A/N: Hey, I was just thinking, if anyone has student stories they'd like to see (present or not yet existing students), let me know! (Also name suggestions are welcome) I only bring so many new 'featured' students every new school year that rolls around in here, but I figured I'd ask :)
April 21st 2022
Chapter 111
Our Spirit of Family
When Maya arrived home after the try outs, she looked and felt spent. Lucas watched her head up the stairs to change before dinner, and he knew it had to be about something more than a long day. A few minutes later, he walked into their room, there to find his wife putting her things away, and again, even though it was her routine, a lot could be gleaned by exactly how she went about it. The way she was going now, he knew he'd been right with his choice.
"Change of plans, your sisters took the girls to pick up something for dinner," he told her, and Maya turned around to look at him.
"What? Why?" she asked, but then seeing the look on his face… She let out a breath and nodded before moving to sit on the edge of their bed. Lucas came and sat by her side. "I want to talk to you about something… I need to talk to someone about it, and if I have my pick then…" she turned her eyes to him, and he nodded appreciatively and openly. He was listening.
"What is this about?" he asked.
"Cody Marshall," she told him, and now he adjusted his position, turning so as to face her.
He had been aware since the start of the year that something had happened with the boy, the last day before the start of school, something she'd only been able to tell him had happened, without any further details. He understood this and respected it, understood that some things needed to be kept private. She always at least told him that there was a thing she needed to hold back, and he never pushed for her to speak if she couldn't. But now…
Maya recounted what had happened, that day at the mall. She told him how she'd inadvertently spied the boy through a store window and gone in to say hello. She recounted the scene as best she could, and it was not difficult. She had not been able to forget the look on her student's face, his whole posture, as he'd stood there with that dress in his hands, looking at his reflection… right up until he'd spotted her in the mirror, dropped the hanger and the garment on the floor, and disappeared between the racks, leaving the store without a look back. She told Lucas what Cody's behavior had been like at school over the last few weeks, including how he'd withdrawn from the knitting club. She told him about try outs, and her concerns, and her feelings of helplessness. She wanted to help him, and she knew he needed that help, but she didn't know what to do, how to approach him or the situation.
Lucas took in the information as she gave it, showing complete attentiveness even as he considered all the elements that she provided him. It wasn't hard to see why she'd needed to keep it to herself all this time, same as it wasn't hard to understand why she'd now come around to opening up to him. This needed a delicate hand, and it couldn't happen without knowing how to proceed.
"What do you think… I mean, was it just a curiosity of his, or…" Lucas asked, unsure how to put the question into words. Maya sighed, leaning back as she set her hands to the mattress for support.
"I don't know, I… I don't want to make assumptions without knowing. But I won't know unless I talk to him, and he's so not there…"
"Can you try maybe to tell him that you'd be open to talk, just sort of… covertly?" Lucas suggested.
"What, like 'hide the vegetables' but with advice?" she tried not to picture it in her head, but it was too funny not to. "I have a feeling, don't ask me how I know, but I have a feeling we might have to do some of that with Remy…" she let her mind wander for a moment. Lucas quietly nodded in total agreement. After Marianne, who was so far from a picky eater, they'd been sure at least one of their triplets would give them trouble there, and their little kitty kit had no problem at all letting them know when there was something on her plate that she didn't like. Maya breathed in again, refocused herself on what they were actually talking about. "I'll have to try, won't I? I've been debating leaving a note in his diary, but then what if someone saw it? And then I thought of finding a way to talk to him one on one, but it could backfire so badly…"
"You'll find a way," Lucas promised. "You usually do."
"I'll try and keep that in mind," she smiled, and he responded by coming up to kiss her. They lingered together for a moment, after which she pulled her head back only so far as to look at him. "You know… It's dawning on me right now that we are alone… until everyone gets back… Any idea how long it'll be before that happens?" she asked with an innocence that fooled no one, least of all her husband.
Whether anyone, especially Eliza or Emma, realized anything when they did return with dinner, they didn't say anything. They had a good family night, dinner followed by the evening routine, which this time involved Lucas working to remove Remy's projectile carrots from Lucy's hair.
Maya spent a good part of the weekend mulling the Cody question over in her head. She still went along doing what she needed to do, house chores, kid things, all the diaries… Marianne continued to join her for a lot of this, drawing in her own diary but also passing her mother the diaries when needed. The triplets would be nearby, too, and as their curiosity was growing along with them, Maya would find them wandering over to see what she was doing from time to time, and she would show them.
Once she'd gone through all four of the boxes, her thoughts resolved themselves as they often did. She pulled out one of her own sketchbooks, took up a pencil, and started to draw. She let herself put down whatever came to her, and what it turned into was… a face. Just a face. No body, not even hair over the head; it was all about the expression on that face. She hadn't modelled it on anyone, and it looked like no one she knew, but she recognized the expression very well. It had been burned in her mind's eye since that day at the mall. It could have been anyone, anyone at all, even if she knew it had been Cody's face, looking at himself with that dress in front of him. She could have extended from this face and drawn a body, drawn the dress over it, but… no, this was it. This was her message. She wasn't going to bring up the dress, but she would focus on this face, full of such peace as she'd never seen from him before.
"She's pretty, Mommy…" Marianne declared, and Maya looked over to find her standing next to her, looking at the drawing.
"Yeah?" Maya asked. She smiled as Marianne turned away from the sketchbook, the better to let her hand crawl over to her mother's tiny belly. They had told her that it would be a while before she felt any kind of movement there, and she understood, but she still loved to feel for it because she also knew that her little brother or sister was in there and she wanted them to know that she was around. She kept it there even as her mother's phone rang and she picked it up, so Maya just smiled and brushed at her hair with her other hand while she spoke. "Hi…" she greeted her caller as warmly as she could after seeing that it was her.
"Hey, Mrs. Friar, I'm not bothering you, am I?" Kelsey Farrell asked.
"No, not at all, just sitting here with Marianne. You want to say hi to Kelsey, pumpkin?" Maya asked, moving the phone to her daughter's ear.
"Hi, Kelsey! I'm good," she nodded. "I can't say, it's a secret," she went on, and Maya pulled the phone back to her ear. She assumed Marianne had been asked what she was doing, and she reminded herself to high five her on that one later.
"What can I do for you?"
"I just wanted to let you know that I'll be back at school tomorrow. My mother's at home now, and my aunts are going to be with her."
"Oh, Kelsey, that's great to hear," Maya smiled.
"Yes," Kelsey agreed. "I would have liked to stay with her, maybe just a few more days, but she really thinks it's best if I go back now, so…"
"I tend to agree with her. It'll do you some good, I think."
"That's what she said, too. Anyway, I know it's not like everyone's got your number to call, but since I do, I thought I'd let you know I was coming back, and also ask you about the assignments I missed, for the diary." Kelsey had been keeping up with her other homework, but as far as her diary was concerned, Maya had just let her hold on to it, let her decide whether to use it or not while she was dealing with the hospital and her mother. Kelsey already loved to draw outside of class, so it seemed natural.
"Oh, you don't have to worry about those," Maya assured her.
"No, I know, but I still would like to do them. It'll be good, I think." She couldn't argue with that, so she gave her assignments for the time she'd missed. Normally, it would be common for her to tailor some of the diary assignments to the students, to what they'd done, some of the time, if she didn't give the same assignment across the board. Kelsey was often of that tailor-made type, but with everything she'd been through, Maya had to think for a moment before giving her those assignments, which Kelsey would pencil herself on to the bottom of the diary pages, the way she would do it as she went through the boxes every weekend.
It really was great to know that Haruna Farrell was back home, even if Maya knew already that she wasn't out of the woods. There was no point in her staying at the hospital, no, but she was still far from recovered. She and her husband and children were having to deal with the reality that this would be part of their day to day life for… who knew how long. They were going to have to figure out what that meant.
One thing was for sure: there would be a lot of people happy to see Kelsey back at school, and chief among those would be Olivia and Ava. They'd have to know by now, and they'd have to be looking forward to the next morning now more than ever… especially Ava. Oh, Olivia had missed her best friend, she had, but it had done something to the Nash girl, all those days since that one morning when she'd been so worried over Kelsey's absence. Just thinking about it, Maya could hear her mother-in-law's voice in her head, talking of how absence could make the heart grow fonder.
In this case, Maya might instead say that absence had made Ava's heart grow anxious, like she hadn't realized how important her friend was to her until she'd suddenly been gone like that. More than anyone, she'd been out there, doing what she could to make things easier on the Farrells. Kelsey's father had been the one to tell Maya about this, when she'd gone to visit him and his wife a few days ago. The way he talked about it, Ava was there every day, and he credited her presence as being the reason why Kelsey had remained afloat all this time. She'd always had her own way of showing her affection for others, and right here, that affection felt a lot more profound than friendship, whether she realized it or not.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
