Broken
Lucas is standing outside in the hallway waiting for Riley to come out of her Math class. His class is in the room next door and they both have lunch next so they usually walk together. His waiting is in vain because Riley doesn't appear. He knows she is in school today because they had History together and she was there. He heads off to the cafeteria on his own, a little worried because it is not like Riley to not tell him if her plans have changed. Things have been strained between him and Riley for the last few months but any time he tries to get her to talk to him, she makes an excuse and changes the subject. He knows that she hasn't been herself in a while but what he doesn't know is that Smiley Riley has finally cracked.
Riley Matthews, Miss Straight A's, Miss Rule follower has cut class and headed home. She has decided that she just can't keep up the pretense any longer. She has been feeling the pressure of being "Smiley Riley" for a while now. It's been gradually getting harder to not break in front of her family and friends. She knows that if she did, they wouldn't understand or even worse, not care that she broke.
It's hard to think of your family and friends not caring about something like that but that's honestly how she feels. Somewhere along the way, they have somehow forgotten that at the heart of it all she is an insecure, confused, scared and fragile 14-year-old girl. They don't realize that their cracks about her clumsiness or naïve nature feed into the beast that is her insecurity. Her parents don't realize that they push her aside to help Maya. How do you tell your parents that you feel like they prefer your best friend to you? You want them to help her but you also want to yell and scream that she has a mom of her own and there are times where SHE needs her MOM to hold her and tell her SHE is a warrior too. She's tired of everyone bringing her down to build Maya up and this is what scares her the most. She has never begrudged Maya anything and now, there is a part of her that resents her. She knows that this is not who she is and it is certainly not who she wants to be but at this moment she just feels so damn alone.
She smirks to herself…. alone. How can someone who is considered to be the center of her group of friends be alone? It's easy. She can't really talk to them about feeling like this. She doesn't want to seem ungrateful for her life. She knows that there are people who would gladly trade places with her and a part of her feels guilty for feeling like she does. She's not quite sure when it got harder to keep the mask in place but now it's not just hard, it's impossible.
She wants to stomp her feet, yell, scream and rail at the unfairness of it all but it's always mattered what others think and this would just be one more thing that wouldn't get the attention it deserves. So she sits on her bed, in the middle of the school day, all alone, tears streaking down her cheeks and wonders what happens next.
How does she explain any of this without sounding like a petulant child? How does she explain that she feels like an outsider in her own family? How does she explain to her "sister" that somewhere along the way she has lost herself? How does she explain, to the people who matter most to her, that she feels like she doesn't matter at all?
How does she explain that she, the one who is always fixing things, is now what needs to be fixed?
