September 21st 2020

Chapter 265
Their Step to Recall

Wednesday afternoon – 9th grade field trip

"Was it weird for you today?" Maya asked Stella as the freshman group moved into the museum. The number of ninth grade students had left them with several trios and one duo lacking a third. To no surprise, this became Stella and Phoebe. Maya had given the girls the option of an exception, knowing they would never wander apart from one another, or to stick with Lucas and her, as had been offered to Daphne Brett the day before. The two of them had shared a brief look, and then they'd decided to go for option two. They were just getting so used to being around her, weren't they, with all those lunch hours they had spent in the art room.

Of course, today, it had been different. As they had been set to depart for the museum as soon as they all finished lunch, Maya had instructed her ninth graders to come and have their meal in the classroom, with her, with Lucas, and with Stella and Phoebe. It had turned into something almost like a picnic or a sleepover, and loads of them had been amused by this. The thing Maya loved to see the most was just how, no matter what configuration they fell into when they'd eat in the cafeteria, back in her classroom they were much more prone to landing somewhere else entirely. No second guessing, no exclusion. They were in their art family mode, and they ran with it.

Maya had all of her students' interests at heart, and she didn't go around playing favorites. But then managing all those various personalities and quirks she had gotten to know through the year could often get to feel like she had to juggle with precision to ensure none of them collided or got dropped. And the one factor she'd wanted to secure was Stella Buckley, the instigator of the art room lunch club. It may have been nearly a year now since she'd joined the school, moving away from her homeschool setting, nearly a year since she'd been allowed into the room at lunch time, eventually joined by Phoebe.

In the beginning, it had been to counteract how new it all was to her, how the cafeteria was just overwhelming for her. Maya meant to check in with her, as the year was drawing to an end, to see if maybe she'd be ready to reintegrate the cafeteria, but she could never bring herself to do it, too afraid that the question would be misunderstood and the Buckley girl would assume herself no longer welcome in the spot she had adopted back in the fall. But it had been nearly a year, and not much had changed. Now, Maya worried that her enabling this separation for much longer would essentially negate the whole reason why she'd started coming to an actual school in the first place. Her shy little bird needed to fly.

Now, when Maya asked her about her impressions of the classroom lunch they'd all had before getting on the bus, Stella looked at her like she didn't know what to say. She turned to Phoebe, who was looking at her final instruction sheet and chewing at her lip in deep thought, before turning back to her teacher.

"It was… a little louder than I'm used to, but… I don't know, it was okay, I guess," she shrugged.

"You go to the basketball games, those seem to go okay for you, don't they?" Lucas tipped his head to look at her from Maya's side. Stella gave a sheepish smile at this. Phoebe was on the team now, good and officially, and Phoebe was her best friend, her first, her one and only true friend… one who wasn't a teacher, too… So, naturally, Stella wasn't about to miss her games, whether she was on the bench or the court. When she'd be on the court, she could count on her best friend being up in the stands, waving her sparkling sign in the air like she barely knew how to do it but was excited to try. It might have been one of the cutest things anyone had ever seen.

"I wear earplugs when I'm out there," she revealed. "When my hair's down, no one can tell."

"Not a bad idea, your ears do kind of ring for a while after being in there for a game," Maya commented, and Lucas nodded in agreement. "That's a good trick," she told Stella, hoping to convey in some way that she might give this a shot in other locations… say, the cafeteria.

This being their third run of these tours this week, Maya and Lucas really were starting to have their routine down. Having each class separately, rather than to have all four at once, made it easier to concentrate on one group at a time, to give each one the attention it deserved. And after they did their guided group portion, the trios would be sent on their way to do their exploring and researching.

Though they had chosen to follow their teacher and her husband, Stella and Phoebe were very much in their own world, speaking quietly to one another, pointing this way and that, looking at their instructions and taking notes. This enabled Maya and Lucas to keep an eye on the other groups a bit more, and, as on previous days, just enjoy being here together, in this place which had held so much meaning to them both for so many years of their lives and their relationship to one another.

"Where's their third?" Lucas asked at one point, getting Maya's attention until she'd turn and see where he was nodding. Spotting Missy and Kai walking along, hand in hand, she frowned for a moment, seeking their missing partner only to find him a few feet behind, staring into his phone. When she happened to catch Missy's eye, Maya pointed to her and Kai, and then to their third. Missy stopped walking, bringing Kai to a stop along with her, before turning her head to look behind. She saw the guy and huffed, calling out to him twice before she and Kai ended up having to dash back and get him. They made him look to their teacher, and Maya gestured for him to put his phone away right now or he'd have extra pages. He didn't have to be told twice.

"I didn't know they were dating," Phoebe commented, as she and Stella had naturally witnessed the whole thing.

"Who, Missy and Kai?" Maya asked, and the girls nodded. "They're not."

"But they're holding hands," Stella pointed out.

"He told her he always gets lost in museums when everyone was coming off the bus," Lucas revealed. "Might be their way to make sure he wouldn't this time," he shrugged.

"First time I held his hand, we weren't dating yet," Maya beamed to her husband, reminiscing. "Actually, we were right here, in this museum."

"You were?" both girls asked at once.

"Seventh grade field trip," Lucas recalled, with a smile of his own. "We snuck off from the group while no one was looking, ran around the place on our own for a while," he went on, and Maya gave a look as though to ask if it was really a good idea to be telling her students this. In the end though, the verdict just seemed to be that, where these students were concerned, they had little to worry themselves over. When the girls started to laugh, Maya turned a finger toward them.

"Hey, it was for the art," she 'defended' herself.

"You guys have been together that long?" Phoebe asked, amazed.

"No, well, we didn't actually get together until… well, until we were in ninth grade," Maya revealed, tipping her head to the two ninth graders. Lucas' response to this was a look which might have been read as 'we might have been together that far back, but…' "You two need to get to work, come on," Maya nudged the girls to move along, and so they went.

"How long do you think it'll take them to get there?" Lucas turned to Maya when the girls had gone far enough out of earshot that he could speak, indicating Missy and Kai off on their own explorations with their third looking like a child tagging along with his parents.

Maya could only let out a sigh bordering on sympathetic frustration. Those two… Oh, she saw them every day, Monday to Friday, right after lunch, but then with Missy living just up the lane from them, and Kai living across from the elder Friars' house, she saw one or both of them most weekends, too. In her classroom especially though… She got to stand witness, front and center, to the progress of their friendship, the very small dips off road toward potential romance… Oh, she saw all of that, whether they noticed or not… probably not… If they kept it up the way they were going now, they would never 'get there.'

"I'm really starting to wonder now," Maya had looked to Mr. Matthews, one day in the teachers' lounge. "When we were out here, in your class, me and Lucas… Was it that obvious? Were we that obvious?" Cory said nothing at first, only drinking from his cup, but then his silence said plenty on its own. "That much, huh?"

"I could fill books, big chunky ones, with all the couples I've seen grow into being before my eyes over the last two decades," Cory finally had to laugh. "I'm not saying all of them have survived the test of time, some of them I couldn't tell you. Sooner or later, they'll go off into the world and you won't get to know what happens next, not for most of them. Now, as far as you and Lucas, well… that one goes in the hall of fame. I did get to marry the two of you," he reminded her, with no small amount of pride.

"Yeah, you did," Maya had laughed.

He wasn't wrong, was he? Missy and Kai, whatever they would or wouldn't become, were not the only ones. August and Milena, Daphne and Dakota… It was almost impossible not to get the tiniest bit invested in seeing what would become of these vibes she would witness radiating through her classroom day by day.

When the time came for everyone to head back to the bus and back to school, Maya counted off the students as they climbed aboard and took their seats. Bringing up the rear, their third having officially retired from following them, Missy and Kai made it all the way to the bus door before they just sort of stopped and realized they were still holding hands. They looked to one another, and as their hands released, they both had themselves a good blush, doing their best not to let the other one see and at the same time paying no mind to their teacher as she shared a look with her husband over their heads. Are they even serious with this? Maya's eyes said, and Lucas could only smirk as he shrugged.

They only had one more of these, bright and early the next morning, with the seniors, and both young Friars felt almost sad for this as they sat on the bus that afternoon. The week was just flying by, and so were these field trips. Lucas could see how much Maya enjoyed bringing the kids here, and he had a feeling tomorrow's final group would hit her the hardest. Her seniors, the first of her kids to graduate and move on from the school… She'd let them all into her heart, and now the first experience of letting some of them go, oh… Maybe that was another reason why she'd recruited him for this.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners