August 15th 2020

Chapter 228
Their Visitors in Class

Maya was beyond happy to be back at work. It had quickly become her favorite place to be outside of home. She couldn't have predicted that, even for how long she had yearned to be here, in this exact position. She didn't want to make it sound as though she didn't love being at the theater with all the Stage Ready projects she continued to be a part of, and she really didn't want to make it sound as though she was not deeply attached to the work she did as a songwriter, or as one fifth of TXNY, not even a little. And yet, if she had to choose between the school, the theater, the band, and the songs… if she really had to… she would pick the school, wouldn't even have to think twice. That was the surprise.

But it really did just sit in her heart like nothing else could, to be here, with her kids, day after day. She had missed it so much since they'd all gone off on holiday break. For all that this break had entailed, with the fire, and the Friars staying with Lucas and her, she had not forgotten a single one of them, and now… Now she was looking forward to getting them back so much that she wondered if she'd be able to keep herself from going off the rails once they came into her classroom, or even if she saw them in the hallways, or… sitting outside, right there on The Bench…

"Well, well, I haven't seen you since last year," Maya grinned, even more so when Stella Buckley lifted her head and saw her. She'd been bent over one of her notebooks, and from a distance Maya only had to see the way her pen moved to know she was drawing and not writing. She gasped upon seeing her teacher, and everything was tossed back into her bag and carried off as she stood and sprinted over. The way she stalled, she might have been about to hug Maya, only to stop as she wondered if it was okay to hug teachers. "You're here early," Maya laughed, leading the girl toward the school.

"My mom's out of town, and my dad works early, so he dropped me off," Stella shrugged.

"Got it," Maya nodded. "You want to come into my class until first period?" That was barely a question she had to ask, of course she wanted to go. "How was your break?"

"My sisters came out here for Christmas," Stella told her. "One of them got engaged on the morning when we opened presents."

"That's great! Right?" Maya asked, amending just in case there was more to the story, but Stella nodded at once. It was great.

"And then two of them revealed they were going to be having a baby," she went on to share what was clearly the top news item in her book as she held up two fingers for emphasis. She gave that full smile that put her braces in the spotlight.

"Woah!" Maya laughed. "Was this Christmas morning, too?" Stella nodded.

"My mom almost passed out." Maya could have hugged her for real.

Stella was in her class until Phoebe came and found her so they could head out to their first class of the day. She'd helped Maya get set up for her first class, with the seniors.

"Are we starting today?" Phoebe had eagerly asked her art teacher. "I brought different shoes, and my heavy duty kit," she tapped the side of her school bag.

"Today, lunch. We'll try to get you out of here with minimal use of those band-aids," Maya smiled, watching the girl hurry off with her quiet friend. She almost ran into the door frame on the way out, so really nothing had changed there, and there was no telling how long these clumsiness-correcting dance lessons would take to help, or if they would help, but Maya made it her personal mission to get that girl on the girls' basketball team proper, by the start of tenth grade.

As usual, her day started with her seniors. After having seen him several times in the last few weeks outside of school, part of her had maybe hoped that when August would walk in he would be that boy still. Instead, he was back to his quiet self, the one she'd discovered on her first day in September. He was better once Tony and Milena Janacek came around, but on the whole there was still that layer that had Maya concerned. She had hoped maybe that being on the basketball team would go and help set him back without her having to do anything, and to a point it had done that, but clearly it only went so far. He could zone in on the court, the ball, the team and the game when he was out there, but the rest of the time… She was really going to have to talk to him once and for all.

The bell had barely rung for lunch when Stella and Phoebe popped up at her door.

"Hey," Maya laughed. "Go on and eat, I'll be back and we can get started."

"Maybe we should do it first and eat after," Phoebe pointed out, scratching at the back of her head hesitantly. "If I just ate, I might end up…" she mimed being sick and Stella scrunched up her face.

"Okay, good point," Maya nodded, turning to shut the door. "Help me move the stations?"

With the middle of the classroom floor cleared out, Maya watched as Phoebe changed shoes while Stella went and sat on one of the moved tables to observe. She could have asked her if she wanted to join in, but she had a pretty good idea of what she'd say. If Stella ever decided she wanted to be a part of this, she would get up and ask to, so until then it was just her and Phoebe.

"Now…" Maya trailed off, browsing through her phone for a song. When the music filled the room, she turned to her student. "Show me what you got?"

What she had was the most Phoebe type of dancing Maya had ever seen. She was all wild, chaotic energy, and her limbs didn't seem to be in complete communication with her brain some of the time. She had rhythm, but it mostly came in short bursts interrupted by that miscommunication situation. Her demonstration had lasted all of a minute, and she had almost bumped into some table, stool, or foot – her own – about eight times. When she was done, she was a bit out of breath but overall satisfied.

Maya could see Stella sitting back there, and the expression on her face looked more or less like what she felt her own face had to look. Half of her felt like she was trying not to laugh, and the other felt like she was just dumbstruck.

"Okay, that was… We can work with that," she promised, nodding to Phoebe, who nodded back with a smile. "So, here's what we'll do. I'll show you one short thing, then after that we'll work on some skills. I want you to keep working at all of it at home when you can, and at the end of the week you'll do the choreography again, yeah?"

"Yeah, okay," Phoebe nodded, stepping back to go and stand next to where Stella sat. "I'll try to remember."

"I have a video, I'll send it to you after," Maya revealed with a smirk, recalling the previous night, when she'd recruited Lucas to act as her camera guy as she stood in the middle of the living room and did the short dance she'd put together for Phoebe. It had taken many, many takes, as she'd keep seeing the look on his face and end up laughing. Then, there were the elder Friars, who had come up from the basement after a while to have a look, and Sam, too, who soon got roped into being her assistant/test subject. He appeared with her in the final, official take, which she would send to Phoebe for reference. It had also made its way out to the Hart-Lanes in Tucson and was received with wild appreciation and laughing emojis.

Between the demonstration – which was received with the girls' awed looks – and then the rest of the day's first lesson, the lunch period snuck away from them in no time. They finally had to stop when Stella told them that the afternoon classes were starting in ten minutes. Ten minutes for them to put the stations back, get everything ready to receive the rest of the ninth graders, and actually have lunch, all to then go on with their day and not look like they'd been dancing around all this time.

"Slow down, slow down," Maya told the girls. "I'm giving you special permission to eat in class. Next time, we'll put a timer or something, yeah?" she pointed to Stella, appointing her as the time keeper. She was happy to take on the job.

Maya would have her lunch after the freshman class had come and gone, in her extended break before getting her juniors. She couldn't say that she'd had a single bad day, only good ones, but today might have been one of her all-time favorites. Sitting at her desk with her sandwich and salad, she watched the video of her and Sam again, chuckling along. This in turn had started her with a nugget of a melody which she tried to explore, alone in her classroom. After an hour and some, she was really starting to have something, and she couldn't wait to get to the Hex that evening. It might have been worth putting out to Ree for the album. She was coming up next month for another session.

They were no more than five minutes from last period when there was a short rap at her door and she swivelled in her chair to find the unexpected faces of her mother and mother-in-law in the door window, the two of them waving at her. Maya scrambled to stand, signalling for them to come in.

"Did something happen? What..." she asked.

"Oh, no, no, everything's fine," Katy promised at once, reassuring her daughter. "No, we were just done shopping, and…" she turned to Melinda.

"And I told your mother how I had never seen your classroom in person, and so here we are," she explained with a grin.

"Oh," Maya blinked. Her mind had just gone straight to the bad news side, and now she felt just a bit silly. "Well… this is it," she swept her hand around, suddenly very aware of the time. "And I'm about to have students coming in," she turned back to the two of them. She had a feeling that she'd be setting a precedent about this, but then what was she supposed to do? They were just standing there, the both of them, and she could see all that pride, and excitement… "I guess you can sit in and watch, but you have to just… be cool, okay?"

"I appreciate you trying not to single me out, but I understand, I do," Melinda nodded.

"Oh, no singling out, this was for both of you," Maya assured her, tipping her head to her mother.

"That… yeah, that makes sense," Katy had to nod, which made Maya grin.

"Alright, just… over here?" she went and pulled two chairs to the corner. When the students arrived, they all looked to the two women sitting in the corner in some variant of the look they'd had on the first day of the year, when she had been the stranger among them. Once everyone had arrived, she called them to attention. "Okay, alright, hello, welcome back everyone, happy new year!" There was a rumble of wishes returned to her. "First thing, so you won't be whispering about it until I tell you – yeah, you," she pointed to one of the boys, who gave an amiable laugh, "I'd like to introduce you to my mother and my mother-in-law, who are sitting in today." Katy and Melinda waved, keeping blissful quiet. "Now, let's get started."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners