June 21st 2023

Chapter 172
We Swim Through the Season

She would get teased - lovingly, always - about how into her task she would get every year at this time. Her father would be the top hitter in this, always, though Lucas would not be far behind. With a parade of her siblings living in the house over the years, especially those who lived on the second floor and so near to her art room, she'd get it from them, too. She'd take it all with a smile and a laugh. She had grown attached to her yearly teacher routine, and this was a big part of it.

Every summer, after she'd had time to fully put a school year to bed, she would go and turnover her files on her students. Last things would be added, projects, notes, letters... The senior files would join the others, and the freshman, sophomore, and junior files would be updated to mark their ascension into the next grade up. She'd prepare the new files, as best she could at this point in time, to receive documents regarding her freshmen for the coming fall.

She would take the pictures of her senior diary farewell sketches, in their back covers, and add it to the pictures she'd taken before, a whole collection she could look back on and recall her former students whether they had graduates weeks ago or nearly a decade ago. She knew that her girls would be looking forward to flipping through the new additions, and the older ones, too, as they often did. They were all getting old enough now that all the names and their diaries would be familiar to them, almost like the characters in a grand story where their mother was the star. She would mention any one of them and they would look up with recognition in their eyes, whether or not they had ever actually seen the people in question with their own eyes.

When she'd started hearing about how things were going on the senior trip, it was as good as some special summer episode of their ongoing saga, and they ate it up. Most of what she had to share came via encounters with various parents she encountered while out and about in the city, and she would amuse the fellow parents, telling them how the news was about to be very entertaining to her pack of little blondes.

Everything she heard indicated that the trip was going very well. Maybe her favorite part was that, exceptionally, there was a future senior among them. Nothing prevented it, and anyway they would have been of this graduating class if they hadn't repeated freshman year. They hadn't known they would go right away, and they had quietly been excited for their girlfriend anyway. But then Ash Bell's father, as a gift, had gone and paid their way, so that they could go and travel with their girlfriend as they might have done of they had graduated on time. It had been the best thing he could have done for them, and now they were having the best time with Maia and the other graduates.

She heard about the Bailey-Ryan siblings, who had made it their mission to take the best and funniest pictures for little sister Mary, who had hated for them to go even as she'd soon have to contend with the fact that they'd be moving out of the house once they returned to Texas. And she heard about Angel Ríos, who was following his path of reminding his art teacher of herself and her friends in his choices, as he sent back news of the museums he had been visiting along the way and all the things he'd seen.

"He used to be so quiet," his mother smiled wistfully, sitting with her husband at the Friars' table, dinner plates now emptied. They could vaguely hear the girls playing and laughing in the other room, led by Talia Ríos herself. "And that was fine, I mean this one was very quiet when we were kids," Lita turned a different smile to her husband, who nodded as he recalled those same days just as fondly. "But we wanted so much for him to go and find a way to be the person we knew him as at home."

Maya nodded, recalling more than one parent teacher session where Mr. Ríos had stated how his son wanted to be more open but never managed to get there. Without them saying it, she knew they credited her with a big part of Angel pulling it off, but she'd place far more of that credit on to Angel himself, above anything she had ever done. She had nudged, she had encouraged what the young man already presented, so it didn't feel so big a thing, but it was all about the big picture, with him, with all her students of past, and present... and future...

"What do you think this coming year will be like?" Lita asked her former colleague, unspoken words as bold as the spoken. Principal Davenport and her new projects, her teams...

"I don't want to have to think about it," Maya plainly stated with a sigh. She didn't have a choice though, did she? She couldn't just say 'it's summer, I'm not teaching, I don't have to think about anything except my family, including my new grandchild about to be born, and my friends.' If she just sat on her hands all this time and did nothing about this Davenport problem, she would absolutely regret it later.

"I understand," Lita nodded, like she could have understood everything that had gone through Maya's mind just now.

"She has done nothing that's good for the school in the time she's been there. Any sort of good that could have happened, it started out as her making an image play and ended up with the rest trying to make due with what we had," she finally elaborated.

"Like the cheer squad," Lucas offered, and Maya nodded, in total agreement. "She wanted the squad, but I don't think she ever bothered to keep up with it or she would have seen she didn't have a good coach, not until Maya stepped in and got made to take her place."

"By accident," Maya easily reminded the others. "It's been like that for the last two years. And this probably won't be all that different." No one would say it, but they all knew, to some degree or another. They both wanted and needed for Sandra Davenport to go away. They just didn't know how to make it happen.

If they wanted allies in this fight, they never had to worry about finding them. Maya already knew of plenty of students especially who were just waiting for some kind of signal, who very likely were not actually waiting and had probably either set some schemes in motion or had at least pieced them together, where no principals could hear or intervene. She easily thought of those of the students at their school who were members of the multi-school endeavor that was the LGBTeam.

They had all really flourished into something beyond wonderful in the time since they'd first come together. Since they were their own thing, it didn't matter whether some members graduated high school. It didn't keep them from playing, not when some of their members had never been in high school to begin with. Some had been in college at the time, or even beyond. For sure, their numbers exceeded a standard team, so if they were to face off against another, they couldn't all play, which was fine, as their various stages in life made it so that they weren't always available to meet, to play a game with some opponent or another.

Either way, they had become a strong community, and an active one as far as getting involved, whether it was for people like themselves or not. It was really something to see. And so when it came to something like the school, and the principal's entire stance on the arts, they were already raring to go, all of them. All they needed was a rallying cry, and they'd be pulling together, no hesitation. Maya knew that this determination would someday come to save the day, and she was just waiting to see it.

For sure, the LGBTeam would have the members of both Born Curious and Critically Bookish to stand alongside them, backing them up. That had always been the thing, hadn't it, at least for Born Curious over the years, and now that their new second quiz team was part of the mix, well… their strengths felt doubled in power, and the thing that brought comfort to Maya was that she was almost certain the principal had no idea just what they were capable of.

She could see the ways in which this statement could look doubtful, especially right about now. Never mind that those teams had her name written all over them and she was squarely in the principal's sights because self-preservation was a thing, but now… Oh, now, she had two of their members, one in each team, who had gone and become pregnant, a fact that had for sure reached the principal by now. For there to be one of them would have been one thing, yes, but two now… She could just see the woman sitting out there, looking for a way to spin this and somehow make it her fault, like she had incited Max and Marie to go and end up pregnant. It was a ridiculous notion, but Sandra Davenport could be a very ridiculous person without trying very hard. Or maybe Maya did not feel sorry about getting bitter about her it came to her students and looking out for them.

And now she was having to face a decision about the coming year and their new recruits, one of them in particular. She did not know the majority of the freshmen yet, but she for sure knew a few of them, including one she had known from the day she was born, one Haley Hanna Hunter Hart, their 4H. Maya had already been teacher to three of the four little Hunters, and none of those three had shown any inclinations whatsoever toward being part of the quiz team, but Haley absolutely did, and she had begun campaigning for her big sister to pick her for the open slot. Personally, Maya would absolutely want to say yes and take her on, but she didn't feel that she could do it, at least not like this. What would it look like if she'd given the other students no chance at all and immediately picked her own sister?

Maya could imagine that Haley would have plenty on her plate already in those first few months of the school year, whether or not this would interfere with her desire to be on the team. She would be starting freshman year, but then so would her best friend, Madelyn, and she would be starting that year with a belly she'd be unable to hide, from what they were already seeing. It could be a comfort to know that she wouldn't be alone, with Haley there, and with Max and Marie going through a very similar experience, but that hardly felt like the right word.

She thought a lot about Lita Ríos' question, and about her turnover up on the second floor, about those three young girls… If any people were going to hold back the wave of Sandra Davenport's influence in their school, she would for sure be one of them, as she had been before. This year though… This year felt different, more urgent, like if they didn't keep as steady as they could, with their feet firmly planted in the ground, they would all be razed over. And she may not have been New York Maya for the better part of her life now, but Texas Maya could be just as powerful… if not more so.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners