April 12th 2022

Chapter 102
Our Introduction to Freshmen

It was no exaggeration to say that she had been thinking about this day for the past seven years… and maybe longer. Before she'd been hired at this school, it had been little more than a fancy, something to make her smile, but once she had become the art teacher here at her old school, it had become less than a fancy and more of a reality with a delay. In due time, which was to say once they got old enough, Maya would get to teach her siblings. It had all seemed so far away when she'd started off. Her oldest Hunter sisters had just recently turned eight years old at the time and were a little less than half a lifetime away from landing at one of her stations. But now… now, here they were, and it felt so surreal. If she closed her eyes, she could remember like it was yesterday… and not fifteen years ago… the moment when she'd first held them both, her sunny girl, her mouse-mouse…

And now here they stood on their first day as students at her high school… No one could blame her for feeling all these emotions, and they had nothing to do with this potential baby none but one other in this building knew about. Her colleagues had not missed the chance to highlight the fact that they would soon be teaching her little sisters. Some of them already knew Nellie and Gracie, a couple of them since they'd been babies. Those were the ones most prone to tease her with promises of how they wouldn't go too hard on them or do anything else because of how they were related to her. The spectrum of comments went all the way down to those teachers, few as they were, who seemed to want her to know that Nellie and Gracie would get no special treatment for their connection, that if they did something wrong, they would be punished for it, as though there had been any question of them getting a free pass. Even Maya herself had reminded them both that she would have to treat them like any other students. The twins had received this warning with mature understanding.

With lunch drawing to a close, it was only a matter of time before her new freshmen started coming along, with what could have been a patented array of first day reactions. All of them, whether they had any way to hide it or not, would be well aware of the fact that they were in a new school today, and every class would be a discovery. For Maya, part of that journey still included several kids either doing a double take as they recognized her or others clearly having already had the 'do you know who our art teacher is?' conversation. This group, as they would come along, would give her the distinct impression that, if they'd gone to middle school with the Hunter twins, they were already well informed about their art teacher the singer/songwriter. They likely also knew about their mother, the television star…

As tended to be the way, the first ones to arrive in her class were kids who already knew her, not first timers, and this time around, it was a whole cluster of them. She heard them coming several seconds before they finally appeared in her doorway. Nellie, Gracie, Desi, and Bobby and Ethan… and…

"Not seeing you until last period, Mr. Day," Maya gave Anton a smile. The boy was holding on to her sunny girl's hand, though upon being spotted, he politely let it go while giving her a discreet smile.

"Yes, Mrs. Friar," he nodded and moved on his way. Oh, Nellie looked way too happy at the prospect of being at the same school as her boyfriend for the next two years. For their sake, she hoped it would all work out that way.

"Afternoon, freshmen," Maya tipped her head to the quintet that remained, and they all had to laugh as they greeted her back. "You're going to have to figure out what you want to do," she went on to tell them. "It's four to a station," she explained, indicating how there was unfortunately one too many of them.

They all looked at each other, and oh, was it awkward. Here they had two sets of twins, which could have made things easy, two and two making four. But then there was Desi, who was the girls' best friend, and she would want to be with them, as they would want to be with her. So maybe the Davis boys could go to another station, as they, like the Hunter twins, would want to stick together, but then Gracie and Ethan… Maya watched them all standing in a corner together, whispering to one another, and she struggled not to laugh for how intense they all looked. It was one class, but they were going around like the fate of their entire year was weighed on this moment.

Finally, they made their choice. The girls would be at one station, and the boys at another. Specifically, they would be at two neighboring stations, with the Davis boys landing back to back with the Hunter girls. All they'd have to do would be to turn around and they'd find one another. That was perfectly fine by Maya, so long as they didn't abuse this 'power.'

Not long after the big decision had been made, they would be joined by what would end up being the rest of the Davises' station, another pair of brothers looking to stick together. Seeing this, Maya kind of had to smile to herself. She knew that the stepbrothers had not always gotten along, and she also knew that, over the course of their middle school years, they had made an effort to change that. They weren't necessarily the best of friends at this point, but they were close enough that, given a choice of where to sit in this way, they would choose to go together. The fact that they ended up at the Davises' station came about as Ethan Davis recognized that these two seemed to know their teacher as well and decided to invite them to share his and his brother's station. The pair accepted.

Once the class filled up and the bell brought them to attention, Maya made her introduction and, as usual, invited everyone to do the same. She had some thought for her introduction of the previous year, at home with her daughters who'd only been released from the hospital very recently, talking to the kids through a video call. She was so happy to be back, and for a moment she lost track of herself, like she needed to do math in her head real quick, to know if she would get to do next year's or if she'd potentially be home with a baby… No, she should be here…probably…

"Mrs. Friar?" a voice brought her back, and she realized she'd been standing there, lost in thought in front of her class.

"Sorry," she blinked, laughed. "First day back," she waved it off and got a few chuckles in return. "Who wants to go first?" Yes, her eyes turned toward her sisters' station as she said this, though they were by no means obligated to introduce themselves first. Someone else beat them to it, as she saw a hand raised out of the corner of her eye, and so they got started.

It was occurring to her now that she would get to see what her sisters and their friends were like as students. It was one thing to know what kind of grades they both got – Gracie was often at the top of her classes, while Nellie wavered on subjects but overall did very well – but it was another to get to see them actually sitting in classrooms. Sure, this class was not exactly demanding the same of them as an English class or History might be, but it didn't mean that art was the place to waste away a period. Oh, she couldn't wait to see how they would do. For now, it seemed as though they were employing the Talia method for introductions, which was to say that they sat quietly and waited as everyone else got their turn, the intent clear on their faces that they would go last of all. Maya suspected the Davis boys and Desi would do the same, and in the end so did the stepbrothers. Everyone else in the room had gone when, finally, one of them raised his hand. Maya signalled for him to start.

"My name's Tre Whitley, I'm fifteen. I play basketball, I… I like to draw, I guess," he shrugged, though for the way Maya had seen his hand absently move about throughout the period, like he was tracing with an invisible pencil, she took a guess to say that he was of the type who acted more than he spoke. He may not have known how to express himself nearly as well as he would have liked, but if you gave him paper and a pencil, he could tell you in great detail just who he was as a person. Maya recalled the way Rochelle would speak of him, when she was her student, and it felt like this was who he'd always been. "Oh, and…" he thought, then hesitated, like he wasn't sure whether or not it would be relevant, considering that she knew, but finally chose to go on anyway. "This is my brother… stepbrother," he specified with a shrug to show that the 'step' was merely an afterthought at this point.

"Alright then, thank you, Tre," Maya smiled and nodded to his brother. Now, him… Even though she'd only met him a couple of times in passing, it was hard not to get caught up on the resemblance he bore to his older sister. They both had stepbrothers and a half-brother, but they were full siblings, and in the whirlwind of their parents' divorce and eventual second marriages, it had always meant a lot to the both of them that they had each other. Where Rochelle had always come off a bit more reserved, serious, her little brother was overall a more open and cheerful kid, which took the shared features to brand new places.

"Hey, I'm Roland McNeil, I'm fifteen, too. Some people call me Rolly, I don't mind either way," he specified. "I don't play basketball, but I follow it a lot. I like the statistics," he explained, and Maya smiled, recalling Rochelle's tendencies for this back when she'd been on the quiz team. Now she imagined the brother and sister sharing this hobby and wondered if one had introduced it to the other or if they'd come to it on their own. "I build things, so I sort of taught myself to draw that way," Rolly went on, and again her connection to his sister helped Maya fill in some of the blanks, as she remembered Rochelle going on about spending several hours at a Lego store one year for his birthday, helping him figure out what he needed for a big project.

She was really glad to get to know both of these boys better, and the same went for Desi Russell, Bobby and Ethan Davis, and even Nellie and Gracie Hunter. She may have known them all in her personal life – her sisters especially – but that didn't mean there wasn't space for her to learn even more. For that, their introductions to the class, including Nellie and Gracie stating the nearly unnecessary fact that they were her sisters, felt barely needed, but they were no less appreciated. They were going to have an amazing four years, all of them, she could feel it. How much of those four years they would get to spend together without her being on maternity leave remained to be seen, but one way or another, they were starting this journey together, her and the class of 2038.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners