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Maya isn’t sure how they got to this point.
Okay. That’s a lie. She’s smart enough that she can look through the past four years and pinpoint exactly when things went wrong. If you’re looking at cause and effect, it’s really Lucas’s fault, for getting on that stupid bull. Or if you want to look back even farther, the fault belongs to both Riley and her, because they signed Lucas up for that stupid rodeo. Or if you want to look back even farther than that, it’s Lucas’s fault for falling off stupid Judy.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Really, though, Maya is eighteen now, and she’s old enough and mature enough to recognize that the fault isn’t Lucas’s. It’s not Riley’s, either. It’s hers.
Years later, Maya will find out from Farkle exactly what happened in all of the years that she missed. She counts grade eight, because she wasn’t there for her best friend. The best best best friend she ever had.
All Maya knows though at this point is that she’s alone. She’s alone because of a boy. A stupid boy broke up one of the strongest friendships of all time. And looking back (and maybe because she knows who he is now), Maya knows now that he most definitely was not worth it.
Stupid.
*
The whole thing doesn’t start with a rodeo. Contrary to popular belief, it starts the day her favourite class is cancelled. She’s furious and miserable and feels as though her skin isn’t strong enough to contain her, and when Lucas says, “I want Maya to be happy,” something inside her shatters a bit.
It’s like the day that Shawn tells her she should change her clothes. Someone, a boy no less, wants her to be happy. Someone cares about her other than Riley, who is basically obligated to care because she’s Riley and she loves the whole world.
But Riley still has heart eyes whenever she looks at Lucas, and Maya won’t ruin her best friend’s first love. She’d rather go heartbroken than ever see the belief in Riley’s eyes fade.
So Maya nestles the way Lucas looked at her when he got all defensive of her art deep inside her heart and tries to ignore the flip her stomach does every single time he accidentally meets her eyes. Because he belongs with Riley. He does. Sunshine belongs with sunshine.
(Maya can’t quite stop the voice that hisses that Riley doesn’t need more light. She was born with light pouring over her from all directions. Maya was born in a shadow.)
When the yearbook comes out with Maya and Lucas as best couple, Maya shoves the yearbook into her backpack to stare at later. Right now, Riley is devastated in only the way Riley can be: dramatically and irrevocably. While Riley is off pretending to be a shadow, Maya takes on Riley’s persona because she needs a Riley. Maybe if she has Riley surrounding her like a second skin, she’ll turn into sunshine too.
Instead, Maya discovers a secret.
She can’t ever tell Riley, because Riley would be devastated and Maya doesn’t ever want to go back to Morticia or whatever it is Riley named herself.
So they continue, Maya shoving her crush’s ugly (actually kind of adorable) head down whenever it pops up, somewhere between her lungs and her stomach. Maya thinks that love is a little bit terrible and a lot overrated. She’s sick of feeling like she’s going to vomit or pass out every time Lucas gives her his charming, pretty smile.
And then Texas happens.
*
Maya is still reeling from everything that happened two weeks later. Riley likes Lucas as a brother. She and Lucas are like brother and sister now. This is simultaneously Maya’s heaven and hell, because when she started liking Lucas she didn’t ever think he’d like her back, and now he’s thinking about it.
They have chemistry. Sometimes Maya catches Lucas biting his lip while he looks at her and kind of wants to sink her teeth into that lip. She wants him to grab her face both hasty and gentle like he did at that campfire. She wants him to kiss her gently for maybe two seconds and then lose his self-control and kiss her properly. She wants to call him Huckleberry, and have him call her Shortstacks while they make out. Maya wants a lot of things, but it’s still awkward.
It’s still awkward because Lucas doesn’t think of Riley as his sister. Not yet. Like Maya, he’s still reeling from Riley’s confession. Maya might have known it, but she didn’t think that Riley would ever figure it out.
She asks Riley once, “You don’t have any feelings for him? None at all?”
And Riley smiles at her, gentle, and says, “He’s one of my best friends, and I love him like a brother.”
Maya tries to keep an eye on Riley, just to make sure that she’s still doing okay, but it’s hard when Lucas is looking at her best friend less and less. Maya has liked other boys before (namely Uncle Boing), but she’s never had to deal with the never-ending time spent together. She can’t escape him to work herself back to sanity, because almost as soon as she’s gotten herself back under control, she sees him again.
He’s everywhere. School, Topanga’s, Riley’s bedroom. Maya doesn’t want to be that girl that completely loses herself over a guy, but his charming grin and cowboy morals make it hard, especially because she knows that underneath all of that sunshine, he’s got a box of shadows inside of him too. It’s dustier than hers, and he doesn’t take it out to look at it quite as often as she does, but it’s there.
When he kisses her properly for the first time, Maya wants to scream and cheer and do cartwheels and maybe act a little bit like Riley does all of the time. No wonder Riley is so weirdly happy. Having been dipped in a bit of sunshine, she can’t imagine how wonderful it would be to be pure light.
*
Riley is probably the best friend there ever was. She doesn’t get angry when Maya starts spending more time with Lucas. Instead, Riley tells her, “You deserve to be close to another person. I won’t always be around.” Maya scoffs, but goes on that movie date, and the next one. (The movies all have the same ending: Maya and Lucas end up making out, and Maya misses most of the plot).
Maya still makes sure she spends lots of time with Riley, but Riley has Farkle, who’s been hanging around now more that he and Smackle have broken up. Maya doesn’t say anything to either of them, but she kind of hope that Farkle wins Riley’s heart, because Riley definitely deserves better than Charlie Gardner and it would be kind of fun to go on double dates with her best friends.
Riley catches a flu at the end of April and ends up feverish and in bed for a week. Maya thinks it might be because Riley has been stressing about the start of high school, and hasn’t been eating as much as normal. Riley can’t even catch up on the school work because she spends most of that week either hallucinating or sleeping. Maya visits her as much as possible, but it’s harder because Mr. Matthews closed the window to protect Riley from the cold and he and Topanga don’t want Riley’s friends to catch the same flu that she has.
When Riley gets back, she has a week worth of classes to make up for. She spends most of her free time doing homework, in the school library at lunch or in her bedroom at home. Maya isn’t allowed near Riley during these sessions because she’s a ‘distraction.’ Maya allows Riley two hours of homework a night tops before she breaks in and demands that Riley takes a break. Lucas is nice about their cancelled dates (is he ever anything but nice?), and they end up making out more than normal when they do get to hang out, so Maya doesn’t mind either.
Graduating middle school is harder than Maya thought it would be. It shouldn’t be; it’s just middle school. But Maya is stupidly emotional and even cries a little bit when she gets home because she just knows that high school will change everything.
She knows it won’t change MayaandRiley though. Nothing could.
*
Lucas comes home from his summer vacation in Texas during the week Riley is staying with her grandparents, and Maya forgets that she misses her best friend when he pulls her in for a kiss. Farkle and Zay give her hugs too, but they’re not number one, or even number two. Riley is number one of course, but it scares Maya sometimes how easy it would be for Lucas to creep up to a tie with Riley.
There’s a mix up though about when Riley is supposed to get back, and Maya shows up at Riley’s house the night she was told only to find out that Riley got back the night before, while Maya was at the movies with Lucas. It was an accident, and Riley apologizes, but Maya is still a little bit hurt. She kind of hates what dating Lucas has done to her, because her emotions are so close to the surface these days. She’s gone soft, damnit.
The night before high school, Maya leaves Riley’s at nine like she usually does. (She still isn’t used to the new bay window. It’s not the same.) Around eleven though, she still can’t sleep, and so she texts Lucas and Riley to make sure that they’re all walking together because she doesn’t think she could stand starting high school without her two best friends.
When Maya arrives at the bay window, Riley is wearing a cute vest over top of a black t-shirt and jeans and a nervous smile. Farkle is sitting on her bed, playing with the zipper on his new leather jacket. Maya hugs Riley because it’s hard not to when Riley has that expression, and then Lucas shows up and they’re off to high school.
Maya wasn’t thinking when she put on her new blue flats that morning, and of course she has a blister after two minutes. Lucas offers her a piggy back and she accepts, adrenaline pumping through her veins as he runs down the street towards their new school. She loves that she has a boyfriend that’s strong enough to lift her, no question. She loves that when she looks back, Riley is beaming at the yellowing leaves on the trees and that Farkle has the same smile Lucas wears when he looks at her.
Except of course her perfect morning doesn’t last. Three asshole seniors shove them down in what they call the Hole, and there is no way in hell Maya is ever letting jerks like that boss her around. No reasonable person would.
Except for Riley, apparently.
Maya’s known for a long time that her best friend is a little bit ridiculous, but that’s why she loves her. But it’s the first day of high school and Riley wants to stay in the Hole because some random seniors told them to and Maya knows that those seniors were just being jerks because they could. They aren’t Mr. Matthews; they aren’t trying to teach them a life lesson. They’re just trying to beat them down. Well, Maya Hart is not one to be beaten down.
She tells Riley, “Sometimes you’re just too much for me,” and storms away, followed by Lucas and Zay.
The triumph of being followed as though she’s the glue of the group doesn’t do much for the immediate guilt hunting her down. She left Riley. With Farkle. In a Hole. She starts to go back, but then she sees Riley and Farkle watching the shoes pass, and thinks that maybe this is a good lesson for Riley to learn.
This is one of the moments Maya regrets, even years down the road.
*
High school is nothing like High School Musical. The coach doesn’t step in when the football team gives both Lucas and Zay black eyes, and there’s no Riley around to yell at the pretty senior artist who tears a strip off of Maya when Maya tries to enter her work in the first art competition of the year.
Maya’s apologized for the first day a few times, but Riley still won’t meet her eyes and to be honest, Maya is pretty pissed off at her. She never thought that they’d be the type of friends to drift, but at the end of the semester, they’ve gone a week without talking and Maya wants to be angry or sad, but she can’t. She at least tried. She visited Riley at least three nights a week, but Riley wanted to do homework and whenever Maya tries to talk about Lucas, Riley changes the subject, and Maya doesn’t want the best friend who won’t let her be herself. She wants the old Riley back, but this new Riley is morose and Maya is angry and she doesn’t decide to find out why.
Maya has a lot of regrets.
*
It’s the second week of sophomore year, and Maya hasn’t spoken to Riley or Farkle since school ended. Riley texted her and told her that she and Farkle were going to see her grandparents for the summer, and after the first few one word text conversations, Maya gave up on keeping in touch.
Maya hasn’t really seen either of them yet and she thinks that she’s still angry at Riley for letting their friendship slide until Riley is walking down the hall and their eyes meet and Riley’s skip to Maya’s boyfriend and all of a sudden, Maya gets it.
It’s one of those revelations where it just hits her, all at once, and suddenly everything makes sense. Unbelievable. Their friendship ended over a boy. MayaandRiley ended over a a stupid boy.
Maya cries that night because she’s the shitty friend who didn’t notice. And all of this time, while she thought that she’d been left, maybe Riley thought the same thing.
Lucas and her have their first big fight the next day.
*
She and Lucas break up in January. As it turns out, having two people with fire in their veins can lead to not only some pretty great make out sessions, but some pretty serious explosions, too.
Maybe a month after they’ve broken up, Lucas has been converted into a Football Player. He’s grown and Maya wouldn’t comfortably fit in his arms anyways. So, to sum up her life by the time she’s sixteen, Maya’s lost her best friend, her other best friend (and fake husband), her sort of friend (Zay and she were never close; more friends through proximity), and now the boy who tore her strongest friendship apart.
Maya’s not used to being alone anymore.
That’s the problem with being friends with people like Riley and Lucas. They make it impossible to remember what being alone is like, so when that loneliness returns, there’s no protection against it. She threw out that protection a long time ago, and she regrets that decision.
The only painting she’s proud of from sophomore year is a a tree surrounded by burnt stumps. She tries not to think too hard about it.
*
She has new friends now. She still checks the bay window sometimes when she feels particularly alone, but she can never work up the courage to duck inside like she used to. When she’s going past, Farkle and Riley are usually curled up on her bed together, sharing a pair of headphones attached to Riley’s Mac. If they aren’t a couple yet, they will be soon.
Maya is surprised by the nasty cold shock she gets when one night in November, she stops by to creep and finds the window closed and locked. For a split second, she imagines breaking the window and getting inside anyways, and then quickly shoves that thought away.
She just leaves instead.
The next day, she can’t quite resist going up to Farkle when he’s on his own. Farkle looks up from the stack of textbooks he’s trying to steady in his arms, and stares down at her. Before she loses her courage, Maya says, “She locked the window last night.”
Farkle tilts his head to the side a bit, and Maya can practically see his brain churning out different hypotheses. He doesn’t ask her why she was creeping on his girlfriend, or why she’s only approaching him now. (Two years late). Instead, he shrugs and says, “It was cold.”
Maya lets her eyes drop to the floor. “Right.” She leaves before Farkle can say anything else. It turns out, leaving is something she’s pretty good at, and she hates herself for that.
*
Her new friends drag her out for nights on the town, and most times that’s enough, even though she kind of wants one of them to demand, “The party starts at 10:30?” as if that’s the most ridiculous thing ever, just because. She misses having someone to differ with. These art girls, they’re all ‘unique’ in their sameness, and Maya gets sick of the portraits of the smokers and the crying girls really quick.
Pain, Maya has learned, is universal.
Still, though, Maya can cope without Riley. She’s gotten good at it, even. Without Riley, Maya can stay out until three with her friends without worrying about her best friend. After they all get hammered in clubs they’re not supposed to be in, her friends get her home and she can drag herself to bed without worrying about Riley’s stray limbs.
She dates a few times. A couple of boys, a girl or two. Maya learns a thing or two about attraction, but nothing about love, because these broken people don’t have much to teach her. They know about as much as she does.
It’s been three years since they stopped pretending to be friends when Maya sees Riley and Farkle holding hands at her art show.
Riley sees the purple cat and turns white and drags Farkle away, but Maya waits patiently because unless Riley is a completely new person, Maya still has an idea of who she is. Riley comes back at the end of the show, and she stares at Maya as if Maya had been dead and not in her history class.
“Hi,” Riley says.
“Hi,” Maya says, voice hoarse.
“Hey,” Farkle says.
Maya says, “Hi,” again. She clears her throat.
Riley squeaks out a “hi” before shaking her head as if she can shake off the awkwardness. Because this is awkward, and Maya wishes that it weren’t. Riley pauses and then says softly, “I loved your art, Maya.”
“Thanks,” Maya manages to squeeze out, because she misses everything about being best friends with this girl, and how have they gone so long without talking? Maya is still mad at Riley, and she’s sure that Riley is still mad at her, but that anger was never supposed to keep them apart. Apparently though, anger turns to apathy, and Maya never thought of herself as an apathetic person, but that’s really the only explanation for the way they just sort of… fell apart.
“We haven’t talked in a while.”
And there’s the anger. Maya welcomes it though, because it’s better than that stupid apathy. If she’s angry, she cares, and Maya so desperately wants to keep caring about this, because this is important. If missing a person three years later isn’t an indicator of true friendship, Maya doesn’t know what is. “I’m not the one who locked the window.”
“What if I opened the window, just for a bit?”
Maya accidentally jerks her chin up. Riley is angry. She can see it in Riley’s unsmiling eyes, her frustration, and Maya is frustrated, too. But Riley has hope, too, same as always, and just like she used to, Riley’s hope draws out Maya’s. Maya says, “Maybe I’d show up.”
Riley nods, “Okay,” and then she’s gone.
*
Maya needs a cigarette to calm herself, but she only makes it through a few puffs before she’s picturing Riley’s reaction if she found out and Maya’s stomping the cigarette out. She lights another cigarette when she imagines trying to explain to Riley what happened to their friendship. That one only lasts two lungfuls before she has to toss it to the ground and go brush her teeth and change her clothes so that Riley doesn’t smell the smoke.
As she’s going to Riley’s building, she nearly decides to go through the front, but she can’t. She’s not ready to see Cory and Topanga after all of these years, and besides, it’s fitting that their friendship started through the window and might start again the same way.
Maya tries to imagine the worst case scenario, Riley’s fury and unforgiving face chasing her away, but even that can’t squash the hope rising in her chest.
She takes a deep breath and crawls through the open window.
*
A few days later, Maya moves back to her rightful spot at Riley’s left hand side, and Mr. Matthew smiles as if to say, ‘Welcome back,’ before going into his lesson.