July 3rd 2023
Chapter 184
We Surround In Mystery
As strange as it could sound, when Maya had pulled into the school parking lot, she'd felt an immediate instinct to walk around the school and visit her old bench. It wasn't a sort of nostalgia-filled feeling, on her girls' first day of school and hers along with them, just a sensation in her gut that traveled all the way down to her feet and took her and her cart of diary boxes around the building and toward the tree-lined path with its benches. There were a few kids already milling about, but only one of them caught her eye, sitting quietly on the one bench that had once been a staple of Maya's student years.
For having dropped off her two youngest together that morning, and seen her triplets so thrilled to have one another, she was very confident that what Marie Nilsson wanted most of all in that instant was her big sister Miley. But she had graduated, just last spring, which meant that while she was off on her first year away at college, Marie was on her own, a senior now, and by Maya's count about five months pregnant. She was here and she wasn't, simply lost in her own mind as she sat with her backpack hugged to herself, hiding herself away from any prying eyes. There were a couple of those already, and Maya gave them a good stare, to see how they liked it. They didn't wait around too long.
"Good morning," Maya stopped in front of Marie, standing her cart to balance on its own. The girl, one of her best cheerleaders and the new captain of the Critically Bookish quiz team, looked as though she hadn't slept well in days, and also as though she'd been crying no later than that morning. She reached up now to touch her own face, making sure there were no tears for the art teacher to see.
"Good morning, Mrs. Friar," she finally spoke and, when Maya indicated the bench, she nodded. Maya sat by her side.
"What do I always say, about the people in the stands when you're out there, with the squad, or the quiz team?" she slowly asked. Marie sniffed, thought for a moment, let out a breath.
"That it doesn't matter what they think, and I'm where I am for a reason," she declared before turning her head to look at her, then back at herself. The curve of her belly was a lot more evident here, and she had clearly opted for comfort over concealment. "It's not the same for this."
"Not exactly, no, I'll give you that, but the first part definitely is. There's going to be a lot of eyes on you today, and the next few days. Eventually, they're going to move on to something else. You know how it goes." Marie nodded. "You just keep going, yeah? I'm right in there if you need me."
After leaving the senior to however many further minutes of peace before classes began, Maya set her cart in motion once again and walked into school. She had been in the building several times over the summer, so it wasn't as though she had left at the end of last year and only now returned, and yet there was still this feeling in her, of renewal, of beginning. Maybe it was the stack of boxes she led toward her classroom, full of blank sketchbooks. Either way, she was just looking forward to getting started, no matter what the principal would throw at them, and she was certain that…
"Maya! Hold up!" a voice called out, and she stopped her cart again before turning, smiling as she found her brother jogging toward her, his friends right behind him.
"There aren't many people in here calling me by my first name, you know?" she told him.
"Yeah, but I don't have to call you Mrs. Friar until the bell rings," MJ declared.
"Sure, let's go with that. What's up?" Maya asked, looking from MJ to Ash and Lydia.
"We think we just had a breakthrough," Lydia replied, sounding both winded and excited.
"No, we definitely had a breakthrough," MJ insisted.
"Alright, what are you talking about?" Maya called them all to attention.
"The cheer squad," Ash told her, and she looked at them, generally the most sound of minds among that trio. In this case, however, Maya remained at a loss for understanding. "You know, about how come there wasn't one of those at the school for all those years."
Maya blinked, recalling now. Two years back, when it had been announced that the squad would be reformed, there had been a lot of talk, whispers, as many people wondered how come it had ceased to exist, before Maya herself had even been a student. But then they'd all stopped wondering about it, hadn't they? She'd stopped hearing them all going on about it, so she'd just figured they'd decided it didn't matter anymore. Only now…
"Have you three been on about this for all this time?"
"No, well… We were, at first," MJ shrugged. "But we weren't getting anywhere, so we kind of stopped for a while."
"But then we tracked down the old coach, the one who was there when the squad was last active," Lydia continued, with a grin that suggested she'd been the one to make this discovery.
"What did she say?" Maya asked, curious despite herself.
"Nothing, she wouldn't talk to us," Ash explained.
"But after that, we decided we had to get into it, and we did," MJ went on. "We spent… most of the summer at it," he admitted, and now that she thought about it, Maya remembered those three being permanently stuck together, always looking like they were up to something.
"And… what did you find?" she asked, as she figured this was where the whole conversation was going. The trio looked at one another, then at her.
"We're not sure," Lydia frowned, and Maya closed her eyes. "I guess we were a bit… premature about the breakthrough thing," the girl reflected. "But we're close, you know?"
Whether or not that was so, for now everyone's time would be put to much better use if they went into class and started preparing for first period. They may not have been much help as far as this cheerleader mystery – 'cheerstery,' as MJ insisted on calling it – but they did speed up the process of setting out the diaries. They knew much more than she did about any developments in friendships and romances that had happened over the summer, so they were able to suggest several seat switches that would have to happen sooner or later. She didn't question it and, by the time the students arrived and were directed to their seats by MJ, Ash, and Lydia, everyone looked glad for where they ended up. When the bell rang, Maya welcomed her new seniors, who gave a resounding cheer to the acknowledgement of their final year being underway. They had all been through this three times together, so they all went through the process of catching her up about their summer break without prompt. Some of those happy unions and unfortunate partings were expressed here, which made for moments that were sweet here and awkward there. They made it through with more than half the period left to spare, so Maya left it up to them to either go and pick out materials to do something or go ahead and begin work on their last diary covers if they already knew what they would do. She always loved to see how, already knowing this would be asked of them, some students would show up with an idea already plotted out in their heads.
While some of the students did make their way to line up for the supply closet, a new topic came up. They were still in their first class on their first day, but they were seniors now, and that meant that they'd have their big trip at the end of this year. Like any graduating class in the past who'd wanted to make sure and get a head start, they had already been raising funds for this trip, but now, of course, they needed to kick things up a notch. There were several ideas tossed on the table, some of them old standards, others… slightly more out there, but what mattered was their motivation, and they had plenty of it for Maya and others to work with. The emotional rollercoaster never stopped running for her that day, and now she was having to navigate the curves and loops of the 'MJ is one school year away from being done' section of the track. It wasn't as though she hadn't gone through this with Nellie and Gracie, but now it was him, her star boy of a baby brother…
"Alright, you knew this was going to bug me, so spill," Maya demanded as she came to lean on MJ's station and look at what he and the others were doing. Ash was tracing their gold pen at their blank cover, as was MJ. Lydia had left hers alone and was drawing a 'live portrait' of her two friends where they sat and worked.
"Spill…" MJ asked, not following, which made Maya sigh.
"You know what I'm talking about," she nodded at him. He actually looked like he didn't know for a while there, but finally it clicked. "There it is," Maya bowed her head.
"Look, we're not genius detectives here, and there's not much to go on," MJ told her. "It's a lot of scraps, and they don't really fit together, but we figure maybe, if we try and look at all of them side by side, they'll start to make sense… maybe… hopefully…"
"And this breakthrough?" Maya asked. The trio looked at each other like they might have spent the summer developing telepathic abilities on top of everything. It only made her more curious than she already was, and it was way too frustrating. "Guys, come on," she tapped the top of the station, getting their attention back.
"There's really not a lot, we always saw that, but then… that's weird, isn't it? We had a great squad, and then we didn't, and there's nothing really to explain it. There should be, shouldn't there? At least… some trace? An explanation?" Ash stated. They had a good point.
"Okay, but… Where is this going?"
"The information isn't here, clearly," Lydia replied. "So, we figured if it isn't here, maybe it's somewhere else. We went down, so… who went up?"
Her words stayed with Maya for the rest of the period and even after the seniors cleared out. Who went up? They didn't suggest it, didn't go any further, not out loud, but they didn't have to. Her mind had gone right there, and possibly they'd seen the thought form in her head and responded with one of their own, something like 'so, you're thinking it, too, aren't you?'
Whether she meant to or not, over the past two years, Maya had done a lot of reading up on their new principal and her history, mostly about her career, though her personal life had come into play with the revelation of her connection to the Friars in the past. She could recite all the schools Sandra Davenport had worked at, the positions she'd held and the years she'd held them in. And she knew when this school had lost its cheerleaders, which told her where Sandra would have been at the time. One quick internet search and…
No, no, she wasn't going to do this to herself, not now, not on the first day. And what was it going to matter in the end, right? The past was the past, and now… Now she's messing with my school, and we need to get her out…
"Not now…" Maya sighed to herself. "Not today."
TO BE CONTINUED
See you tomorrow! - mooners
