December 18th 2022

Chapter 352
Our Future to Play

The story went that Marianne Friar had not exactly been interested in taking up soccer, but she'd done it for her friends. Harper and June specifically were going to be playing, and so as it would happen, this trickled down the friend group, their parents checking with the other parents to see if their girls also wanted to play. Winnie hadn't been sure about it, had never been big into sports or any big active play, while Marianne was, but Marianne… was all about basketball. She'd grown up around players and enthusiasts of the sport, so it was just a part of her for as long as she could remember. She'd been learning to play since she could walk, maybe even before, and the more she grew – in age and in height – she had started to show a lot of skill and a lot of promise. Now, at a solid seven and a half, she already had plans to play on her school team as soon as she could. And through all that, she'd had a singular vision. She would play basketball.

So, when soccer had come on the table, her first response had been 'no, thanks, that's not my sport.' That was fine, that was her choice, and no one was going to force her… but they could wear her down. Harper and June really wanted it to be the five of them out there. Winnie still wasn't sure, and the thought was very clear that the only way they would get her on the team was if they got Marianne on it, too. The same went for Lily. So, finally, Marianne had changed her mind. She had joined the team for her friends. And basketball may have been 'her sport,' but she was pretty good at soccer, too, once she started to play. It had been nearly two years now since she'd started, and it was one of her favorite things to do. When she'd been performing with the musical, she'd had to step away from her team for all that time, and it had been the one disappointing spot in that entire journey.

She was back now, and watching her running around on that field, her parents and sisters, her grandparents, aunts, and uncles, whoever would be there on any given day, they would all cheer her on, as much as they would cheer her friends on when they were out there, making things happen for their team. There were signs, large and colorful, waved around by the artists who'd made them or not. It had felt like a flashback to their basketball days, making signs for their daughter and her friends, and Maya and Lucas had a smirk on their faces the entire time. They were aided by their daughters where they could, of course. Ella had been a big help, her and Tori together, as had Lucy, Kacey, and Remy. Mackenzie had been kept far, far away from the glitter, because they knew better than to try that again. Smallest of all, Aubrey had been very happy to press her little hands in paint and on to the big signs, like a proof that these well wishes were from her, too. They now had a picture of Lucas, smiling like the good girl dad he was, with hand-shaped paint marks trailing from his ears and along the sides of his face.

And they had a new special call. There'd been some debate about whether they would still use Maya and Lucas' special call, which Marianne knew very well and could perform. But then they'd come down to the fact that it was their special basketball call, not soccer. They needed one just for this. It had taken a while for them to come up with one that was satisfying to them, which had made for a lot of puzzling trial and error, at least to the people who'd heard them. Finally, they'd gotten one they were happy with, and so whenever Marianne would be on the field, she would sometimes hear her call and it would be all she needed to hear to know that they were there, and they were proud of her.

This year more than before, Maya and Lucas had watched their daughter start to take in the world around her, take it in and start to ponder her own place in it… parts of it. More than anything, she had her eyes set on the days when she would go to high school. It was hardly difficult for them to see how her mind had ended up there, with much of Maya's life outside of home revolving around that place and all that it involved. She couldn't wait to do all the things that she'd seen. All of them. She wanted to be on the basketball team, and the quiz team, too. She wanted to be in the musicals, even the knitting club. Maya didn't know that it would be possible for her to do all of those things at once, but then this was her daughter, so she wouldn't put it past her either.

With all these plans in her head, it was no wonder that she'd gotten so invested into the tail end of the school year, just like her parents did. She hadn't quite picked up the intricacies of knitting just yet, but her curiosity was there. She was attached to Michelle Day, too, and if she could learn to knit from anyone, there couldn't be a better teacher. At the art auction, it had been the club's patchwork quilt that the girls had selected as their one thing they wanted to bid on, and they had managed to win it. Now, it adorned the couch in the basement's TV room, which had fast become a new place where the girls liked to go and gather together. Lucas and Maya had more than once found them there, huddled under the large blanket as it sat draped over the row of blond heads, Marianne at the middle like a tent pole.

She had attended the last match of the quiz team under Captain Nika and looked on with such pointed interest. It was a look Maya had seen on her daughter's face for many years, nearly as long as she'd been sitting in on team sessions back at the house, and she'd done that since she was a baby. If they always said that Born Curious was family – because it was, to them at least – then Marianne was part of that, even if she wasn't technically on the team herself… not yet. The same went for the basketball team, and possibly more, where 'her sport' was concerned. She continued to maintain her chart, back at the house, having a much better handle on it now that her reading and her numbers were improving. It was actually helping her learn, which further motivated her parents to encourage it. Going to the games was a family activity, and they would try and have all seven of their girls there if they could, but if they couldn't, then Ella happily named Tori as her proxy among her aunts and her grandparents. Marianne and the triplets were most familiar with the whole ambiance, and Mackenzie was getting up there, too. They hadn't brought Aubrey until she was at least half a year old, and even then, they sometimes left her with a neighbor or an aunt or uncle. It wasn't until very recently that they'd started bringing her every time, and she was very curious about all that she saw.

This year, they had to say, the thing Marianne had looked forward to the most was attending the musical. Between their trip to New York, and everything that had progressed with her mother's musical out there, and then of course her run as Young Cosette, she could not have been more plugged into the musical world. And for that, she simply could not wait for the premiere. The day it came, she wanted to be all dressed up, their high school musical production coming off like the talk of Broadway. She always wanted to know anything new that was going on out there when her mother came back on a rehearsal day of some kind, so by the time she attended the premiere, she went around as though she'd been out there herself, and it had everyone laughing, amused.

Marianne Friar had as many years to live as she'd already lived, before she would be a high schooler, and as anxious as she was to get there, her parents would sure be glad if it didn't all happen so fast. Right now, they preferred watching her running around that field, her long blond ponytail swinging around as she went, and the rest of them in the stands cheering her on. Her little sisters treated this like they might one of the basketball games at the high school, or their father's games, too, except it was their big sister out there, and to them she was a superstar.

"What was that about?" Lucas asked, when Maya returned from going to change Aubrey's diaper with a barely concealed frown on her face. Most people who didn't know her well enough might think that all was well, but he'd known the ins and outs of that face long enough to know this was just a very good bit of masking on her part. He'd seen her talking to one of the other adults, one of the dads from the opposing team, if he was not mistaken, and whatever he'd told her had put Maya in this sour mood.

"He wanted me to prove to him that Marianne is only seven. Says she looks more like she's nine or ten." She was the tallest kid out there, sure, but that was just that.

"What did you tell him?" Lucas asked.

"I told him that if he's already looking to point the finger all over the place at his kid's soccer games when she's this small, then I feel sorry for her when she's older and he's out there pulling the same tricks," Maya replied.

"You didn't…" Lucas tried not to smirk.

"No," Maya sighed. "But I did start going on about how fast kids were growing at this age, pulled a bit of emotional mom on him… Did you see him at the end, he just gave up," she chuckled. Lucas laughed along and leaned to kiss the side of her head.

One of the biggest takeaways they had found since Marianne had started playing soccer, playing it, and really enjoying the fact that she was playing it, was a running joke that they'd never seen a kid react so well if they ever fell or were mildly injured in some way. They remembered days when Marianne had been little and had pitched a fit at the slightest bump, but now she'd end up crashing for some reason, and while her parents would be in the stands, resisting the urge to run over to her, she'd just pick herself up with a big grin and wave at them before getting back in the game. By now, they would hope that it would have taught them not to let their hearts leap when it happened, but alas…

"Let me see," Maya motioned, at the end of the game, when Marianne returned to them. She'd taken a fall earlier, and they'd seen her pick at her arm ever since. Now they saw that she had scraped her elbow, not a lot, but enough that it had bled just a bit and would scab over.

"That was right before Winnie scored, you saw that, yeah? Did you get it on the camera?" she asked, arm still being inspected by her mother. She hadn't been looking, thanks to the fall.

"Uh, I'm not sure, but we'll check," Lucas told her, smiling apologetically. They'd been looking at her, and he couldn't remember where his camera had been pointing when Winnie's goal happened. It was the first time it had happened, and he would feel bad at the thought that he might have missed it.

"I can look?" Marianne asked, reaching for the phone with her good arm. Lucas let out a breath, passed it over before excusing himself to go find Winnie and congratulate her. She still looked at him like the father she didn't have, and she would want to share this moment with him, as he would with her.

"Good news, your arm won't fall off," Maya told her with a smirk. That joke did not fly so well with every one of her daughters; some of them took it too seriously. "Did you find it?" she asked, as Marianne scrubbed through the footage. Finally, she hopped around and stood so her mother could see, too. There it was, little Winnie Grayson, getting out there and scoring for her team. She looked completely taken by surprise, but quickly it had turned to bright glee. With this to think about, what did a scraped elbow matter?

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners