June 5th 2023

Chapter 156
We Could Be There

The closer they were coming to the end of the school year, Fridays would get to be such a mix of distraction and stress as everyone looked toward finals, or finals PLUS graduation... Maya's position on this very simply became about giving everyone the space to breathe and not feel all that so long as they were in her classroom. They still had things to do, as it WAS a class, too, sure. But she wanted them to have fun doing it, and generally they did that.

This Friday, when she got to her freshmen after lunch, she became immediately aware that this was not happening across the board. One corner of the room felt very much beyond the touch of 'stress relief art class fun times.' Something was up with the Maxes.

They were doing the work, but they weren't talking. They COULD talk, as the layer of voices in the room could show, but those two, who were usually the first to jump into conversation, as though their entire friendship existed in a single, years long conversation that they simply paused and resumed on need... they were silently working. It didn't even feel like this was something where they'd had an argument and they weren't talking to each other. There was still something to them, how they existed in each other's vicinity, to tell Maya and anyone else that they were the best of friends.

But there was something happening in their lives right now and it was enough that they could do no better to deal with it than sit quietly and paint. Once, she did spot Max Farrell leaned over to whisper, but Max McAllister only looked at him and shook her head, and they both got back to work, silent and turned in on themselves.

When the class was nearly over and everyone started to pick up after themselves, Maya debated approaching them. They stuck together in all their tasks, waited for each other if one finished first, helped the other if they could... Maybe it would be better off if she didn't get involved, only showed herself available as she always did. The bell rang, and everyone started to clear out, waving at her, some wishing her a good weekend, and she wished them the same.

Max and Max gathered their things, and they waved at her as they headed out the door, so she waved back, tried not to come off too mom-like about it. She might not have helped her case as she moved into the hall after they'd gone, but it was stronger than her. When she got there, she spotted them, further up the hall, as they reunited with the third of their trip, Kinsey, coming from her own post lunch class. She fell in with them, making it clear that whatever was going on, she was aware of it, too.

She mentioned the whole situation to Lucas that night, as she would, but they didn't dwell on it too long, instead looking ahead to the following morning, where the two of them would be headed back to the school for a special event.

It was that time of year again where they all got to looking to the future and the past and present, too. Prom was coming, then graduation, but before all that they had graduated classes reuniting. The ten-year reunion would bring together the class of (year) and the likes of (student names here because I don't have them). The twenty-year one, which they would be working to prepare today, for the class of (year) would include graduates who had been in school at the same time as them, had been on the basketball teams with them, too, the first class penalized by those teams being unable to play. Lizzy Barrett, Tommy Marlowe, Étienne St-Pierre, names that might not ring familiar to people around their school today but had once meant everything to their teammates. Their 'basement party' over at the Shelby house was coming up, too, and this felt like just the kind of reminder they needed. This didn't need to be their class for this reunion to feel special to them.

That had been the year when the teams had been disbanded, there had been no season, not for them, but that didn't stop the teams from being represented in the various 'memory lane' displays that were being put together. It had absolutely made this senior year memorable one, for all the reasons they sort of wished it wasn't. Sure, they couldn't deny that this whole problem with the teams had brought them all closer, kept them close to this day, but it was impossible to say whether they would have chosen to give that up for the chance to play instead.

It was just understandably distracting for both Maya and Lucas to be involved in preparing for this reunion. All the pictures and the videos that were brought out for the graduates brought out memories for them, too. Every face they saw was like a direct line into the past. Some, like their former teammates, were clearly defined for them, with names, and anecdotes. Others had these connections, too, but only really from afar. The rest would fall under the heading of 'I know that face, I know I saw it around school all the time, but that was about as far as it went.

Where it got very interesting was when they then looked to pictures that had been submitted, along with brief questionnaires, of the returning graduates and what they had become, twenty years onward. They would see the 'new' faces, matching them with the old ones, and they'd be stunned to realize that one random face from the past had turned into a very familiar one in the present and they'd had absolutely no idea they were the same person. They saw a few of those, most prominently Peter the comic guy... and their pumpkin's beloved teacher, Ingrid McAllister.

She was there that day, too, helping in all the preparations for her reunion. When Maya saw her, she was taken with two conflicting feelings at once. The first came of seeing the woman back when she'd been a random face in the halls when she'd herself been a freshman or sophomore and now knowing who she had become... and remembering the way her daughter had been the day before. She might have hesitated about bringing any of it up, but then she looked back to Lucas and he had the same thought on his face, watching the woman. HER face strongly suggested that she was aware that things were not shiny and bright in her eldest's world at this moment. Once they saw that, the decision was clear, and they went over to talk to her.

In that moment, it was hard to say if Maya and Ingrid saw one another as one another's daughter's teacher, or former schoolmates, or any amalgamation of these that compelled them to be able to open up to one another. Maybe it all boiled down to someone really needing to talk and being presented with a suitable means to let it out.

If they were honest, Maya and Lucas both would say that the thought had crossed their minds that it could be this. They didn't want it to be this, but it all felt a little too familiar, with experiences both near to them in heart and in time... by all of weeks. They'd seen this whole dance when it had come out that Madelyn Carter had gone and found herself pregnant, and now, as Ingrid had learned the night before and the Friars learned that morning, the same unexpected expecting had come upon their Maxine.

"It's not... Max?" Maya couldn't help but ask, with the flick of the hand that always translated to 'the other one,' whichever was 'the other' at the time. Here, Max Farrell was that one, and the question was clear. It seemed impossible that those two would cross the line from friendship to more, but stranger things had happened before, hadn't they?

"No, no," Ingrid sighed and shook her head. "Strange as it sounds, I think it might have been easier if it had been, which is really not what I want to be thinking about either, he's like a son to Nat and I, and now this... I had no idea that she had even... For some reason, I was sure she would have said something, she's always been that kid. When she first got her period, well..." she stopped her sentence and waved it off, deciding her daughter would be against her sharing the story, even with what was going on now.

"How's she doing? How are YOU doing, you and your wife?" Lucas sympathetically asked.

"I don't know," Ingrid replied. "That more or less covers it. Max says she only found out a few days ago, and WE found out last night... Right now, it's just new, for all of us, and we're all doing what we can to get beyond that part, which for ME right now is this, apparently," she gestured around the gym in its activity, which went on around them even as they'd stalled.

Their families were linked already as it was, with teachers, and daughters, and old memories, with new friendships through Betsy and the McAllister women, and now with this development with Max, the next part just came naturally. As they went to leave the school together, Maya suggested that Ingrid get her wife and children and join them for dinner at the house. She hesitated very briefly, but she finally accepted, so they were on.

The McAllisters would come along in due time, three of them at least. Ingrid and Natalie brought their eldest, while her younger siblings had been left with a neighbor. Minding the fact that they were still being kept in the dark regarding their sister's situation, it felt like the only thing for them to do. It allowed Max space to let down whatever mask she felt she needed to put on while she was with people who didn't know, so they wouldn't judge her while she was still trying to deal with this thing that was happening to her. That was what they'd gather from the things she said and didn't say once she arrived.

There had been a similar thought at the Friars' house, as all the girls but Marianne had been sent across the street with their aunts, uncle, and cousin. It had made sense to keep her around when her teacher would be visiting, and she'd been THRILLED... so they'd figured that it might be a good idea to read her into the secret before their guests arrived, so she'd react in consequence. She was surprised, obviously, but immediately after her thoughts shifted into a reasonable idea: why didn't they put her Max and Madelyn together, so they could have someone that was going through the same experience at the same time, to be less alone.

They'd cross that bridge another day. For now, the trio arrived, and the mood was as strange as they'd figured it would be. Max looked like she didn't know what to do with herself, her mothers both looked like every instinct in their bodies wanted to fret over her... Maya looked to her student and felt a deep need to protect her, whatever the next several months would bring. She might make it to the end of the year before anyone found out, but by fall... everyone would know. Lucas was having similar thoughts, taking a detour toward memories of his eldest, when SHE had been a freshman and expecting.

And Marianne, their dear Sheriff, she did what came logically to her and stepped up to embrace the teen girl.

"You'll be okay," she told her. Max was surprised at the gesture, but it was so genuine that her arms might have closed in on reflex. It allowed her to settle, and breathe. She'd needed that; maybe they'd all needed that. "You won't be alone."

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners