April 17th 2024

Chapter 108
The Turn of the Clock

For one who had come to share lunch with her oldest friend, Riley looked much more interested in 'eating' the tiny toes of little Colby Friar. It was still so curious of an exercise with the one-month-old babe, but there he was, cradled in his aunt's arms as she showered him with sweet words and pretended to chomp down on one foot and the other. He smiled, tried to get a hold of her hair, let out a squeal, and it made her laugh. She finally paused at the sound of a cleared throat, looking up to find Maya staring back at her, barely containing a laugh.

"No, please, don't let me interrupt you," she teased. "I made pasta, but if you're busy…"

"I can hold him and eat," Riley very swiftly moved the baby into a one-armed hold. "See? Gimme the pasta, please?"

Maya snorted. Even as they both were seeing the end of their thirties and the start of their forties and were each of them mothers several times over, she could look at Riley and see the girl she had grown up with in there.

"Fine, but be careful. He's getting grabby these days," she informed her, cranking up the merriness in her voice as she leaned in to kiss her son.

"I noticed," Riley confirmed. "Good for you, Huck," she told the boy, and he responded by batting his hands toward her long braid, just out of his reach.

They all made it through lunch just fine and, by the end of it, Colby was sound asleep in Riley's arms. She was looking at him with the kind of eyes that could have landed her ready to welcome a new baby of her own by year's end if she wasn't careful, and Maya could hardly blame her. As familiar as this time was for her, the one part she would always forget was quite how… potent… the pull was when they were that small.

"What does your afternoon look like?" she ended up asking, and Riley looked at her.

"Pretty empty, actually. Had two appointments, one cancelled and the other rescheduled. Why?"

"How'd you like to join Huck and I on a trip through junior year?" Maya smiled, laughing when she saw her friend's face split into an instant grin. "Just don't start and read too much into any of it, okay?"

"I'll do my best," Riley nodded. She wouldn't be able to help herself completely, but that was alright. That was sort of what they were both bound to do at this point, wasn't it? "Oh, what about the ones who don't want anyone looking but you?"

"Dakota knows to stack those at the end of the box, facing the other way, so I can get them done first or at the end, depending if I've got a buddy by my side… or six or seven… Anyway, I already took care of those for the junior boxes earlier, before you got here."

So, up they went, the two friends and the baby. They ended up sat by the window together, the boxes stacked between them and becoming a table where each book could be rested as they looked through the new pages and the notes. It may not have been a bay window, but with the three of them there and the cozy daylight around them, it filled Maya with a similar feeling as what she recalled from her New York days at the Matthews home. Riley was definitely feeling it, too.

"Oh, I don't know if I should be looking at this…" she hesitated when Maya pulled out the first sketchbook and it had her brother's name on the spine. "I know you've taught some of your siblings so you've looked at theirs, but that was expected. Maybe I should ask him first."

"He's never given me any signs like he wouldn't want anyone to see his work, but I can keep it for later… and you're already texting him," Maya nodded, admiring her multitasking skills as she kept hold of the baby and hummed and rocked him, all the while writing a message to her youngest brother.

Mentioning to her that he would be a senior the following year was a one-way ticket to seeing Big Sister Riley start to tear up, so Maya didn't go anywhere near that. Instead, she held the closed book in her lap and waited until they got the all-clear. As soon as it came, Riley's hand shot out so she could look through the sketchbook, and Maya handed it over with a snort.

The way she looked at the pages, it was clear to Maya that her friend saw some things she herself couldn't in Hunter's work. This wasn't even the therapist looking at the art, it was the sister. Some things she shared as she found them. Others she never vocalized, and Maya didn't try to get it out of her.

The rest of the box went by without the need of any checks for consent. Several of the names that came up were familiar to some degree or another to Riley, whether for their being brought up in conversation as Maya's students, or Cory's students, or as Hunter's classmates for any number of years, and it made her that much more curious to see what they had to say on those pages.

Maya loved to see all this, but for this round in particular she was drawn to check on Dakota's notes from parent night. She was so proud, and just so relieved in a way, as she looked at Madelyn Carter's diary, and Dakota's note. Madelyn had been making the very most of this year, turning a page really, and Maya was very happy to see her as happy as she was. She wouldn't want the entirety of her time at this school and beyond to be held up against what she went through as a freshman, and Maya did her best not to lean on that either. She couldn't ignore that, when she did see her, her thoughts would go that this was the girl she had imagined her sister's best friend would become, and in doing so she would be drawn to the fact that it was only happening now… and the reason for the delay. If things continued on in this way though, hopefully, they wouldn't think about the beginning as much, if at all.

"Oh, wow…" Riley reacted when she looked back from Colby over to the diary now open between herself and Maya. "Who did that one?" she asked, and Maya blinked, drawn back to look at her friend.

"Huh? Oh, Jonah Killian," she replied. "It's, uh… It's a new style for him," she declared.

"It's beautiful," Riley smiled.

"Yeah," Maya agreed. That was very much the feeling evoked by the figure drawn over both the left and right-handed pages, the better to give her more space to exist. It gave the impression of an angel, or a goddess, a creature of some kind that was in every way larger than life.

"What's up?" Riley asked, and if this had been anyone else - aside from Lucas in this case - she might have brushed it off or changed the subject, but with her… She hesitated a moment, like someone might be revealed to be listening in, when there could only be the two of them and the baby. Colby sure wouldn't say a thing, but then neither would Riley.

"You don't see it?" she asked first, pointing to the drawing. Riley frowned as she looked to the drawing again, turning on a more critical eye, by any means she had at her disposal. Even with all that, she was drawing a blank.

"Maybe you shouldn't tell me," she concluded.

"Maybe not," Maya finally sighed. Thinking of it now, she reached into her 'tool kit' and stuck a sticky note that her daughters would recognize as a warning not to look in this diary before joining it to those others in the bottom of the box. It would be most important that her baby sister Haley didn't look at it, in case she recognized herself in Jonah's most stunning vision.

In Haley's box, the AP Juniors' box, the thought that most often struck Maya was that they would be in for a great senior year together in the fall, and this was a thought to send her mind ablaze with ideas as much as it would start the wave of nostalgia that was never far behind. Whether these kids were finishing their third year with her or their first, it didn't matter. They'd had a great first year together in this new advanced format, and if they were only going to have a second one and be done together, then she would want to make sure that it'd be a great one.

For what she saw through the diaries, and Dakota's notes, a lot of those kids had expressed their own anticipation for that new year themselves, whether they'd done so intentionally or not. She'd have someone like Reese Quinland, who had found in art class the peace he most needed, his teacher and classmates having welcomed him so wholly that he'd be able to know himself as safe as he was cared for among them. It didn't matter here what he had or hadn't done, or where he'd ended up because of it. He was like them, he was an artist and an art lover, and that feeling was one she had tried so hard to nurture that to see it exercised in such a way… She was so happy for Reese most of all.

"Oh, that's Haley's one, yeah?" Riley reacted when Maya pulled the book out, and she snorted.

"How could you tell?" she teased. "How about you hand over my child so you can have a look at it?" she asked with a raised brow.

"Do I have to?" Riley blinked. But little Huck could see his mother across from him, and she was smiling at him, and there was no beating this, so Riley passed him over, where he was received with as much love as he had to give his mother in return.

Almost as a consolation prize, she came to tell Riley about the girls' discussion from a few nights back, the idea of renaming the school to reflect its new art concentration. Maya hadn't been sure how this would be received, and she was so amused to watch as her best friend reflected on it for a few moments before speaking.

"You know, it did sort of bug me for a while," Riley finally spoke. Maya tried and failed not to snort at the way she said this, like she hadn't said anything before but, with the floodgates open, she would let it all come free.

"Did it?" she asked.

"Didn't it bug you?" Riley countered.

"I don't know if that's the way I'd put it, but I did think about it a lot, sure. After a while, it did sort of… slip my mind," she pointed out, eyes turning to her baby boy for emphasis.

"No, that's fair, that's fair," Riley agreed. There was a pause, both of them sitting quietly for a moment, until Riley couldn't just hold it down any longer. "So, what are you going to do about it?"

"Woah, hold on… In case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of doing this thing right now?" she told her, looking to her son again. Each time she did, he would reach his hands up toward her face, like this was a game they were playing.

"Sure, yeah, but that doesn't have to stop you, does it? I could…" Riley started to say, then paused as a new idea showed itself across her features. She gasped, reached across to take her best friend's hand. "I could help you!" She had just a bit of a crazed look in her eyes, but coming from her… Yeah, she could get on board with some Riley crazy, some Riley and Maya crazy even better, Honey and Peaches riding again…

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners