March 21st 2021

Chapter 80
Our Farewell to Starts & Ends

"You know, I could have done with a field trip today," Morgan sighed. She and Maya were standing outside the school, near the bus which would take the freshman art class to the museum.

"Not that I would… ever encourage skipping classes…" Maya shook her head at her friend, bandmate, and colleague, with a sly smirk that made the music teacher chuckle for how it seemed to say 'officially.'

"No, never," Morgan concurred.

"But is there any particular reason why you'd want to be anywhere but here today?"

"Can't I just feel like taking in some works of art with my very knowledgeable friend?"

"You can, but I can smell a buttering up when I… smell… one…" Maya shook the words away, recognizing that they'd gotten away from her. "What's up?" she restarted.

"Oh, you know how it is," Morgan looked around like she wanted to make sure there was no one around to overhear her. "Intentions and results don't always… line up, with everyone," she explained, pointing to both her ears in the process. Maya took this to mean 'I'm about to have my ears broken by some well-meaning students.'

"Ever thought of investing in a pair of earplugs?" she joked, making her friend struggle not to laugh. They were both of them reasonably sympathetic to whatever their students produced, weren't they? "I am taking you to the museum in spirit," Maya pressed her hands to her heart, and Morgan waved her hands toward her as though to transfer this spirit of hers.

"One of these days, I'm going to bring you into my class. Guest Lecturer Friar."

"Have your people call my people," Maya intoned, and they laughed, pulling themselves together when they spotted the kids coming their way. Morgan wished them a good trip to the museum and hurried back toward the school.

Maya was so happy to take this group out. The year was not over, and they still had a summer to get through, but this trip felt like the first step toward her regaining 'teacher-ship' over them. There were some of them who still felt so hard to conjure up in her mind. She had been communicating with them through the diaries all year long, but it all depended on just how much they devoted themselves to the assignments. She could only do so much to feel like she actually knew them, which was really her biggest regret about this absence, where this group was concerned. If she had been in class with them, it would have been so different, she was sure.

On the other side, there were those students who had given so much of themselves in their assignments, on purpose or not, that she could really feel as though she knew them as she would some of those she held dearest to her heart. With some of them, it had been almost an instant connection, for one reason or another. There had been an instant connection to Ruby and Abby Shelby, but then she had known these girls, to some degree, since they had been children. They already had this link between them, born of siblings, of basketball… On that level, there was a deep understanding, and it meant a lot on both sides.

And then there was Bodhi, dear Bodhi. One way or another, she'd been brought to take notice of him, before she'd ever met him, through his journey up to now. It could be for his being trans in the middle of high school, where people could make his life harder than it should be, or for his having fallen behind a couple of years on his way here. But then she saw him with the quiz team, and she listened to his contributions when the 'committee' met to discuss the senior trip and the grudge fund, and she discovered the pages of his art class diary, the breadth of his imagination. And she felt like they could have been such good friends if they had only been in school at the same time as students. Today, he so looked forward to the field trip, and she had a notion of keeping him close to her the whole time or else he would absolutely fall behind. She didn't want to have to assign him pages for having become enthralled with a painting as she so often did.

As instantaneous as it had been with the twins and with Bodhi, there were those she had taken time to get to know, like Talia Ríos, for instance. Maybe a part of her had believed it would be easy going with her. She was the vice-principal's daughter, and she'd known to expect her in her class… But it wasn't as clear cut as she'd figured it would be. Talia had told her, that first day when she'd gone in to meet everyone and hand out the diaries, that she'd taken art class because she wanted to get better at it. And she had. She'd started out being someone who absolutely could draw, who devoted herself to making her depictions feel accurate, not like a caricature.

There was so much room for improvement, and it wasn't as though Barton Day or Maya herself would have been able to stand up there and give a detailed course on drawing techniques. It wasn't that kind of class exactly, but then the idea still remained, the sort of mission statement Maya upheld from day one: Show me what you're looking for, and I'll do everything in my power to open up the way for you. For Rochelle McNeil, it had meant tapping into her aptitude toward research. For Stella Buckley, it had started with offering a safe space not to feel overwhelmed. For Dakota Day, it was trusting the process…

For Talia… All the assignments she requested of the girl were the means to an end, they were essentially practice exercises to help her work at her drawing skills, whether she realized it or not. And if one leafed through the pages of her diary, they would see the progression she'd made, until one would be hard pressed to believe the same person had done it all if they only looked at the first and the latest. All year long, she'd been watching her grow more confident across the pages of a sketchbook, and today, climbing on the bus, she saw this reflected in the girl herself and how it inhabited her. If she'd achieved this in one year, what would the next three bring?

All week long, it was no secret to Maya herself that she had been most looking forward to the last of the field trips, with the seniors. As they were all ramping up to the end of the school year, it became more and more important to her that she concentrate on them. It started with this field trip, but it didn't stop, it was prom, and graduation, too. They were on their way, Ariel Su, Daphne Brett, Dakota Day, all of them… It never got easy, but she'd gotten better at it over the last three years. That she'd been gone all year, that was what made it harder this time around.

"It wasn't too bad having your dad at school your senior year, was it?" Maya asked with a funny sort of 'sorry' look on her face when she managed to get a moment alone with Dakota Day. Barton had gone off to talk to the bus driver. The boy, who looked like a younger version of his father, like all three of his little brothers, received this question with a smile.

"No, it was good… mostly," he shrugged. The resemblance really stopped at physical appearance, didn't it? His father was much more of a talker, as was current sophomore Roman, while Dakota was generally quiet, focused more on his work than much of anything else. But then the work said so much more than the words ever could, so who were they to get in the way? To Maya, he gave off the impression of someone who would get on very well in the world, and that was all she needed to hold on to as he would go on to college.

When the bus arrived at the museum, the students started to get up and get out. Maya almost absently counted them on their way along, which was just as well, as she came up one short. Looking back, she spotted one sandy blond head poking out from somewhere near the middle.

"Last stop, Brett," she called, and Daphne startled and scrambled to stand. As she did, her notebook slipped from her lap and thumped in the aisle. She quickly bent to pick it up and make sure that what she'd been working on hadn't been stained or accidentally bent. From where she stood, Maya could make out something that looked an awful lot like… a spaceship? "How are you able to draw on a moving bus?" she asked the girl. "Scratch that, how are you able to draw on this moving bus?" she wondered, giving an impression of anyone riding on this thing which involved a lot of shaking around.

"Very slowly?" Daphne replied, and Maya grinned. "I couldn't help it, I'm almost done, I think. If I keep going much longer, I'll wreck it. Know when to quit, right?"

"Can I see?" Maya asked as she motioned for her to follow and get off the bus with the others. As they joined the group on its way into the museum, Daphne passed her notebook. There was no doubt that she would never in a million years have shown this to any random person. She trusted her teacher's opinion though, and Maya was thankful for this trust.

In three years of knowing her, if Maya had to use one word to describe Daphne Brett, it would probably be 'consistent.' From day one, she'd known what she was about, and in all this time her passion never wavered. She was all space, and the stars, and science fiction. Maya believed deep in her heart that the day would come when the world would know this girl's name, by some accomplishment or another. She could be a scientist of some field or another, or she could be an author, certainly dreamed of it. She could end up an actual astronaut, and Maya would not be surprised.

"You drew something a little like this, freshman year," Maya pointed to the drawing.

"That was the same ship," Daphne was all smiles for how her creation had been recognizable. "I've been working on it," she indicated the pages. When Maya started to flip through them, she found different views, and close-ups, and interiors.

"When's the launch?" she gave a genuinely awed smile.

"I'm not sure what I'll use it for yet. There's a lot of ideas, but it took me that long just to do the ship…"

"Hey, that's a big step if you ask me. Just keep going."

Much as she would devote one hundred percent of herself to all her students, she would have been lying to herself and everyone if she said there weren't those that stood out to her, for one reason or another. They almost became a part of her, and when the time would come to say goodbye…

This year, this graduating class, she now had to say goodbye to Ariel Su, and she really wished she didn't have to. From day one, there'd been something about this girl, where even without trying or intending to, she would stand out. She was someone who commanded attention. She held an ease and a confidence about her, and Maya knew very well that it hadn't been dropped in her lap ready-made, no. Ariel Su had needed to work hard to get where she was, to overcome obstacles she'd once described to her teacher as insidious. How was one able to sidestep or jump over an obstacle when it was part of you? One time, she had tried to personify it, in her diary. She had drawn a girl who looked frightened, and who searched for something. All the while, there was a creature clinging to her back, the very thing she looked for. But she couldn't see it, not from where it sat, perched, claws gripped at the back of her neck. She could never be rid of it.

Maya had asked her, afterward, if she was comfortable with it being in there, with people potentially seeing it. Ariel said yes. She said she found power in acknowledging.

Maya would miss her when she was gone, she would. But she also felt that when Ariel Su stepped out into the world, she would continue to be the person she'd grown to know and respect. No matter where she'd end up, she would do something wonderful, Maya believed that, and she couldn't wait to see it.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners