People You May Know

Lost Souls

Chapter 15: Lost Souls

Riley

My entire life up until this point, I had known the exact path I would take for everything that was thrown my way. I had known who my friends were, what I wanted to be when I grew up, that my parents loved me unconditionally, what I believed in - and what I didn't. But somehow, be it fate or destiny or a random string of coincidences, I had taken the wrong path somewhere. And now I was lost - signs pointing in every direction, causing me to stray from the path I would have normally taken. The questions was - would I ever find my way back?

When I arrived at school that next Monday, things had gone from confusing, to complicated, to just plain bad. It was homecoming week, which basically meant I was in my own level of personal hell. I stood in the background as Lucas and Merritt hung posters and passed out gourmet cupcakes in their campaign to win homecoming king and queen. I watched him stare in my direction when he was supposed to be staring at Merritt. And on top of it all, I tried as best I could to forget how Jensen's lips felt on mine by avoiding his dozens of calls and text messages. I didn't know what to do or where to go from here. And it was only getting worse.

"Ah, homecoming," Maya sighed as she approached Farkle and me sitting on the half wall in front of our high school. "Where kids like us get to watch the popular kids live their dream lives, while we must simply exist in the middle of it all."

"Maya, don't play the 'my life sucks because I'm not popular' card, you're better than that," Farkle reminded her, and Maya rolled her eyes.

"I'm really not," Maya smirked, pulling out a bag of chips from her backpack. "But, I'm perfectly fine living in the shadows because I know that one day I will become a fabulous editor for a big-shot newspaper and they will be washed up nobodies."

I glanced over at Lucas talking to some of his lacrosse teammates under the big oak tree. He was only a few feet away from me, but it might as well have been a thousand. I shook my head, trying my best not to get sucked into a trance. Pushing any lingering thoughts of Lucas out of my mind, I turned to Maya and Farkle and smiled widely.

"Guys, I have an announcement," Maya raised her eyebrows at me, and Farkle frowned.

"Does it involve Lucas Friar, because if so, I don't want to hear it," Farkle plugged his ears with his index fingers, and Maya gave me a knowing look.

"No, Farkle, it's not about Lucas," I assured him, before taking a deep breath. "I wrote my short story for the contest last night."

"No way, that's awesome!" Maya exclaimed, throwing her arm around my shoulder and giving me a congratulatory squeeze. "Do we get to read it?"

"Nope, not until after the contest is over," I told them, and Maya pouted her lips at me in disappointment. "Hey, come on, you didn't let me read yours!"

"True," Maya nodded, as she popped a chip into her mouth.

"What changed, Riley?" Farkle asked, and I furrowed my eyebrows at him in confusion. "You were having a serious case of writer's block just last week. Did something happen over the weekend to change that?"

Maya raised her eyebrows at me and I kicked her foot in response.

"Yeah, Riley. Did anything interesting happen this weekend to pull you out of your writer's block?" Maya teased.

"I just... Went to the park. Sat on my bench. And inspiration just sort of... hit me," I explained, avoiding eye contact with both of them.

My phone buzzed, and I quickly glanced down to see a message from Jensen pop up on my screen.