I
High school is about figuring out who you are, and it has taken Maya fifteen years of life to realize that she is a maker in every sense of the word. She starts things – friendships, fights, projects, fires – and maybe she doesn't always finish them, but that's not the job of a catalyst. Maya is the spark and Riley is the match and together they create a fire they cannot control.
Maya is used to never putting herself first. Riley is her world, or maybe the world is Riley's and she's been gracious enough to let Maya be a part of it. Either way, she is grateful to be a part of a something.
Riley doesn't know what it's like to want things; she doesn't understand that sometimes you don't get your three wishes, your glass slippers, your fairy godmother. When Riley wanted to be a princess, Maya found her a kingdom. When Riley wanted a unicorn, Maya made her one – and she would have stolen the stars out of the sky to accompany it, if Riley had asked. If Riley wants a Prince Charming – if that person truly is Lucas Friar – then Maya will make it happen.
There isn't a lot Maya has to give others, so she offers up everything to Riley: unconditional love, trust, support. Compared to every beautiful, precious thing Riley has given her – a sense of family, friendship, stability – Maya's own sacrifices feel trivial. Whenever the butterflies in her stomach begin to soar, she reminds herself that her feelings don't matter.
She wants the best for her best friend, and the best certainly isn't her.
The day feels wrong to Maya even before it starts. The rhythm of the moving train almost lulls her to sleep, her head drooping dangerously towards Riley's shoulder. She knows Riley wouldn't mind, but to Maya, there's no longer anything innocent about using her best friend as pillow.
School is as monotonous as usual; the only teacher who's ever managed to intrigue Maya about subject matter not pertaining to art is Mr. Matthews, and they left him behind in middle school. She still sees him just about every day, as ridiculous and dorky as always, but no teacher has ever got her the way he did. None of them understand how her brain works, or why she can't always turn her assignments in on time.
Her last report card – she still isn't even sure if her mother ever saw it – read, "Maya puts in just enough effort to pass. If she really gave her projects her all, she would excel at everything she does." The statement was good for nothing except a quick laugh; no one knew how much energy she exerted just to stay afloat.
It's a bad habit, she knows, but Maya can't stop comparing herself to other people. Little kids notice everything, even when – especially when – adults don't, and she can vividly remember being seven and not knowing she was supposed to bring her own toys to the party and having to stand by and watch because she had nothing. She was supposed to be used to having nothing, but it stung a little more when everyone else had something.
She's been comparing herself to Lucas Friar since he first walked through the doors of John Quincy Adams Middle School back in seventh grade; he saw Riley and she saw him, and Maya, unnoticed, watched her eyes light up.
Lucas is Mr. Perfect, star of the baseball team and straight-A student, handsome old-fashioned gentleman but still the life of the party. In their friend group of four, Lucas is the moral compass and Maya is always pointing the wrong way. The only thing Maya does consistently is drag Riley down, while Lucas is the kind of person people aspire to be like.
She watches them now, the perfect couple, leaning against Riley's locker as if they're oblivious to the fact that other people exist. Even from here, across the hall, she can hear the sound of Riley's nervous giggle as Lucas brushes back a strand of her hair.
It occurs to Maya suddenly that it was Riley who, at Missy's ridiculous seventh birthday party, came up to her on the sidelines and offered to share her doll. Riley, who has been saving Maya since before she was even old enough to understand what she was doing.
Impulsively – selfishly, but Maya accepted long ago that she was a bad person – she strides over there and throws an arm over Riley's shoulders rather possessively. "Hey, Ranger Rick!" she says brightly with a saccharine smile. It still doesn't properly sugarcoat the bitterness she can taste in those four syllables.
"Maya," Riley says with such concern that Maya jolts upward from her lounging position on Riley's bed. The brunette is sitting cross-legged at the windowsill, a worried expression etched on her delicate features.
"Riley," Maya responds carefully, trying to measure out just the right amount of love for the word to sound platonic.
"You know you're my best friend in the world, right?" she asks slowly, as though trying too hard to string the words together. Maya's heart, the one she'd rather pretend isn't there, stops for the briefest moment. She forces it to work again, smiles reassuringly at her best friend.
"I want you to be one hundred percent honest with me," Riley tells her finally, meeting Maya's gaze head on. A hundred different things float through Maya's mind – the only lie she's told Riley, and only by omission, is the way she feels about her – but none of them are what she's expecting. "Do you really not like Lucas?"
Her first instinct is to laugh. How could she have expected the conversation to go her way? The universe has told Maya time and time again what it thinks of her, and yet she continually goes on hoping like some naive little girl who believes in fairytales. Happy endings are for people like Riley, beautiful girls with two loving parents and the perfect boy who has eyes for no one but her.
Maya doesn't know what people like her end up with. Three part-time jobs and still not enough money to pay the bills? She doesn't want to turn into her mother; she doesn't want to grow up and understand the woman who only had time for her daughter when she could carry Maya around inside her womb. The only thing her mother taught her was how to bottle things up and repress your feelings.
I know you better than Lucas, she wants to say. I could love you better than Lucas.
But Riley daydreams about a tall, male Texas ranch hand waiting for her at the altar, not a tiny bisexual blonde who can draw every contour of her face from memory. So Maya musters up enough strength to shrug like she's indifferent, and tells Riley what she wants to hear. "If I didn't like Lucas," she jokes, "would I have let him hang around this long?"
It isn't necessarily a lie, because Maya really does like Lucas as a person. Maybe if things had turned out differently, if they had met him one day on a plane in their twenties instead of seventh grade, when starry-eyed brunettes are still innocent and impressionable – that alternate universe is too appealing and too painful for Maya to keep thinking about it.
"Oh, good," Riley replies with a sigh of relief, leaning back against the window. "I don't think I could date anyone without your seal of approval, Maya."
Riley goes out on her first real date with Lucas, and Maya fondly remembers a time when Cory would have forced her and Farkle to tag along. It's almost pathetic how much she wishes he would do that to her again, because nothing is more torturous than being here in the Matthews home, waiting for Riley and not knowing.
Josh is here, preparing to graduate from NYU, and they make small talk while she checks her phone for updates. Riley doesn't text – Maya can only imagine what she's busy doing – so in her head, she pitches Josh's constant chatter a little higher and pretends it's Riley speaking.
When she looks at him, Maya wonders if that was why she'd liked him so much. Her crush on him had been embarrassing – how many times had she made a total fool out of herself when she was thirteen and clueless? – that Maya is surprised Josh was comfortable having a conversation with her now.
She pays more attention to him as he talks now. It's been years since she was infatuated with him, but the years look good on Josh. For a moment, she wonders if she should bring up the "three years" thing and see if he's changed his mind. Josh is definitely a man now, Maya can tell, but she also knows for sure that there's only one member of the Matthews family for her, so she keeps quiet.
Waiting and wanting are not new experiences for Maya. Riley is worth it.