January 5th 2024

Chapter 5
The Opening of Renewal

It seemed fitting that her two sophomore groups were going to join her one after the other. Every other grade had split with a majority favoring one level over the other, a bit more regulars here, a bit more advanced there… The sophomores had been an even split. Those numbers had been bolstered by the new additions and now she would get to see what these two groups would look like.

"You and your sister really do look so much alike," Maya chuckled when Allie Sheridan stepped into the room. "For a second there I thought she was coming back." Her smile was a knowing one, and Maya bowed her head. "Hear it all the time, huh?"

"Only every day or two," Allie confirmed.

"Well, it's out of the way now. Here," Maya reached into the box and pulled out the sketchbook with her name on it. "This is your first year with me, I'll explain how the diaries work in a bit."

"I know about these," Allie told her. "Knit club, you know?" she gestured back to where her usual seat was, or had been before she'd gone and changed things up over the summer. When she carried the book over to her new seat, she had the look she had started to notice already and would continue to see. The uncapped, those who hadn't wanted art class just because, those who had really wanted it, they would come along, and they would get their diaries, and there would be ideas in their eyes, potential, and their excitement was contagious.

The sibling parade carried on, as one Sheridan, one Bennett, and one Dixon had already come by in the first half of the morning, and she had one more of each of those families in this single group. Allie was at her station, and soon there was Willy, and Julie… Willy, as she'd been thinking earlier, had a lot of his older siblings in him, whether in temperament or skill out on the basketball court. So far as the two brothers went, it was already evident that between the two of them Jake stood at the forefront with the team, and he would sail through a second year as captain before leaving many people upset that he would be moving on, likely swept up in a college scholarship.

Willy, now, he was no slouch, not at all, but he didn't have any tendency to stand out, not the way his brother did. That was fine by him. He did his own thing, which also fell in line with who he and his siblings were. Maya did have this feeling that, once Jake was gone, Willy would step up. Whether he did or didn't, it would be the right choice for him.

Julie Dixon and her older sister did not always see eye to eye, didn't always hang in the same circles, but their bond was undeniable. Amy had plenty of the protective big sister in her even before Julie's vitiligo had started to manifest and kids had started to be mean to her. She had shown that in standing up for her as much as in helping her learn to stand up for herself, to find the beauty in the thing that made her different. In no time, the younger Dixon girl had started to run up the road to the Friar house to show any changes her skin had started to show.

This had come from Amy, too, as she'd seen something online and had turned to their neighbor the artist to make it happen. Maya had been more than happy to help, so each time she had taken paint and let the spots and patches direct her hand, highlighting them in a colorful if temporary way. They would take pictures, later to be developed and added to Julie's album.

She had been over, just the night before, to show how the patch on her face had seemed to burst all of a sudden. It had been there since earlier that summer, but this was a lot, especially on the day before school started. When Maya had offered to get her paints, Julie had hesitated.

"New school, new rules. You trust me?"

She had the same bright smile now that she'd had upon leaving the Friar house the night before, her paint still intact. A year ago, it would have been a completely different story, and the fact that Julie could show herself like this today was as good of a sign as any that they were well into a new era.

She had a new set of siblings in her midst, not uncapped but transferred. The Yoon twins had attended a different school in their freshman year but, upon hearing of the changes coming to this school, had come on over to join them. This, by the fact that they were split over the regular and advanced sophomores, had very likely been one sister's idea over the other, but they couldn't end up in two different school, so she'd followed. As both a sister to twins and mother to triplets, she understood the choice. And she would look after the leader as much as the follower.

Cait Yoon ended up being the last to introduce herself. She was off in her own head just as much as she'd surface enough to listen to her classmates. Maybe she just missed her sister, or she was still acclimating to a room and a school where she knew exactly one person in any way that would matter. Either way, she eventually realized it would come down to her, and she was scrambling to think of what she might say.

"I'm… Cait… short for Caitlin, but no one calls me that except my family, no matter how many times I tell them not to. I have an identical twin sister, Clare. She always calls me Cait. She's more of an artist than I am, but we do a lot of other things together. We dance, we sing… She says I could be an actress one day. Might be, I don't know," she shrugged.

"Does that mean I can expect you at musical auditions?" Maya smiled at her.

"Definitely," Cait smiled.

She stuck around after class was over, long enough that her sister would make it over from her previous class. Seeing them together, they were as identical as they were unique. She saw quirks and other little things that she recognized from watching her sisters and daughters over the years. These two were best friends, soul mates… They would love and follow one another wherever life took them, and that included this school.

When Clare Yoon introduced herself, she was the first of the AP sophomores to do so, which felt in line with who she and Cait were as a pair. She shared the origin of her love for art, saying that her grandfather would take her and her sister to museums when they were little, at least once a week. Cait loved it because she got to have outings with her two favorite people, and ice cream afterwards.

Clare loved it for all this, too, but then there was the art… The way she described it, she was so small, and the paintings, the sculptures, all of it was just massive, towering over her… It was the most wonderful thing, and she couldn't get enough of it. Her grandfather had passed away only three years ago, and it had been the greatest sorrow of the twins' young lives. They continued to visit museums together, as much as they could, but it just wasn't the same.

The introductions traveled along the stations, some speaking up because their neighbors had done so, others deciding they needed more time and letting someone else have their turn. One boy got his turn because the one next to him looked scared enough about speaking up in class, even for this, that he decided to give him time by going ahead of him. It was a very small choice, easy to make on the whole, but it felt very telling to Maya about who he was as a person.

"I'm Jesse," he lifted his hand from the tabletop in a short wave. "Durant," he went on. "I, uh… I was a swimmer for a while, but I gave it up after middle school. I'm on the basketball team now. I do… drawings, from the games. I like doing action shots, you know?" he mimed a jump, and it made some of the others laugh.

"I think I've seen some of those going around," Maya informed him, and he looked momentarily concerned, but she smiled. "They were pretty good. I used to do some of those, too, back when I played."

Eventually, everyone who walked into her class would have been in one group or the other, but right now she had her old, single groups, split in two, and knowing why one would decide either to stay in regular or go into advanced placement was usually simple enough. There were those who had surprised her, mostly for choosing the latter.

Katie Willows was one of those. It wasn't that she'd not liked her class enough in the first year, or that she didn't have skill, or interest, but she had felt most likely to coast through, taking whatever she did and learned in art class into her life, what effect it might have, big or small. Now she was here, and as she spoke of herself, there was a light in her. She was happy to be here. She couldn't wait to begin.

Maya was not surprised to see the likes of Angie Anna Bowles among her AP sophomores. If anything, she was relieved. She'd been sick again, just a few days ago, enough to land in the emergency room. Even now, she didn't look completely recovered, and she might have been better off staying home, but whether she said it or not - and she wouldn't - she'd needed to be there. She hated being sick, hated missing out, always. But this was less about her and more about the girl sitting next to her.

Deanne Wallis was the second of the two XCs in the high school, as the others were in middle and elementary school. She was going along with the day, school was school, but in her mind, Maya guessed, there was a great storm of thoughts of memories, and keeping them under cover wasn't so easy. It brought Maya back to the months after her father's passing. She'd had people all around to support her, and she was older than Deanne, who'd lost her mother in the midst of freshman year in high school.

She didn't mention this when she went ahead and introduced herself. She explained how she was from Arizona, and she was spending the year in Austin as an exchange camper with Sullivan Stables. She spoke of her love of horses, and how she'd been led into this love by her mother. She was able to share this now, but it was written all over her face how much she still struggled, less so than before, about talking of her mother, their memories…

"Mrs. Friar, would it be okay if we had lunch in here with you?" Angie Anna asked when everyone started to leave after the bell. "The cafeteria is loud on any day, but they're louder today, you know?"

"Yeah, of course," Maya assured her. It would be good for them both to have a moment to pause, to breathe, before continuing into the afternoon.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners