September 22nd 2020
Chapter 266
Their Step to Transition
Thursday morning – 12th grade field trip
"I was thinking…" Lucas declared as he and Maya came to sit at her desk.
They had only just returned from the museum with their final group of the week, timed well enough for lunch that it had already been decided he would join her. When they'd been getting back on the bus, Maya had texted music teacher Morgan, asking if she might add to her usual lunch order. Her boyfriend, as they'd learned, worked at Ma Maggie's, which had made Maya's affections for her colleague and friend increase that much further. Morgan's boyfriend, Paul, would send her something just about every day. Today, she'd called him, putting in an extra order, for Maya and Lucas. After dropping off the kids, they'd gone and picked up their bags from the lounge and retreated to Maya's class.
"Should I be worried?" Maya asked, sounding just a bit closer to 'Is my food going to get cold?' Lucas chuckled, signalling for her to dig in, which she did.
"I'd like us to go out tomorrow night," he went on. Maya smiled. Of course, she would be on board for date night. "Specifically, I was thinking we could go to dinner, before or after going to the museum." Her smile pressed into a curious squint now.
"The museum, as in the place we've been to every day this week?" she asked.
"Yes, that one," he laughed. "It's just that, when we were out there today, I kept thinking how we were there, but we weren't necessarily getting to be there, you know? We were busier looking after the students, making sure none of them wandered off… So, I'd like to go, just you and me, so we can enjoy it all for ourselves… Maybe look around for some 'weird stuff,' too…"
"That actually sounds like a really good idea," Maya decided. "It'll be a nice way to just book-end the week," she added, and Lucas nodded. "And I definitely won't wander off from you, unlike some people who shall remain writing extra pages on their finals."
Today's trip had been possibly the most anticipated and most chaotic at the same time. It was to be a sort of send-off for her first graduates, which was bound to set her up with a number of lofty mental images, with her imparting some final knowledge on to those kids before they left her classroom forever.
What she mostly had to contend with was a bunch of boys and girls on the verge of sitting their senior year finals. It may have been a number of years since they'd gone through that themselves, but it didn't take long for both Maya and Lucas to recognize the stress that resided in most of them. These were possibly some of the most important tests they would have to take in their young lives, and by the time they got on the bus to head to the museum, it left their teacher to wonder if they would really get much enjoyment out of this day.
"Might not be so bad," Lucas told her, when they reached the museum. "They should be a bit more minded, yeah? No wandering off or anything?"
Later, Maya would 'accuse' him of having jinxed them. Already as they'd gone around in the more group/guided portion of their tour, they could both feel that their bunch felt looser than they'd like, with some of the students falling behind and having to be called back, others clearly not paying attention until their name was called and even then needing a tap on the shoulder from their neighbor. Then, when they'd been released into trio mode, the 'madness' had been unleashed. They had gotten the same rules as every other group, including the 'stay in your trio or suffer extra pages' gold rule, which should really have been all they needed to hear, with how busy they already were.
"Okay, those three are all on their own," Lucas pointed out each of the first splintered group, even as Maya had spotted another group in the same conditions, just completely off in their own worlds. It wasn't even that they weren't doing the other thing that they were supposed to do, which was to go and get a look at the works of art, observing the ones they'd choose for their final and taking what notes they might need, but then they had been told to stick to their trios.
"Yeah," Maya sighed, pointing to the second trio. She was conflicted, he could tell. It wasn't that they were slacking off or making trouble, and it would have been very easy to decide to ignore what she'd told them back on the bus. But if she did that, wouldn't that make her a hypocrite? Everyone had gotten the same rule, and all those who had broken it had been punished in the same way. If she exempted them just because they were seniors and they had a lot on their plate, what would it say? "I'll go be the page police with those three, can you get those?" she finally looked to Lucas, who nodded and took off one way as she went the other. Already, that was two more pages for each of those six, which meant twelve more for her to correct.
By the time the groups had to be called to head back to the bus, every last trio save for one had splintered and been penalized for it, and Maya was barely keeping a grasp of her patient teacher mood. Her one unbroken trio, to no surprise, was August Matthews and the Janaceks, though she suspected that if it wasn't for their connection to her and to one another, they might have landed themselves extra pages, too. With the way they had kept together, Maya had half a mind to shorten their finals as an act of gratitude.
It was a wonder that it had taken this long for August to become so close to the brother and sister, Tony especially, as he would have been in classes with him going back as far as when the Matthews had left New York and relocated to Texas, a dozen years ago. All they could guess was that, up until this year, August had had his little group, if it could be called that. He'd quickly made friends with a fellow new kid, and the two of them had been very tight for all this time, until the boy had moved again. And then there'd been Michaela Zhu, of course, who had been his first and so far only girlfriend, up until she'd gone away to college and the two of them had eventually split up. She may have been a year above him in school, but she was still such a big part of his life, and maybe for that, between her and his best friend, he'd been set in his ways.
And then Tony… Tony, as far as Maya could say for having interacted with him all this year, was just a quiet guy. He was tall and could be rather impressive looking, the kind of guy you might assume ready to knock you down if given half a reason, especially for the fact that he didn't talk much, never raised his voice much at all, just kept a very even tone. Oh, he smiled, and he'd give a light laugh from time to time, but he was much more prone to do his own thing, to speak only when spoken to most of the time. The most active you were bound to see him be was on the basketball court, and even there he was precise, not wild and out of control in the slightest, which a very strong asset in making him the effective player and captain he was for his team.
Maya had one clear memory of the Janaceks before they'd become her students, and this one had needed to be brought back to light from one day coming upon pictures of the day in the question. It helped a lot that this day was one of the most pivotal ones in her life. October 31st 2017, commonly known in the Friar household as Spookversary, the day before she and Lucas had gone from friends to boyfriend and girlfriend.
Tony had been in August… Auggie's class, another of the kids for whom the haunted house had been created. Maya and Lucas both had been involved in the creation and decoration of the activity, along with many of their fellow freshmen, but there had also been some parents involved. One of them had been a woman named Magda, who had painted several pieces for them, with some infinitely fine details, impressing the fifteen-year-old Maya to no end.
On Halloween night, she had known to look for Magda's son, as she'd told her all about his desire to go dressed as a magician. She'd told him how her husband had even engineered him a magician's hat, from which he could pull a rabbit as though it had not been there until he spoke the magic word. The eight-year-old had been proud to perform this little trick when the vampire girl had seen him and asked him to do so. Ten and a half years later, and she still remembered the boy's smile, missing several of his teeth. Recalling his mother, Maya had seen to getting him through to where the woman would be waiting, outside. When they'd made it out, the little magician had run toward his mom, who waited with a small girl with a glittery tutu and fairy wings perched in her arms. The kid had a look to her like she'd had just about her fill of Halloween and just wanted to get home, but when her brother had come along, she'd perked up some, especially as he reached into his bag of candy and offered out a small chocolate bar. She'd looked to her mother, who had given her permission to eat it, late hour be damned.
Milena would have been six then, if her math was right. Maya remembered how she'd seen the fairy ballerina struggle with the wrapper and how she'd gone to help her. The girl had gasped and burrowed her face in her mother's neck, scared of the vampire. The chocolate, once opened, had needed to go into Magda's hand and then be handed over to her daughter once more. Milena had only dared to look back at her once, as she was carried off by her mother, who was busy hearing all about the magician's adventure in the haunted house.
She had possibly run into them in other places over the years, though this was the only actual occasion she could recall. Looking back on it now that she knew Tony and Milena the way she did, it was difficult to think how, just two years later, Magda would be gone, taken by illness, leaving her husband and children to cope without her.
However long it had taken for August and Tony to become the tight friends they'd grown into over the school year, it wasn't the years that mattered so much as the fact that they had made it to this point in their lives. The same could be said of August and Milena, more or less. Their situation was different, of course. They'd spent a couple years secretly doing something they now both regretted. Much as it had afforded the two of them to spend time together, it had been a block in what might have been a closer bond, up until this year, when truth had gone and torn it down. They'd walked from the rubble to become as close as they'd yet to be. They hadn't gotten so far as to call it dating, but if they weren't there yet, they couldn't be so far away. Who knew, maybe the museum would work some magic for them, just as it had done for their art teacher…
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners