Mine

Girl Meets Surprise

Mine

Girl Meets Surprise

"I say, "Can you believe it?"

As we're lyin' on the couch"

"Well," Maya Hunter finally said after a seemingly never-ending silence had spread between her and her three friends. "That happened."

"Yeah." Riley Matthews nodded slowly.

"Well," Riley's boyfriend, Farkle Minkus, joined in.

"That happened," Joshua Matthews, Riley's uncle, added.

The four of them were sitting in Maya's bedroom at her parents' apartment. Farkle was lying sprawled out on the blonde's bed with Riley sitting cross-legged right beside him, lazily playing with his hair. Josh was sitting comfortably on the couch, his arm resting on the back. Maya was sitting next to him, curled up and leaning slightly into the older boy. Even though the blonde girl and brown-haired boy were not quite touching, they were clearly taking comfort in each other's presence.

It had been an eventful day for our four friends to say the least and all of them were still fuzzy on a lot of the details. Right now, they were just catching a break from everything that had happened in the comfort of their improvised safe haven, all the while trying to make sense of today's occurrences.

Riley suddenly shook her head, resembling an anxious horse with her actions. "What exactly did happen today?" she asked. "I mean, I know what happened ... but ... how? ... and why? ... and what?"

The brunette was working herself into a real frenzy, causing Farkle to quickly sit up, put a comforting arm around her shoulders and softly kiss the top of her head. "Shh," he tried to soothe her. "It's okay, Riles. That's why we're here. To try and make sense of ... what happened." As he spoke, Farkle continued to stroke Riley's back in slow circles, eventually succeeding in getting the brunette to calm down a bit.

"Farkle's right," Josh added. The slightly older boy sat up straight, thereby touching Maya's shoulder, causing the blonde to jump a bit. He looked at her apologetically, but Maya just gave him a kind smile. Her reaction had had nothing to do with Josh but had everything to do with ... what happened. "Why don't we start from the beginning and ... you know, go through everything," he suggested.

Riley nodded. "That's a good idea, Uncle Josh." She turned towards her new blonde friend. "Maya, would you mind talking us through today?"

Maya took a deep breath. Josh, noticing her hesitation, carefully placed his left hand over her right one lying in between them. Maya looked over at the older boy gratefully, really glad that he was here too. That he was her friend. After all, in a way they somehow were now all in this together. "Yeah, okay." The blonde nodded and thought about where to start. This day had been so surreal from beginning to end. Well, maybe not from the very beginning on. This morning had actually been pretty normal. It had just been her and her mom ...

________________________________________________________________________________

"Do we have everything, Mom?" Maya called as she was trying to navigate her shopping cart around the many last-minute shoppers. Yeah, as much as Katy and Maya had been looking forward to spending some time together, maybe going shopping on a late-Saturday-morning had not been their brightest idea yet.

"Well," Katy started while studying her list carefully. "If you really do want me to make Charlie's world-famous mashed potatoes to go along with our meatloaf for tonight, we sure are gonna need some ... well, potatoes."