Roommates & Soulmates

Maia's Texting

It was only June. She'd been enduring her parents for just a little over a month, and already Maia felt like dirt on someone's shoe. How was she supposed to survive another two and a half months?! The only thing that helped was her mantra. When that crushing feeling tried to convince her she was worthless, Mia would repeat the same phrase over and over in her mind: 'I am important, and I have nothing to prove.' Repeating it seemed to be helpful, though Maia knew the best solution would be to get out of the house more. She thought maybe getting a job would help, but her parents didn't want her to do that.

"And what will you do when you go back to school," her mother would say. "Just abandon the job? No, it's best not to create false expectations."

Maia so wanted to tell her mother that lots of students worked over the summer then quit on short notice, but she knew it was no good. Next, Maia had tried to volunteer to get away, but there wasn't much in the way of volunteer work available. It had been different here before she'd really learned how great it was to be away at school. It was like when you're lactose intolerant and you haven't eaten dairy for almost a year, then suddenly you are force fed three bowls of iced cream. Some days she thought that if it wasn't for her cell phone, she would have actually lost her mind.

'Please please distract me!' Maia texted Simon.

'I think I'm moving in with Clary and Jace,' Simon texted back.

'Oh that sounds interesting,' Maia texted back. 'Details please.'

'They can't afford their place, and Jordan and I are living in a tiny box with fleas, so we thought, why not?'

'That isn't enough details,' Maia explained. 'What part of distraction did you not understand?'

'Jordan's thrilled to be paying basically the same rent for a billion times better living conditions, even if we have more roommates.'

'That's great,' Maia typed. 'Is the problem you living with Clary then?'

'Kinda,' Simon texted back. 'If Jordan was dating someone new, and you had to move in with him and his new girlfriend, how would that make you feel?'

Maia stared down at her phone thoughtfully. She honestly wasn't sure. The biggest problem with this was that she couldn't imagine Jordan finding someone else. Jordan wanting her felt like such a core part of who he was, she'd never once considered how she'd feel if he moved on.

'Weird I guess,' Maia replied.

'Weird's a good word for it,' Simon texted back.

'So have you seen Izzy?' Maia asked, trying to keep the conversation going so she didn't have to focus on anything else. Like the fact that she was currently hiding from her mother at the top of the stairs.

'Not since Malec's engagement party.'

'Malec's?'

'Magnus and Alec,' Simon explained. 'Don't ask. I blame Clary.'

'Alright,' Maia replied, adding a laughing emoji to the end and smiling down at her phone.

"Maia!" her mother called from the bottom of the stairs. "Come down here please."

With a sigh and some mental preparation, Maia answered the summons. Hiding her phone in her pocket, Maia went downstairs to find her brother at the table with both her parents on either side him. She sat down in the available seat and prepared to not be seen.

"Your brother was just telling us about the girls fawning all over him at school," their mother began, smiling as if the pride she had in her son could actually light up the room.