? And if she was told the truth, all of it, then that would include her origins, and Dylan wanted to protect her from that. Was that his choice? Maybe not. But then their mother hadn't exactly given them much of one, had she? So, until something happened, one way or the other… All Lucas could do was sit here, and smile, and listen.

At the other end of the table, Maya was being given something of a pitch from the Shelby twins. It didn't start that way, not exactly. But then Ruby and Abby started going on about how several of their year had been talking about taking a trip at the end of their senior year.

"Yeah? I went on a trip in my senior year, not with the whole graduating class but there were still over a dozen of us," Maya smiled, reminiscing. "Where would you want to go?"

"Well, it's a little early for that," Ruby pointed out, sitting up straight like she might already have been making a presentation. "But we were thinking that, if we started to work toward it now, we'd have a little over three years to raise funds. That should be enough, right?"

"Fundraising, yes. Jobs are good for that, too," Maya added. That brought some memories, too. They'd all been as determined as this, hadn't they? They'd all been so intent on finding work, the better to gather up savings, to see them off to Europe.

"If we did both of those, all of us, we could put some of it aside for a charity, right?" Abby jumped in here, more relaxed in her seat even as she speared a piece of waffle on her fork and joined it to a strawberry slice and some whipped cream. "Like the seniors do. Is it true that you guys were the ones who started that?"

"What, the pup fund?" Maya laughed. "Yeah, that was us," she breathed. As legacies to leave behind at her school, that was a big one, for her, for Lucas, and so many of their friends. "Didn't start as anything, we were just a bunch of dramatic little weirdos and we were putting quarters in a jar whenever we got nostalgic about graduating," she explained, which made the girls laugh. "Hey, you just wait until you're seniors, you'll see what I'm talking about," she pointed to them both in turn. The twins looked to one another, and Maya felt like there would have been some little squiggly lines between their two foreheads, to indicate telepathy, if this had been a cartoon. "What's up?" Maya asked, resisting the urge to nudge their legs with her feet under the table.

"So, if we did want to have a trip at the end of our senior year, we'd have to get organized with the school, yeah? For the fundraisers, and arrangements… and teachers to accompany us?" Ruby asked, her posture now definitely feeling so pointed as to make Maya feel targeted. One look to Abby found her giving something very similar, if in her own manner. It made her chuckle.

"Yes, I guess you would," she confirmed. Sure, she knew what they were getting at, but she also wanted to let them say their part on their own.

"I guess since it's already almost March, we might as well wait until next fall to really get started," Abby went on.

"You could," Maya nodded along.

"But then if we do that, we could end up at the end and not have everything we need, and we won't get that extra time back," Ruby stated.

"True, true," Maya hummed. The squiggly lines were going again.

"Mrs. Friar?" Abby asked.

"Mm?" she asked, taking a sip of her smoothie.

"Well… Are you still allowed to help us with all this even if you're on leave?" Ruby inquired. Maya considered how she was already running the diaries effort for her classes. She was also helping the quiz team, or she'd recently started to. No matter what, she couldn't seem to stay away, could she?

"I can advise you, yes," she told the Shelby girls.

"Would you? Not just for now, next year, too, and… the other ones, until the trip?" Abby asked her.

"You two start talking with the rest of your class, see who'd be interested, then get back to me, and we'll see how we might get things going," Maya tipped her head in agreement. Suddenly, the twins were not so disturbed by their loss back at the gym, as giddiness built for something still three years away. For her part, Maya looked across the tables to where Lucas stared back, curious for what they were up to. She only shot him a quick sign. Later, we'll talk.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners