A/N: I think I want to try to finish this story before 2016 as well. Wrote this chapter out in fairly quickly while on break from studying.
(Also, this winky face ;3 is for a specific someone. You know who you are lol)
Thank you for the support to the preliminary chapters guys! I'm glad you enjoyed it! I hope the rest of the story is definitely enjoyable for you! As long as you guys are happy, I'm happy too :D
Disclaimer: I do not own Girl Meets World, but… eh I got nothing…
"Miss Hart?" Anna said, poking her head in the classroom door, "My daddy's late again."
Maya stood up from her crouch in the back where she was cleaning up the toy bin. One of her poor sick students had vomited after lunch time and Maya hadn't had a chance to properly sanitize it after wiping away what had been left behind by the boy. Maya had had to leave her classroom in the hands of one of the first grade teacher's assistants who thankfully had been in the hallway so that Maya could take Daniel to the nurse's office.
"Alright." Maya said, gesturing to the arts and crafts boxes on one of the tables, "I don't have art club today. Feel free to use any of that stuff you want. I just have to finish cleaning this up and then I'll see if we can find you something fun to do."
"Okay!"
Anna skipped over the table and plopped in her favourite green chair, pulling out a pack of coloured pencils from the box. Maya watched her for a moment, making sure she was situated and settled in her activity before she continued to finish wiping down the toy bin.
It had been a little while since Maya's impromptu meeting with Anna's father, and she was happy to see that there were definite improvements. Though he was often late to pick her up and although he couldn't always pick her up or drop her off, Maya could tell Lucas was still making efforts to better take care of his daughter and that was what Maya knew was important and counted. As long as he took the time to really make sure Anna felt cherished and loved, that was important.
Anna herself seemed over the moon happy about it. Maya could tell the girl was really fond of her father. During playtime or show and tell, Anna's usual choice of conversation with her friends or for a presentation was about Lucas and how he would take her to the park to practice her catching or how he helped her paint her bedroom a new colour or when they tried to make smoothies and he forgot the lid of the top of the blender and they had a race to see who could clean up the fastest. At last week's show and tell, Anna had brought her father's stethoscope and talked about the puppy she got to play with who Lucas had been taking care of at their home.
It truly brought a smile to Maya's lips. The bond between parent and child was a crucial one, and she was definitely pleased to see that Lucas had taken her advice and was spending more time with his daughter.
Maya closed the toy bin with a relieved sigh when she was finally done sanitizing the entire surface, wiping her brow before tossing the used napkins in the big garbage bag beside her. She rose to her feet, her back and knees cracking wonderfully as she straightened. She tied up the top of the garbage bag before lugging it next to her trash bin at the front. Maya glanced around her classroom, making sure everything was fairly in place for the next day. There hadn't been much disorder that day because after the little vomit spiel, she'd sent the kids outside with another second grade class so she could clean the contaminated area. So the remainder of the free time was spent outside of the classroom, thus diminishing Maya's overall cleanup at the end of the day.
Rolling her shoulder to loosen up a kink, Maya made her way over to Anna's table where the small girl was humming to herself, kicking her legs back and forth as she gripped a green coloured pencil, scribbling on the paper in front of her.
"That's a nice green dog." Maya said in amusement as she looked over Anna's shoulder.
"It's Minnie." Anna said, taking the purple and adding polka dots to the fur.
"Who's Minnie?"
"She's my future dog. She's just like the golden retriever puppy my daddy is taking care of only she's going to be the colours of the rainbow. I really want a puppy so bad, but Daddy says I can't get one until I'm twelve. That's such a long way away though!"
Maya smiled to herself. The age old trick. Parents told their kids they could have something at some obscure much older age, expecting the children to forget about it by then since by that point they would most likely develop other interests or understand more what was involved in the request and lose interest.
"Well at least until then, if you keep drawing your dog, your dad will know exactly what kind of dog you want in the future."
Anna nodded. "But I'm trying to save up so I can buy my own. I'm going to do a lemonade stand and sell it and then I'll make enough money to buy Minnie and Daddy can't say no."
Maya chuckled softly, but didn't respond, unsure what to say in answer to the girl's belief. Maya glanced at another drawing Anna seemed to have left unfinished. It looked like a flower store from what she was seeing. There was an assortment of colourful flowers in the front of a door and window. But it seemed like she had stopped halfway through the drawing of the actual building. Most of it all looked fairly 3D in a sense—well at least a child's version of 3D—save for the building, which looked kind of like an odd square. But it was rather impressive.
"Do you like to draw, Anna?" Maya asked, intrigued.
Anna grinned toothily up at her and nodded emphatically, her dirty blonde curls bouncing around her face.
"I do! I love to draw! It's so much fun!"
"Yeah?" Maya pulled out the chair beside her and sat in it, her chin resting on her palm. "I didn't know that. What are your favourite things to draw?"
"Well… I like to draw dogs. And cats and hamsters. They're the easiest!" Anna tapped her chin in thought. "I want to draw the night sky with the stars like I used to see in Texas but there are so many stars."
"What about buildings?" Maya asked, pointing to the drawing Anna had discarded.
"I want to draw them too… But they're so hard!" She whined, her lips poking out in a slight annoyed pout. "Every time I draw them, they don't look real."
"They're not too hard. Here let me show you." Maya smiled, taking a pencil out of the art box and pulling a sheet of white paper from the pack before setting it on the table. Anna scooted her chair closer, leaning into Maya to see what she was doing. "Have you ever heard of perspectives in art?"
"Prefectives?" Anna asked in confusion, "What's that?"
"Perspectives." Maya chuckled. "It's when you draw something from a different angle or side."
"I don't get it."
"Let me show you." Maya set one of her giant 'Oops' erasers upright on the table, turning it so that the letters were facing Anna directly. "Do you see the letters on the eraser?"
Anna nodded, her rapt attention on the eraser.
"See how the letters are facing us from the front? You're seeing it from the front. You're seeing it from one perspective. But if we turn it like this…" Maya rotated it at an angle. "The letters look slightly different because you're seeing it from a different side, right? In this case, the letters farthest from you look a little smaller and squished, don't they? You see something different because it's a different perspective."
"Oh I get it now!"
"Right. So when you look at a building from the front, it looks like this." Maya roughly sketched out the front of her apartment complex. "But if you look at it from a specific side or perspective…"
Maya drew it from an angle, mentally drawing out her perspective lines before drawing the building through basically muscle memory. She'd gone through the process so many times, she basically no longer had to look or think about it.
"See? What I just drew here is called two point perspective. And you can even put other buildings next to it. If something is closer to you, you make it bigger. If something is farther away, you make it smaller."
Maya quickly sketched in the rest of her block, filling in the sketch with a couple other random things like cars and trees on the sidewalk. And just for fun, she penciled in a miniature pregnant Riley who was supposed to be on a jog but stopped at a hotdog cart for a quick bite to eat.
"Wow!" Anna gasped in shock, her blue eyes wide. "This is so cool! It looks like I'm really standing there! How do you do that?"
"It's really simple. You can learn it too."
"Can you teach me?"
"Of course I can, Anna Banana."
"You're such a good artist!"
"Thank you, sweetie. You are too."
"How come you're not an artist, Miss Hart?"
Because it was a dream lost. Because Maya had never had the courage to try to strive for that dream and before she knew it, she had yet another regret tacked on to her already long, pathetic list. All her life, she'd only ever been someone who couldn't ever accomplish anything.
She was Maya Hart afterall.
Good things never happened for her because she'd never been destined for anything great.
She never would be more than that scared girl who hid her fear behind her bravado and made mistake after mistake after damn mistake.
Maya smiled warmly, tucking one of Anna's loose coils behind her ear.
"I'm not an artist because if I was, I wouldn't get to be you guys' second grade teacher."
"I guess that makes sense." Anna stared at the paper. "Hey Miss Hart? Can I keep the drawing? I really like it. I want to try the prespectors at home."
"Of course you can." Maya laughed.
There was a knock on Maya's room door after that and they both turned around. Lucas was standing at the door, looking just a little out of breath, his tie crooked and looking like it had been hastily loosened.
"Daddy!" Anna exclaimed, hopping out of the chair and running over to him with her arms outstretched.
"Hey Sugar Plum."
Lucas stooped and caught her just as she jumped, letting out a slight grunt as he hoisted her up and rested her on his hip. Anna giggled, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her head on his shoulder. Maya smiled as she began the cleanup of the art supplies. It was a touching scene, parent and child.
"Did you forget to wear a jacket today?" Lucas asked Anna in concern, smoothing down her flyaway wild hairs.
"Yeah, but only because it wasn't cold in the morning." Anna lifted her head in excitement. "Can we get ice cream?!"
"I don't think so, Anna." Lucas rose a brow. "Mrs. Coleman told me you didn't eat your broccoli yesterday and tried to feed it to Callie."
Anna pouted. "But Daddy…"
"Tell you what, if you get an A on your next math test, we can get ice cream."
"Okay!"
Maya chuckled to herself before setting the box of art supplies back on its shelf and going to her desk to gather her keys and her bag. She stuffed her things in there before slipping on her jacket.
"Sorry for being so late to pick her up." Lucas said, addressing Maya, "We had an absence from an illness, so I had to take care of their patients too today. It took a little longer than I expected. Thanks again for watching her."
"No, it's fine." Maya locked her desk drawer before picking up the drawings from the table and Anna's bookbag from the floor and making her way over to the two. She handed them to Lucas with a smile. "I had a lot of fun with Anna. And I'm glad you're still picking her up. Late or not, you still showed up and that's what counts. I'm glad you've started prioritizing what is most important."
"Well, I do have you and your insults to thank for that." Lucas' lips were curved in a slightly amused smile as he slung Anna's bag onto his shoulder and then handed Anna the drawings when she eagerly reached for them.
"In my defense, you definitely deserved it." Maya pointed out, cutting off the lights in her room before walking out of the door with Lucas. "You attacked me first."
"I guess I did come off a little vicious. But attack's kind of a strong word, don't you think?"
Maya rose a brow, giving him a deadpan look as they slowly made their way toward the front of the school.
"You called me an issue."
"Okay fair enough. I might have slightly attacked you in some way." Lucas chuckled, "But in my defense, I was only looking out for what's best for my daughter. But I do have to say, I'm pretty glad now that art is included. Anna is always telling me she loves it when you let them do arts and crafts in class. She has so many of them in her room."
"Well I'm glad you enjoy it so much, Anna Banana." Maya stated.
"They're really fun, Miss Hart."
"That's good to know." Maya turned to Lucas again. "Hey, I run an art club after school for students who want to understand art more or are interested in it. It's only open to students in the third grade and higher, but since you tend to finish work well after Anna is done with school and she seems to already have a pretty good grasp of art and its components for her age, I would love to have her be a part of it. That way, she won't have to wait forever for you to be done, and it's within the realm of her interests."
"Okay. How do you feel about that Anna?"
"Yeah! Can I daddy? Can I be in the art club? I want to learn prespectors with Miss Hart!"
"Of course you can."
"Yay!" Anna cheered.
Lucas gave Maya a confused look, no doubt wondering what Anna had meant by prespectors, and Maya laughed to herself, mouthing the word 'perspectives' to clarify. Lucas nodded in understanding, a smile also gracing his lips.
"Great. So I'll send her home with the permission form tomorrow for you to sign."
"Understood." Lucas said as they stopped in front of the teacher's lounge, "Thanks again for everything, Ms. Hart."
"Sure, no problem." Maya responded with a smile, "Have a good evening."
"You too."
He walked on out of the school, and Maya waved back to Anna when she lifted her head again and waved emphatically.
"Goodbye Miss Hart! See you tomorrow!" she shouted, her voice bouncing down the hallway with a slight echo.
"Goodbye, Anna Banana!"
After they turned the corner, Maya dropped her arm, making her way into the teacher's lounge. It was empty, most teachers likely having gone home for the day. Maya went through her final rounds. Checking her mailbox. Checking the announcements board. Checking the memo board. She took out her bottle of water from the fridge before sticking it in her bag.
Only then did Maya check her phone.
And just like the day before, there was nothing. No calls. No texts. No nothing.
Another disappointment.
Maya sighed dejectedly, dragging her feet as she left the teacher's lounge and made her way home, mentally ticking off another failed day in her mind.
Another day that went by without finding anything.
Another day that she lost a bit more hope that tomorrow would be different.