June 19th 2021

Chapter 170
Our Beginnings Into Evolution

After nearly four years of teaching, Maya felt like maybe she should have been getting better at this, but at the same time… no. If a year ever ended and it didn't affect her to see a class of her students get closer and closer to the end and then graduate away from their school, well, maybe she'd need to re-evaluate her status as a teacher. Until then, this part of the year was going to keep on being the hardest and most bittersweet. Oh, she was so happy to see her seniors reach this point, to go on and guide them just a bit further as one by one the telltale signs of an ending year locked in. The end of the basketball season – this had happened already – and the last meetings of the quiz team, the proms, the final days of class, graduation…

This one was bound to hit differently though, and she wasn't the only one to realize it. Lucas had been on such peak Huckleberry that their brand new jar (actually a tin box shaped like a book, a gift of Cara's from a few years back) had received several donations. Maya would tease him and claim that he was being this nice because he wanted to go to Disneyworld. Of course, his true motive, the only one there could ever be, was that he knew she'd be upset at the thought of seeing off her very first freshmen, the first class she'd followed from start to end of their years at the high school. She'd been bracing for it, all year long, but now… Now it was finally right there, right around the corner. And tonight was a big milestone, really the start of the end. The Senior Prom was upon them.

Even though it had been approaching for a few weeks already, even though Maya herself had been part of the planning committee, as she was every year, the 'turn' only came as she was flying home with the quiz team.

They'd come out of their second day of competition just narrowly missing the top prize, but you wouldn't know it by looking at them. They'd really come so close that it wouldn't have been unreasonable for them to be disappointed and bummed out, but instead they were just so proud of what they had accomplished, all of them together, and even if they hadn't received the top prize, they'd come so close to it. Stella had told her team how it could have been anyone's game, because they were that good, and that was all they needed to remember. They'd spent Sunday night enjoying the end of their short trip, the six of them, and then the next morning they'd boarded their plane back to Austin. On the plane, all the kids could talk about were the proms.

As Maya couldn't help but overhear from where she sat, she knew that Rochelle was debating whether or not she wanted to go to the Junior Prom, because on the one hand she would have loved to stick it to the people who'd taken issue to her dating Bodhi by going with him, but on the other, she did want to go with him, for no other reason than because she liked him so much and the feeling was mutual. She didn't want to have to deal with 'those idiots.'

Rochelle and Bodhi had since attended the Junior Prom, just a week ago, and for having been in the gym that night, Maya knew they'd had a great time. Did the two of them have a few guardian angels dotted around the place in case anyone 'got any ideas' to do anything? Well, if they did, they never noticed, and that was how it would remain.

Even as there'd been discussion of the juniors and their prom on that plane back to Texas, there had also been the subject of the seniors, represented among them by Stella. Lea was so envious of her getting to go and couldn't wait until she had proms of her own. She wanted to know if she could go dress shopping with Stella, wanted to know who she would go with, if someone had asked her or if she'd asked anyone, because of course it didn't have to be up to the guy to ask, or whoever she might have wanted to go with. For all the progress she'd made over the last few years, this was one place where Maya was not surprised to find Stella continued to clam up. For the dress, yes, absolutely, she would love to have Lea's opinion. Now as to her date…

"I don't know, Phoebe doesn't have a date either, so we figured we'd just go by ourselves together," she'd told her teammates. Rochelle and Bodhi thought this made sense.

"But it's your Senior Prom," Lea had countered, her voice seeming to capitalize the words with how important they were to her. "It's… you know…" she'd gestured with a tiny flash of desperation.

Miracle of all miracles, when they all returned to school on Tuesday morning, it came about that Phoebe Munroe had a date to the prom. One of the players on the boys' basketball team had asked her the day before, while Maya and Stella and the others had been coming down from their return home and weren't at school. There'd been a full promposal and everything, which Phoebe recounted in the giggliest way they'd ever seen her. Would this be her great love? Probably not, or then again maybe, who knew? They were headed to college in the fall, both of them, and not anywhere near to one another. That didn't matter, not right now. Instead, there was prom.

She'd felt so bad about breaking 'the plan' with Stella, but it had just happened, and now here she was. Stella had promised her that it was fine, better than fine. She was just happy for her best friend, and they would go shop for their dresses, the two of them and Lea tagging along, within days.

For the rest of the week after their return, the assumption remained that Stella would play the contented third wheel to Phoebe and her date, and that would be all. Then the week after that, this week, leading up to the Senior Prom, there had been this sense like something was brewing in the shy bird's head. No one knew what it was or would even ask, but they would find out, at least in part, by Friday morning. As first period was letting out, she received a message, and she stopped so suddenly that Phoebe almost bumped into her. When asked why she'd stopped, Stella had whirled around, looking at her, keeping her phone close to herself. It was fortunate she'd been nearby, or Maya would never have heard her quietly announce that she had a date to the prom. Phoebe had asked who and, after a beat, Stella had leaned to whisper at her ear. Phoebe's outburst had been one of such surprise that they might have heard her clear across the school.

No one else knew, no one else would know, not until the prom, although Maya felt she might have an idea. All of them who'd been on that trip might have known, too, if they had the ability in them to recall one moment the way the art teacher did. She might have said 'what are the odds he would come out here?' but by now she felt like she'd experienced enough odd-defying situations to let her extend her definitions. Yes, she could believe that he would come. He'd done it before… just last year… and that had been for a whole class. This time… This time, he just might come for one person.

It had happened completely by chance that on the Sunday when the quiz team and their advisors were going to be in that one city, it would be the same night and place where The Young Frank would be giving one of the last performances in his current North American tour. What was less about chance and more about connections was that Maya had gotten them all tickets. And after the show was over, she'd been able to escort them backstage, there to meet the teenaged singer. It would be a brief encounter, as he needed to be on his way, journeying overnight to the next stop on the tour, and the kids needed to get some rest ahead of their flight home in the morning, but the meeting had occurred and it had been meaningful, for some more than others.

When she'd told Lucas about the whole thing, he'd claimed that she had spent too long as a friendly matchmaker not to see potential everywhere. Just because she thought she'd seen some sparks did not mean that there would be a fire. What were the odds, right?

As to how the two of them had gotten in touch, she couldn't say, but it would become clear in time that they had done so, and that they had kept in touch as the days had gone on. And at one point, Stella might have mentioned her prom coming up, and from there it was difficult to say who might have put the idea on the table, but the end result was that Stella Buckley would be accompanied to her Senior Prom by François Lejeune, also known as The Young Frank.

She had been the quiet one for the better part of her high school days. Even kids from her own year would have spent most of the last four years either not knowing she was in there with them or could have only known her face and little else. Then, all of a sudden, she had done the musical. Then, to everyone's amazement, it was revealed that her mother was famous. And then, to top it all off, she walked into the gym on a French heartthrob's arm. The funniest part of it all might have been the looks on the self-appointed popular kids' faces, like suddenly nothing in the world made sense anymore.

It was François who attended the prom that night, of course, and not The Young Frank. It was the reserved boy Maya had met and worked with up in her home studio, and while his stage persona may not have been so far off, when he got to be himself, when he got to be that with the girl who he'd met just two weeks back…

Maya couldn't even rub it in to Lucas' face, as she and her honored co-chaperone watched them dance and hop along with Phoebe and her date. He hadn't believed it would happen, but there it was. There was no telling what the future would hold for those two either. If two kids going to colleges several states apart was a challenge, what would one college girl in Texas and one French singer constantly travelling the world have to face? For their sakes, Maya could only hope one thing, and it was for those kids to keep doing what they'd been doing all along, to keep challenging the odds and knocking them down, one by one.

"You know, I never look forward to this time of the year, and then I'm in it and I never want it to end…" Maya breathed, later on, as she and Lucas permitted themselves a slow dance.

"You went and found a job where we get to go to prom every year," Lucas pointed out, making her laugh. "Even if it ends, we'll get to do it over again next year."

"Oh, next year, we should do a theme. We won't tell anyone ahead of time. It'll be funny," she suggested with bright eyes. Lucas slowly nodded, his smile matching hers.

"With you, it usually is."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners