April 28th 2022

Chapter 118
Our Transformation Into Truth

"You know, I'm starting to think we might have to rework a couple things in the next few years…" Lucas reflected as he and Maya worked to 'peel' their little fruit girls and get them ready for bed that evening. They were being placed in the hands of their Aunt Cara as activities shifted from outside to inside. As much as she loved these Halloween parties, the idea of keeping watch over her little nieces right about now felt a lot more in line with what she wanted to do, and so she would be there, her and Mateo together.

"What do you mean?" Maya asked as she kept coaxing Remy out of her strawberry. Even asleep, she seemed aware of the parting and was instantly distressed at the idea. She'd loved her costume.

"Marianne's party… It's been one thing since she started having birthdays, with the families and our friends together. But she's got her own friends now, from preschool, and the ranch…"

"So, you're saying pretty soon we won't be… cool enough to be around our daughter and her friends?" Maya gasped in mock horror, hiding her 'shame' behind the freshly extricated strawberry suit. Lucas chuckled quietly, folding up the long sleeved yellow shirt and pants which had formed the underlayer of Kacey's lemon costume. "Can we wait another year before we start thinking about splitting parties? Last thing we need is me getting 'all in my mom feelings' right now," she sighed.

"Fair," Lucas agreed, continuing with Kacey.

"Question… To wake a one-year-old who still has some green on her little teeth or to leave it until morning…" Maya hummed, as she got a look at Remy's teeth. Oh, how that cake had been a rousing success…

The games outside had gone great, especially if you asked Marianne and her pack of small friends. Winnie was there, and Harper and June as well, and a couple more of her schoolmates, and campmates, her niece, and her cousin… And then Teddy and Priya had brought the latter's four-year-old daughter, Lily. Ever since she'd been brought into the fold, the girl had been steadily growing into a special friend for Marianne. It was always so sweet to see the way she'd sound one moment, only to sound completely different as she'd speak to her mother, taking on her accent. When she'd returned from a trip with her and Teddy to Priya's hometown back in England last summer, her 'other voice' had stuck on pretty good for a week or two, leading Marianne to try and take it up. She wasn't half bad at it, with how curious she'd been over Ree's accent in the past. That one was different, of course, and she could recognize it, but it still brought a sense of happy familiarity.

"Maya?" Nika appeared, a few minutes after they'd returned from upstairs. They'd seen her already this evening, as she'd been out and about with her brother and Tori and Ella, but in that moment, it was like they just remembered how one year ago she'd sat in their living room, and they'd learned of her being secretly pregnant. Had it only been a year? Sometimes it felt like so long ago…

"Yeah?" Maya asked as they reached one another. She was presented with her student's phone.

"For you," Nika nodded to the lit screen, showing an ongoing call. Maya looked to Lucas for a moment, the two of them feeling an echo of their 'curse' of teenaged drama every Halloween.

"Hello?" she spoke into the phone when she held it up to her ear.

"Mrs. Friar, we need your help…" Ava…The words were all she needed to flip back into teacher mode. She motioned for Lucas and Nika to follow her over into the kitchen, away from the growing noise of people coming into the house for the latter half of the evening.

"What's going on? Who's we?" she asked. There was hesitation on the other end of the line. "Ava?"

"Can you come and get us? I promise we'll explain. I wouldn't ask if…"

"Where are you?"

Fifteen minutes later, the minivan pulled up to find the little group at a bus stop, where Ava had said they'd be. She was there, along with Olivia, and Kelsey, and Carina Mendoza, and… what she could only call a hectic Cody Marshall when she first spotted him. The four girls looked like they were having to keep him surrounded or else he'd wander off or get hurt. As Maya and Nika got out and hurried their steps toward them, it all suddenly felt that much clearer… Cody was drunk… very much so.

"Hey, look, it's Mrs. Art!" he stumbled merrily out of the shelter when he saw her, and Olivia stopped him from tripping into the street. "Hi! Happy Halloween! No! Wait!" he suddenly gasped a very big gasp. "She can't see me, I'm 'sick' today," he recalled to himself – out loud – with a couple of messy air quotes. After a beat, he just broke into laughter. "Nika! You're here, too, great! Hey, did we have any homework?" he asked her. She just blinked, speechless, and turned to look at Maya. The others were looking at her, too, waiting to see what she would do or how she'd react.

"Alright, everyone in the minivan, come on," Maya quietly motioned back to where she'd parked, and they started to move.

Olivia and Carina set themselves to leading the shambling Cody along, while Ava carried the pieces of Kelsey's costume that they'd already removed from around her chair. These were stowed away in the back along with the chair. For expediency's sake, Ava asked Kelsey if she could lift her out and put her in the front passenger seat, and she agreed, looking momentarily surprised at the ease with which her friend lifted and carried her. In the back, Carina was already seated so to be ready to act if Cody looked like he'd be sick. Before they could take off, Maya had to know… How had they all ended up there?

"It's my fault…" Carina stated, which dislodged an insistence that it wasn't from Cody. "No, it is," she told him before looking back to the teacher. "I got invited to a party tonight, and when I got back to the Marshalls', I told Cody about it, and he wasn't sure if it was a good idea if I went on my own, so he agreed to come along. He really didn't want to go, but he knew I did, so he was looking out for me… I should have been looking out for him, too, he was nervous, I could tell, but…" she shook her head to herself. Cody turned his little dazed self to try and comfort his guest and friend.

"It's okay, Carina, you deserve to have a good time. Not your fault I'm so… boring…" he declared.

"I didn't even know they were serving alcohol at first, but I guess when we got split up, he ended up there. I don't know how many he had, but when I found him again…"

"This many," Cody held up a few fingers, giving Maya flashes of her daughter proclaiming her age that morning. "Or was it this many?" he frowned, playing with the number of fingers he held up. "Somewhere in there," he finally nodded, wiggling his fingers, which made him burst into new giggles.

"I tried to get him outside, and that's when we ran into them," Carina continued her tale, indicating the three junior girls. They wouldn't necessarily have known one another, being in different years, but then the Zhus and the Marshalls lived just a few houses away from one another, so both Cody and Carina recognized Olivia in that respect, and she recognized them back.

"We were only going to go for a little bit," Olivia told her teacher and bandmate. "Just to say that we'd gone, and then we were going to head back to Kelsey's and watch a movie or something. But instead we stayed with them, didn't feel right to leave, plus he was a bit all over the place…"

"I was," Cody agreed with a steady nod that was clearly put upon, going by how he started to laugh again within seconds. Maya had never heard him laugh this much… or at all… Under the circumstances, it was slightly disconcerting. "I'm better now."

"Are you? You want to say that to your parents' faces?" Maya challenged.

"Oh, no, not a good idea," Cody immediately shook his head. "Ooh, dizzy…" he blinked, and Carina moved to open the door so he could lean out. "No… Nope, I'm good, nope… false alarm!"

"Right, okay…" Maya sighed as she turned back around and got the minivan started.

"Where are we going?" Nika asked from her side.

"Right now, back to my house. We gotta try and get him sobered up a bit, at least enough so he can go home at some point tonight."

They made it there without 'sickly incident.' On the way, Maya called Lucas to catch him up and ask if he might look into preparing a few things ahead of their arrival. As was getting to be a recurring event, they would take refuge in the Hex, the better to keep Cody from being out there for everyone to see… including a few more of his teachers. Getting him out of the minivan and around the house along with his rescuers without being seen was easier said than done when he was still feeling very uncharacteristically noisy, but they made it, and Cody Marshall was admitted into the small studio.

"Oh, wow!" Cody gasped, and suddenly he was a kid in a toy store, looking at the big console, zooming up to the booth door to look inside… Before they could stall him, he was inside, looking at the instruments from up close. His focus locked in on the drums, and he went and sat on the stool. "Where are the… oh, here they are," he grinned, holding up the two sticks. He may have been very drunk still, but he twirled them between his fingers like he'd been doing it all his life and then just started to play.

He was still at it, the others just looking on, when Lucas arrived with his means for sobering. Cody would only be coaxed back to the couch if he was allowed to hold on to the drumsticks.

"You know, I wasn't really sick today," Cody whispered as he sat with his teacher, her husband, and the girls from his school.

"I know," Maya assured him sympathetically.

"I used to go in costume, every year at Halloween, I'd go to school in my costume, even in middle school… Not high school though, not last year…" he shook his head. "And then this year… This year, I realized something… I didn't need to put on a costume, because… because…" he paused, looking around, greatly aware of how many people were there. Maybe it was the way they'd all been there that night, looking after him as they'd done, or that they were in the studio and he felt safe, holding on to the drumsticks in one hand and a mug in the other. "I already have one on, every day. My Cody costume…" he spoke into his mug. If any of the girls sitting and standing around him were surprised by this insinuation, they didn't show it. Maybe, to some extent, his drunken behavior had opened the way at least a little, like it had allowed him to shed some of that skin deep costume.

"And there's someone underneath there," Maya suggested, and he nodded. "Does this other someone have a name?" Cody looked up at her, shy now, but a different kind than what she'd been seeing in class, much closer to the face she'd seen in the store mirror that one time.

"I'm not sure yet, but… I call her Echo."

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners