Lucas kept his head down as he walked.
There's no reason to be nervous. It's just Maya.
As if the phrase "just Maya" could make it all better. As if all the time they had spent together made her any less extraordinary, and him any less crazy about her. He laughed a little, remembering a time when she drove him crazy in a bad way.
That ended quickly.
He had watched them as they both changed. Middle school. High school. Riley leaving for the Navy. Farkle going to MIT. Maya got a scholarship to NYU, and he decided to go there too. There was no pretending it was a coincidence.
She was his gravity. She pulled him in, no matter how much space she put between them. He could not help but close the gap. Sitting together on his couch, video chatting with Riley, or with Farkle. Days at the zoo just watching the animals do stupid things like pee. Nights on the phone talking about what it meant to be alive. Walking her home from his house; walking so close that their shoulders would bump every few steps. Like gravity.
After all that talking, he could get out a few more words.
You are the ground. You are the calm that I will fight for.
I love you.
He turned red just thinking about it and looked around self-consciously before remembering that it was dark and no one could see him. He was halfway there.
His muscles ached, not from the strenuousness of his walk, but because he had spent most of the day at the dojang, half of it training, and the other half teaching kids the basics of taekwondo. In middle school, training had helped him to control his anger and to direct his aggression in a positive way, and he wanted to help other kids to learn to do the same. Sometimes it was difficult to make time for his classwork and for the dojang, but he always managed it. It was never difficult to make time for Maya. He never had to make time for her, he always just found it in the most natural places.
Except for perhaps today. He hadn't meant to call her in the middle of her class. He'd forgotten, which kind of frustrated him. He knew her schedule almost as well as his own.
He stopped short, his eyes blinded by flashing red and blue lights. There were police cars and paramedics outside of the Hart's apartment.
He was running.
He was there.
"What's going on?" he asked the first officer he saw.
"We got a call that one of the residents had died," the officer stated matter-of-factly. He dealt with situations like this every day.
Oh, God.
Oh, God. No.
Lucas's arms were shaking. He dragged a breath in. "Name?" was all he could manage.
"I don't know, son."
An officer was opening the door. Lucas knew they would stop him, so he bolted before he had a chance to think. He was the first one inside. They were yelling at him, he didn't even hear it.
Maya was sitting on the couch among half-eaten boxes of Chinese food. She had a TV remote in her hand. He could see her chest rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths. She was so pale that Lucas felt that he could see right through her. She stood up.
He just stared at her, the officers and paramedics filing in behind him.