June 20th 2022

Chapter 171
Our Time to Give Back

Dear Mrs. Friar,

As promised, I'm including photos from the exhibit. Cecilia insisted that I needed to include one of me posing with my piece, so you'll find that, too. She's been trying to get me to show more pride at the fact that I was chosen as one of the artists on display, and I am proud, I really am, it's just strange, I guess. I didn't set out to have anything I made end up in some gallery, and it wouldn't have been if Milena hadn't talked me into submitting something. I guess I shouldn't be surprised about that at least. No one's ever gotten me to do anything so easily as my little sister's done since we were so little that I can't remember. And she knows she's got that power, too. I'd be in more trouble if she exploited that power, but she hasn't actually done it… Not much, at least.

When we flew out for the exhibit, Cecilia and I, all I could think about was how I wished my mother could have been there with us, but then I would remind myself… Yes, she was there. She's always there with me when I draw, like she's right there looking over my shoulder and it doesn't matter that she's been dead for fifteen years, I can still hear her voice, her accent, all of it. And I can feel her smiling at me. I might not show it all on my face out there most of the time, but it's hard sometimes. Writing to you now, I remember how some of my teachers back in high school would give me these looks, like they thought I was just not going to be paying attention to anything, or I could be a troublemaker. And I remember how you were never like that, which was one of the things I appreciated the most, even if it was just for one year. That was really what made it so that I kept drawing, that I still do today.

I'm also including a small reproduction of my gallery piece. Hopefully it will have survived the trip in the mail okay.

Take care,

Antonin Janacek

P.S.: Glad to hear this year's pumpkins turned out alright.

.

Dear Tony,

You know, when I got your letter, I was in the middle of closing out this year's seniors. That's what I call it anyway. You were already gone by the time I started doing diary sketchbooks with everyone, but I've told you about these in the past. Before giving the seniors their diaries back at the end of the year, I leave them a message, and I draw them something at the back of the sketchbook, so that's what I'm doing at the moment. And looking at that reproduction you included (absolutely beautiful, by the way, some of your best work), I just think about what it might have been like if I'd had a diary to look through every week that had your name on it. I think it would have been one of those I looked forward to the most each time.

As to how your teachers saw you, I may not have landed there for the same reason, because I kind of was trouble, before coming to Texas, but I do know how it can be, when people decide who you are without ever really knowing you. I had my reasons for being the way that I was, just as you would have done. It's been a quality that's been hard for me to ignore whenever I picked up on it, and that included you. Like you said, we only had one year as teacher and student, but still I haven't forgotten you, and I won't. Please keep drawing, and keep sending me whatever you may, if you feel like sharing.

Say hello to Cecilia for me? Love to you both,

Mrs. Maya Friar

X

As she sealed and addressed the envelope, the better to set it aside for posting later once Marianne was back – so that she could get the pleasure of bringing it to the mailbox – Maya continued to smile to herself. She'd been doing so since she'd paused her activities to go pick up the day's mail and found Tony's letter. Many of her colleagues could not believe how many of her students would continue to write to her or would go and start to write to her after never doing it before, or how she would answer every last one of them. She couldn't blame them; it baffled her maybe more than anyone, in a good way. She would have been thrilled even if only one or two of her students did this every once in a long while, but it was much more than that. It would be several of them, month to month, and then of course as the years would stack up, with more people out in the world who could call Maya Friar their art teacher…

If it wasn't enough that they all wrote to her as often as they did, it was what they'd tell her in their letters. Some would share news of how their studies were going, or how they had gone out for a job and gotten it, or not. She'd had more than one engagement announcement, though not too many as of yet, not when her eldest graduates, like Tony, were no more than twenty-five years old. Although that in itself is still just bonkers.

And they'd ask advice… They'd want to tell her things that they struggled to say to other people but… could say to her. Others would express how much her class had meant to them. All of them, every single one, would make her happy to receive and respond to, but then some of them would really just grab at her heart to read…

Now she looked at the boxes of diaries, which she'd been slowly but surely working through so they could be given back to their owners on the last day of class. She had worked out a system wherein she'd do one from each pile in turn, so three notes with the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, and then one note and back cover drawing for the senior before starting all over again. It gave her hand a bit of a break to relax, as slow as the whole process already was.

Before she knew it, she could be seeing letters come along that were from some of these kids. She already had a feeling like she knew some of them would do it among the seniors, but even some of those in the younger classes, too. Her sisters would be some of those, she knew, if only in the spirit of a playful joke.

Of all the back cover drawings she'd done in the years since she'd been keeping this tradition, she may have done a few of her all time favorites this time, and a lot of it was thanks to Cade Foster, Henry Hillard, and Stevie Brett. She'd set the three books side by side, open to their back covers, and she'd essentially created a single piece that ran all the way from the first diary on the left, through the middle, and into the right, like a triptych. She hoped to represent how much they had been connected to one another through the past four years, how important they had been to one another. There was no telling what the rest of their lives would become, but right here, right now, this was who they were. Naturally, the inspiration was the thing that had brought them together in the first place, a great narrative of a galaxy far, far away… though for Cade's sake she had also added a few nods to his own favored 'Star' franchise. She had a feeling they'd all get a kick out of it.

When she was done with these three, as she'd done with the others, as she had done with every last diary she'd closed out over the years since she'd started this, she would take a picture of the finished piece. She had an album of these, up there on the shelves on the second floor. She would look back through those photos sometimes, and they'd be as good as anything to remind her of the students she'd made them for, but also to illustrate how she'd felt about them, her varying relationships with them. Whether or not she'd been particularly close with them, it wouldn't really matter. They'd all meant something to her, and here was a glimpse into that meaning.

Oh, how she looked forward to going back in the fall. She always did, yes, but it was different whenever she'd been away like this. And now, as she was closing out the year's diaries, her mind would not take long in dipping where it always did, when she did this. She thought about her juniors, who were about to become seniors. Anton Day… Her last Day brother was on his way out, and with him, as promised, Lambert's piece, still on display, to be given to him upon graduation. She was sure that she would feel some bit of grief when that moment came. Olivia Zhu… Kelsey Farrell… and Ava Nash… Oh, those girls… What years they had given her… They wouldn't be gone from her life, she knew, not with the connections they had with one another beyond the school, but it would still do something for her not to have them there in her class anymore.

Everything and everyone was moving forward. Her sophomores were to be juniors, including Jenny Marshall… who would arrive at last as herself. All Maya could think, hope, was that all the support that she had now would just keep growing. It would never be absolute, much as they could wish it, but that wasn't about to stop her from living her life or her friends from backing her up. And then her freshmen… her gold star group… They would be the sophomores now. She couldn't wait to see where that energy of theirs would take them in their second year of high school.

She didn't have a list just yet to tell her what this brand new class of freshmen would bring her, but even not knowing them yet, she still looked forward to meeting them, getting to know who they were as people and as artists. Compared to the last couple of years, and especially after this year that was just ending, Maya was only going in with, to her immediate knowledge, a single student she knew ahead of their arrival at the school, maybe two. Angel Ríos, Talia's younger brother and thus the second of the vice-principal's children to come through her classroom. She still had a vivid memory of him, ten years old, the day his big sister had brought him out for a presentation. She'd seen him now and again in the years since then, seen him grow into the teenager he had become, but the old memory was still hard to chase. She wondered what he would be like, quiet like his sister, quiet in his own way, or something else…

When she'd finished the last of the diaries, all four classes, she gave Stella a call. She would come and pick them up that evening. In the meantime, Marianne wanted to help her mother take the last pictures for the back cover album, and so she did, holding each one open while Maya handled the camera. Knowing a curious look when she saw one, she went ahead and explained what she was doing, talked about camera functions, mostly to see if Marianne would remember. She did, and she nodded even as she listened anyway. Between her mother and her grandfather, she'd been able to pick up plenty of information about photography along the way. When they were done with the back covers, Marianne asked if she could take some pictures, and Maya passed her the camera. She was made to pose for a few photos, following her daughter's directions. A few more shots were done with the triplets downstairs, with baby Mackenzie, and with Lucas… Marianne may have been a bit too young to develop them herself, but she took some pretty nice shots, and she received them with pride.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners