October 31st 2022

Chapter 304
Our Hands to Grow

"Can you reach it? Higher? There… Yeah, that's it, go grab it," Maya chuckled as she set Tori back on her feet and the girl reached into the opening of the vending machine, picking up the snack she'd brought tumbling down with the press of two buttons. "Let's wait to open it once we're back in the classroom, okay?" Maya suggested, and Tori agreed, staring at the wrapper on the cookies as they went, trusting to her grandmother's hand on her shoulder to guide her feet in the right direction.

Once they were back in the room, Tori went to sit back where she'd left her supplies to keep on painting, and she got the wrapper opened, nearly sending the cookies rolling off the station before Maya got hold of them. She placed them both on top of their wrapper, within Tori's reach, and after a moment the girl looked at the cookies and picked one up, offered it out.

"For me?" Maya gasped just a bit more than she needed to. Tori beamed and nodded. She wanted her grandmother to have the second cookie. "Well, thank you so much, that'll help me get through the rest of tonight," she whispered in confidence, and Tori nodded again. Yes, that made sense. They exchanged a quick hug and a little kiss on the cheek before Maya moved to see if her next appointment was ready to go, kicking off the sophomore portion of the evening.

It would have been easy for the vice-principal to come and see to her son, but instead it was Angel's father, Manuel, who did the rounds that night. Maya knew him well, as much for having seen him on these nights back when Talia was here as for sharing in the occasional social event with him and his wife. It was always deeply fascinating to encounter this guy, who was the life of the party, in every way you could consider him, while both his daughter and his son as Maya had known them were so quiet and shy most of the time. Despite that difference, here was such a kind man that you could at least see where his children had picked up those qualities they did have.

As to Angel, well, everything she'd seen of him last year and now at the start of this year told her that, while he was on the whole a quiet boy, he had aspirations for something more. His efforts in the musicals had shown as much, and for him it was something else from the likes of Joey Garcia, even as Maya still found herself thinking of Asher's twin sometimes when she saw Angel. With him though, she could sense much more about a desire for him to break out of his shell. It wasn't easy for him, and he was still figuring out what it would look like or mean for him, but the effort was there, and it was clear.

Having Raj here last year had been a lot better for Angel than they'd ever anticipated it could be, but at the same time… Now that he was gone, Angel had struggled this year so far, like he'd taken two steps forward and two and a half steps back. The hope was that, with the friends he had made in class and in the musical, he would bounce back up again in due time. Maya assured Mr. Ríos that she would do all she could to help him in that direction.

"Hi, kiddo!" a high-pitched woman's voice once again pulled Tori's attention firmly off her painting and she waved her hand over to Sydney Carter. Lucas' basketball teammate was coming into the classroom now, ready to discuss daughter Maia Bennett's year so far with her art teacher, which was already a different vibe from her other stops. Add in the presence of the child, with her paint and her smock, and there was nothing formal about the encounter in the slightest.

This year, like it or not, was impacted by the absence of Ash Bell, still back among the freshmen while Maia had moved up with the sophomores. Her work remained as exemplary as ever, and if that was all that they cared about then there'd be no more to the subject, but grades weren't all that mattered, not to Maya and not to Sydney. There was nothing they could do to change Ash's situation. They would continue to be one grade below Maia and eventually would still be here while Maia would have graduated. It would have been fantastic if they could have changed history here, but they could not, so they had to move on. Maya firmly believed that they would get there, that they needed time.

Discussing all this with the girl's mother, Maya kept thinking about when she'd recruited the other Maia on to the quiz team. She had sort of deviated from her rule when she'd chosen her. There hadn't really been anything there to think that she needed the quiz team. There had just been this vibe about her that she'd felt would be good for them. But now, a year later, she found that she was really glad that she'd picked Maia, because this year she definitely needed the team. They were just the kind of circle she needed around her, regardless of grades, above or below. Maybe it also gave her a pipeline, through Lydia, about how Ash was doing, in case her enbyfriend didn't share certain things that might need sharing with one's best friend and girlfriend, for support's sake.

Whenever she had siblings in a class, she'd try and make sure to schedule both appointments back to back or at the same time if possible, depending on whether there was one parent doing both at once or one each to the siblings. If those siblings were in different grades, even though she'd try and tackle one class at a time, if parents requested doing those back to back, too, she would try and accommodate them. Later she'd be seeing both of her parents there for the twins and MJ, and they insisted on waiting their turn. Right now, she was getting to see Claudia Ryan for the second year, for her son Luke, even as she was meeting Hugh Bailey for the first time, as he came to discuss his daughter Meadow.

Claudia was about a month away from giving birth to the baby that had been the catalyst to their families coming together, and she had a look to her that made Maya think of her mother, when she'd been about to have the twins. It had been so long since the last time she'd been pregnant, and she had never in her wildest dreams imagined herself going down that road again, but suddenly here she was and… it was the most perfect mix of strange, startling, and wonderful. Maya had already run into her since the start of the year, so she'd already gotten to congratulate her, but now she also got to have a look of her new husband and do the same with him.

Hugh Bailey, from all she'd heard and pieced together through interacting with Meadow, had been thrown headlong into fatherhood already in the past, so the surprise of this new baby was not so startling as it might have been. The story went that, nearly seventeen years back, he'd been at work one day when he'd been visited by an ex-girlfriend. He barely had time to see her there that he noticed the bundle she carried in her arms, no seat, no stroller, just a flowered blanket. She informed him then and there that, after they'd broken up, she'd found out that she was pregnant, had the baby, but would not raise her, so either he could take her, or she would put her up for adoption. He'd been blindsided, to say the least, but when she'd presented him with the baby girl, he'd taken her without question. He was so fascinated that he never noticed that his ex had already left until the baby started to cry and he looked up… and there was no sight of her. After that, much as he'd tried to find her again, he had never tracked her down. Eventually, he stopped trying.

In the meantime, he had this baby girl, and he had no proof other than her mother's word that this was his child. Tucked among the few items left in a bag with her was a birth certificate, naming him as the father and showing that she had been born all of two days earlier. He had named her Meadow because it was the one thing he could think of, looking at her in that blanket, and there'd been no going back. He had never bothered with a DNA test, and for all either of them knew he wasn't actually the one who'd helped create her, but she looked enough like him that it didn't feel necessary and, even then, it didn't matter, not to him and, in time, not to Meadow. He had raised her; he was her father.

Maya had been stunned, as one would be, when she'd first heard the story, but also it had felt halfway familiar to her, especially under the circumstances, and it all went back to Meadow's new stepmother and stepbrother. Maya recalled from the previous year and knowing Luke's mother in this way, too, that she had raised her son on her own since he was a baby, as Hugh had done with Meadow. In her case, she didn't shy away from sharing that Luke's father had been abusive, and that it was in finding out that she was pregnant that she had finally worked up the courage to leave him. She had started her life all over again, just her and her baby boy, and it had been the best decision of her life.

It was actually how Claudia and Hugh had first known each other, years ago. They had both been part of a support group for single parents, especially when they'd had their newborns. And the two of them had met there, bonded, and become friends. There had been a moment where they'd almost started to date, but then they'd lost touch of one another, for several years. It wasn't until nearly two years ago that they'd run into one another by chance, and rekindled their friendship, in time becoming something more. When Claudia had found out about the baby, she had told him, and Hugh had proposed on the spot.

Now, even though it had been months since the wedding, and the move to bring everyone under one roof, there were still some growing pains for their new family, mostly where it came to Luke and Meadow. Both of them had grown up in such a way, with their one parent, and their history, and it was to be expected that there would be a struggle. Still, they tried as hard as they could, and they were getting better. Where school was concerned, Maya could say the same. Grades wise, as far as she'd seen, both were doing very well. Things with the musical and the roles they had gotten versus the ones they wanted were no longer an issue. It had been, as Maya had hoped, the key to getting the two of them started down whatever path of brother and sisterhood as they might have needed and, as the months would carry on forward, maybe it would help put to rest any and all remaining wrinkles between the pair, that, and their new sibling nearly among them. It was entirely up to them.

"Alright, ready for another stroll?" Maya asked Tori when the last sophomore parents were gone. "Do you want something to drink?"

"I have to go bathroom," Tori informed her. Maya bit back a smile and held out her hands.

"Okay, so no on the drink, got it. Let's go, quickly."

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners