February 26th 2021

Chapter 57
Our Work to Advance

It had soon become obvious that Riley and Dylan planned to hold on to their little 'secret' as long as it had reason to feel safe that way, which was to say until someone was going to find out anyway. That plaque was up on the nursery door in their house, so the moment anyone came to visit them and headed up the stairs… It turned out to be a reasonable caveat, as it was actually a couple weeks before anyone that wasn't in the know – like the two of them and Maya and Lucas – ended up at the Orlando house and went anywhere near the stairs. To hear Riley recount the close calls, the whole thing could have been a comedy act, with her and Dylan just looking at their guests, waiting almost too intensely to see if they would go and then looking oddly disappointed when they didn't.

"So just tell them," Lucas laughed as Dylan shared the story of when his parents had last visited.

"We will… soon… I think."

That was still days ahead of the actual point when the announcement made the rounds. Maya was very suspicious of the circumstances, as though one or both of the future parents had decided they'd had enough but didn't know how to admit it, and so they had orchestrated the means to an end: they had ensured that someone would come, and they would have no choice but to go up the stairs and past the nursery door. Regardless of whether or not this was true, it remained that this was the impetus for Dylan and Riley Orlando to announce to friends and family that they were having a son, and that he was to be called Nicholas, though for them, he was simply Nicky.

Once the secret was out there, Maya could easily sense in her best friend a renewed anticipation for the birth of her child, though this was still many weeks away. March had barely started, and she wasn't due for another two months. Her reduced hours at work enabled her to spend more time with Maya and Marianne, and she never missed a chance when one presented itself. They got to hang out, go shopping or on errands together, share a lunch here and there… And of course, they would still meet up with regards to the trip and the fund instigated by the current freshman class.

A lot of it remained up in the air, this early on, but this didn't prevent a stronger if tentative skeleton of a plan to start coming together, enough to shift some of the maybes into yeses already. The Shelby twins and Bodhi had been speaking with the teachers, passing along Maya's idea about the projects, how they might count toward students' grades. They couldn't say what those projects would be yet, not when it was still so far away, but the commitment was made, ensuring that the teachers were on board. The exact itinerary wasn't locked down either, but maybe inspired by the sketchbooks, they were entirely sold on making this a bit of a roving through Europe situation, just as their teacher and her friends had done. It came with ardent support from Maya, and Riley, and Lucas and Dylan, when they'd come along in the midst of the gathering in the Friar kitchen.

They hadn't planned to let all this out just yet, had actually decided to hold out until the start of the next year, the better to make it a fresh start, but then some of their classmates had overheard, and so there really hadn't been any way around it. They were just going to have to say it all now. It didn't convince everyone in a snap, though their previous twenty-eighty calculations quickly turned into something more like sixty-forty, angling toward a seventy-thirty even. That number still had plenty of time to shift further along, and for now it didn't matter. What did matter was that they had gotten far enough to convince the principal and vice-principal to make the whole thing official. The seniors of 2033 would have their trip, they could start working toward it all.

Now as to the pup fund, or what their version of it would be, a decision had not yet been made as to the eventual beneficiary, nor could they say that whatever funds went into this were motivated by any sort of nostalgia for high school among the freshmen, seeing as they were still barely starting. But the account was opened, and the small planning committee did not lack for an idea on how to get the ball rolling, get those quarters in. Rather than being powered by nostalgia, it was powered by something of a semi-friendly rivalry with another high school. Whenever any of their class would bring them up in any way, it was a quarter, or possibly more, depending on the intensity of the statement.

"That much, huh?" Maya laughed, upon hearing about it.

"There's twenty dollars in there already. It's been a week," Bodhi informed her.

"Wait until there's big games coming, it'll just roll in," she told him with a grin.

She had a feeling the quiz team was responsible for a sizable chunk of the 'grudge fund,' as it was currently known. The other school happened to be the home of another quiz team, none other than the Think Tank. Technically, one could say that it wasn't necessary for them to add quarters whenever they spoke of the team, as it didn't exactly have to do with the school itself, and it wasn't as though Bodhi – the actual freshman on the team – was the one to bring it up all the time. But to him and the girls, it was apparently warranted, and they insisted on paying up, so they did.

The first friendly between Born Curious and the Think Tank – jackets and all – went very well. They actually won, something Rochelle suggested might have been fueled by a desire for them to take one for their school, against these 'rivals' of theirs. Whatever it was, they had been successful, and there was now a photo of the four of them, Maya, Cory, and Mr. Brett, sitting on top of Maya's desk in the attic. It was all she could do not to simply put it in the trophy case, for how proud she was of the four of them.

The more time went on, with them already in March as they were, Maya felt like she had fallen well into the groove of this new life of hers that involved so many of the things already there but now also included her having a child. After Marianne was born, even before that, when she'd just been on leave at the end of her pregnancy, it had been a bit difficult not to feel almost restless. She was so used to thriving on projects, on having things to do, to get her mind rolling, and to be without all that… It wasn't as though she didn't know how to stop, to relax, but that was different from just needing to take things easy and then to simply have no time or means to get involved in anything that didn't have to do with the immediate care of a newborn.

But now here she was, still on leave, the mother of a four-month-old girl who brought more joy into her life every single day. She was not teaching, but in a lot of ways she was a presence for her students, with the quiz team, with the senior trip and the grudge fund… And outside of that, outside of being there for her family and her friends, she still had her music.

She had fully expected for people to start trying and reach out to her despite the fact that she'd made it expressly clear that she was currently unavailable, just as she'd been warned, and it was all proven wise before long. She had asked not to be told specifically who it was that had been reaching out, as it could only get the gears of her mind turning again, though from what she heard, there had been several artists who had to be told of her current unavailability. All she could know about them, she got from the way she was told that someone else had reached out, from the tone and the face, and clearly some of them had to be at the very start of their careers. And then others were almost staggering in their status, enough that it became very tempting to break open that seal and find out who they were. But she resisted. She was on break. If they wanted her now, they could wait until later. Some of them, apparently, were more persistent than others, but this they did in such a way that left Maya feeling strongly opposed to even collaborating with them, sensing they would clash, and it wouldn't work out.

In the meantime, she had one song in the works, and it was really getting to come along. It wasn't as though she usually rushed her work, not at all, but this one felt almost more deliberately slow in its assembly, given extra care, and she liked that very much. She didn't know when she would have the whole thing completed, the demo ready to send on to Neil Tolliver and the rest of the Marvelers. Either way, part of her felt like she would need to wait until this summer anyway. If it got out that, after having told everyone repeatedly that she wasn't currently working on any music for anyone, she'd done something for them, it would put her in a position of not being true to her word, and she didn't want that. It could wait, it would.

She didn't lack for anticipation, of course, for this as much as for the other half of her music, her band. They had started a soft conversation about when and how exactly she would make her return. At this point, TXNY was on a hiatus from doing shows. Riley was too far along now and wouldn't do it anymore, not until after Nicky was born. That was alright though. After their latest string of performances, as enabled by the aftermath of awards, they would likely have taken a pause from shows anyway, baby or no. Breaks led to anticipation for a return…

The next time TXNY would take the stage, it would be with Maya at the forefront again, while Cara would move to take position at the keyboard while Riley was unavailable. Maya was pleased to see how her sister took all this in stride. She was glad to jump in for the assist, and she might have been happy to bow out and become audience once more, once she was no longer needed as a sub, but Maya didn't feel right simply casting her aside.

"You could open for us," Maya told her, one night, as she watched her little sister walk around with a fussy Marianne. Cara looked at her, intrigued.

"By myself?"

"Sure, why not," Maya chuckled. "I… might actually have a couple songs in the works that would suit this purpose very well," she added. Now, Cara looked like she might cry. Sure, she had always been on board with her band tenure being a temporary thing, but after she'd found her groove on the stage, the bite had been so strong. If she could keep going, if her sister believed in her enough to put that much faith behind her, oh…

"I-I would like that a lot… yes…" Cara finally replied, turning a glowing smile to her niece, who received this as an invitation to poke and patter at her aunt's face.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners