Chapter Three: Rings
I was in the classroom waiting for them, all their chairs had been turned around and to help me with the next stage I placed a single desk in the middle of the circle. The ticking of the clock echoed through out the room, I sat thinking about what I was going to say, how was I going to start this next stage. A sudden knock on the door interrupted my train of thought, looking over at the door I saw Cory standing there.
"Thought I would check up on you, one last time before they get here." Cory revealed,
"Yeah, just prepping mentally"
"You never did tell me what the girls gave you."
"Secret."
"Ah, well do you know what you'll say yet?"
"Yeah, kind of"
"You sure you don't want me here, I can take some of the backlash for you"
"Ha-ha no it will be alright Cory, I can handle it. Anyway don't you have a class to teach?"
"Yeah but I don't really want to right now"
"Well Cory that's what we do, we're teachers, we teach, if you haven't forgotten."
"Yeah I know, with these guys as they are I just want to focus on them"
"Well you can't. Listen you go teach your classes, and when they're in your class you teach them all the life lessons you can, when they're in here I'll work to keep them together okay, sound like a plan?"
"Yeah, okay, I guess"
"Goodbye Cory Matthews."
"Okay, Goodbye, enjoy!"
"You too." I concluded, Cory turned around and hurried off. I chuckled for a moment but came to an abrupt stop as Riley and her friends marched into the room. Greeting me as they passed my desk on their way to their seats. A sudden sickening feeling appeared in my stomach as I found myself nervous and surprisingly rather fearful of what I was about to do. Everyone was seated and I took three deep breathes before standing up and walking to the front of my desk.
"Right, okay, starting today we will move onto kind of the next stage of this process. Now teenagers usually just fix the problem at hand, but sometimes that means they only scratch the tip of the iceberg. That may fix the problem for a time, but it doesn't fix the damage it has caused which usually leads them to fight again. Before we fix the problem, it's not that I want to but that I need too show the damage this problem has inflicted upon your group. Now I want to make this very clear; no one in this room is to blame, not me, not any of you, okay? Because we don't control our feelings and what you've all done is a completely normal reaction. I want to say it again: no one is to blame for this, is that clear?" I said firmly and clear. I looked around at them individually receiving a nod to acknowledge they understood. I exhaled deeply my palms were sweaty, no more words were needed and I knew what I had to do. I walked up to the table in the middle of the circle and placed both hands into my pockets, I pulled out an item from both of my pockets and held them tightly in my hands. I gently placed them on the table and walked back to my desk. The utter horror expressed on their faces and what I had placed on the table spoke louder than any words, I looked at the table in the middle of the circle and in particular at the two rings I had placed in them middle of it. A quick moment of shame overcame me, it was dispersed when Riley overcome by her emotions ran out of the classroom, and Maya immediately look at me. I gestured my head signalling her to give chase and she did without hesitation. I looked at Farkle, Isaiah and Lucas who were still processing what had just happened and what it meant,
"I, I did this?" Lucas stuttered,
"No Lucas, you didn't do this, no one did!" I assured him but the tears were already visible as was his guilt.
"How did you even get the rings?" Farkle inquired,
"When you were telling me your stories, you all reached a moment of incredibly high vulnerability, of doubt, for the girls in that moment I was able to convince them to take off the rings." I answered.
"Oh this is bad!" Isaiah insisted, and he was right. The bell rang and our session came to an end, the boys picked up the girl's bags and took them away while the rings remained in the middle of the table, after seeing the boys off I walked to the front of my desk and looked at the rings.
That night I sat at the head of my dining table in my apartment. Since the girls never came back, the rings remained with me; they rested on the table in front of me as I took sips of vodka from the glass I held in my hand. I found myself unable to take my eyes off of the rings,
"Did I make the wrong move, did I screw things up for them even further, what the hell was I thinking?" I whispered deep in thought. An abrupt knock on my door raised my suspicion, I rested my glass gently on the table before checking the time on my phone "6:15 pm" I whispered and walked over to the door, I opened the door to find Lucas standing there clearly upset.
"Lucas, what are you doing here, and how did you know I lived here?" I inquired,
"Something's happened, and Cory told me" Lucas replied, while I wasn't impressed with Cory in the slightest, I couldn't just send him away, so I let him in. I lead him to the couch in the living room where he sat down. I grabbed my drink, a book and pen from the pile on my table, walked over and sat down in the armchair also in the living room and placed my glass on the coffee table next to me.
"Okay Lucas, tell me what happened" I insisted as I opened the book and clicked the pen ready to write, he looked at me for a moment gathering his thoughts.
"Well, after our session with you, we found Riley and Maya gave them their bags and what not. But then there was this little incident with some other students but that isn't important." He began,
"Okay then, what is important Lucas?"
"Long story short, Farkle and I called Riley out on her being her. She wasn't seeing the other side of the argument, and it felt like she was trying to force for ideals and views onto us, and get us to agree with her so that we would all say that she was right. And like I said: Farkle and I called her out on it, thinking about our time with you and thought as good friends we should point it out too her, except we started arguing and she stormed off." Lucas carefully explained everything about him; his postures, tone, use of words were screaming how guilty he felt, how upset he was. I looked down at my notes, flicking through the pages of all the notes I had taken since our first session before returning to the latest page. I clicked the pen and placed it in the middle of the book before closing it, and resting it on the coffee table next to my glass. I sighed and rubbed my eyes with my left hand. I took a deep breath and started blowing air from my mouth, making helicopter like noises as I thought about what Lucas had said.
"So you basically called Riley out for being herself too much?"
"Yeah but it was like, she, wasn't, ah never mind" Lucas tried to explain but was unable,
"No, go on!" I insisted.
"When she was talking, it was like she didn't believe what she was saying. Or was reading from a script of some sorts." Lucas continued, I lowered my head slightly, I reached for my book and put it in my lap before opening up to the page where my pen was. I picked up the pen and clicked it as I searched through previous pages, stopping at the one that read "Riley Matthews" at the top. I tapped the pen on the page a couple of times before looking up at Lucas.
"Is there anything else that seemed, out of character for her?" I asked carefully choosing my words as what Lucas was describing started to make a fear for Riley I had a reality.
"Umm." Lucas began as he searched his memory. "There was one thing" he stated,
"Do go on" I said intrigued,
"I asked her who she was, because I said that I didn't know who she was and where Riley had gone. She got emotional and apologised and whispered that she didn't know before storming off." Lucas explained, I sat back in my chair; I looked down at the page and circled three words 'the broken one' "I didn't entirely understand what she meant," Lucas continued.
"What if I told you that, Maya wasn't the broken one of your group. Instead it was actually Riley?" I asked, Lucas chuckled but stopped when he realised that I was serious.
"But Maya is Maya, look at her life and who she is."
"Maya is a functioning teenage girl, who, while yes has had a crappy past, she has left it in the past and is moving on. Maya I would say is a normal teenage girl, her home life could be better and is what it is, besides that she is going through the same thing every teenager is going through at this age."
"Okay, but how does that in anyway make Riley the broken one and not Maya?"
"What's the secret of life?"
"People change people?"
"Yes, we are who we are because of the people around us. The closer the people the bigger the influence, Riley and Maya have been best friends since they were little. Riley has grown up with a best friend who is broken, damaged, a best friend who has cried on Riley's shoulder, Riley has had to be happy for two people, she fixes everything and everyone to make up for the fact that she can't fix her best friend. Riley is so full of faith and hope because Maya isn't, she sees the brightest, happiest aspects of everything because Maya doesn't. Their friendship has shaped Riley into who she is, she's done it all for Maya." I explained and Lucas sat back as everything became clear to him.
"Riley submitted Maya's artwork for the art show in middle school, when Maya didn't believe in herself or her talents Riley never stopped believing in her. When she was bullied she didn't tell us because she didn't want to burden us, she believed that she had to fight her own battles. Riley stepped aside when she found out Maya liked me, because she knew it would make her happy." Lucas said the shock clear in his voice, I nodded.
"Why was she bullied?"
"She was bullied for being Riley."
"And from that moment on the question has been resting in the back of her mind, who is she? And when she saw the rings on the table"
"She realised that she didn't know who she was without Maya."
"She had no identity. Riley is having an identity crisis, you said she sounded like she was reading off a script because it's the same script she has been using this whole time. It's just now, she's broken, it's like looking in the mirror and your face is blank."
"I said those things to her, I'm her friend and I did this too her!" Lucas insisted as tears welled up in his eyes, and guilt overcame him.
"No, it was I, my actions brought it all to the surface, and it was all too much for her."
"Okay, what do we do to help her, to fix this, you talked about fixing us well how do we do it?" Lucas questioned anxiously, despite all that has happened between them, he cares deeply about Riley, if his tone or the very fact he was here now wasn't proof enough. It was his eyes and the tears that escaped them, they were hurting for her, I knew then and there this young man sitting in front of me was ready to tare the world apart to help her.
"An identity crisis usually rides shot gun with depression" I began; the word struck another blow in Lucas.
"But Riley is the…"
"The happiest person on Earth?"
"Yeah"
"The saddest among us are usually the happiest, it's something they put on."
"Okay, but the problem, helping her, how do we do it?"
"Remember when I was talking about the whole top of the iceberg thing?"
"Yeah?"
"Your little love triangle was the top; we are now much closer to the core. In terms of fixing it, there is no easy fix. Riley right now is in a very lost and vulnerable frame of mind, tomorrow I'll talk to her privately and see what I can do."
"But what can I do?"
"Try and be there for her, but don't try and force her to talk to you, when she's ready she'll talk. How's Farkle by the way?"
"Feeling like crap."
"I want you to know Lucas and to tell your friends this too, that Riley is going to try and isolate herself now and push everybody around her away, and she'll be trying to go in a hundred different directions at the same time. As her friends you'll have to be there for her without smothering her, and know that none of this was the fault of any of you okay?"
"Okay"
"Come here" I insisted gently putting the book and pen on the table and standing up. Lucas also stood up and I embraced him tightly. "Come on, I'll drive you home" I continued.
When I returned, I locked my front door and the first thing that caught my eye were the rings still on my dining table. I put my keys in a bowl on a shelf next to the front door; I walked back over to the coffee table and picked up my glass that still had some vodka in it. I gulped it down in one go and returned to the dining table, sat down at the head of the table and simply looked down at the rings.