Ghost

Ch 1

Maya sat in the uncomfortable chair outside of the school offices, for once not knowing why she was there. It’s the last week of her freshman year at Abigail Adams High School; she can’t even remember the last time she had done something that would warrant a summons to the administrative offices for a reprimand. Maybe she had just failed all of her finals so badly that she was going to have to be held back? Yeah, probably that. Even with her studying more now that her friends couldn’t be bothered with her, she didn’t think she was a great student. She hadn’t logged on to the school website to check her grades since a bit before Christmas. There’s no way she was keeping up without Farkle and Riley helping her study. Maybe she could talk her way into summer school instead of being held back.

Before Maya can think about it too much more, the door across the hall opened, and a kid came out with some papers and the school guidance counselor, Ms. Andrews, saying “Talk it over with your parents, and let the secretary know your decision by the last day of school, next Tuesday.” As the boy thanked her and walked away, Ms Andrews turned to Maya and motioned her into the office and told Maya to sit down.

As Maya left the counselor’s office nearly 30 minutes later, she couldn’t believe what had just happened. As the bell for the end of that period rang, she carefully put the bundle of papers in her bag before moving towards her last class for the day - History, with Mr. Matthews. Maya wished she had someone to talk to about this…. but, if any of her friends had the time to care about how she had been doing in school for the last 6 months, she wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.

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It had started small, as these things tend to.

Last autumn, Riley had begun dating Lucas. In the beginning, she had been meticulous about making sure she still hung out with Maya. After a few weeks, Lucas had begun walking Riley to school. Then Riley had been slower to answer Maya’s texts, and started rescheduling on Maya to spend time with Lucas. By the time school let out for winter break, Riley was so wrapped up in her  boyfriend, that she barely even acknowledged her best friend anymore.

As all this was happening, Zay had begun dating a nice girl from his dance class called Tiffany. Maya, not wanting to be the odd one out in the group, started hanging out with everybody less and less. With everyone else being paired off, and busy with various sports, clubs, and other extracurricular activities, no one commented on her decreasing presence.

Not even the adults had noticed. Despite not taking the position in London, Mrs. Matthews had still gotten a promotion, and was working insane hours between the law firm and the bakery. Mr. Matthews was preoccupied picking up the slack at home, valiantly trying not to freak out over his daughter having a boyfriend, and spending as much time as he could with Shawn when Shawn was in town. Maya’s own mother was busy helping Mrs. Matthews run the bakery, and, when she had time, going with Shawn on his trips for the web-zine.

All of these factors combined meant that Maya had found herself with an abundance of free time that had previously been taken up with friends, and, amazingly, even less supervision than she’d had before her mom was working at the bakery. To the point of being regularly left at home alone overnight, as her mom and Shawn had no way of knowing that she and Riley were hardly talking, and they assumed she would probably be over at the Matthews’ anyway.

The day before winter break saw Maya checking her grades, and finding her solid C average slipping dangerously close to Ds. As she was no longer hanging out with her friends, she no longer had ready help with homework. Their now much more varied class schedules also made it pretty pointless to borrow notes from them. The only class all of them shared was History… and Maya thought she’d like to switch out of that too. Wanting to at least maintain her average status, if only to avoid questions, she started studying. A lot. Out of character? Yeah, but…. It’s not like she had much else to do.