Or at least it was while it lasted.
Lucas's blissful Saturday morning sleep was interrupted by his mother coming into his room at six thirty.
"Lucas, honey, wake up. Come on, Lucas, up." His mother said, pulling the covers off of Lucas's body. She walked over to the window and opened the blinds. The early morning sun was unforgiving, and Lucas was getting its full wrath.
"Urrrgh." Lucas garbled.
Mrs. Friar just shook her head in begrudged amusement. On one hand, her son was hilarious in the morning since he was most definitely not a morning person. Just seeing her poor baby try to readjust to the land of the living was sheer entertainment that never failed to make her laugh. But the whole thing was tainted by the reason why he had to get up so early in the first place.
"Sweetheart, come on. You need to get to school." She tried again, giving Lucas a shake to get him to wake up completely.
"No I don't," Lucas mumbled. "It's Saturday."
He meant to turn around to get away from the direct line of the sun's rays coming through the window. However, his mother's sturdy hand on his shoulder prevented him to do so.
"Tutoring at the middle school, remember?" She told him, eyebrows raised.
Lucas heaved a sigh of extreme annoyance and started mumbling angrily to himself. "Wonderful." He had this deep feeling in his gut that today was going to be an interesting one. But knowing his luck, there was a huge possibility that it would not be interesting in his favor.
His suspicions were confirmed when he arrived at the high school and waited to get on the yellow bus taking the twelve seniors to the middle school. That was when he saw her, Riley Matthews. Of course she would volunteer her weekends to tutor ungrateful middle school brats for fun.
Since this was the first time he really saw her alone since that day he accidentally pushed her into the lockers, Lucas took a moment to observe her. Despite the fact that five years had passed, she still looked completely the same. Well, not completely. Obviously, the years had divested her of some of her childhood fat, especially in her cheeks. And yet, those cheeks remained permanently tinged rosy pink, regardless of whatever she may be feeling. Her eyes were still as brown and expressive as they have always been. Riley's once long, glossy brown hair had been cut short- and left short- to her shoulders about a month after their confrontation. People thought it was her going into mourning for the loss of his friendship and thought it really dramatic. But nobody dared say that out loud lest Maya was ever near enough to hear them.
As Lucas kept observing her, he even took in her style of clothes. Well, if it can even be called "style". Riley's clothes seemed to have done a complete one-eighty from when he first met her. She usually had on quirky heels, layered her shirts, wore bright patterns, and chose eye-popping colors. On anyone else, it would have looked ridiculous, but it matched the whole "Princess Star Shine" persona she had going on in seventh grade. But then, one day it all changed. Riley started wearing looser and plainer clothing, and actually wore regular sneakers on a routine basis. Her usual item of clothing she had on every day, which was a source of much teasing from Lucas's crew, was her pale blue sweater. Even today, she had that same pale blue sweater on. It was so raggedy that looked like it would come apart with just one hard tug on any of the many loose threads it had. He never understood why she didn't just buy herself a new one.
But then again, there was still so much about her that he didn't understand. And he didn't know why that thought made him so uncomfortable. Hopefully, as he sat in the back of the yellow bus heading to John Quincy Adams Middle School, he could drown out those particular thoughts about her and mentally prepare himself for the whatever hell that awaited him.
The whole tutoring session was a complete and utter waste of time in Lucas's opinion. For starters, he was walking through the halls where he became the mess he now was. In the beginning, these halls represented a place where he could have started over and become someone to be proud of. But they quickly became a place where his hopes dead a swift, yet painful, death. Confronting that fact had left a bitter taste in Lucas's mouth even before he met up with the kid he was supposed to be tutoring in math.
Then, when Lucas met his tutoring kid, he realized that he had his work cut out for him. His tutoring kid, Louis, was not in the mood to learn. Lucas gathered up every ounce of patience he had to not shake the kid for not understanding something as basic as different types of triangles. Lucas should have gotten an award for slowly explaining the same thing over and over again. However, all he got for his trouble was Louis acting up, calling the whole thing bullshit, and stalking away out of the classroom loudly. All of which disturbed the rest of the students and tutors. Personally, Lucas had to agree with the kid, this whole thing was bullshit. He was thankful when it reached time for them to get back on the school bus and head back to the high school.
As he looked out of the window, Lucas didn't think the day could get any worse. However, as always he was proven wrong within a few minutes into the trip back.
"Hey." A voice sounded from his right. He didn't even need to turn around to know who that bright, slightly nasally voice came from.
There sitting in the seat next to him, not even three inches apart was Riley.
Lucas gave a short glance and then turned back away, keeping his earphones in his ears.
"You want to buy some raffle tickets? We are trying to raise money so we could buy John Quincy Adams some new computers for their computer lab."
"No." He said curtly, looking down at his Ipod to skip the current song he was listening to. Lucas hoped that the loud bass of the next song would drown out whatever Riley was saying and would make her leave him alone quicker.
No such luck. "So I saw the way you were in there with Louis. And I know it can be very difficult, but maybe you should try backing into it from somewhere else." She continued to speak, not deterred by the cold, indifferent reaction she was getting.
He didn't verbally acknowledge that he heard anything Riley was saying, but still she pushed on. She just did not know when to just quit. That seemed to be her biggest problem.
"Are you going to visit David?" Again Lucas did not respond verbally. But his hand clutched tighter around his Ipod, threatening to snap it in half. "That would be a no. Well, they moved him from the hospital to a rehab place."
Suddenly, Lucas couldn't take her babbling any longer. "Is this your idea of small talk or something? Because if it is, your social skills need some work. No one forced him to climb that ladder." Lucas snapped at her, finally giving Riley his full attention as he roughly pulled out the earphones from his ears. The muted beat coming out the earphones could be heard by the two of them.
"It's called peer pressure." Riley said, frowning at his quick dismissal of blame and unapologetic tone.
Lucas scoffed. Like he needed to be anymore judged. "And how do you know about that? Did you read it in your precious book?" He pointed towards the bible that was sitting in Riley's lap.
Another thing that had changed with her since they met was how into religion she had gotten. Actually, it wasn't so much about religion to her as it was about hope and faith. Riley had always been full of hope and faith in everything and everyone around her. Religion gave her something to tether that abundance of hope and faith to. She began going to church on Sundays with her family, and dragged Maya and Farkle along with her sometimes. Both obviously went to the service because of Riley. Lucas only knew about this because as a white Christian from Texas, he also went to church every Sunday with his mother. While Farkle and Maya went for Riley, Lucas went for his mother. He didn't believe in God, not really. Because if God existed, he wouldn't make people get together just so they could fall apart. Unless he was a sadist son of a bitch.
A heavy sigh brought Lucas back to the present. "Please don't pretend that you know me anymore. Okay?" Riley said, hands touching the book in her lap.
Lucas gave a short, cold laugh. "But I do. I do. We have all the same classes and have been in the same school since the seventh grade. Why, you're Riley Matthews. Your dad is our history teacher, and has been for six years. You sit at lunch table seven. While not necessarily the reject table, it is still very close to self-exile territory. Although you sit with your lap dog and guard dog. Whoops, I mean best friends, Farkle and Maya. As to how Farkle and you still maintain your friendship, I understand. But how high school hasn't fucked up your friendship with Maya is beyond me. The two of you are basic opposites, and your relationship with each other shouldn't even work. But whatever, I digress, weirder things have happened."
He took a short breath, and gave her an obvious scanning look before continuing. "You have exactly one sweater, you like to look at your feet when you walk. Oh and yeah, you like to tutor on the weekends and hang out with the cool kids from astronomy club. So how does that sound?" Lucas asked her with a smirk.
Riley thought about it for a second. "Fairly predictable. Nothing I haven't heard before."
Lucas looked at her in disbelief. "So what? You don't care about what people think about you?" He asked.
"No. I did before but realized in the end it doesn't matter as much as I thought it did. Besides, people are always going to talk about you anyway. It's up to us to decide whether or not to listen." Riley replied with a serene smile as she got up from Lucas's seat and moved back to her one up front.
Not wanting to show that their conversation affected him, Lucas quickly shoved the earphones back into his ears and turned up the volume some more. However, Riley's parting words echoed in his head the entire ride back to the school, and on his subway ride back to his apartment.
It's up to us to decide whether or not to listen, Riley had said. But how is it possible to even make that decision? What kind of superpower did she have that made her able to decide no? And how is it that Riley Matthews always seemed so quick to get under his skin?
