December 14th 2020

Chapter 349
Their Place to Wonder

Sitting in the minivan after she'd parked in the school lot, Maya stared at her phone. Her fingers felt like they wanted to move, to start typing, but they couldn't find the right way to start. She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. This was any other day, or it had to be. One more lie at this point…

Maya: Hey, are you guys busy tonight? Dinner? Our place or yours.

She stayed there for a couple minutes more, fiddling with her phone, staring out the window until she realized she'd been staring blankly at the bumper sticker on the math teacher's car. So, the phone went away, waiting for Riley's reply, and got out of the minivan to head into the school. It dawned on her, right as she rounded the corner of the building, that maybe she hadn't so much been waiting for her friend to write her back. She might have been avoiding going around where she was likely to hear the usually anticipated…

"Morning, Mrs. Friar!"

There they were, as ever. Stella and Phoebe… Phoebe…

She had thought more than once how the Munroe girl reminded her of a mix between Riley and Dylan, and now she could just have kicked herself…

"Morning," she smiled as they approached her. No matter what was going on, they couldn't know about it, not now if ever, and the thing that mattered most was that it didn't change the way she felt about the sophomore girl.

The problem now was to figure out what she was supposed to say next. She might have brought up parents night, but then that would just have taken her right to the place she was trying to avoid. The urge was there for her to ask questions, to fill in some blanks, to just… figure out what she was supposed to do with this information where her student was concerned. If she didn't do that, then she'd just be walking along a broken road from now on, constantly having to check her steps as she advanced.

But then, of course…

"My mom said how she liked seeing my teachers instead of my brother's for a change," Phoebe informed her, smiling, and Maya had trouble looking at this now without just seeing Dylan's smile. It had been Jo Munroe's laughter the previous night which had started Maya in picking out the resemblance to Dylan, and now… Phoebe had the same smile, the very, very same.

"Why, is he a troublemaker?" she ended up asking, glad to have come up with something to say.

"Oh, no, not trouble," Phoebe promised, sounding immediately like she would be the kind of sister to speak of her little brother like he was one of her favorite people, someone she'd defend to the ends of the Earth, no matter how much work she'd have to do to extricate some solid reasoning for his behavior. "He's actually really nice once you get to know him," she nodded, and for a beat it felt like nothing had changed, like she was who she'd always been.

"I'll keep that in mind for year after next," Maya told her.

"My mom said she really liked meeting you especially," Phoebe went on, and Maya had to will herself to keep a straight face.

"She did?" she asked.

Did she know? In all this time, it hadn't even occurred to her to consider if Jo Munroe might have been keeping tabs on her sons' lives from afar. Dylan had mentioned how the cards had kept coming, even when they'd been living out in Houston. And then when they'd returned to Austin, they'd come to the old apartment he'd shared with Riley and Rosa, and now to his and Riley's house… Clearly, she lived nearby, so… Did she know that her daughter's teacher was her son's friend, too? No… No, that would have just gotten too weird. Still, the thought was hard to chase away completely.

"Yeah, well, you know, I would tell her all about our classes, and how you helped me get on the basketball team," Phoebe reminded her, and Maya shook the other thought away.

"Oh, right. She did mention that," she breathed.

"Are you okay, Mrs. Friar?" Stella asked. In all this time, she'd been so focused on Phoebe that Maya had not paid any mind to the other girl standing there, looking on, and she wouldn't have put it past her to have picked up on something. It was always the quiet ones, wasn't it? So observant…

"Long night," she told her, doing her best to brush it off. "A lot of people, a lot of information to keep separate… All the parents, they only need to talk a few teachers, but on our side, all those classes, all the students…"

She was saved by the ringing of her phone, and when she saw it was Riley she quickly excused herself and wished the girls a good morning until she saw them again in third period. Of course, as she moved along, it was hard to call this being saved, more like leaving one fire for another.

"Hey!" she answered while heading up toward the school's main entrance. It had been nearly two years of her teaching here, and she still preferred coming in this way than the other, in the back. Force of habit, she guessed. Today, she might have delayed her running into Phoebe until she'd had more time to figure out how to behave around her.

"Hey, I got your message!" Riley replied, already clueing her friend in about her response just from her tone. Maya wished she could have found a way to downplay this without giving it all away right there on the phone. She didn't see how tonight could be all that fun, with what they'd have to discuss. "I was thinking about it, and maybe we should go out somewhere instead of eating at home. My last appointment's kind of late, although Dylan gets out of class early enough, so he could get things started on our end. When does Lucas get out of class today?"

"Early-ish, too, then he just has to get back… Look, I'll cook, I really don't mind. It'll be easier that way, you know? No shoes, less noise…" You really don't want this conversation happening in the open.

"Alright, sounds good. I'll check with Dylan and get back to you, but count us in."

"Great," Maya smiled. "See you tonight."

She came to a stop in front of the trophy cases, sending a quick text out to both Lucas and Sam to let them know about dinner. When she was done, she looked back up. She'd walked by these displays enough times that she could almost recreate them from memory. And where she stood, she knew, she only had to turn her head to find a picture of the boys' basketball team, nearly a decade ago… Most kids probably never get it a second glance as they walked through the halls, but to Maya they weren't just a bunch of boys who'd be adults by now, they were her friends, some more than others, one of them her own husband… She looked to that small snapshot of the teenaged Dylan Orlando, and she swore he looked like his father, too, very much so, but right now… Right now she could only see the features he'd inherited from his mother, the ones he inadvertently shared with his young half-sister and half-brother.

"That was some game, wasn't it?"

Maya had been so caught up in her thoughts that the voice came out of the blue and startled her. It sent her hand flitting down as though it would press to the little bump, only to realize it and quickly redirecting the motion and sending her hand to grip at the back of her neck as she turned and saw that Cory was next to her.

"Huh? Wh… Oh… Oh, yes, yeah, it was," she quickly nodded and smiled.

"I didn't mean to…"

"No, it's okay, I just… It's fine," Maya blinked, stealing another look to the photo before moving away from the trophy case. Cory followed.

"You're looking forward to the finals this weekend," he told her, likely assuming this was what had brought her to look at the photo and reminisce. Actually, for a minute there she'd forgotten that the games were coming up, tomorrow and Sunday.

"Always," she nodded, rolling with it. "Gotta support my students."

Maya was tempted to ask him. He had been Dylan's teacher, was now his father-in-law, and he was Phoebe's teacher now. Surely, if he hadn't pieced it together himself then he had to have… what… suspected? Maybe it was like her, where Phoebe Munroe had come into his classroom and he'd felt an immediate and inexplicable connection to her. From what she'd heard of him, when she'd come up in conversation, he sounded like he got along well with her, like she was doing well in his class. He was bound to hear about it all from Riley after Maya and Lucas talked to her and Dylan tonight, so it might not have been so big of a deal if she told him about it now, but… no… She was too concerned that, even if they went somewhere and shut the door, the windows, and she told him, it would still find its way back to Phoebe, and it was the last thing she wanted. For her sake, if she was ever told, it needed to be done with care and caution.

Getting through first period, with the seniors, was easy enough. As much as the revelation occupied her mind, once she was in that room, with those kids, she was in her element, she was able to go on. Of course once that was done, it wasn't long that the sophomores came along for their Friday class with her. All she had to do was exactly what she'd done earlier. Most importantly, she couldn't be found to stare or to get distracted in any way. It wasn't her fault that this was happening and, really, she stood to lose the most in all this. Maya wasn't about to let it happen.

She made it through the period. As she'd hoped, the rhythm had fallen into place and she'd followed it, like a song.

"Are you coming to the game tomorrow?" Phoebe came up to her after the bell had sent the group to collect their things and head out. You're not making it easy on me, are you?

"They would have to physically prevent me from entering the gym to keep me from being there, but then I'd just find a window to look through, maybe get on my husband's shoulders…" Maya told her, pretending to hang on to the edge of a window. Phoebe laughed with giddiness, looking like she might have hugged her teacher but resisted the reflex. She really cared so much for her, just as Maya cared for her, which really played so much of a part in why she wanted to be so careful in how they handled this.

"Okay, I gotta go, see you then!" Phoebe moved to leave, nearly running into the door frame before catching herself and turning her body away just in time. "Woah!" she breathed before turning a grin to her teacher and dashing off.

Maya shut the door after this and moved to stand in the corner of the room, on the same wall as the door, the better to hide her from sight. There, she could let her face experience the various emotions coursing through her mind, thinking about Dylan, and Phoebe, and their mother… She had learned so much of not judging without knowing in situations like these, thanks to her father, but… this one felt different, and maybe it was because all of a sudden she was about to be a mother herself. She just couldn't wrap her mind around why Jo… Jocelyn… had done what she'd done.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners