A/N: [November 12th 2024]

November 12th 2023

Chapter 316
We Sing Through the Museum

It had been a few weeks now since the news had started to come out about Farkle and Isadora. They'd had time to adjust about as well as they ever would, so now their minds were turned to being there for their friends, as they had promised they would be. They were still not there yet as far as the actual dividing of their household. Who would move, where would they go, what would happen with the kids… It felt like the thing that was holding them up the most was the fear of the unknown, of getting it all wrong maybe… Either way, they were all doing their best to navigate this change, and none of them were nailing it. They expected nothing else.

The Friars were in on all this, too, of course, but at the same time the moment they had entered into February, their thoughts had started to turn to their eldest daughter and stay there. Ella was due to have this baby of hers… Oh, it could be any day at this point. She was close enough to her due date that an early arrival would not have felt so worrisome. Now, any time they got a call from Ella or Taylor, they would tense up the way they had done when Sunny had been about to be born. Now it had been a year and a half already, and they were waiting on their grandbaby's little sibling.

Today, Maya was imagining herself causing the most ill-timed disruption if she got a call to say she was going to be a grandmother again as she sat on the school bus with her students, all of them on their way to the museum.

This wasn't one of those times where they would be heading out with each grade over several days, or where they'd have the whole school, a whole grade whether they were in art or not. This was very specifically a trip with Maya's students, with her juniors, as they visited a photography exhibit, one that would go toward their year-long project. She had done one of these trips with the seniors for their clay already, and the sophomores for their portraits. For the freshmen, she had been entertaining the idea – maybe with the slightest spiteful edge to her, imagining the principal's reaction – of bringing the freshmen to the comic book store for their own project.

The juniors were not nearly as chaotic here as they could be in class, which was saying something, because bus rides had a way of bringing out a lot of energy out of a group of kids like them. Out here though, in this moment, they were thinking about their projects, and the exhibit they were about to see… Maya loved seeing their excitement so much. It more than made up for the fact that she didn't have her usual co-chaperone by her side on this trip.

When they arrived at the museum, they filed out of the bus, a very manageable group on the whole, which helped, seeing as Maya was on her own looking after them. She still expected some of them to wander off on their own, and she wouldn't necessarily stop them when they made their attempt. She wanted to see what they'd do, what they'd discover. And in the spirit of this semi-casual field trip, they had guests.

"Mama!" the little voices seemed to redouble over one another, coming to surprise the group, none more so than the one they were calling for. Max McAllister very quickly turned her head at the sound of her twins' voices, and the love that burst from her as she saw them dashing hand in hand away from their babysitter and toward her…

"Hi! Hi! What are you doing here?" she asked Daisy and Callum, her tone much closer to joy than curiosity.

"Didn't you say you wished you could take them here?" Maya shrugged, and her student smiled on. Yes, she had said something to that effect. Now here she was, and here were her children, their many 'aunts and uncles' from Mama's school closing around to say hello. They made their way into the museum, the little ones paired up to their mother and their favorite uncle Max on their way in. The way those two were together, one might have compared them to a twin pair, too. It wouldn't have been all that inaccurate. They carried themselves not just like a brother and sister but like a brother and sister that had been bonded since back in the womb. It was as funny as it could come off in Maya's head, and it made them perfect to see to the actual fraternal twins.

As the students – and the children – got lost in the great exhibit around them, Maya felt as at ease as ever. That was just how she felt whenever she was in a museum, a gallery… It felt like home. Most of the artists on display here were either complete strangers to her, or known only through their work… Either way, it made her happy to connect with their work. And if she was very fortunate, as she was that day, she could say that she had the privilege of knowing one of the artists, that she had done so for more years than she had not, and that she got to call him Dad.

It wasn't the reason why she'd brought them out to this exhibit out of any of the ones she might have taken her students to see, but she had to say it made her smile if ever one of them looked at a photo, saw the name set by its side, and just do a bit of a double take. They'd look at her as if to ask 'Isn't that…' and she would just laugh on the inside. Her father would not know what to do with himself if he was there when this happened, and that only made it better.

This was a much better prospect than the alternative, which was that her thoughts would be drawn back to thinking about Sandra Davenport. The principal had been there to see them off, back at the school, as they'd boarded the bus, and it had made Maya annoyed enough that she was lucky she had as much control over her face as she did. She would betray nothing of what was going through her mind. She knew that was what the woman had been trying to do, too, as though she would have ever given her the satisfaction. Maya would have maybe been so bold as to say that Sandra Davenport was getting nervous. She didn't know what was going on, but she felt as though something was happening. How maddening that must have been, and if she didn't have the last three and a half years playing back in her mind, Maya might have felt bad about it. As it was, she would gladly stand by and watch as Sandra's fingers slipped, one by one, until her grip would release completely.

She had been talking with Caroline Renshaw more and more in the last few weeks. She would never involve the former cheer coach any more than the woman would wish to be involved, and she didn't set out to involve her, really. But then they were talking more and more, and as time had gone on, Maya had sensed a shift between them. They were bonding over cheer stories, about school stories, and as Maya would share her side of it, there would be no way to prevent the topic of Davenport and everything she'd been doing at the school from emerging. Eventually, Caroline had started to ask outright about learning more, and Maya had obliged her, allowed her to get a better picture of the state they were all in. Clearly, it was the last thing Caroline had ever wanted, for the woman who had chased her off from the job she'd loved to go and seat herself in the same school where she'd been at home. By now, she was talking about those days leading up to her departure, telling Maya everything she might have wanted to know and more. They were after the same thing, both of them, for the sake of the school and the students.

"We're not allowed to take pictures of the exhibit, are we?" Rafa came to ask his teacher after having spent a few minutes standing before one of Shawn's displayed photos.

"That would be a no," Maya had to tell him.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that," Rafa nodded. "I just sort of thought…" he gestured back toward the illuminated still in its frame.

"Yeah, I know," Maya assured him. He wanted to show Haley that he'd been there, that he'd seen her father's work today. Maya wondered if she might have been able to get away with enabling an exception to the rule, seeing as she, too, was the daughter of this artist, but it was better off, for his sake and the others' that they stuck to what was available to them. "But I'm sure she'll be just as happy to hear you tell her about it," Maya told the boy, smirking as it clicked for him that she knew precisely where his head had been at.

"I guess she will… I'll do my best to describe it for her." Maya tried not to laugh as he moved to rejoin his exchange camper. Young Mr. Silva was having a great day out here, his eyes bright with the overwhelming presence of things for him to see, to discover. He was still learning how to work his camera, like a lot of his classmates for the year, but she could see the way he took everything in today. He wanted so much to look at the work of these artists and see if he could do anything new, if he could think about what he'd been shown in class, and see where these things had been applied here, and do as they had done.

"Fancy meeting you here," a voice called up, and this time Maya was the one to hear it, recognize it, and turn. Much as she would have hoped it did, this voice did not belong to her husband, but it was someone she was just as intrigued to find here, in some respects maybe even more. What was Vice-Principal Alistair Song doing at the museum? She asked him that question, without sounding too caught off-guard. Obviously, he had known she would be surprised. "I… Well, I guess you could say that… I'm a fan of the arts," he quietly declared.

The statement gave her pause, the good kind of pause. The hidden meaning was right there for her to uncover, outlined beneath its cover. He was on her side in all this, as he had been, as he had shown her… to the best of his ability. There were those times where he could only do so much, could not stop the woman positioned above him, but for him to come out here that day, with those words… Maybe he was ready to push further. As he joined the juniors through the rest of their exploration of the exhibit, Maya felt very much that this was his way of sending a clear message. Even though he didn't go right out and say it that way, his demeanor seemed to say 'I know you're up to something. Whatever it is, I'm in.' Between him, and Caroline, her fellow teachers, the students… They were entering the final battle, all of them.

"So, the freshmen are using comics for their final project."

"I've heard that," Alistair confirmed with a nod.

"I want to take them to a store…"

"Leave it to me. When do you want to go?"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners