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I could go on and on about how I moved, how I didn't have internet for 2 weeks, how writer's block plagued me like a harbinger of doom-but, I won't, because that's pretty boring...Instead I will serenade you with a brief shower of apologies and strive to write quicker than before! ;)
Enjoy the chapter!
Disclaimer: I don't own Girl Meets World, just this story!
Chapter Thirty-Four: The Golden Scale
The fact that she found herself once again on a plane, bound for a destination she wasn't entirely pleased about, really infuriated Maya. Her mother claimed adamantly that she wasn't being forced, that she had a choice in this matter, but she refused to buy into it. She had a choice? Right. Because she had a say in anything lately.
"We're almost there," Lucas remarked, leaning over her to pull up the blind she had over the window and craning his neck to survey the passing landscape below.
Maya stubbornly pulled it down sharply, ignoring his head that was obnoxiously in the way. "It's too bright," she insisted, staring him down with piercing, warning eyes.
"You're not a vampire, Shortstack," he laughed, conceding the matter. He scooted back into his seat, chuckling and shaking his head.
"As long as you think so," she retorted sharply, jamming her earbuds back into her ears, blissfully delving into obliviousness. Maya inhaled deeply, allowing her thoughts to be tucked into their respective drawers with an attempt to contain them. Not thinking was a glorious feeling.
Naturally a tap from a certain bothersome Huckleberry swiftly brought her back from the land of nothingness, an action which she did not appreciate in the least. "What?" She snapped, raising her eyebrows in an anguished irritation.
Lucas to his credit calmly received this response with patience, and merely proceeded to point out a gorgeous billow of fluffy clouds to her right. With a vexing knot of guilty conscience now rooted in her stomach, she sheepishly turned her attention to the aforementioned landmark.
"It's breathtaking," she affirmed, slyly sliding her earbuds into her pocket, a motion
which Lucas of course noticed, but graciously didn't mention. "I know. It reminded me of you," he admitted, smiling slightly, the golden light of the setting sun washing his face in an enchanting ochre light. It was surprisingly captivating but Maya wasn't sure what to do with that realization.
"How so?" She inquired warily, hoping the gorgeous comment was not about to become a premise for a cliche comment.
Lucas smiled. "You're an artist, I thought about you and how you might like to draw this scene." Noting her immediate baffled and surprised look, he burst into loud chuckles, drawing attention from irritated passengers. "What, did you think I was about to serenade you?" Maya scowled and turned her face to the ethereal landscape before her with a furious red blush spreading across her cheeks. Lucas however was still getting a kick out of it. "Shall I compare thee to a sunset? The red in thy cheeks is only further illuminated by the heavenly orange light-"
"Shut up." Maya held a hand over his mouth with an dangerous, sharp glance.
"Hey, speaking of orange." Lucas lifted her slender fingers off without a second thought, it being an action he performed quite often. "Let's do the color orange. Or yellow. Same thing."
"One, they aren't the same colors. At all. Second, I don't want to do that anymore."
"Why not?"
Maya sighed and rested her head on the window, allowing the vigorous shaking from the plane to rattle her very bones and brain with an uncaring stubbornness. "I can't think of anything."
Lucas cocked his head in an accurate mockery of an inquisitive dog. "Is that the only reason?" Maya grunted in a terse, crude affirmation. "Then too bad, I'm calling your bluff."
"Who even says that?" She complained, lifting her head to give an incredulous glance, her hand leaving its position on her head to lift up in dubiety.
"I'll go first." Lucas offered generously, leaning back in his seat.
"Oh, yay."
"Imagine a young boy, about yay high." He hovered his hand about shoulder height, ignoring Maya's wide eyed disbelief next to him. "He's staring into the red-orange of a late Friday sunset, anticipating the following day with nervous excitement. Tomorrow, he would become a man. Tomorrow his life would change. This boy's hair whipped in the wind and he knew that nothing, not even catching the flu would cause him to miss the event of tomorrow."
"I swear, I will tear you limb from limb if you don't stop." He bowed his head down to meet the snapping eyes of his friend who had suddenly cluctched the fabric of his collar within her fist.
"What? What could I have possibly done in the span of ten seconds?"
"Talking like that!" she cried as if this was an obvious fact.
"Maya, it's called dramatic storytelling," Lucas solemnly said, smoothing out his now wrinkled fabric.
"Unbelievable."
Settling back into a comfortable position, he cleared his throat to gain Maya's attention once more. "What was the event of tomorrow, you might ask?"
"I didn't," she grumbled under her breath, picking at an obnoxious hangnail on her index finger.
"Mutton bustin'." Maya eyed him with suspicion, jerking her head up. Since when did he openly talk about an embarrassing memory?
Lucas, expecting this exact reaction, smiled and proceeded to explain vaguely. "Surprised? Well, I have decided that it is time for me to disclose this information to my wonderful friends."
"You literally already have," she contradicted doubtfully.
"Ah, Ms. Hart. You forget you weren't even there," Lucas chided.
The defeated blonde conceded and waved at him in a meaningless gesture. "Just continue, Sundance."
With this prompted reminder, Lucas's countenance grew eerily dark in a split second. "My grandfather was wearing orange when I fell off the stupid sheep. The first thing I saw was the orange." He paused. "Then the disappointment. It was the first time I received the "becoming a man and acting like one" speech."
"That escalated quickly," Maya commented quietly, causing a small smile to quirk up onto her friend's face.
"Yeah well, this is an important memory. Not just because it shaped me "into a man", it was what prompted you guys to sign me up for bull riding and that was a very important trip."
Maya inhaled sharply, but Lucas didn't seem to recognize the way his words sounded or how they might be received. Or what personal memories they might have triggered. "I see," she cautiously responded. "Well, that sure was a short and already known story, Ranger Rick."
He shrugged in a nonchalant gesture, an uncommon attitude presenting itself to her. "True. Your turn."
Maya still wasn't fully certain as to the intent or meaning of that specific memory, but she reluctantly proceeded to tell her story, deciding that she could always ask about it later. Her only qualm with waiting to pry was that Lucas's tone and actions were strangely abnormal and it was concerning. She wondered briefly if he was hiding something from her and it sent a tornado of furious butterflies whirling in her stomach to take flight.
"Um, let's see. There was this one day with Farkle." Maya hesitated, thinking of her friend whom she was currently at odds with a pang of guilt and nostalgia. "We were at Topanga's and he was helping me with math homework or something. Naturally, the discussion turned to other things, taking into consideration the fact that my friends just love to derail from the important things." Here she sent him a significant look. "But, we ended up discussing things like homework and it actually prompted me to turn in my homework on time. I have been for the last two weeks." She bit her lip, twisting the skin until it broke with an unceremonious bubble of scarlet blood, her nervous habit presenting itself once more. Maya knew she was rambling, but her jumbled thoughts were all flowing out of her like a waterfall that had been held back for too long. "I don't know why I told you that, honestly. I only know it will create more problems and a whole heck of a lot more "you're getting better, Maya" from you guys.
"Oh, right, I almost forgot the orange. Farkle had on this old turtleneck, obviously the orange one."
The boy next to her merely furrowed his brow in response and studied her with an unreadable expression, seemingly unaffected by her incessant chattering.
"What?" she snapped, feeling irritated at his inspecting gaze, unsure of why it was directed towards her. Maya had already told her tale and explained where the orange memory had originated from, so what more did he hope to garner from their conversation?
"Are you feeling okay?" she asked, suddenly worried with his odd behavior when he didn't shift his expression.
"You need to stop doing that," he finally commented softly, causing a puzzled furrow in her brow before he reached over and wiped off the blood on her lips. It surprised her, but the spot where he had touched her buzzed with a curious yet pleasant electrical charge long afterwards.
"Why were you looking at me like that?" she queried, ignoring his weird reaction to her lip biting.
"I just can't figure you out, that's all." Lucas promptly proceeded to turn his oddly flushed face from her, deftly slipping his own earbuds back into his ears.
Maya blinked in utter confusion, unsure of how she was supposed to take that response or how she should respond. Studying his closed off features, a trait that they both irritatingly shared, she wondered if she had said anything. Maybe his weird behavior was due to the fact that he was mad at her for some unknown, hidden reason.
Could it be the texts he had read? They hadn't discussed it yet and it had nearly been two weeks since then. To her complete bafflement, Lucas hadn't mentioned the incident at all. In fact, he seemed rather normal, that is for a respective Huckleberry.
Maya numbly stewed in the stony silence and swiveled to face the breathtaking sun, allowing her thoughts to scramble onto the sun's surface like an army of ants. No more thinking. No more inspecting or muddling through curious musings. Just her and the ethereal sunset before her.
Except the occasional ant got loose, and scuttled into the recesses of her mind. Them she could do nothing about.
"You are kidding, right?"
"Not in the least." Lucas held out a faded, brown cowboy hat with an unneeded flourish, one designed and configured to amuse her. It didn't.
"There is absolutely no possible way you will ever get me to wear that," Maya snorted, stalking past the boy with an unladylike stomping of her clicking heels.
Lucas trotted after her with a taunting sing-song voice pervading the air. "C'mon, you know you want to."
"No."
Riley ducked from behind a door, her twin pigtails swinging in light of her hurried excitement. "Let's go, slowpokes. We're waiting for y'all," she exclaimed, her chirpy words inflected with a horrid Texan accent.
"Riley, just because we're in Texas doesn't mean you have to talk like that," Lucas laughed, plunking the unwanted hat onto the mass of unknowing blonde curls to his right as he spoke.
Maya scowled and yanked it off, smoothing her hair down in a vain attempt to placate the wild nest. "It doesn't mean you have to wear a stupid cowboy hat either."
"It does," he insisted, throwing it on her head again as he headed out the door with Riley.
The blonde shook her head, narrowing her eyes at their retreating forms. She had limits. Lucas didn't abide by her rules or pay attention to those boundaries. Lucas would regret it later.
Just as she began her wicked inner plot for revenge, her first step towards the front door was blocked by a certain Cowboy. It just wasn't Lucas this time.
"Hi, Pappy Joe." Maya sent him a polite smile and then stepped to his left to slip past him, but he stopped her movements with a random and ill timed attempt at conversation.
"How are you, Maya?" he inquired, a wide grin plastered across his features. Despite this seemingly content composure, the smile didn't fit and she could tell he was masking some other emotion. Was she to be the brunt of some annoyance or concern?
"I'm fine," she returned with a false tight-lipped smile of her own, warily eyeing his expression for any signs of backlash or fire. Didn't he know she had to leave for the festival now?
Maya was contemplating voicing her departure until it all left her brain when he asked, "Everything fine at home?"
That question set her senses on high alert and her brain scrambling to construct the massive brick wall she built with queries such as this. Her lips pursed instinctively and she raised her eyebrows in a demeanor of lackadaisical uncaring, her pointed chin lifting in defiance. "Yes, quite fine," she spat out less then generously. She then proceeded to wiggle past his body with no hesitation this time, merely wanting to get out of the house and away from him as rapidly as possible. Why the hell would he ask something like that?
"Didn't mean to offend you, darling," he called out as she stalked out onto the creaky wood of the porch. Inhaling deeply, she paused and turned on her heel to squint at his silhouette in the dark doorway.
"It's fine," she offered curtly, the only response she could muster at the moment.
Maya stumbled off the steps with an embarrassing lack of gracefulness, running over to the waiting truck without further thought or consideration. Why would he ask something like that and why the heck she would even react that way completely stumped her,
She slid into the oddly vacant front seat and slammed the door behind her with an automatic grimace as her friends all lifted their heads to glance at her with concern and reluctant withdrawal, believing they could not react lest she get furious. Maya folded her arms and waited for Lucas to start the car, the diminutive guilty hurt she felt at her friend's removal was yet still smothered with her anger at their actions.
"Come on, Sundance, let's get this cowboy festival over with," she finally complained, still refusing to meet his eyes lest they show her emotions that were tumbling through her brain.
Maya promptly heard the jangle of keys and then the gear shifting as he began to drive, Lucas continuing to refuse to utter a word along with the other passengers in the car. She had once more depleted the jubilant excitement of her friends and it sent a pang of self-loathing through her heart.
"I'm sorry," she muttered, unsure if anyone would even hear or care. "I didn't mean to ruin the mood."
"You're fine, Maya. Don't worry about it," a voice piped up from the back, one she hadn't heard say her name for a long time, in her presence at least.
"Thanks, Farkle."
Lucas still didn't say anything and neither did Riley.
"I want an explanation and I want it now," Maya seethed, grabbing a fistful of Lucas's shirt and dragging him behind her as she stomped over to a secluded spot in the shade.
He sighed and pantomimed checking his wrist for an imaginary, scolding watch. "We've only been here for like 7 minutes, Maya," he complained, tapping his bare wrist.
"Why are we really here?" she blurted out, not appreciating his comedic jokes at the moment.
Lucas froze and time seemed to grind to halt as their eyes met, one an icy, green expanse of fear, and the other a biting, snapping blue sphere of anger. He was panicking and scrambling for some excuse, some explanation, but she was calmly awaiting his response with fearful anticipation.
Maya had been thinking. The car ride had once again been an awkward silence that penetrated the very core of their excited spirits, but it had given her space and clarity. They had just arrived in Texas yesterday and since then nothing had been normal. Lucas's odd behavior, Pappy Joe's question. There had to be something going on and knowing her friends her suspicion wasn't that unbelievable.
"We're here to hang out and go to the festival," he responded firmly, hoping his voice wasn't shaking like his nerves were.
"Really? Is that it?" Maya stepped forward with a dominant step, closing the distance between her and him.
Here was where he lied. "Yes."
"You better not be lying."
"I'm not." He tried not to make his gulp noticeable.
Maya stood on her toes and thrust her face into his. "Promise me you're not lying."
This time her voice was softer and open, raw with hidden emotion. Lucas felt an instant pressure of guilt hunched over in his chest and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth with a chalky taste. He couldn't betray her trust again, but did he have another option? "Why are you asking?"
"You've been acting weird and Pappy Joe—" She stopped, glancing over at him with a sheepish, gauging glance.
"He what?" Lucas felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. What did he do? "Did he hurt you?"
"No, Lucas." Maya snorted and raised her eyebrows. "He just asked a weird, prying question."
"What question?" he prodded, still not trusting his grandfather's eloquence and attentiveness.
"He asked how everything was at home."
"And?"
"That's it," she confirmed, furrowing her brows and looking at him as though he'd just committed a crime.
Lucas returned the gaze. "I don't understand, Maya. What's the big deal?"
The blonde's face darkened and she slumped onto a nearby bench. "I—I don't know. I just felt like he was prying and unnecessarily nosy and that he shouldn't ask about my life." She took a deep breath.
Lucas cautiously approached the bench. "Maybe you shouldn't be wondering so much about the question but about how you reacted to it."
She jerked her formerly bowed head up to meet his sympathetic eyes and in that instant she began to berate herself, questioning her stupidity and overreaction to everything. Of course Pappy Joe hadn't meant anything like that, it was just her being herself. Her stupid self.
Unless...he was being overly nosy and there was something going on.
"Lucas, I swear I will never forgive you if you're not telling me what's going on," she breathed, catching his eyes with a melancholy anger, the last of her mind's thoughts skipping in a gloomy parade through her brain.
He slid onto the bench and looked into her eyes, hoping to placate the furious storm taking place inside them. "What are you thinking right now, Maya Penelope?"
"I'm thinking I'm going to hurt you and the rest of them," she snapped, getting up and heading back towards her friends to gain information from them instead.
"Maya." Lucas snagged her arm, yanking her back to his side. "What are you thinking?" he repeated, sensing self hatred oozing from her very being.
For a moment the scale hung in a synonymous balance and he wondered if she really would tell him something about her thoughts. But then her heavy, massive, blackened heart sunk the scale to the bottom and she jerked away from him.
"I'm giving you one last chance." She sized him up with a dangerous warning.
"We are here to hang out and have fun at this festival," he said once more, calculating the odds of him coming clean. "But—" Lucas slammed to a halt, at loss for words and not sure how she could see so well through all of them.
Unfortunately his hesitation cost him. Dearly. Maya caught on and sensing his nervousness, stepped back and met his eyes evenly. "You're here to fix me, aren't you?" No response. Lucas couldn't breathe, move, or speak. His lungs began to burn and ache with the loss of oxygen. "I don't know how you thought Texas
could help me or why the hell I'm here, but the motive behind the trip...are you kidding me?" Maya's face crumpled and he was almost certain she was on the verge of a breakdown or tears. He couldn't decide which one he'd rather witness.
Then, the balance dropped even further, its golden strings straining and stretching like a frayed rope. Soon after, Lucas would wish that he could see both of her reactions at once instead of what followed.
The blonde took one more step forward, this time with a menacing, deliberate countenance. "I will stay with you on this trip, but after this Lucas Friar," Maya stood up straighter, stiffening her spine. "I'm done. You will stop trying to help me, when I don't need to be fixed. You will stop trying to like me when we all know I'm a lost cause. And you will certainly never tell me who I should be."
All the progress of months past, all the hidden feelings and attempts at regrowth were shattered with a single line of words. And it was her fault once more.
She promptly stalked past him, leaving him to rot and stew alone with her declaration by himself. Maya would have left then and there, but something stopped her, something incredibly ridiculous and stupid. A memory, a stupid, frickin' memory. "I don't know if I will ever speak to any of you again," she whispered, almost wishing he would not hear so that she could take the words back. But he did. And it hurt on both sides.
The scale snapped and skidded to a halt on the edge of a precipice, bobbing and threatening to tip over into the abyss below.
Lucas looked away. Maya walked away.
It fell.