July 21st 2020

Chapter 203
Their Art of Teaching

"Afternoon, Mrs. Friar!"

Maya turned around to find Missy Sanderson standing in the doorway, Kai Avelino just behind her. Seeing the excited look on her neighbor's face, she had to laugh. She'd been going on about how it was going to be so weird not to just call her Maya, when she'd been doing it for two years already, and would continue to do so when they weren't in school. In the end she had decided to stick to Mrs. Friar for the last week, the better to get used to it.

"Afternoon to you, too, both of you," she motioned for them to come into the room proper. They were in her ninth grade class, both of them, on this first period after lunch. As they came along, Missy reached into her bag.

"From my grandma," she held out a clear plastic container, holding a piece of pie. Missy's grandmother was practically renowned for her pies, competed across the state with them and generally came back with the top prize every time. "I forgot about it earlier or I would have brought it to you before lunch."

"Nothing wrong with some afternoon pie," Maya hummed with a smile. "Thank you for bringing it to me," she told Missy. "I told Coach Langford about you," she turned to Kai.

"You did?" the boy's eyes widened at the mention of the boys' basketball coach. "What'd you tell him? What did he say?"

"Only good things," Maya promised. "He is looking forward to see you get out there." This sent him off to find his seat – at the same station as Missy's – with a nervous smile. "Hey, so, anything I should know about…" she started to whisper at them, before pulling back at the arrival of some more students.

"No way…" one of the girls stalled when she saw Maya, nearly causing a pile-up before the others behind her forced her to keep moving, all the while stealing looks back to the new teacher. It hadn't been lost on Maya that she was wearing a TXNY shirt and had clearly not been aware when she'd put it on that morning that her new art teacher would be one of its members.

"Good afternoon, everyone," Maya swung back into her start of class introductions for the third time now, the notion fuelling her smile and her energy. It could have started to feel repetitive after going through those facts over and over, but it was almost like a 'choose your adventure' kind of thing, where she started in the same place, with her introduction, and from that point on the road went and split into one, two, now three, and soon four different paths, as she would now be treated to the tales of a new group of students.

These ones, her ninth graders, would be the first group of kids she would get to see through the whole of their high school days, in her class, in the school… They were just starting here today, same as her, and she pointed this out to them now. When she asked who would like to go first in making their own introduction, it was to no surprise that she found the first hand belonged to…

"Missy Sanderson… Does it say that on your papers or Melissa?" she diverted at once. "I asked if they could change it." Maya cleared her throat. "Right, that can wait. Anyway, I'm fifteen, I live on a farm with my parents, and my grandparents. I am a ballet dancer, and I love zombies," she grinned, sharing a look with Kai. She might have said plenty more about herself, but Maya suspected it was hard for her to come up with much else to tell her, as none of it would have been new information to her teacher right here. Mostly her eyes spoke of how thrilled she was that she was here as their new teacher, out of anyone in the world. Maya smiled.

"Thank you for sharing, Missy. Who would like to go next?"

Much as her reflex might have been to let Kai take his turn after this, his hand had been beat in ending up in the air, so she had signalled that he would go after the one who'd gotten there first. This one had been a boy who generally gave the impression of volunteering now solely in order to get the exercise out of the way and be able to sit quietly the rest of the class. Maya did not push on, instead turning to Kai so they might continue on with the other students.

"Hey, I'm Kai Avelino, I'm fifteen now but I'll be sixteen next month," he started, looking immediately like he was coming up against the same issue Missy had done, in that she pretty much knew already what there was to know about him, so he ran through it anyway, each statement sounding like 'which you already know' was tacked on to it. "I'm a basketball player, like my brother and sister. They went here, too, they were on the teams. My brother taught me how to play. My sister got me into zombies," he recalled fondly. "My mother is the best cook I know… I'm really not. And my father, he grew up on beaches, surfing. He kind of sticks out around here, and some people think he's weird, but they just don't know him."

"I played with your sister, my senior year. Your dad in the stands was kind of the best to get everyone cheering," Maya recalled, and Kai laughed. "Alright, who wants to go next? You?" she acknowledged the next hand that came up. The girl it belonged to froze, blinking back at her for a moment before speaking so quiet that Maya could not understand a word. "Sorry?"

"Bathroom," she finally caught. "Can I go, please?"

"Oh, sure, sure, the pass is there by the door," Maya pointed, and the girl stood from her seat at the back station by the window, rounding around to the front and taking the pass on her way out. "I should have asked her name," Maya mumbled to herself before turning back to the others. "Who's next?"

After one boy who tried to get smart with her and came up short against a flare of New York Maya, and a girl who sounded primed for becoming a future entertainment correspondent, the next hand that went up belonged to the girl with the TXNY shirt. Maya kept her apprehension on the inside before calling on her to introduce herself. At the same time, her eyes kept ticking to the empty stool and wondering about her unnamed pass user.

"I'm Phoebe Munroe, sixteen years old," the girl in the shirt announced, in a cheerful voice that reminded Maya at once of Riley, in her own way, and it made her smile to hear it. "I'm really bad at drawing, but I love doing it so I do it anyway," she revealed. Maya gave her a confident nod. Good on you. "My brother says someone should put me in a padded suit because of how clumsy I am and it shouldn't be up to our parents to keep up the band-aid business." Okay, I take it back, she's Riley and Dylan in one.

"That bad, huh?" Maya asked. In demonstration, Phoebe lifted up her arm and bent it to show her elbow, which had been covered in a couple bandages to cover a sufficient area. "When did that happen?"

"Like an hour ago?" Phoebe cringed.

"Right… I'll keep the first aid kit stocked then," Maya breathed.

"Oh, I bring my own," Phoebe informed her. Maya blinked, holding back a smile. She may have had a soft spot for this one already.

"Preparation, that's good. Anything else?"

"I saw you when you sang at Ree Forster's show last winter," the girl informed her, and Maya wondered how she'd react if she told her about the album they'd be working on together.

After Phoebe had her turn, and one of the boys had gone, too, Maya really couldn't just let it wait any longer, and she asked Missy to go check on the girl in the bathroom. Three more introductions later, Missy came back, stopping at the door and motioning for Maya to come to her.

"She won't come," she whispered. "She says she's not feeling well, but I think she just doesn't want to have to talk." Maya let out a breath, nodding in thanks and telling her to go back to her seat.

"I'll be right back, don't get me in trouble on my first day, alright?" she told the class. After stopping across the hall to let Mrs. Anderson know she had to step away, Maya headed to the girls' bathroom.

Inside one stall, she spotted one foot on the floor, conjuring the image of her missing student having the other pulled up, arms locked around her bent leg. Maya thought about how her mother used to tell her how much you could tell about a person from their footwear. If she were here, Katy would see the one boot there on the girl's foot, properly worn but still in good condition on the whole, that its owner knew what she liked and did not see change as an absolute necessity. Yes, it was worn, but it was still a perfectly good boot. The way the foot sat now, Maya knew the girl was aware of her presence, whether she realized who was there or not.

"Do I need to take you to the nurse?" she asked. Seconds dragged on; she had not known it was her teacher this time.

"No."

"Good, that's good," Maya quietly replied, stepping forward. "Can we do this just you and me? I told you about me, now you tell me about you. There's no one else here." The second foot came into view. "Let's start with a name?" A few seconds went by.

"Stella," the girl finally told her. Per the list, Maya could fill in for herself that this was Stella Buckley. She was a ninth grader, there was nothing in Mrs. Yang's box about her for Maya to look through later on. Maybe if she'd been in middle school with Missy and Kai…

"Nice to meet you, Stella. You're… fifteen?" Maya guessed. She was. "Have you lived in Austin all your life?"

"We moved here when I was ten," Stella revealed. "I grew up in Los Angeles before that."

"Wow," Maya replied honestly. "I've never been there. Do you miss it?"

"No. I like it better here, less noise."

"Yeah, I grew up in New York, I get that," Maya nodded. "Any siblings?"

"Five older sisters."

"Woah…"

"They're all in their twenties, they don't live at home anymore. I was a surprise baby."

"I've got eleven brothers and sisters all together," Maya told her. "Oldest's seventeen, youngest is just a few months."

"Woah…" Stella echoed her earlier response and Maya chuckled.

"I know." A few seconds later, the latch was heard and the door slowly swung back, revealing the quiet girl, her hair in a low ponytail that reached down her back, face sprayed with a multitude of freckles, subdued eyes a light brown bordering on gold. Her hands were barely visible coming out of her sleeves, but what she could see of her fingers showed color… paint. It felt so instantly familiar to her that she had to smile. "Tell you what, I'm not giving homework today, but I would like you to get ahead on what I'll ask everyone to do next time, yeah? I want you to introduce yourself, not with your words but with your hands. Can you do that?"

The smile she got right then, revealing a row of braces along Stella Buckley's teeth, may have been Maya's favorite memory from that first day.

"Yeah? Good," she smiled back. "I'll get back out there, come back on your own time, just not too much time, alright?"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners