Pluto (One-Shots of Rilaya)

I Am Me Because Of You

"Riley, I'm me! I've always been me, I'm always gonna be me! Nothing's gonna change that!" I yell, exasperated.

She continues to sing, making me even more irritated. It's as if she won't listen to me. Like there isn't any other reason why I've been acting the way I've been acting. Why won't she listen to me?

Then, it hits me, "Lucas."

"La..." Riley stops singing and looks at me. "It's not just Lucas."

"What, there's more?" I say, my voice wavering.

"Maya, you haven't stood on a teacher's desk or been in detention for a long time. You sold your house in Mayaville and you moved to Rileytown," Riley says, lightly holding my arm.

I don't understand why she's acting like this. She wanted me to be better. Riley wanted me to care. She wanted me to have hope, and now, she wants me to throw it away? Why? Riley's my safe place... Why would she want me to go back to how I was? What makes her think I need to be the way I used to be? What if I don't like who I was?

"I must like it," I weakly reply.

She looks at me with so much pity that it makes my stomach churn, "Go home."

"What's wrong with us both liking a nice guy?" I ask her, my eyes watering.

"Do we?" she asks softly.

I feel my heart hammer as she asks that question. This isn't how this conversation is supposed to go. I don't want her to know. She can't know. Looking away from her, I bite my lip.

"What's wrong with who I am now?"

I feel her touch my hand, "Maya, the world has one of me, the world needs one of you."

My heart plummets. She doesn't want me to be fixed. I have to be bad to be Maya. Is that what she wants from me? To be bad? No, I am still me no matter what. Riley knows that. She has to, right? Doubt starts to fill me.  

Staring into her eyes, I say, "My voice is still my voice, Riley. You're gonna need to show me a lot more than clothes and hair and a boy before I believe that it isn't. You want me to go home? I'll go home."

Ripping my hand from her touch, I crawl out of the window. She never wanted me to change. Riley only likes me for my need to be fixed. Once I actually repair myself, she doesn't want anything else to do with me. I'm her project. That's all I am to her, right?

She's so much more to me, though. Riley is my inspiration. My hope for a better life. The one thing in this world that makes me want to be better, but she doesn't want me to get better. Sometimes, Riley is too much. She messes with my feelings, makes me believe in something, and then, the world slaps it away from my grasp.

"Who am I?" I whisper once I reach my apartment's fire escape.

I'm Maya Hart. The idiot who fell for their best friend. The girl who was fixed but became broken in a different way. The girl who saw hope and trusted in it, but then, it broke her.

Sighing, I wipe a tear away from my eye, "Hope is for suckers, anyways."

****

"I owe you an apology, Ms. Hart," my art teacher, Mr. Jackson, says.

Glancing over at Riley for a moment, I say, "Everybody does."

"Took another look at your piece. Your work is absolutely saying something. And when I took a step back..." Mr. Jackson steps back, and my stomach fills with dread. "You haven't lost your voice. You're screaming, Ms. Hart."