The texts kept coming and coming, each word her brown eyes scanned over feeling like an extra stab to the heart and bringing fresh tears to her eyes.
She tried to ignore them at first, and with everything going on, it was easy. Why focus on her own problems when the school started taking budget cuts and getting rid of Maya's art, or when Farkle thought he had Asperger's, or when any of her friends needed any sort of help with anything ever in the entire universe? It was easier for her to help others than herself. She loved to help, because it made her feel important, it made her feel needed, and God knows that's all she ever wanted.
If they needed a shoulder to cry on, or someone to make them smile, or simply a little light in the darkness of their lives, she would help them. Farkle once said that she was the sun; warm, bright, lighting up his whole day. She personally thought that she was more like Pluto; the smallest planet with the biggest heart, (because to her Pluto would always be a planet no matter what scientists said) but if they wanted her to be like sunshine, she would be their sunshine in a heartbeat.
She had faked a smile for so many weeks, she'd forgotten what it really felt like to smile a genuine one. She made an effort to be herself around her friends so they wouldn't suspect a thing... all the while she was feeling humiliated, because the very things her friends loved about her was everything she hated about herself. Being goofy and silly and awkward and quirky wasn't what she wanted to be anymore.
She was Riley Matthews, a perfect combination of Cory and Topanga. She was special, she was unique. That's what her friends said she was. Deep down, she knew that would never change, no matter how hard she wanted it to. She just didn't want to believe it. She wanted to put on a brave face for her friends, like Maya did. Maya never cried. Maya never took anything anyone ever said to heart. And that's why she took it out on her. Because the texts were becoming more frequent and the insults more and more scathing;
"You exist and you're weird, and you get in the way of where I'm looking, so stop being weird and stop being happy."
"No one should be as happy as you."
"Stop being who you are, or I am gonna put my foot in your weird, stupid face."
And those were the nicest of the insults. The one who attacked her from behind a screen used other words, too, words that never should have been used against anyone, no matter the circumstances. And Maya, as broken as she was, as terrible as her life seemed, she was confident, the most secure person she knew. Maya wouldn't care if someone sent her things like that. Maya would let the words roll off her back.
But Riley wasn't Maya. That was the thing. Back in seventh grade, when Farkle was being bullied to his face, not through a screen, by Billy Ross, she had insisted that the class write their flaws on their foreheads. She'd written a single word, insecure, and she meant it. No matter how much she tried to deny it, it had always mattered more to her what others thought of her than what she thought of herself.
She didn't want to be insecure anymore. She wanted to be like Maya, tough and independent. So she sucked it up. She refused to cry out for the help she very much needed. She would handle this by herself. She wouldn't cry for help. She didn't need it.
... Right?