January 29th 2023

Chapter 29
We Gather Once More

They did not know how they had ended up here, but they had tripped their way into December and all the way to the last day of school before the holidays. So far as the school could be concerned, with Maya, it was just any other year, and that was just as she would have them think. They did not need to be all caught up in everything else that was happening back home, did they? All they needed was their Mrs. Friar, just as they had always known her, and that was just what they got.

If what Maya had needed was a distraction, she knew she'd have it there, and so she did. The weeks running up to the holidays always made for a lot of extra cheer and activity with this club or that team, and changes or none, that remained the same. The seniors, whether her gold stars or those beyond art class, were all looking to the turn of the year, officially bringing the Class of '38 into that very year they'd carried with them from the start.

They weren't thinking about graduation or diplomas right about now though, no. What they were focused on just now was what would come right after that. They were thinking about their trip, which made for more fundraising efforts. Not for the first time, this turned into a Clash of the Bake Sales, but by now they were all used to it enough, the students included, that it became something of a game between all of them... and a friendly competition.

Maya was very popular among the eight and under crowd when she came home on bake off day with offerings from each of the tables enough for everyone to try. They couldn't have all of them on the same night, but everyone had their box to pick from for the next few days afterward, and they were so, so excited each time.

The knitting club was pretty busy, too, and while they didn't produce any baked treats, what they had set out to do was great in its own respects. They had put together a project where students commissioned mittens, choosing colors and patterns, which one member or another of the club would make for them. In the end, the whole lot was to be donated to people who would need them, heading into chillier nights. They could also put in for a full set, with a matching hat and scarf.

All through the month, it was easy to spot the knitters for how often they would be seen with their commissions coming along, in any free time they had at their disposal. Michelle Day was easily the most prolific among them, would still have been if she was put to the same available hours as the students were. Through her, full sets had been created per the selections made by the Friar girls, who very quickly became taken with the project. For some of the sisters, it was a discovery that there might be people out there, some of them as young as they were, who might not have mittens, or hats, or scarves, and it was a very alarming discovery at that.

When Maya had shared this story with Michelle, the woman had insisted on coming over that very night to help them all pick out their designs so she could make them and donate them in their names. The girls had been very happy to make these choices, and Maya suspected that, come Christmas day, they would find that not one but two of each set had been made, one to donate and one for them.

Both Maya and Stella had been very curious to see how everything would shape up with their two quiz teams as they got to this day. All this was thanks to a challenge extended between Born Curious, their art class quartet, and the brand new second team, the 'artless' team, for a match to be held at lunch on the last day before break. And since that friendly offer had been made, they had all been working overtime to get ready, so they might come away with the win and the bragging rights. They could see it all becoming tradition, and if so then they were all up for it. For now, it was these two teams that would initiate it, Rolly McNeil, Maia Bennett, Lydia Sullivan-Reyes, and Agnes Killian on one side, Sandy Abbott, Miley and Marie Nilsson, and Kip Perreault on the other.

That was the main thing on Maya's mind as she headed into school that morning, that and of course the singing and other merriment she always foresaw for her classes on that day. What stood out instead, for the better part of that morning, was another team, a squad. As she learned along with several others that day, the cheerleaders had been called on to go from class to class in small groups to bring on a bit of that holiday cheer themselves.

That was all good and fine, for the most part, except that there was this one thing: they weren't very good. It had all the makings of some comedy, the ragtag team coming together, struggling to succeed before turning it all around. Maybe that was what they would do in time, but just now they were very much in their failure era.

Maya had been getting several earfuls about how disheartening it would get at times from those of the squad that she had in her classes, people like Lydia, like Meadow Bailey, like Austin Abbott, and the Nilsson sisters through the new quiz team… They had all started this off, trying out to be cheerleaders now that the team had been reformed for the first time in so, so long, with optimism. They were all skilled enough, they trusted, to think that, once they got started, they would become a cohesive unit, a great squad to amaze people whenever they performed. Maya had been thinking the same thing, to be sure, and then she'd seen them, at their first game… Oh, everyone had seen them, and they probably remembered how it had gone, too; they certainly hadn't let anyone on the squad forget it.

They'd been doing their best to come back from that debut, but as of yet they had not come anywhere close to finding their footing. It was enough that not only did the people in attendance at the games groan to see them arrive, but so did the teams they were meant to cheer for. Frankly, even the team was getting disheartened to the point that some of them were talking of quitting. Whether they would say it or not, they were not gelling with their coach. They followed her instructions, but this was what they got for it, and now… Now they were being made to perform in classes throughout the last day before the break, and they couldn't even make themselves rally, to turn this around. They were miserable for it, far more than the other students, who for the most part ignored them the whole time.

"I can't keep doing this, I can't!" Lydia huffed when she came along at lunch time, ahead of the face-off. Maya looked at her, only a sliver of her cheer uniform visible from beneath a dark hoodie that was notably too big for her, and she gestured at it with questioning eyes. "Huh?" Lydia blinked, then after looking down, "Oh… Borrowed it from a guy in class." She left it at that, but the grin on her face suggested how that had been one good thing to come out of this day. Moment over, she rediscovered her fury and shook her head. "I'm quitting the squad, alright? I don't know what I was thinking when I joined…"

"You were thinking that you put too much pressure on yourself about your grades last year and you needed something to take some of that off. That's what you told me anyway," Marie Nilsson told her classmate and fellow cheerleader. She, like her junior class sister, was also covering up her uniform, here with a pair of matching knitted vests.

"Yeah… that…" Lydia sighed as she remembered. "I'll find something else. Still got this, right?" she gestured around, indicating the two gathered teams. "We could all quit. Turn in our pompoms. Who's in?"

"Bet Davenport would love that," Maya muttered under her breath, trying very hard not to sound hopeful at the thought. Instead, her face scrunched under the knowledge that she had to take a different approach to responding. "Look, if you all really want to quit, I'm not going to stop you. Before you do though, make sure… it's the right move? Do you still want to be cheerleaders? All awkwardness aside?" They said nothing with their words, but their faces and postures said that yes, they did. "So, if it's worth fighting for… give that a try first."

Whatever disappointments their cheer tenures were giving them, they had to put all that aside just now, and Maya was glad to see that the friendly face-off put them back where she'd hope for them to be, on the last day before a break from school. They'd still have an afternoon to get through afterward, and more class visits, too, but the hope was that they'd bring enough good feeling with them to start and turn things around. Right now, she didn't care that the squad was the principal's project. What she did care about was that it meant something to the students on the squad, or it had, and they deserved to get that back.

Without having said it in so many words, what she hoped for this afternoon came down to a sort of 'ah, screw it' spirit, where the travelling cheerleaders would just go ahead and do what felt right instead of what they'd been told to do.

The match was a close one all the way, but the new team just edged out the old one in the end to claim the win. They were very gracious about it, as were Rolly and the rest of Born Curious. Oh, were they ever going to have a rematch… probably at the end of the year.

"Looking forward to the holidays?" Maya asked Agnes as anyone who wasn't a freshman in art left the room and she was aided by the girl to set things up. "I mean…" she indicated her earrings and Agnes laughed. She'd been wearing a selection of different 'holiday shaped' earrings all through the month. Golden trees and silver bells, wreaths, and ornaments, Santa Claus… Today, they were light bulbs, one red and one green.

"Kinda, yeah," Agnes nodded with her best 'that obvious, huh?' smile. Maya chuckled.

"Big plans?"

"Always," she confirmed, her tone filled with self-explanation again. In that one word, Maya saw a lot of preparation to keep the freshman busy throughout her break, big gatherings… and she was looking forward to all of it. "What about you, Mrs. Friar?" she now asked, which made Maya realize that, since the start of the year, she hadn't had the team over to the house yet. It wasn't even about the principal, although thinking about it now, it was hard not to go there. She would have to see about reaching out to them, inviting them over somewhere before the turn of the new year. Until then…

"Oh, well, even before having a whole mess of little Santa enthusiasts in the house, we were all over it, but now… It's non-stop from the coming of the Christmas fairies on to the countdown to midnight for us," she laughed.

"Christmas fairies?" Agnes asked with a curious smile, which brought a new grin out of Maya.

"Oh, you've never heard of the Christmas fairies?" she intoned as though this was some great surprise and, at her student's laugh, she very gladly told her all about this very important part of the Friars' holiday traditions.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners