_a/n: this is Maya-centric, and this is growing up the hard way.
blind-sided
adolescence (and other lost things)
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She is six and she is happy. Her hair is long and light and her mother says it brings out the oceans in her eyes. She goes to the ice cream parlor every Sunday—daddy, daddy can I get a cone this time?—and he'll always surprise her with sprinkles by the time the cone ends up between her tiny, tiny fingers.
(it is a time of smiling faces and innocence and beauty in the sunlight reflecting off her mother's eyes)
(it is a time before heartbreak, before loss, before the shattering of adolescence)
/
She is eight when she decides that strawberry is her favorite ice cream flavour. She is eight when she begins making decisions for herself. She is eight when she sees her father's fist strike the side of her mother's face. She is eight and she is growing up much faster than she should be.
/
She is two years older, wiser, taller, and prettier. She is in the fifth grade and every day at three, she'll walk home alone. This is the year she stops asking her mother if he is ever going to come home. The answer is very clear to her, despite having her overhear her mother's almost-silent tears in her bedroom most nights around ten. She'll hear her mumble into the house phone, dialing numbers engraved in her mind and saying things encaged in her heart. Her mother will leave message after message, holding onto every inch of hope she would be able to find in her body.
She is only ten and she thinks her mom is silly.
/
When she is twelve, she is overwhelmed when she sees her best friend flushed from ear to ear. Riley Matthews' face is blooming bright Marilyn-lipstick red and the Hart girl instantly makes the connection when following where her friend's gaze stayed put. The boy's a pretty sight, Maya would agree. She throws a knowing look and nudges the brunette, entertained.
They are in the sixth grade and Riley's gushing over boys and fate and love (all nonsense, silly girl having yet to realize that it's all false—misconception after misconception) after noticing how her locker seems to be the center of multiple attractive classmates. Maya nods—smiles, even—and pretends that she is at quite the envy.
She could really care less for fantasies, though.
/
She is thirteen and she learns plenty. She also spends a lot of time in the Matthews' abode. It is spacious, comfortable, welcoming and feels like home (there are hugs, food, people)—unfortunately unlike her own apartment, where her mother is usually (always) absent. She sees her best friend's parents and she wonders about the water they're drinking. Or maybe they'd just been the rare ones, the lucky ones.
She finds a group of friends she comes to care deeply for. It starts with a certain country boy sitting with them at lunch, followed by Farkle, still claiming to be madly, unconditionally in love with she and Riley. It's funny, entertaining and lighthearted—they are exactly what she needs to keep her mind off things that have settled its way into the depths of her mind and continue to tug at her heart strings.
She also has a knack for art. It's all in the way her (not so tiny, not anymore) slender fingers hold a utensil as she glides her wrist across a canvas in easy, simple satisfaction. She draws things she sees, things that are evident, that are in front of her. She doodles the moon, sketches her best friend (who is all wide smiles and naivety and a lot of happy, things she wished that had never been stolen from her) and paints the diner where her mother runs off to in order to escape the difficulties of her life. And when Farkle asks why there is half a lady on the side of her painting, a pang of resent is rekindled, despite Lucas's attempt to shut the boy up.
It had previously ignited when Riley had tried taking matters into her own hands, oblivious to the fact that the history and relationship she had with her parents ran much deeper than the brunette would ever know. She dismisses her best friend's ignorance, however, for she is Riley and she is still lucky to have her innocence and a heart that continues to grow bigger and bigger each day.
(god, how she wishes she could be the same)
In class, she tends to paint portraits of her mother. Some days she will be a flourishing beauty with golden skin and vivid hair. Her lips will be glossed and her lashes will be curled and Maya is not hesitant to let her teacher peer over her shoulder and marvel at the striking mother-daughter resemblance as her brush nonchalantly drowns in the acrylics. On rare days, days where Maya lacks a seat partner since Riley is out sick, the blonde will not hesitate painting another portrait of her mother; this time, with her hair graying and her eyes bloodshot. Her skin would be smothered in black and blue, and sometimes with a violet hue over one pinkened eye.
And when her teacher makes her way around the corner, Maya will accidentally spill an assortment of paint on her canvas, covering the previous image in yellows and reds and greens entirely. Little does she know that one day, Lucas will notice the entire charade in silence.
/
Her first kiss happens at fifteen, under an October sun gleaming through the blinds of the classroom, for her detention. It is unexpected, soft, and sweet and she catches herself smiling a short while afterward. The boy was attractive, with bronze hair and dark eyes and he had even had the decency to cradle her face in his large hands.
She is fifteen and she discovers a new source of temporary happiness—something she hadn't even known existed—that allowed her to delve further and further away.
(involving a pair of lips and butterflies beneath her ribcage—and who knows what else two burning bodies were capable of—she'd be willing to find out)
His name was Aaron, but she's aware she won't remember it.
/
She is sixteen and she refuses to learn anymore.
(because learning leads to growing and growing leads to reality—and she can no longer tolerate the unfair brutality she'd been forced to face since her hands were tiny and her eyes were bright)
She is sixteen and she does, does, does.
She stops listening, stops accepting, and stops obeying. Not that she'd been known for doing any of those pristine things to begin with.
She cuts class three times a week, and when Riley finds her in the girls' restroom with a stoge between her teeth and a lighter in her (still slender) fingers, she remembers a rebellious phase in middle school similarly paralleling this moment. The circumstances are all different, though. Not that Riley would understand. Then the now-older brunette stocks over to her and grabs the cigarette right from her hands, before smashing it under the heel of her boot, indignant and in complete disbelief.
And she's yelling the shit out of her, because she might be sixteen but she still has this stubborn optimism that she's carried since the seventh grade with her crazy, crazy desire to make Maya better.
And Maya retorts back, wrapped in venom and layered with profanities because she's older and she's tired of trying to be changed from her natural self. Her tone is harsh, and it's a foreign sound too Riley's ears. "Will you quit trying to be the damned hero? I don't need your help. I don't need you."
And she takes her best friend for granted because her mother hasn't come home in five months and everyone was temporary anyways.
Riley blinks back the water that had sprung in her eyes and with the little breath she has left hitched in her throat, asks, "What's wrong with you?"
Maya only turns around, avoiding further eye contact while lighting another stick. When Riley is away from her peripheral vision, her exist a silent retreat to the bathroom door, Maya blows out a wisp of smoke and dares not take a look at her sullen reflection, wondering the very same thing.
/
A year later, she stops painting and drawing and sketching and all forms of art altogether.
She kisses boys that don't matter and drinks beverages that make her whoozy. She finds pleasure in numbing herself with distractions. It's something she and her mother have in common.
(she is Maya Hart and she's become good at breaking hearts, including her own)
She has knobby knees and thick hair and eyes like the ocean. She's pretty and broken and everything in between. She also grows a tendency to ignore forms of human contact.
(with people that had potential to matter in her life, for the most part)
/
It is Christmas Eve when the three most important people in her life find their way into her (empty, so empty) apartment.
(she might push them away, but they will never push her)
They are persistent, and she hates that they feel the need to work so hard for her when she is nothing but undeserving.
The three knock on her door, waiting for any sign of shuffling on the other side. When no sound is heard, Riley twists the doorknob herself, finding it already being unlocked. They call out her name, only to be answered by no one. Farkle places the gingerbread house he had brought on the messy countertop, noticing checks made out to the blonde from her mother for the monthly rent alongside shoeboxes of old pictures, unwashed dishes, and cartons of half-eaten Chinese food. Riley searches the rooms while Lucas disappears onto the fire escape.
He 's got a sudden rush of anxiety as he quickly climbs the ladder toward the roof of the brick building. The atmosphere is foggy, especially at this hour of the day and the snow is relentless, but even through the weather conditions, he catches a glimpse of the blonde standing at the corner of the ledge away from him. He'd scream her name, demand her to get down from there, but he's scared she might be alarmed at the sound of a voice so close to her that she'd accidentally stumble.
Fuck, he's scared and he trudges toward her on the snow-filled roof and speaks at voice-level.
"Maya, please don—," he's begging, pleading and praying that she will make the right decision.
And he can't help but stop in between words when she turns around and falls into him instead, face wet and body broken into the support of his frame.
"I can't remember the colour of his eyes," she screams between tears, (and she is cold, so fucking cold) and the only thing he can do is wrap her in his scarf before doing the same with his arms.
/
She is eighteen and the last person she would expect to see lingering around their high school a week after their class had walked on stage and attained their diplomas walks only a couple yards away from where she stands. He's still tall, tan, and handsome, but she'll never give him the benefit of the doubt. Her eyes move from his back to the white building in front of them. She fiddles with the diploma she had picked up just then, ten minutes before. "Fancy seeing you here, Cowboy."
"Missed you at graduation," the Friar boy states in nonchalance.
Before something cunning could make its way past her lips, he continues.
"Missed you at a lot of things," his voice is sincere, and she is almost touched at how he had noticed her absence. And then she proceeds to remember that Riley must have mentioned her at some point.
She's hesitant, mainly the reason being that she isn't used to speaking to someone who'd been remotely significant in her life for a long time now—well, besides Mr. Hunter, who had become her legal guardian. "How is she?"
"Riley?" he clarifies. "She's well. Really well. Been with Farkle awhile now," Lucas pauses, unsure for a moment. "You should se…"
And she interrupts him, because she knows exactly where he's getting at, "I will."
He stares at her and she stares right back—she wants to thank him, she does, but she doesn't know how to assemble the right words. And since she is Maya and he is Lucas, this mental game of chess (that had started so, so long ago—during a time they'd both been young and childish) continues with his next retaliation. It is his turn to interrupt her, and so he does.
She is eighteen when her swollen lips embed into Lucas Friar's for the first time. There is a faint taste of strawberries on his tongue and she decides this is much better than nicotine. And she isn't as happy as she'd been as a child, but she knows she is certainly getting there.
She is eighteen and she is a legal adult. It's ironic, though, since they all know she was forced to become an adult much, much earlier than she should have. She is eighteen and she discovers that learning is inevitable, as is growing, and that these people—yes, these people (that still and always will welcome her to their homely abode) may or may not be the closest things to forever.
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fin.
_a/n: hopefully you weren't overwhelmed with the dark twists and turns. i got really carried away haha