July 13th 2022
Chapter 194
Our Signs For Peace
"Hey… We're here," Maya looked over to the passenger seat, where Jenny sat. It was down to the two of them and Olivia after they'd dropped off both Lara and Maggie at the Sullivan-Reyes house, seeing as the last two girls were a few houses short of being next door neighbors. Olivia had started grabbing her bag and getting ready to get out of the minivan, but Jenny was still off in her own head somewhere, like she had no idea that they were pulled up to her house. She blinked now and started to do the same as her friend and bandmate.
"Thanks, Mrs. Friar," she blankly told her, and Maya reached out to stall her.
"Are you okay?" she asked. Jenny sighed, sat back against her seat. In the back, Olivia stopped, too, looked to the back of Jenny's head.
"Sure," Jenny shrugged, then, as though she'd responded automatically and now realized she was speaking to her, she turned a small smile to her teacher. "Long week, that's all."
It was Friday afternoon. Time had done what it did best and flown on by so that the first week of school was now behind them. This was now the third day that ended with Maya driving the four juniors home, today with a bonus fifth passenger in the form of Olivia Zhu. Henry had seen to his sister and her friends yesterday and would have done so today, too, if not for a class that had run late. Seeing Jenny's mood now made Maya sort of glad that she'd been called on to do this run.
"Are you sure 'that's all,' or is there more to it?" she quietly asked.
"Jen…" Olivia leaned forward, put a hand to her shoulder. This was as much her way of asking what was wrong as encouraging for her to share the parts she did know about. "They've been stuffing notes in her locker," she turned to Maya.
"Liv…" Jenny looked at her. Why'd you say it? She couldn't even be that upset in the end though. Deep down, she knew she should have said it first.
"Do you have these notes? What did they say?" Maya asked, reaching for her hand. Jenny hesitated for a moment. She pulled her bag into her lap, reached inside. At the very bottom, she'd stuck an old pencil case. She passed it to Maya. It was full to near bursting, stuffed until the zip could barely be closed.
"I wouldn't read those if I were you and I wanted to be in a good mood," Jenny frowned before looking back to Olivia. "Nika suggested I hold on to them, for proof."
"Yeah, and Lara said they could figure out who wrote what from their handwriting, or the paper they used," Olivia added, looking to Maya, who was herself too focused on the pencil case. It was a sort of flat one, looking more like an envelope, but still… All she could think was 'this all happened in the span of five days?'
Looking at Jenny again, she could only imagine what it had been like for her, going to her locker every day, bracing herself for what she'd come to know would be there. It was like these kids were out there every day, devoted to chipping away at her joy, little by little. It made her ashamed to know that this would be allowed to go on. What was worse was that she could see exactly the ways in which this could all get worse, the further they'd go on, until it wouldn't matter how much Jenny and her friends could try and push forward. There would always be people pushing back, trying to keep her from advancing, trying to make her step back… back into the shadows. No, never.
"Maybe you shouldn't use your locker for a bit," she suggested. "You can keep your things in my class, I'll make you a space."
"You don't have to do that," Jenny tried to graciously decline.
"Might not be a bad idea," Olivia suggested from the back. "I was going to suggest you use one of our lockers, but they'd probably just do the same thing there. You wouldn't believe the things kids have put in each other's lockers, just when they thought they were being funny. That's not funny at all," she pointed to the pencil case. Jenny let out a sigh.
"Fine… okay," she finally agreed, looked back at Maya. "Thank you."
"It'll get better," she promised. Jenny smiled, and Maya smiled back, reaching to give her hand a squeeze. "Have a good weekend?"
"I will."
Driving home, the pencil case sat on the passenger seat, and it felt so much like something out of the Telltale Heart that, after a while, she had to toss it into the back once she'd stopped at a red light. She had to remind herself that this was only a fraction of that first week, that there had been so much good apart from the bad.
The seniors were already looking to have some year long project, something in line with the pup funds of Maya's day. This had been going on not just in her classroom but all around. They hadn't figured out exactly what they wanted to do yet, but they would get there. If that wasn't enough out of that group, then Maya also had to contend with the power that was Captain Ava. She was the senior in the quiz team this year, as wild as it was to think about it. Maya remembered so well what it had been like to even consider bringing her into the fold, how much the rest of the team at the time had hesitated, resisted. Bodhi, Lea, Rosemary… All of them gone now, graduated, so it was her turn… and she wanted her freshman as soon as possible, just like the captains usually did.
It had only been a week though, so she was still only getting to know her freshmen, couldn't say exactly who she might consider Born Curious material, but she was keeping an eye and ear out, waiting on whatever would point her in the right direction. She had a shortlist of candidates, but she was not necessarily at the point where she would ignore anyone that would come along and surprise her, whether they were in her class or not.
Quiz team aside, the freshmen were moving further off from being a majority of strangers. They were definitely not at the same level as her previous freshmen as far as class involvement and spirit, but then she would have been surprised if they had been like that. They didn't need to be that way for her. Sure, it definitely made it easier when she could connect creatively with all of them, but she knew from experience now that even those who were harder to know in the beginning, those who had perhaps not come into her class with the same drive as some of the others… They had it in them to be memorable, too.
Angel Ríos might have been one of those. It didn't take long for Maya to get this impression like his reasons for taking art had a lot less to do with any artistic leanings and a lot more with what felt like expectation. He wasn't bored, and he did do the work, but a lot of the time she could see this impression coming off of him like he wasn't sure what he was doing there. Maybe he'd just taken the class because his sister had taken it, and he knew Maya to some degree, and… it had been a class like any other. Maya had been so sure for a while that he would be like his sister, who had developed over her four years into such a wonderful artist, and maybe this was because he'd presented himself that way around her.
Then there were Maia and Ash. The latter was absolutely an artist, and a very skilled one at that. Their diary presently sat in the freshman box in the back of the minivan, and Maya still remembered when she'd seen it earlier that day. When Ash had handed the book over, Maya had briefly just sort of stood there, staring at the book with its pattern… The freshman had not used their gold pen, not at all. Instead, they had used a white paint marker, either that or some liquid white out… Whatever it was, they had used it to draw over the entire surface of the cover, front and back. Maya had actually seen them work away at it, bit by bit, throughout the week until it landed as a finished product in her hand. Dots… all dots… clustered very tightly or spread out, creating shades, all of it creating contrasting images on the two covers. A landscape here, and a profile there… It felt to Maya like the promise of a great four years.
Then there was the front runner on her Born Curious list… Maia with an i… Maia Bennett was what Maya would call a particular artist, in that there were certain things she did very well, like she'd clearly done it many times before, and then the rest of it, she'd give it her best go, but she'd have her uncertainty on display for all to see. Her given skill went toward faces. They weren't photo-real, far from it, and in fact they could sometimes come off very much on the abstract side, but there was always a sense that she knew what she was doing. She had said as much in class. She always was very interested in faces, and so she would draw them.
The more Maya tried to think back on her first week returning from leave, all she really felt was that she couldn't pull those memories forth and relive them. All she could do was think about that damned pencil case in the back seat. It stayed with her all the way home and, once she got there, she just couldn't bear it anymore. She reached back and got hold of it. She stayed where she sat, in the driver's seat, and she opened it. She didn't want to even bring it into the house, and that was before she actually got a look at some of the notes inside. She was so fixated on everything she saw that, when Lucas knocked on the window, she jumped and allowed several of the notes to slip from her hands, landing around her feet. She swore under her breath and crouched to collect them. Lucas opened the door to help her, which led him to get a look at a few of those scraps of paper. He made a noise and she looked up at him. She didn't have to say it; he knew who these had been written to, and he looked immediately as disgusted as she had been for the past several minutes… scared, too.
"You have to show these to the principal."
"We'll deal with it," she promised him. They both worked together to grab every last little note and return them to the pencil case. With the zip shut tight again, the air felt a bit lighter. Still… "This is just one week's worth…" Maya shook her head, feeling like she was this close to crying. Lucas looked at the pencil case. "And we all knew this was going to happen, huh? We tried to tell ourselves that it wouldn't but were we really kidding ourselves? Jenny definitely knew it would be… all this… and she did it anyway. It shouldn't even be a question of whether she can or not, but also if we're scared for her… I keep thinking about what her parents must be thinking, every day, when she goes to school." And they would do it all over again on Monday, week two… They all would.
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
