A/N: [October 30th 2024]

October 30th 2023

Chapter 303
We Rise Under Secrecy

She didn't know why she thought this when she saw proof to the contrary every single time, but sometimes she would walk into the school on a Monday morning with the expectation that she would find no one in the art room, or maybe only part of those two teams, not all eight of them. But then she'd be walking up the hall, not even arrived at the room yet, and she would hear the familiar rumble of their voices in discussion. It made her smile every time.

This Monday, following Fairy Night and Ezra's birthday, she approached and heard primarily her sister's voice, and she didn't need to hear her words so much as her tone to guess what she was talking about. She was sharing something she had been part of, describing it in as good of a way as one should hope to hear it told so they could picture it in their minds. There was only one thing that she could have been talking about, to Maya's recollection, and she was right. She was telling her teammates and the other team members about getting to help decorate her sister's house as one of their secret fairies.

The other seven in the room had a varying level of awareness with regards to the existence of Fairy Night, but overall they were taken in by Haley's storytelling, and they'd smile, and laugh... They barely noticed that she'd arrived until after she'd walked into the room proper, and then they looked just a bit unsure of how to proceed, like what if this discussion of her own home was out of place? She might have pointed out that they had all at one time or another been to her home, outside at the Hallowannie games or even inside, for quiz team purposes, but what would have been the fun in that.

"Show us the pictures?" Haley asked at once, with renewed excitement. She had her hand out, waiting to be given her sister's phone, and Maya was surprised at the thought that Haley hadn't gone and snapped a few dozen images herself, but Haley wanted to see her nieces and nephew's reactions, too.

It wasn't even until she'd taken out her phone, as good as a reflex, and started to pull up the pictures that she realized what this would mean when Agnes would get to see. Yes, deep down, she wanted to go and give the girl a chance to see her son, but she hadn't intended for it all to be this way, here, with all the others around her. What if they saw some reaction on her face and they pieced it all together? It shouldn't be, not when most of them didn't even know the circumstances of how Ezra had come to the Friars, but still...

The students closed in together to look at the screen, Agnes, too, and they made the appropriate noises in response to cute pictures of children in deep wonderment. Maya found herself doing what could only be described as playing distraction whenever Ezra was on screen, so the others would look at her and not see Agnes, or the barely contained emotions in her eyes.

When the rest of the teams went and left the art room ahead of first period, when it came down to just the two of them, it was easily the closest that Maya had felt herself get to just dropping all pretense and talking plainly. She could have spoken to Agnes and pointed out that she knew by now, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she was Ezra's birth mother. She didn't do it, but she wanted to enough that she didn't know what to do with herself. This turned into her opening up this day's class with the seniors to discussing the progress on their fast approaching trip, the ever ongoing tradition for their seniors after graduation. This enabled everyone to talk through the period, Maya along with them, even as it gave Agnes the opportunity to hide in the noise, to pull herself together. The only one who noticed anything being off was her boyfriend. Freddie would be looking at her, discreetly holding her hand… It was one more reason on a growing list for Maya to be thankful for him.

When class ended, she watched the pair of them walk off hand in hand, and she was feeling secure in the knowledge that Agnes a bit better than she'd done at the start of the period. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for her. It was one thing to give up this baby to be adopted by another family, but she'd done so much more. She had hidden all throughout her pregnancy, and maybe there were people out there who knew her secret, who had been taken into this knowledge, but Maya didn't know if they did, nor who they were.

Agnes had kept this pregnancy secret, and then she'd given birth… hid that, too, and for having done it four times herself, Maya couldn't imagine how she would have done that. Then Ezra had been sent away from her, sent to his new family, and she'd had to go back to her life like it was just another day. She could not have done that, not knowing how deeply she loved her children, and she had no doubt of this about Agnes, too. She loved Ezra, and it was by that love that she'd chosen to give him to his new parents and sisters. And she'd left herself to be so close to his new mother, prone to hear about him whether she'd expected to or not. On the one hand, it could feel like a benefit, but for having seen that distant look in the girl's eyes, Maya knew that Agnes was now forced to realize the way it could be anything but beneficial.

Lunch eventually rolled around, and Maya could not begin to express how much she had needed this moment to stop and pull herself together. She'd spent the rest of her morning, two free periods with the sophomores in between, dipping in and out of that single train of thought. She usually didn't get stuck like this, but that morning… She meant to call Lucas, to talk to him and see what Huckleberry magic he would go and pull to settle the choppy waters in her mind, but instead found her peace, of all places, in the presence of the knitting club and this year's holiday project.

"We're going to call it the Great Texan Square Off," Noor Kaur informed her, with a smirk to suggest she'd been the one to come up with it.

While there was reasonable split in the number of students who would knit versus those who would do crochet in their club meetings, the name did give off the idea that all they ever did was knit. For that, they had decided to focus on the other side for this project. They were going to have this great group session where they would go and try to create as many granny squares as they could, not just making them but making them well, naturally. They would collect pledges, donations per square they'd manage to get done in the end. The money from those pledges, as well as the pieces eventually assembled from these squares, which would be auctioned off, would all go to the charity of their choice. They were discussing that here, now, while those of them who had hardly ever done crochet if at all were continuing to practice, developing their skills the better not to let the others down on the day of the GTSO.

Maya carried that thought with her as she left the club to her classroom and headed to find her squad, those of them who weren't back there with their practice squares. They would generally be found in one of two places at lunch, either outside, around a few of the tables there, or in a very similar configuration back in the cafeteria… mostly on days where it was too rainy, or cold, or snowy for them to eat outside. Today, they were in the cafeteria, thanks to on and off rainfall.

Like the knit club, they had their own fundraising plans for the holidays, maybe not as altruistic as theirs, as they were looking to save up funds for a competition trip, but if they went past their goal… They were looking forward to this, now that they'd decided to go for the tried and true bake sale, and Maya found them in the midst of a ridiculously heated debate over what treat would bring in the most customers, and which ones needed to be kept away from at all costs unless they intended to be stuck hitchhiking to their competition, eating their leftover unwanted cookies.

The upcoming holidays manifested in different ways across Maya's four groups, and the one that made her smile the most was her freshmen, her comics project group. They were all looking to the holidays as a time for them to get their minds off school for a while, of course, and as a time where they could have fun with friends, with family… Maya didn't even assign for them to make a push at their year-long project, but they committed to it regardless. They took up this thought that they could come back from break with new and important direction for their stories, and it was the kind of motivator that Maya herself could not have given them. It had to come from them, and it did.

The more time had gone on, especially as they'd been drawing closer to the winter break, she had been compelled to take a few more chances, and she did so that day, having planned the whole thing out with his teacher and making it so that Freddie Jacek was able to visit the freshmen and share some of his personal knowledge on the subject of comics. It was very much 'some' of his knowledge, as it became clear once they got him talking. It was enough to make Maya wonder why he hadn't gone and gotten a job in a comic book store, nearly in the same breath as it made her wonder if they could not bring up this fact with Peter out at their store. She recorded just a portion of Freddie's presentation to the class, in equal measures for his other teacher's benefit as for Freddie himself, who might not have believed he could stand there and speak so confidently back in freshman year… and maybe for Peter, too, for him to see the kind of employee he might get through him.

This took her to pivot right back toward Agnes, as she considered showing this to her, too, proud girlfriend that she was. After what she'd had to show her that morning, unplanned as it had been, this felt like the best means to balance everything again. Whether or not she could actually do this would have to be left to be seen. After everything she'd had on her mind that day, the conclusion she was left with when she sat through her long afternoon break was that Agnes Killian would not know nearly the peace she needed until after someone put that diploma in her hand and sent her on her way into the next phase of her life. It was not the conclusion Maya wished for, and she loved having her around in class, always, loved having her around under any circumstances, truly. But it was for that very reason that she wished her happiness, and peace… beyond her classroom. Right here, so long as she was here, she was too close to the things that would leave her miserably thinking of the what ifs and the unknown, thinking of the baby boy she'd given away. She needed to move on if she was ever going to be able to accept that she'd done the right thing.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners