April 15th 2024

Chapter 106
The Turn of the Chairs

It was a recurring joke, as it had been for as long as any of their girls had been in school, that the parent teacher nights at the high school and elementary school always happened on the same nights. Because of that, Maya would hardly ever get to go and speak to her daughters' teachers, as she was busy being the teacher to other parents' children. The very rare exceptions came out of those times when she was on maternity leave somewhere in fall or spring.

"You're going to look at all my drawings, right?" Mackenzie asked as she had her arms around her mother's neck, the better to cuddle on her. Maya smiled, embracing her right back.

"You bet I will. I've been looking forward to it all day," she told her, pressing a good kiss to the top of her head.

"Mine, too?" Aubrey appeared next to them, and soon there were Kacey, and Lucy, and Remy, and Marianne along with them as she held Ezra. He had his hand in the air like he wanted this, too, and she didn't bother to point out that he wasn't in school like the rest of them, and she already got to see his drawings.

"You can take the art teacher out of the school…" Lucas teased her as she prepared to head out. He would have offered to tag along, but he knew how much she wanted to get to do this for once, so he didn't say a word. For what he had instead, an evening with the kids, he was wholly satisfied.

"You're lucky you're cute," she told him, the spark in her eye summarizing the banter that the use of the word 'cute' could have brought on. He knew very well what she would have said if there weren't children roaming about.

She had only ever known the elementary school as being her children's school, but every once in a while she would be reminded that, once upon a time, it had been her husband's school, his and his old friends. It would make her look around, imagining when they had all been children running through these halls, sitting in those classes, playing in the school yard… She might have lamented not getting to be there with them, growing up with them, but by now she would consider that untouchable time and it would feel like a storybook, ready to make her dream and wonder. Every once in a while, Lucas would recall one of his days back there, and she would happily sit by and listen to him, watching him all the while, smiling.

When she came across other parents, the reactions would vary, with several of them having known her as a parent from their own children's classes, and some knowing her as their high school aged children's teacher, while others had known her for her music, with TXNY and beyond. The biggest thing tonight was that she was here at all, instead of Lucas. From one waiting line to another, there would be a lot of asking after Colby, and she would brighten with maternal pride, showing them a picture or ten.

Her appointments this year had lined up youngest to eldest, so she first met with Aubrey's teacher. Not unlike how she'd been out there with her pictures, Aubrey had been talking on and on about her baby brother ever since she'd come to school the first day after his birth. She sometimes had to be told to tone it down a bit, but she'd take it in stride, smiling to herself. As for the rest of the time, she was doing just fine. She was still only in kindergarten, but she was on her way to being the kind of student that teachers described as a delight to have in their class, and Maya was very glad to know it.

As promised, she made sure to have a good luck at her art, and it gave her a good laugh to see how prominent Colby was in all her drawings. It didn't matter that, thematically, he might not have belonged there. He belonged there for her, and that was all that mattered. He looked like he was in the middle of adventure upon adventure.

As she sat waiting outside Mackenzie's class next, Maya's eyes moved to the coat hooks, to the line of cards stuck above each one. If she hadn't seen her daughter's before, she could have picked it out in a second. All the girls had their own style, and Mack's was very much in her own image. Her funny macaroni left to draw whatever she wanted would be sure to make people smile when they saw her work. Her teacher would have the same opinion, showing Maya more of her art once they got to sit together.

Of course, this year had been greatly affected by Mackenzie's injury and how she'd been out of school for a while, recovering at home. They'd helped her at home, and it had helped a lot. Once she'd rejoined her classmates, it had been a great relief to her personally, but it had distracted her enough that her grades had taken a hit. They weren't too worried, and she had started pulling out of that down curve already. If she kept this up, she would maybe reach new heights once she moved into a brand new year, the injury fully behind her.

Lucas had always set out to have his meetings with the triplets' teachers and discuss each of their three girls one by one, rather than all at once and mixed up, as he knew some people would end up doing, whether they meant to or not. That was Maya's policy, too. They were a unit, but sometimes they had to step away from that unit, showing they were three different girls. There was this year though, and while they continued to stave off the moment where they would end up in separate classes, their third grade experience had been one to make it almost impossible not to talk of them all together.

Lucy had been working so very hard this year to do better in school. She'd had Kacey to help her through some of this, tutoring her through those subjects she struggled with the most. Meanwhile, Remy had taken it upon herself to help the youngest triplet with her 'enemy,' namely the presentations, the readings, anything where Lucy would end up in the spotlight and lose all means of showing what she knew but couldn't show.

The three of them had always been as close as any three people who'd once shared a womb could be, but then unlike any twins they might have known, they had the presence of a third, and this might have been one of the greater instances where the… duos within their trio had been nurtured this much.

"Hey, Maya, wait up!"

"Next year, Mr. Babineaux," she smirked, seeing her friend jog up to her. He really had a whole look going when he was at school, and it was hard not to imagine the Zay she had grown with standing opposite 'Mr. Babineaux.'

"Yeah, well, about that," he pointed at her. "Why don't we make this a dinner, you and Lucas and Nadine and I? I tell you about your three and, year after that, you tell me about my one?"

"That has some potential," she agreed. "We could have done it when you had Marianne."

"Yeah, don't know why we didn't think about it before," Zay nodded, like he was apologizing.

"Hey," she clasped him at the shoulder with a sneaky smile. "It's hard to be the gold standard around this place."

"This feels like a trap," Zay squinted at her.

"It does, doesn't it?" she whispered, patting his shoulder before walking off to her last meeting of the night.

"I'll take it anyway!" Zay called after her.

"As you should!"

It struck her all at once that this would be her Annie's last parent night at this school. In the fall, she'd be in the seventh grade, walking the halls that had shaped her parents into those very people who had created and raised her. She might have felt bad for taking this moment from Lucas when he'd been attending most of these nights since their pumpkin had started school, but knowing him, he would have relinquished it freely for her.

She imagined Marianne in this room, and she could picture any number of the stories her daughter had shared with her and the rest of the family. She'd always felt at ease in school, something they knew came from her having grown up with her mother as a teacher, and her Uncle Zay, and her Aunt Morgan… It would be just like her to make it all feel like her home away from home in the most positive way.

She was well on her way to kicking off middle school near to if not at the top of her class, which admittedly had been thrown into the tiniest bit of question earlier that year, with the 'Haru moved to Japan' situation. She was still struggling with that distance, for sure, but she had found a good balance with him, and it showed in her school work, one tiny dip moving into a steady climb she had maintained ever since.

"How was your night, dear?" Lucas called back quietly from the couch when she walked in. He sat propped up there, with Colby lying on his chest and Ezra tucked up against his side. One picture later - because how could she not - Maya approached with a grin.

"Oh, it was great," she told him. "Boys' night hit hard, huh?"

"We might not recover," he joked back, and she shook her head. "Dakota called earlier."

"Yeah? How'd his side go?" Maya asked, sitting carefully next to him, brushing at Ezra's hair.

"Alright, I think. He said he'd bring the diaries over tomorrow. He wrote about his meetings, I guess."

"Yeah, Barton did that when he subbed for me, too," she smiled. He remembered.

"You know, the girls and I had a pretty interesting talk after dinner," he told her. Their voices had finally done enough to start Ezra toward waking up, and Maya pulled him into her lap before he continued down that road.

"And I missed that? What did you talk about?"

"The school," he replied. She was intrigued now.

"What about it?"

"Well, apparently they think that the name 'doesn't fit anymore,'" he explained, taking on a bit of the tone that the girls sometimes shared.

"Oh, it doesn't, does it?" Maya laughed.

"Marianne did her research, apparently. She thinks that, being an art school now especially, you all should 'really think' about changing it and naming it after someone more fitting."

"Yeah, that sounds like her," she agreed.

"It does," he nodded. "Do you think they'd do it?" Maya let out a sigh as she thought about it.

"Doubt we could just do it without taking some steps, and… As much as some people haven't been pleased about the art switch, somehow, I'm afraid there'll be even more butting heads on this one."

"Worth exploring though, no?" Lucas smiled.

"Oh, definitely," Maya agreed. "Just… let's keep that between us for the time being, yeah?"

"Just you, me, and the boys," he promised. They looked to each other, to the boys they each held, and the other… Ezra and Colby were both sound asleep, even as only one of them could have spilled any beans. Maya and Lucas shared a quiet laugh, then paused when struck with the same thought. Craning their heads back toward the stairs, they spotted no sign of any one daughter or another.

"Anyone up here, better come down here now," Maya spoke up, testing. No steps coming down or scurrying away, all clear. "To be continued?" she looked back to Lucas. He nodded.

"I can't wait."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners