September 24th 2020

Chapter 268
Their Party For Closure

"Would it be very childish of me if I said I didn't want to go to school today?" Maya asked, after she had prodded Lucas awake. Up to now, she had allowed him to sleep in on those days he could, because it really made no sense to her that he should keep to the early rise if he didn't have to, but today… Today she needed to have a talk before she headed out the door for the day.

"I won't stop you," he mumbled, pulling her closer, catching her in a slow kiss, which could have easily turned into something more if given the chance, but then…

"Yeah, but you're supposed to," Maya sighed, pulling back to look at him. "You're supposed to be good, valiant, honest Huckleberry, who tells me to go to work… do what I have to do… eat my vegetables…"

"Is that who I am now?" he smiled, making a new appeal toward the benefits of just staying here with him by pressing a new kiss to her neck.

"That is not fair…" she breathed, finding it harder to concentrate all at once. "One more day, okay? One more day and you can absolutely wake me up like this… tomorrow. I need the guy with the words right now, please?"

"Oh, that guy," Lucas finally pulled back, propping his head up on his hand. "At your service. Last day of school…" he stated.

"Last day," Maya echoed with a nod.

"Last day until fall, except for the seniors," Lucas continued. She made a sad face. "It will happen whether you're there or not, and if you're not then you don't get to say goodbye?" he pointed out. She stared at him for a moment.

"I think that's a record," she blinked.

"I've had practice," he shrugged humbly.

"Well, you're very good at it," she complimented, stealing at the gap between them once more, with an entirely new drive. "That and other things," she grinned as she kissed him and felt his hands take this as a call to action.

By the time she'd climbed into the minivan and taken off for school, Maya felt about as ready as she would ever be to say farewell to her students, some for a few months, others… Maybe it was just as well that the seniors were in first period. The band aid would be ripped off and then she could go on with the rest of her day, right?

She tried to remember what it had been like, the last day of school when she had been a high school senior. Mostly, she remembered that a sizable portion of her class had not bothered to show up, not unless they had an exam to sit. As far as her class was concerned, everyone had already handed in their final paper, and while she had graded them and would let them have a look, she knew some of them wouldn't necessarily see this as cause to actually attend. Her last day, other than the absences, well… Some of her teachers had already checked out, clearly, but then their presence overall had never been the best anyway. Others sent her off with well wishes and little more. And then the last few – and Cory Matthews had absolutely been one of those – had been going around the school that day with thinly veiled outbursts of 'the feels.' So maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she didn't hold it together the whole time, yeah?

Just walking into her classroom gave her pause. She couldn't believe she'd already made it through her first year as a teacher. She still remembered what it had felt like, when she had found out she'd gotten the job, when she'd even gotten the interview. She remembered how nervous she'd been on her first day, the first time she'd had to stand in front of those kids and be their art teacher. And now… Now she had grown so much into the position, and she loved every second of it, so much that she only mildly looked forward to the summer holidays. Those first kids… Those had been her seniors… She'd only have them for a year, but they would always stay with her. They had been her very first students.

"Maya?"

She smiled. Her very first day had started with August Matthews, started exactly this way, with him calling her name from the doorway. But then boy she found standing there looked almost nothing like the boy who'd stood in that spot back in September. That boy had walked with a weight on his shoulders, with a quietness born of so much quiet pain. This boy walked tall, and he was filled with that light which just came bursting from every part of him.

"Well, if it isn't young Matthews," Maya intoned as he walked in. "Last day, huh?"

"Yeah," he nodded. She just spotted the folder in his hand before he held it out to her.

"What's that?" she asked as she took it.

"You know, the first day, when we all had to introduce ourselves, and then we had to make a sort of… portrait introduction of ourselves?" he asked, and she nodded. "I know it won't count anymore, but I wanted to make a new one than the one I did back then," he explained. "I kept thinking about it, and it didn't feel like it fit anymore."

If she'd had any aspirations for making it through the day without crying, she lost those before first period even had a chance to start. August hadn't stuck around for the part where she opened the folder and looked inside, saying he was going to wait for Tony and Milena, and it was probably a good thing, or she might have ended up hugging him, and even though she'd known him from infancy, it probably wouldn't have been a good idea. Either way, it allowed her that brief moment to discover this new portrait of August Matthews on her own.

To compare the two, the old portrait and the new, she might have said that one had been like a chaotic stormy night, while the other… the other was a peaceful day in spring, a return of colors, of life. It might not have counted toward his grade, no, but it was going up on the attic wall that very night.

When her seniors had come into the room, taking their places, Maya would watch them go and immediately the feeling would be there, rumbling in her chest. It wasn't as though every last one of them had gone through anything the way August had done, but it had still been a year of their lives, a year full of changes, with it being the last one they'd spend as high schoolers. She thought of Milena, who on the whole was not so far off from the person she'd been at the start. Even so, she had shown Maya how some burdens could be harder to spot, that not everyone wore them in their posture, their face, or their work. Maya may always have been one with an open, willing ear for her students to turn to, but Milena had shown her just how important it could be that she was this person for them.

Whether this was proof of that or simply a coincidence, Maya would be able to say that, of all four of her groups, not a single student had been absent on this final day. They had all shown up, even the likes of Candace, who had been something more of a… challenge… throughout the year. They all showed up, and they all went off exchanging wishes for a good summer, until they saw one another again, in the fall.

As for her seniors, her first group of the day, she saw them off with a project she'd cooked up right on the spot, as she'd put August's folder in her bag. They were the exiting senior, so she asked them to put something together for the seniors of the following year, as well as the freshmen who would be coming along for their first year as students at this school. They had all leant themselves to this idea, and when it was all said and done, Maya felt surprisingly more at ease with sending them off at the sound of the bell.

"Long day?" Lucas asked when she walked up to the house to find him sitting on the porch.

"Timewise? Same as usual. Emotions though? Oh boy…" she breathed. "Enjoying the welcoming committee though," she smiled, dropping on to the seat next to him. "Hey," she leaned in and kissed him.

"Hi," he smiled. "How do you feel about pizza tonight?"

"Love it, love it even more if it gets here soon," she nodded. "Sam?"

"Out with Cecilia," Lucas reported.

"You don't say," she leaned back in her seat, enjoying the pleasantly bearable June heat.

"So, how was it today? Besides 'oh boy' on the emotions scale?" Lucas asked, once he'd put in the call for the pizza, which became pizzas, plural, by the look she gave him.

"I have had so many reasons to be happy that I'm a teacher this year, but today might have been the peak of it. If I can keep feeling this way, year after year, I could not ask for more," Maya declared.

"So, you don't want the summer holidays then?"

"Oh, no, I'll have that, thanks," she shook her head. Lucas laughed. "I think we need a party."

"Yeah?" Lucas asked, needing very little to convince him to be on board.

"Yeah, nothing like Halloween in Houston big… or Halloween in Austin either," she amended after a moment, to which Lucas gave a nod. "Your friends from school, and mine, and our usual suspects, and Sam's friends, too, if he wants them over. We get to celebrate just… another year done, summer's here, and so on," she gestured.

"Sounds good to me," Lucas smiled. "When?"

"Tomorrow night? Too soon?" Maya wondered.

"I think we can rally the troops easy enough," he promised. "Hit the stores in the morning for whatever we need… We got this."

"Then that's settled," Maya reached out her hand to shake on it, which Lucas did at once. "You know, it'll be the last big thing before the other big things this summer…"

"How many of those do we have?" he pondered, knowing she would tell him anyway.

"The family trip," Maya counted by tapping her fingers to her thumb, one each to the items, "And Riley and Dylan's wedding, and Chiara having the baby, and then… which one am I missing?" she asked, tapping her ring finger to her thumb as she 'tried to think.'

"First wedding anniversary?" Lucas offered with a smile.

"That's the one," she laughed.

"So, we definitely need a party before that," he agreed.

"We really do."

"And even if we didn't…"

"Party, party! I'll grab my laptop, we need lists."

They would spend much of the next few hours with a session of pizza and planning. The important part was to get the word out as soon as possible, to ensure that everyone could make it on such short notice. It had been so much easier for all of them to just go 'party!' and expect everyone to show up when they'd been back in high school, or even in college, but now so much had changed. Even if they were at heart the same people they had always been, they had grown up, hadn't they? Their schedules and obligations may have changed, but that would not stop them from rounding up the old and the new at every chance they got.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners