A/N: [July 6th 2024]

September 24th 2023

Chapter 267
We Ask For Diaries

August Girl season was upon them once again, and as of this year, it did not start with the Hunter twins, on the second week. Instead, right there in the beginning, the time was upon them to celebrate one Sunny Munroe-Friar.

If Maya and Lucas had been overwhelmed at the thought that their baby granddaughter could be a whole year old already, it was nothing compared to how her parents felt. When the growing family arrived, both Ella and Taylor looked like they didn't know whether to cry or laugh whenever their baby girl went and did things that showed how much she had evolved into the tiny child she was.

Her pack of young aunts had no trouble dealing with the fact that she was getting bigger. They all loved it, so much so that they had asked if they might include Sunny in the diary routine this year. Could she do much more than maybe hand over gold pens to be attached to the finished books? Probably not, but she could do that, so why not? For that, their day would begin at the mall.

The party this year included Maya, Ella, Taylor, Tori, Sunny, Marianne, and Shonagh. Marianne saw it as essential that she not leave her guest behind unless she should absolutely have to for some reason, which had not yet happened. The young XC could not have found herself in a better place when she'd applied to spend this year at Sullivan Stables, or so both she and Marianne believed and fiercely declared. When they got to the art store, while Maya, Ella, and Taylor saw to getting the new materials into the boxes, the two girls along with Tori went and explored, deciding that they needed to create some very special project for Sunny's birthday, and for the birthdays of all the other August girls that would follow her. It was hard to decide just what they would do, and they didn't end up buying anything in the end, but that was not a problem. It was practical at times to have an art teacher for a mother, and this was one of those times. They would think of something, and it would be as spectacular as it should be; they deserved no less.

The art project would have to wait until later. First, they needed to head back home and see about those boxes full of blank diaries waiting to be given names, and messages from Mrs. Friar. They had too many willing hands for the task itself, so, they decided to split it, alternating from box to box. Ella would 'assist' her birthday girl, sitting in her lap, as she'd pass gold pens to her grandmother – and hopefully not stick them in her mouth first – and Shonagh would proudly see to the elastic bands, while the Friar girls would pass the books along, from the box, to Maya, and back again.

Starting with the seniors, there was always that twist of knowing these would be the last diaries she made for this set of students, which never changed, but this one definitely felt different in its own way. She couldn't help thinking about how this graduating class would be the first – and the last, if she had any say – to have Sandra Davenport as its principal from start to end. She didn't want to think about them like that though. She was so proud of them. Some more than others, she couldn't deny that, because she'd gotten to know some of them more than others, that was always the case, but still…

She thought of Freddie Jacek, who had become such an ally, him and Rafa together, behind the scenes of the student government… when they'd had one… And Austin Abbott, who'd had a far from stellar beginning and was now in line to captain the cheer squad, with far more confidence than she would have suspected on day one. She thought of Noor Kaur, who'd always had her very own style, never sacrificed, always furthered, which Maya had loved to witness. And she thought… Well, she thought of Agnes Killian. Up until that night at Stella's wedding, she would have been able to say that here was a girl who'd spent the last three years being such a positive role model and influence in her class, doing so much to help her fellow students, but now there was… the other thing… She didn't know if or when they would ever know for sure, but Maya already felt so strongly that she was correct. Her wish for Agnes in this last year of high school, if she was who she thought she was… Peace of mind, for her, for all of them.

Moving into the juniors' box, Maya's thoughts quickly went to their other international XC, the unexpected Gabriel. They still could not believe the swap that had happened, with no warning at all… There had been no deception intended, simply a quick solution to a last minute problem, and she was only glad that it had ended positively. Gabriel got to stay, at the ranch with Rafa and his mother, at the school where he would soon begin, and in the exchange program as a whole. Getting a look at his school records from back in Brazil, he very much belonged with the juniors despite being of an age with students down in middle school. He'd have no trouble integrating the school, not with Rafa at his side. He'd started looking to him like a little brother, and Gabriel seemed glad for it.

Looking to the group starting the second half of their years with her, she had a lot of hopes for them, too. Their year had been disturbed as well, how could it not, when it had come out about Max and her very public pregnancy, along with Marie's, and Madelyn's… and then Rafa had really taken a hit with the dissolution of the student government… Not all of it had been bad, but the things that had been difficult had really weighed on some of them, so this year really needed to have something of a clean slate feeling. She knew that if she went up the road to mention this to Amy Dixon, her neighbor – and boyfriend and classmate Jake Bennett, who sometimes seemed to live out there with how often she saw him or his car – would come up with something and decide she could handle it.

She would go through her lists in order as much as possible, not just jumping to one name or another she might have been drawn to. Even so, as she started to go through the sophomore box, her eyes kept ticking down to Hunter, Haley, and it made her laugh to herself a couple of times, to the confusion of her daughters. So, she explained how, when she'd told her little sister that they'd be doing this today, Haley had smirked and challenged her not to go and cry when she went and prepared her second diary already. She'd insisted that she wasn't as emotional as that, which had gotten her a quartet of curved brows from her Hunter siblings. If the intent had been for them to help her combat those emotions, maybe they'd pulled it off.

This class had for sure had a rockier start than they might have anticipated when they'd kicked off their freshman year, thanks to another pregnancy, which had earned them way too many assemblies, and videos, and pamphlets about what they should or shouldn't do, all so that they would not end up like Madelyn, having a baby as young as she'd done. A lot of them had had to deal with a lot more interference from their parents because of it, though none would have gone through as much as Madelyn herself, who'd had to sit through a lot of those and feel so many eyes on her all the while. Now she'd be returning, and much as they would all hope that this chapter would be behind them, Maya knew that the girl was still worried about what people would say to her. She was returning though, and Maya and Haley would be at the top of her protection team, letting all know how proud they were of her for how she'd handled herself and the situation she'd faced.

"That's the best box," Marianne told Shonagh when they moved to the final class.

"Why?" she asked, intrigued at once.

"Because everyone's new in there," Marianne told her, and Maya smiled, tipping her head in a thought that her firstborn caught. "Mostly new. We know some of them outside the school."

"Like Cate," Maya reminded her, and Shonagh beamed. She was already attached to her fellow XCs, and so of course she knew about her, and Gabriel, and Ricky, too, even if he wasn't in any of those boxes. She and Marianne both went and stood where they could see what would be written inside Cate Ngo's diary, and inside Katie Willows' as well.

She hadn't been someone they knew very well up until she'd come to collect Cate at the ranch, but they had definitely seen her around. Her parents both worked at the supermarket, and she'd been hanging around there since she was little. Now, she had started working as a cashier, and they were seeing if there was any way that Cate might get to work, too, while she lived with them.

They also knew people that fell under the category of 'next in line,' younger siblings whose older brothers and sisters had come before them, though some were known even beyond all that, and they had two of those this year thanks to Willy Bennett and Julie Dixon. The former was now the third of the Bennett kids to cross the halls, after Maia and Jake, while the latter followed her older sister Julie. Considering that their older brother and sister respectively were currently dating, it was to wonder how those two would be in the same class. Willy, Maya knew, was a lot quieter than his big brother, and the same went for the Dixon girls. As much as Amy would try and test the limits, Julie was very satisfied with her own boundaries right where they were. The one thing that made them like their older siblings was basketball. Jake and Amy were on the school teams already, and Willy and Julie were just one tryout away from joining them. Maya couldn't wait to see them all out there. There was always something special about teammates who also happened to be siblings.

"Why is there a star next to her name?" Marianne asked, as she'd only just started the alphabetical list. Maya looked down, as though she hadn't noticed it.

"Oh, that's a note for me," she explained, then seeing as that wouldn't be enough. "This girl, her name is Angie Anna Bowles. I haven't met her yet, but she… Well, she's had some medical issues, the last few years, and she might be absent from time to time, days, maybe a week or more at a time, so we have to take that under consideration, for her lesson plans."

They did not know that she even existed until she'd told them about her, had never seen or known her, but now they knew this, and the girls looked upset on her behalf. Before the new diary would be put back in the box, Marianne, Shonagh, Ella, and Lucy all insisted on leaving little doodles on the inside of the cover, around Maya's note, cheerful things that would hopefully make Angie Anna smile when she saw them. Maybe this book would follow her, through good times and bad, and they wanted her to know that they were thinking of her already.

When all was said and done, all the boxes settled and waiting for the start of the school year, there was nothing they all wanted more than to go and celebrate Sunny's first birthday. The kitchen became a garden of colorful balloons and banners, and there was cake, one for Sunny to dig into with both hands at the ready, and one for the rest of them to share, the better to mark the day she had come to brighten their lives.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners