July 18th 2020

Chapter 200
Their Art of Growth

Lucas had left while she remained on the bench. He would have gone inside with her, but she'd asked to be left to it on her own, so he'd kissed her and wished her a great day, and he'd walked away. Maya watched him go all the way out beyond view before turning to look at the school again. She took a deep breath. She may have been back on the old bench, the way she would be throughout her high school years, but she wasn't a student like she'd been back then.

She still felt like a student, in a way, felt like a kid trying to be an adult. It was so far from the truth, and she knew it, she did. She had been working down at the theater for nearly two years, held her own with no uncertainty. She guessed it was this place, stepping back into the place where she had been a student that went and reawakened that feeling in her, like she was fifteen all over again instead of twenty-five.

"Alright, Friar, pull it together," she breathed to herself, standing from the bench. In that moment, calling up her husband's name, her name now, she had a feeling he might have gone and pulled that old trick of theirs once again, the same he'd pulled the day they were married. Sitting back on the bench, she opened her bag and searched through it until, in the small inside pocket, she fished out the watch, filled with so many memories and so much meaning over time that to hold it now… It really felt like he was here with her.

Finally, she stood again, and she walked into the school. In her mind, it felt just a bit like she'd gone and hit the reset button. She was walking in here like she was setting down the very first words of a brand new chapter.

The first time she'd walked into the art classroom, knowing it was now her classroom, she'd had to take a deep breath to keep from really just… spazzing out in front of the principal. That would have been too much, yeah? Yeah… She might have shut the door and quietly had it out when he'd left her alone though. She'd taken pictures of the room from every which way she could, so she might figure out what changes she might want to bring to the set-up, and she'd gotten a look at what supplies she had and might need to get hold of… All of this had been seen to ahead of today, when she would receive her first students.

"Stood on stage in front of hundreds of people how many times? You can handle twenty-something teenagers," she told herself as she set her bag down and turned to face the room. She imagined all those stools occupied with her students, and to feel the excitement it gave her, there was no doubt: she was right where she was supposed to be. She took a deep breath, let it out. Really, the wait was the thing that would do her in, waiting for the students to come along, the bell to ring, the class to start…

She was drawn out of her thoughts by the sound of a camera shutter. Maya looked to the open door.

"Dad, what are you…" she laughed, trying not to look so flustered by the surprise.

"What, I had to see you in your class," Shawn shrugged, walking into the room proper. "I would have waited until you had kids in here, but I didn't want to embarrass you on your first day of school."

"Thanks for that," Maya held back a smirk. After a couple seconds of their just standing and looking at one another, she beamed and moved up to hug her father. "And for being here. Now, you need to go," she looked at the time. Students were bound to start walking the halls any minute. "If you guys want to come over for dinner tonight though, I get to tell you all about how it went."

"Done," Shawn agreed at once. "I'm buying," he pointed at her as he backed out of the room.

"Go say hi to your bestie there," Maya waved him down the hall.

She had a feeling that picture would soon be making the rounds among her various parents and grandparents. She could have felt like it would be weird, but then why should she? They were proud of her, all of them, and really that was something she was proud of. Getting to this point in her life, becoming a teacher, it had been her goal for years now. She'd gone to school for it, trained for it… and then two years after that, she'd made it.

Was there a part of her that wanted to get here for them, for her family? Yes, very much. They would not have been any less proud of her if she'd just kept on with the theater, abandoning 'the original plan.' The only one who would have been disappointed about that, the absolute only person in the world would have been her. She had done so much already in two years at the theater, and if that wasn't enough, well she had her contract, the songs she'd already had come out, by Ree Forster, and the Violets, and Marika Marsden… Ree was due to come down to Austin in a matter of weeks, so they could get started on her new album, and she had another song in the works for a new artist, what was to be her fourth single. And she had the band, ten years strong and still going…

All these things she had achieved, and still she ended up here, relieved that a picture should make her family proud, that it would show that she had made it, that she had… that she'd followed through.

That's not why I'm here…

She had been a rudderless child. Her father had gone away, left her to a mother who herself needed something in her life she had yet to find. She didn't blame her for this, not in the slightest… not anymore… But Maya had been going into the world with potential building up inside her and no notion of how to access it, to make something out of it.

She'd always liked to draw, had quickly started to get better at it without really thinking much of it. The moment that went and started to turn the tide was the move, when her mother had told her they were going to leave New York. As she'd been forced to say goodbye to everything she'd known, she'd taken it upon herself to draw as many of those important things as she could. She wanted to take them with her. She could have taken pictures, sure, but it wouldn't have been the same. The pictures just could not collect details in the same way she could, with her pencils. If she drew them, she was committing it all to paper and to memory both.

If not for her doing all of those, for her mother noticing it and stopping to buy her that sketchbook and those colored pencils, on the road to Austin, she might not have continued to expand the way she'd done, found the first notes of her own voice, emerging from deep within. She could 'say' things with her art, things she could not express with words. And beyond that… The deeper she had delved into this world, it was like she had learned a new language, and it existed in her eyes.

Art had taught her about herself. It had not been alone.

Lindsay Alcott, Cory Matthews, Patty Robinson… They were only three among many, but they were the three at the top of that hill.

Miss Alcott had been there, at the beginning of her start in Texas. Maya had arrived in this city, feeling like she'd lost her whole world. She didn't know who to be anymore, and she was afraid of making a bad impression around these people who didn't know her. But there had been this young English teacher, and looking back on their interactions in that first year, Maya could just see it now, how she would have been compelled, how she would have seen a way in. All she'd needed was the right key. In her case, it had been a book, just the right one to be the first step in nurturing a new openness to knowledge.

And Mr. Matthews, well… He had been in her life a long time before he'd been her teacher, and even then he had only been that for a very brief time before she'd gone and moved away, hadn't been that again until a year after that, when the family had also relocated to Texas. When he had finally become her teacher in earnest, he had found a girl very different from the one he's last seen in New York. In one short year, she had developed a whole other outlook on the world. He had found this, and he had continued to nurture it, that year and then all through high school, after he'd transferred up there from the middle school. He hadn't been that to her for six years already, not in the strictest sense of the word, but then Cory Matthews was just the kind of guy who could not 'turn it off.' The man had been her teacher for… nineteen years and then some, and he would continue to be that, for as long as she could need him. She might need him for the rest of their lives.

Patty Robinson had just come into her life, her first day of college, like a whirlwind. If she hadn't already come to the point in her life where she knew what she wanted to do for the rest of it, she would have known it the moment she saw that white-haired woman. That was the aspiration, that was the goal. She didn't want to turn into Professor Robinson, not like that, just… She exuded so much self-assurance, self-awareness, and when she spoke people listened. Maya couldn't say what went through everyone's minds as they listened to her, but she knew she'd get them all thinking, the way she got her thinking. She had such a curiosity for the world, and it was infectious in the best possible way. It was no wonder Pappy Joe had fallen for her the way he did. Now, by virtue of two marriages, her own and her former Professor's, the two of them had gone and become family.

Maya stood before her empty classroom that morning, ready to welcome her very first students, and she was so ready. It had been a long road, from there to here, stretching back the whole of her life, in Austin, in New York… She wasn't out here to find 'the next Maya,' in need of direction. Not everyone was like her, and not everyone would find their answer in the same place, but… She believed she could be someone for these kids. Her impact could be monumental like it could be near to insignificant, she didn't care. They all had their own stories, and she couldn't wait to meet them.

Out in the hall, she could hear voices buzzing, laughter, and locker doors. The soundtrack of a high school morning, the first day for everyone else… Maya resisted the urge to go and spy on them. She went instead to open up her bag and prepare for her first group. She had lists of names. Back home, she had a box of files and notes from her predecessor. She hadn't opened it yet, as had been suggested. She was supposed to meet them for herself first, get to know them just a bit, and now she was about to.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners