May 1st 2021

Chapter 121
Our Surprises For Production

"Hey, Maya, come here?"

Turning at the sound of the whisper, she found Morgan standing in the hall and dividing her gaze between looking in on her friend, colleague, and bandmate, and looking at something back in the hall, too. Maya left her efforts of resetting the class in her break between first and third period to go and see what this was about. Out in the hall, at the other end of it, Vice-Principal Ríos was standing with a woman and the two of them were having a conversation.

"Who's that?" Maya asked, as she sensed this was the reason she'd been summoned.

"Can't say for sure, but I'd put money on it being the new drama teacher," Morgan whispered. Maya blinked and looked at the two women with new intent.

"Wait, seriously? What makes you think that?"

As far back as she could remember – and this included her own years as a student here, which said something – there hadn't been a drama department at this school for a long time. There had been, once, and then the former principal had shut it down, redistributed the budget. From what students and faculty heard over time, they hadn't exactly been all that successful, and no one could or would blame them for letting it quietly die. In the years since then however, there had been a continued effort and desire for it to be revived, especially once the administration had changed. It had never happened though, and so the dream of drama remained that, just a dream. To some, it was more like an urban legend, a myth…

"My equipment room is being relocated," Morgan explained. Maya had to think about it for a second, but then she understood.

"Your equipment room used to be…"

"Yup," Morgan nodded. Across the hall, the vice-principal and the woman turned to walk down in their direction, and Morgan nudged Maya into the room so she could go in with her. They were able to watch them both go by, catching just a part of their conversation as they went. The vice-principal was going on about her own days as a student, which was the first time the art and music teachers realized she'd gone here as well. She was talking about when she'd been part of a play, how she used to have fancies of being a big star.

"I think that's as good as confirmed then?" Maya turned to an excited Morgan. Her response was to take Maya by the hands and stare back at her with determination. "Woah…"

"What have I always said I wanted to do from day one?" she asked.

"The clean version or…" Maya teased. Morgan gave her hands a pull. "I don't know," Maya laughed. "Wait, no, I do know," she corrected herself after a moment. It was the sort of thing you heard over and over but – maybe figuring it would never happen – you never paid much attention to it. Yes, it would be nice, but… Now that they had substantial signs of the drama department being revived however… "Oh," she spoke, and the thought did not leave her uninterested.

"Yeah, see?" Morgan let her hands go.

"Okay, but she just got here. We can't just go in there and say 'Hey, how about we do a musical? By the way, what's your name?'"

"It would show her that we are happy she's here. It's courtesy," Morgan reasoned.

"You are way too excited about this, so I'm going to make you swear not to go out there without me, deal?" Maya squinted at her and offered her hand again.

"Okay, Mom, okay," Morgan sighed and shook on it. They'd barely let go again when Vice-Principal Ríos appeared.

"So, I thought I'd get to surprise you, but I have a feeling that ship has sailed," she told the pair of them with a nod each. "I would appreciate if you kept it quiet until the official announcement is out."

"Of course," Maya nodded respectfully, all the while stealing a glance to Morgan. She was doing her best to come off casual.

"Yes, of course," she finally echoed.

"Excellent," the vice-principal smiled.

"Are we allowed to go and introduce ourselves?" Maya asked, trying not to sound like they were in the middle of a negotiation.

"If you don't mind being recruited for manual labor. She's out there right now, trying to get a start on getting the room set up to her liking."

Morgan helped Maya finish with her set-up – it was only fair – and then they walked off toward the newly reinstated classroom. As they approached, they could hear the screech of a large desk being forced across a floor, as much as could be managed. It sounded as though the desk was very heavy, almost too much for the one who pushed it, so they hurried their steps and wasted no time. They walked into the room and fell in on either side of their new colleague to help her push. She received this sudden assistance with a nod.

"There, under the window," she directed. The desk was moved with renewed strength until it was just where it belonged. "Always best to have a good focal point to get started, isn't it?" she declared, breathing out as she finally took in the faces of her helpers. "I saw you earlier, didn't I?"

"Subtlety is not everyone's strength," Maya nodded, looking to Morgan, who passed her a mock squint over being 'outed' this way.

"It really isn't mine," the new teacher gave a great laugh, and Maya might have already loved her from that. It just might have been that they'd gained some points toward Morgan getting her musical idea off the ground.

"Maya Friar," she introduced herself. "I teach art."

"Morgan Stewart, music," Morgan followed.

"Miranda Ortiz," the woman introduced herself. She looked to be somewhere between a solid forty and a superb fifty, much closer to Maya's height than Morgan's, and one look in her eyes, in her smile, showed someone inhabited with so much passion… just the kind they needed for someone devoted to the stage. "Look at us, three M's," she chuckled.

"With our subjects, might as well call us the Muses," Maya remarked, thinking aloud, and the other two received this statement with enthusiasm. Yes, they liked that very much.

As agreed earlier, neither Maya not Morgan brought up the idea of a musical just yet, though they did assist Miranda in organizing her room some more, until they both had to get on to their classes. By the time they met again, with Morgan showing up in the art room for lunch, Maya knew her friend had been thinking about it all the same over the last two periods. She couldn't exactly blame her, could she? Oh, she'd been thinking about it, too, and it was a wonder she hadn't blank-faced her sophomores while they were with her. Then, in her next free period, she'd gone about her usual tasks, and all the while her head had felt like a jukebox, rolling songs over and over in her head. In that moment, she was New York Girl all over again, and she was seeing Broadway lights all around her.

Only the presence of Phoebe, Stella, and Dylan made it so that Maya and Morgan didn't end up talking about the new hire over lunch, and when the music teacher took off for the start of the afternoon, she passed Maya a look that clearly said, 'I will be back here as soon as I'm between classes.' Maya may have gone down to the cafeteria to grab them a couple of sodas, cups included, and set up the whole thing on her desk, so that by the time Morgan came along she would find she had been expected.

"Funny," Morgan smirked.

"I'm being… dramatic," Maya informed her. "Emphasis on the…"

"Yes, yes, I get it," the music teacher laughed. She shut the door before joining her. "You tell me then: how long do we have to wait before it's not getting ahead of ourselves with this pitch?"

"I may have… broached the subject already," Maya confessed. Morgan sat up. "I didn't mean to," Maya went on. "Just that when I was at the cafeteria, she was there, too, and we got to talking. I asked her what her plans were for this year, I mean, it's already halfway through November, she can't exactly have a regular schedule going yet, you know? So, she told me how basically this year is going to be a sort of… slow start. The school hasn't had a program like this in something like fifteen years, so they're pretty much starting back from zero."

"So, what is she doing then?" Morgan asked, with great curiosity. Maya smiled.

"Well, it turns out, she and I already have a connection… sort of. She used to be with a theater, over in San Antonio, and when she was there, she ended up running their branch of my Stage Ready program. She was so surprised when she realized it, as surprised as I was. Anyway, what she'll be doing this year, for the most part, will be a lot like that. Mostly workshops, at lunch and after classes, as a club. Then, next year, she'll have classes. She mentioned how she was looking to put together a production of some kind, to present sometime in the spring, and once she said it, I couldn't let the opening slip away. I could practically hear you shouting in my ear to say something."

"I would have," Morgan 'confirmed' with a smiling nod. "What did she say?"

"At first, nothing, on account of she got big sort of 'now you're talking my language' eyes. Suffice it to say, our circle of muses is complete," Maya informed her. Morgan was so happy that she could have dropped her cup. "We stopped there, because we got back here… and because I wanted to wait until you were there, too."

"Thanks," Morgan nodded.

"Anyway, we shouldn't get too ahead of ourselves, right? Just because we want to do this, doesn't mean we'll be able to. We need to run it by the school."

"Why would they hire a drama teacher if they don't want to have any productions?" Morgan pointed out, though she knew Maya was right.

"We will raise the money if we have to," Maya stated.

"We will," Morgan agreed. "You could write the musical," she went on, her tone here making it clear that she was joking.

"Yeah, we might want to stick to something people know," Maya laughed. "Not saying I couldn't do it."

"I believe you," Morgan smiled.

They were interrupted by a knock at the door and when Maya spotted the new teacher's face in the window, she waved her in. She had the look of someone who may have quickened their pace to get to their destination, the better to share something exciting.

"I brought up the idea of a musical with the vice-principal," she told the two at the desk. They sat up at once. "We'll need to come up with something more than 'we want to do one' but she said yes." Maya and Morgan looked to one another.

"Can I hug her?" Morgan asked, making Maya burst out laughing. It got a great smile out of the new teacher, too, and Morgan took this as an invitation to go ahead, so she did.

"Why do I have a feeling this class is going to turn into a private dining room before long?" Maya wondered aloud. She was already foreseeing meals with four teachers and two students in next to no time, with how quickly Miranda Ortiz had become one of them. Not that she minded it, of course. Between this musical and her brother's comic book day coming up, the next few weeks felt very promising. He and Dora were coming to dinner that night, and the biggest challenge might have been for her not to tease Sam about getting him to audition.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners