July 11th 2022

Chapter 192
Our Signs For the New

She finally saw Jenny Marshall at lunch time. Morning had just chugged along, keeping Maya busy, her attention drawn where it needed to be. After the sophomores had gone, she had a whole free period plus the lunch break to get ready for the freshmen and, seeing as she couldn't even predict where the diaries would go, she had nothing to do except wait. So, she waited. She pulled out her personal sketchbook and let her inspiration guide her. She heard the bell when everyone was dismissed off to lunch but decided to finish what she'd started before going to grab something from the cafeteria.

"Mrs. Friar?"

She looked up and turned from her desk… and she smiled. Jenny Marshall, in the flesh. This wasn't Echo, the drummer for We Are Sisters, full of stage presence, color and style cranked up for effect. This was Jenny, just how she saw herself every day now that she got to exist as herself. The first thing that Maya noticed was the dress, because it was the dress, the one she'd seen her hold in the store that day, when she'd been seen, and she'd dropped it and run off. Maya knew that it had been a parting gift from Carina when she'd gone home, given by the first person that Jenny had shared her secret with. She'd kept it for this occasion, special as it was to her. Her hair, allowed to grow as it had been for several months, had still been too short for her liking. So, her parents had set her up with some extensions, another gift to send her into the world with added courage, another reminder that, no matter what, she had people who loved her as she was. The look as a whole was so true to her, and yet…

"Hey…" Maya got up from her desk, motioned for her to come in.

"Can I… Is it okay if I have lunch in here? Nika said she did, for a while, when she…"

"Yes, of course you can," Maya shut the door and pulled the curtain down over the windowpane before turning to her again. She gave her arms a light squeeze. "How was it, this morning?" she asked. It was plain to see that some of the shine she had come in with at the start of the day had since worn off, though it had definitely not been depleted by any means.

"Could have been better, but it wasn't bad… not exactly," Jenny shrugged. The way she looked back toward the door, Maya guessed that she might have come here now for fear of what could happen on this break, like some of her classmates had not done anything… but they'd given her the impression that they were only waiting for an opportunity.

"Want to tell me about the good parts?" Maya gave her a smile, leading her to sit at one of the stations with her so they could eat.

Jenny told her about getting up that morning, getting ready to go, feeling butterflies in her stomach the whole time but also liking that those butterflies were there? They were… happy, twirling sort of butterflies – because she was looking forward to this day – not the bad, scary kind. She was scared, but she'd promised herself that she wouldn't lead with that feeling, that she would have a good day. When she'd been ready to go, her mother had asked that they take pictures because it was her first day. She showed these to her teacher, and Maya loved to see her at full brightness, doing one pose and another… It made her think of Marianne, and her own pictures before heading into kindergarten, so she showed these to Jenny, too.

"I had a bracelet kind of like that when I was little," she noted, pointing to Marianne's arm in the picture. "It was my cousin's, and she knew I loved it, so she gave it to me. I wouldn't even wear it… didn't want to lose it, or break it… I think I threw it out, when I was feeling less… comfortable…" she explained, gesturing at herself. "I bet she was excited about today, too," Jenny returned the phone with a smile.

"Oh, big time," Maya chuckled. She was already looking forward to the stories she'd get at the end of the day.

"When I got here earlier, I sort of stayed in the car with my mother until I saw that Nika and the others were coming before I got out. They were great, the three of them. We stayed together so long as we were in the same classes, and they've been coming to meet me to go from class to class when we're not," Jenny went on explaining. "When everyone else started to see me, it was just like… They'd see me, and sometimes it'd take them a while to realize it was me. Some of them have been great, coming up, wanting to know about my name, and my pronouns, things like that. Others just got this sort of bug-eyed look, kept away…" It wasn't as though she'd expected any less, but Maya got the impression that expectations and reality had hit differently.

"You can come and have lunch with me for as long as you need to or want to, alright?" she told her, and Jenny nodded.

Not long after this, Nika came looking for Jenny, with Lara and Maggie tagging along. The three of them had worried about not seeing her in the cafeteria, but then they'd figured the reason for it as easily as they'd guessed where to find her. Maya had a feeling she'd be seeing a resurgence of students dining in her classroom this year. They were, as ever, welcome to it.

With lunch behind them, Maya eagerly awaited her new freshmen and the first of them to arrive turned out to be Angel Ríos and Raj Patel. Talia's younger brother had a lot of her temperaments, but also his own ways as well. And being around the exchange camper who had been staying at his house for several days already, Maya felt that she got to see a lot more of an open Angel. Oh, he was not nearly as talkative as the other boy, but even so, as they walked in and figured out where they would sit, Maya was sure she heard Angel speak more in under a minute than she'd done for most of the time she'd known him.

"How's it going so far today?" she asked them both, a common question when she'd first encounter freshmen at the start of a year, halfway through their day.

"This school is bigger than the high school back home, I think," Raj informed her. "I haven't gotten to go there myself yet, obviously, but my brother and sister have gone before me. The teachers have been nice as far as I've seen, and the students… Although there was a thing with some older boys earlier," he turned to Angel, who seemed caught between wanting to shake his head at him, telling him not to bring it up, and being fully aware that it would be pointless, what with Maya being right there and looking at him.

"Resolved?" she asked him, holding her hand up so he would relax.

"Yeah, it's fine," Angel promised.

"Alright, well, if it's not, then you let me know?"

"Sure…" Angel quietly replied, then, "Don't tell my mom, please? It's the first day…" Maya chuckled; she'd figured as much.

"It stays between us… unless it gets bad and I don't have a choice, got it?"

"Got it," both boys nodded.

A few more of the kids arrived, with a balance of those who did and didn't recognize their art teacher for her musical career, before another came who Maya had been waiting on. When she did come, it took her a moment to realize it was her. The last time she'd seen Maia Bennett, just last week, her hair had been all the way down her back and a deep dark brown. Now it was just above her shoulders and a lighter blond than her own. Oh, it actually suited her very well, but it was still a change drastic enough to have caught her teacher by surprise.

"I know," Maia laughed when she noticed her looking. "My mother kind of reacted like that, too. She did that thing where I could tell she wanted to yell but she held back, wanted me to explain myself. I explained that I was going to donate my hair, you know, to make wigs, so she just…" Maia gestured to indicate that her mother's stalled fury had dissipated at once. "She's still not sure about the color, but I think it's growing on her," she smiled, absently reaching to touch her own hair.

"Well… Welcome… Miss Bennett," Maya tipped her head, and the girl grinned as she turned to the girl standing behind her, who Maya now realized was with her. "Hello," she nodded with a smile. The girl held up her hand in a slow wave. She was not smiling back, though it didn't feel in any way like she was going to toss her a frown or anything like that. She just wasn't a smiler. By her whole aesthetic, which landed somewhere in a happy medium of goth, rock, and poetic, Maya was not surprised, so she went with it. The one accessory that caught her attention the most – and made her glad that she'd seen it – was a pin on the strap of her backpack which proclaimed that she should have been using they/them pronouns in speaking of them. She would keep that in mind going forward, even before they would get to introduce themself. They would do so right on the heels of Maia Bennett's introduction, when Maya would learn that her non-binary student was called Ash Bell.

Both students were fifteen years old, and they had been friends since the third grade, best friends since the fourth, and very briefly in eighth grade they had been girlfriends, before Ash had come out as non-binary. They were still together, though they were both figuring out what word other than 'girlfriend' to use for Ash. They were testing these out now, anything from 'enbyfriend' over to 'my mortal companion.' At this point, the playing around with names was too fun to land on just one.

As to their own separate stories, well, one at least was previously familiar to the art teacher. Maia Bennett was the daughter of Sydney Carter, herself the daughter of Mitchell Carter, present and former teammates on Lucas' basketball team. She was of Māori ancestry through her father, who had passed away three years ago, and it was very important to her that she carry on learning and passing on the things that he would have done, for her and her three younger brothers. She played basketball, like her mother and her grandfather, and was eager to try out for the team. She had been playing since she was a kid, along with her 'sweetie.'

Ash Bell was not the most… wordy of talkers, but they got their point across. They were being raised by a single mother, like their best friend, though in their case it wasn't illness that had taken their father away but 'Leanne from reception.' She was welcome to him as far as both Ash and their mother were concerned. They had one sister, Kennedy, who was seven years old and, Maya was willing to bet, the most important person in Ash's life. Even after they'd finished talking and the other introductions went on, Maya couldn't help but notice that Ash was busy drawing at their hand with a ballpoint pen. When she went around and distributed the diaries at the end of the period, she saw that the teen's wrist and most of the back of their hand was covered in a neatly traced sort of lace pattern. It made her smile and become very eager to see what this would translate into when it came to their diary…

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners