September 12th 2021

Chapter 255
Our Tribute to Team Spirit

The quiz team had started coming over to the Friar house on the lane for meetings with their lead advisor back when she'd been on maternity leave. It certainly wasn't necessary, not once she was back at school day to day, but they'd kept doing it anyway, once in a while, because it just made sense to all of them. Maya was always happy to receive them, and she would assist them for as long as they needed her, no bell to dismiss them or force them to rush off because they had a class to get to. More often than not, they'd get a lunch or dinner out of the visit, sometimes both, before being driven home or picked up.

"Mommy! People!" Marianne called out from where she stood, with her hands and face planted to the attic window. Maya looked over from where she sat at her desk.

"They're coming, huh?" she asked with a smile as she moved over to her. Marianne nodded and waved down to the 'people.' They couldn't see her up there, but that didn't stop her. "Are you staying with us today or do you want to go down to see what the dogs are up to?" Maya asked, planting her hand atop her daughter's head until she finally looked up at her. Oh, what a difficult choice that was. She loved the quiz team, but the dogs... It didn't matter that they were here all the time, living with her, did it? They were so dear to her, and most importantly they were dogs. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Come on," Maya picked her up and moved to get the gate out of the way so they could descend.

It was by no means a tactic to remove the small one from the attic, which had become the preferred meeting area for the team. Maya and Lucas would joke how one of their proudest achievements as parents was that Marianne generally understood when a time or place demanded some quiet. As far as the gatherings with the team went, she had been in attendance since she was a baby, passed around between her mother and the students of the year's team. The current team was the third lineup she'd seen go by, whether she remembered the first or not. Every fall there would be someone new and she would welcome them, good little Hucklebucket that she was.

"Hello Mary-Mary," Rosemary was the first through the door and she greeted the small girl that came rushing toward her.

Of her many nicknames, naturally, some would really be specific to certain people. Pumpkin was mostly to her family, Hucklebucket to her parents, Annie girl to Zay and some of their other friends, Sheriff Annie to anyone who saw her with her star... Mary-Mary was one coined by and reciprocated with Rosemary Adewumi. When they'd met, the first time she'd come over with the team, Marianne had quickly noticed how the girl's name had a part that was like hers, and thus they had become Mary-Mary to each other.

"Going play with dogs now, bye!" Marianne informed this quartet before going calling for another.

"Alright, looks like it's just the five of us today," Maya smirked toward her students. "Anyone need to make a stop in the kitchen before we head up?" she asked, gesturing toward the room where they could now hear childish squealing and laughing mixed in with cheerful barks.

They were all good, so they made their way up. Rochelle, Bodhi, Lea, Rosemary, all four of them couldn't keep from expressing amazement at the fact that it was already April, which meant that they only had a few weeks to go before the school year would draw to an end and their team would lose another captain. Rochelle, most of all, looked as though she wanted nothing more than to make the most of those weeks. She wanted to make sure she left her team in a good place. Bodhi would be Captain next year, as he started his senior year. He wasn't as... insistent as she was, but she did not fear. Her boyfriend would make a fantastic leader.

Bodhi should have been off to college by now, heading into his second year of it, and he would have been if he hadn't been held back a couple of times. That was alright though, because as of this fall, he would be living on his own, and Rochelle would be moving in with him.

Maya would have been sure, with the focus and drive she'd shown for all four of her years at this school, that she'd be aiming to go to some big university somewhere, far out of Texas, maybe even out of the country, but instead she had applied and been accepted here, the very first of them to get her letter.

When Maya had asked her about it all, she'd explained very reasonably that she planned to go to college in Texas for just this coming year, after which Bodhi would have finished high school and then the both of them could decide where to go next. The way she saw it, she'd spent a long time with only her education and eventual career in mind. But then the counselors had put her in art class, in HER art class. And her eyes had been opened, bit by bit, to the parts of life she had ignored, like friends, like... love. She could have gone away to college, and maybe she and Bodhi would have weathered long distance, maybe not. But he mattered enough for her to want to put more chances on their side by keeping the distance short. Maybe they'd find it wouldn't work out in the end that way either, but they wouldn't look to the future with pessimism.

"Anyway, I can be top of my class at any school," she'd finally shrugged. And the matter was settled.

Maya would never not find it amusing to watch those kids walk up into the attic. No matter how many times they'd been up here, they still had an air about them like they'd just up and walked into her inner sanctum. Their response was always very telling.

Lea would be drawn to spy at the awards case, especially when she knew there'd be a new one or multiple new ones, and there had been some over time, still, enough so that Lucas kept saying that he'd need to extend the case sooner or later. Bodhi would go up to the desk and see what his teacher was working on at the moment and even if there was nothing on the surface, he'd still wander over, like he wanted to imagine having a desk like that someday. Rosemary would go and peek out the windows, taking in the view out of the front of the house or the back of it, and she would stand there, looking deeply at peace. And Rochelle would go and bring the bean bags at the center of the attic, under the skylight, where she would sit and take out her things and get prepared for the others to join her, whenever they were ready. Once upon a time, she might have demanded that they come right away.

"Hey," Maya took her spot, next to her, and Rochelle looked up at her. "All good?"

"I just think it's starting to hit me that I won't be doing this anymore after this year, and it's not... I don't know..." Rochelle explained, left awkward by this turmoil of emotions. It wasn't like she never showed her feelings, but she preferred to have some control over the levels, and this felt very much like she was one bump in the road away from losing grip on the wheel.

"Well, you're still going to be in Texas next year, so you'd be welcome to drop in at any time and advise with me and Mr. Matthews," Maya pointed out, which made the girl smile.

"And bug you about freshmen," she joked. Maya laughed.

"I don't think you need to worry about next year, I have a good feeling that I've got that one locked in."

"You do?" Rochelle asked with instant curiosity.

"Yeah, well, it's not guaranteed, but the chances are good."

"Who? Someone you know?"

"Known her all her life," Maya confirmed. It was still astounding to think it had been this long, that she had made it to this point already. "You could call her a legacy of the original Basket Cases."

Before Rochelle could question her in infinite details, the rest of the team finally moved in from where they'd dispersed and settled in around the circle. The captain was left to choose and, of course, she chose her current teammates over hypothetical future members. They got to work.

Last year, Maya had seen her last students graduate out who had been with her since day one of teaching. This year, the last of the original members of Born Curious was on her way out, and the notion had not been lost to her, or to the team. It made them want to make the rest of the year special, to have as many matches as they could while Rochelle was still here, but also to just hang out, the four of them. And while she remained captain...

"I would like to enter a new... clause... into the team charter," Rochelle announced.

"Do we have one of those?" Lea whispered to Maya, who was as clueless as her.

"It's in the book, I put it there when we added Rosemary," Rochelle pointed out matter-of-factly, like she couldn't believe they hadn't noticed. "Anyway... It should state that, every four years, when the roster has completely rolled over, we hold a match, between the current cycle and the former. In this case, Helena, Ariel, Stella, and me, Cycle One, versus Cycle Two, being Bodhi, Lea, Rosemary, and... the next freshman," she stole a look to Maya like she might speak the name. Her teacher just smiled because the idea intrigued her.

"Like the Olympics?" Rosemary asked, making the others laugh.

"Oh, I could do an opening ceremony..." Lea imagined.

"Or it could just be at school," Bodhi brought her back down before she could start plotting her playlist.

"Yes, of course," Lea bowed her head.

"But we could make it enough of an event that we could raise funds, for whatever cause the teams choose to champion," Maya nudged them back toward sensible development, and they were all agreed at once. Rochelle already wanted to reach out to her former teammates.

It was a good thing that they were not timed, or else they might have lost all the time meant for practice toward planning an event far off in the land of next year. In due time, they had set aside those plans and ideas and gotten to work. They lost track of time, just a bit, so that they first had lunch brought up to them, and eventually were summoned down to dinner. At some point in the afternoon, Marianne was brought up to the attic to join her mother and the quiz team. She'd played with the dogs all morning, but now she wanted to be with her mother, so she sat in her lap and remained quietly there while they worked on. After a while, she'd started to move around, sitting with one and another and eventually all four of the teammates in turn before ending up back with her mother when the call to dinner came.

"One day, I bet she'll be on the team, too," Lea declared to her cousin and his wife as they all sat around the table.

"Think so?" Lucas smiled and looked to his baby girl, presently shoving her peas into her mashed potatoes.

"If she keeps sitting in with us, she's bound to pick up some things, right?" Bodhi suggested.

"He's got a point there," Granny Lizzie nodded. Maya looked to Marianne, too. Olivia Zhu had grown up so fast, enough that she was months away from possibly following in her sister's footsteps, so how many blinks of the eye would it take before her pumpkin had done the same?

"That's a lot of legacies on those little shoulders, huh? Basketball, quiz team? What's it gonna be?" she asked the small girl. She looked up from her efforts in pea burial. She had no idea what they were going on about. "It's okay... You've got time."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners