Beyond These Stars

Chapter Three

After two weekends of Ryan, Michael, and Anna hanging out, and two Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and a Thursday of Gavin avoiding Michael at all cost and giving him dirty looks whenever he could, this Thursday's lunch period rolled around and the three were sitting at Michael and Gavin's old table, which became were they would eat lunch regularly.
Michael wouldn't admit it, but he was starting to miss Gavin slightly. He's been his best friend the majority of his life so missing him was a given.
While they were sitting talking about new musicals they found interesting Gavin walked up to the table. He smiled a bit and turned to Michael.
"Can I sit?" He asked. Michael looked at him quizzically, but allowed him to sit anyways.
"I just wanted to say sorry. If your friends with her then I gotta respect that." He says.
Michael nods his head in response and turns back towards the girls who seem to be freaking out about an actor from a musical he never listened too. He coughs to get there attention. They look over at him and Ryan gives a smile while Anna just rolls her eyes.
"Ryan, this is Gavin. I don't believe you ever met." He says gesturing to Gavin.
Gavin gives a smirk and reaches out his hand for Ryan to shake. To which she does... uncomfortably.
"Hi Ryan. I've heard so much about you!" He says with a grin.
"Really?" She asks puzzled turning to face Michael, who shrugs.
"Oh not from him! From around the school and such. Now lets get to know each other. What's your home life like hm?" He asks.
"Um? My uh- my home life? It's uh- um it's fine I g- I guess." She says turning pale.
Michael thinks back to the weekend picking her up and dropping her of at that old run down two story house with the overgrown lawn.
"Gavin, dude, what the fuck are you doing?" He says getting annoyed.
"what'd ya mean? I'm just simply trying to get to know our new friend over here. So, Ryan, how's your dad?" He says, Michael doesn't like where this is going.
"Oh my dad? He's, uh, ya know like any normal dad I suppose." She says, clearly wanted to change the topic.
"Oh really? How nice now what about your siblings? Got any of those?" He says, still smirking.
"Yeah. I have an older sister, and a younger sister. My, uh, my older sister used to take care of us because my dad, um, my dad worked a lot. My little sister lives with her, because uh, my dad didn- er, couldn't take care of two kids at once. So he's stuck with me I guess." She says going back to eating.
During the entire exchange Michael has been growing visibly more and more infuriated at Gavin. And he was about sick of it.
"Oh ok then," Gavin says, "well what about your mom then?" He smirks.
Ryan freezes. She goes even paler than before and doesn't move an inch.
"what?" She says quietly.
"Oh I just wanted to know how your moms doing. Ya know, being she's part of the family."
That's when Michael snaps. He grabs Gavin by the collar and looks him in the eyes.
"Gavin, I don't know what you're doing, but get the fuck away. Right now." He hisses while Gavin smiles triumphantly.
Ryan looks up. "Michael it's fine really, I know that there's rumors and things that go around. My mom died when I was a toddler. She had a heart attack when she was sleeping. I don't know what you heard happened but that's ALL that happened. Nothing more." She says monotone.
Gavin's smile drops and he looks down in defeat. Michael let's him go and Gavin gets up. He grabs his lunch tray and gets up mumbling "losers" on his way up. He goes to sit with the douchy kids at the other side of the cafeteria.
"You okay?" Anna asks her.
"Yeah I'm fine. Not the first time something like that happened. Rumors come and make people think other things. But it still can get annoying."
Anna pats her back.
"that doesn't make it okay." Michael mumbles.

During play rehearsal later that day Michael sits in the back playing with different lightings, because he has nothing else to do, while Ryan is practicing lines at the front on stage. He doesn't know why they even have her practicing because she already knows this part like the back of her hand.
Ryan goes to run the next scene with Devin, the boy playing Evan, and Michael starts to get the feeling of wanting to punch Devin in the jaw. That's a feeling right? Yeah that's a feeling.
Ryan says her lines perfectly without the script and goes to hangout in the back room, because the teachers need to do some work with Devin and the girl playing Heidi. Michael decides to go hangout with her back there so she's not lonely, plus he has nothing else to do.
He walks into the room to find Ryan reading and re-reading the script making sure she has every line.
"Hey dork." He says sitting on the little table across the small room.
Ryan looks up from her seat on the floor and smiles, leaning against the light yellow wall.
"Hey light boy" she says.
"Hey," he says raising his hands with mock offense, "lights are better than having to go up on that big stage."
She laughs. "It's fun going up there. You get to be someone else. Escape your life. And you know what's planned and what's next. Ya know, no surprises. Everything's planned out. I just think it's therapeutic." She says tilting her head back closing her eyes.
Michael looks at her in awe and takes in how relax she looks for once. It's nice.
"See somethin ya like there buddy?" She laughs, not moving from her position.
Michael scoffs.
"Yeah you wish dork," He says hopping if the table, "I gotta go get back to my lights. I didn't realize it would take so much lighting to cover up Devin's ugly mug. We might blow a fuse with that much light."
He ruffles Ryan's hair as he walks by.
"Be nice light boy!" She calls through the closing door, "and don't forget, you're my ride!"

After rehearsal finishes Michael walks out front of the school to see Ryan sitting in a tree above his car.
"Let's go light boy! I'm stayin at my sisters for a week and that's a good 20 minutes away! And you promised me rides everyday!" She shouts swinging her legs.
He laughs and walks to the car.
"Hey, Evan Hansen, get out of the tree and get in the car." He sad laughing and getting in.
She hops down and slides over the hood of the car to the passengers side. She gets in and is smiling. Michael takes note of this being that she normally looks abysmal when he drives her home.
She hands him her phone with the GPS open to what he assumes is the address and starts driving.
After about five minutes of just listening to the radio Michael speaks up.
"You seem happy. Any reason?" He asks turning his head to her slightly, but still looking at the road{drive safe kiddos}
She turns to him and smiles even wider.
"Well for starters we get off school tomorrow because of teacher in service* and my sisters are out of town for a week so it's my job to house sit. So I get to stay there for the week." She says.
"Sounds fun" he says turning back fully to the road.
"Yeah. And you and Anna should come over this weekend! And if you want to you can come and hangout a bit tonight before you leave if your allowed to that is." She says excitedly.
Michael laughs. "Yeah I'm sure that's fine."
After another about ten minutes they pull up at a small, one story blue house, with a small flower garden in the front of it.
Ryan's smile gets even wider when she sees a car still in the driveway.
"You can wait in the car until she leaves if you want. Or you can come with me." She says turning back to face him.
"Nah it's cool. You can leave your bag in here and I'll go park across the street and when she leaves I'll come to the door alight?" He says.
"That's cool!" She says hopping out of the car.
As soon as she does the front door swings open to reveal a girl about 5 ft in a black tank top and denim shorts with blue hair you looks to be about twenty. Ryan runs up and hugs her and she hugs back just as tight, if not tighter. They stand there or a good two minutes just hugging while Michael watches from across the street in the rearview mirror.
When they finally let go they talk for about ten minutes before who Michael presumes to be her older sister, points over to his car. Ryan looks to be explaining whose in the car and her sister nods her head and checks her phone, presumably, to see the time or to see a text. She looks up, says something, hugs Ryan, and ducks out into the car.
After she drives away Michael gets out of the car and walks over to Ryan in the front yard, her bag in hand.
"That your sister?" He asks handing the bag to her.
"Yup! I haven't seen her in like a year! Its really nice when I get to see her." She says, and Michael can't help but notice the giant, genuine smile in her face.
"What about your younger sister? Didn't you say she lived with her?" He asks.
"Oh yeah. We don't get along well, like at all, so we don't really all. She was in the car. She was actually the one that texted my sister to hurry up." She said turning to the house.
As she stepped in she stopped and turned her head. She mumbles a swear word.
"Hey,I just realized I left my actual bag of clothes for the week back at my house, could you drive me over there tomorrow? If not I can just get a bus or something." She asks Michael.
"Nah it's cool. Don't worry about it." He says pushing her lightly into the house.
They stay in the house and just talk and laugh about random shit until dark when Michael has to go home.
He walks to the front door and grabs the bob then turns around.
"Are you gonna be okay by yourself without any of you stuff? I'm coming back tomorrow at like noon anyways so I can stay if you need me to." He says.
She gets up from the couch and walks over to him.
"I'm fine light boy. I can handle it." She says.
"Alright. Just... just be careful alright?" He says opening the door and stepping out.
"Promise" she says smiling.
She leans forward and kisses him on the cheek before stepping back into the he house.
"See ya tomorrow light boy." She says with a wave.
He turns around to walk tot he car and turns his head back and waves.
Michael gets into his car, smiling like an idiot and realizing, he really was getting roped up in the mystery of Ryan Moore.

* teacher in service is a thing where the students have a day off and the teachers still go in for meetings and things. I didn't know if everyone had those so I just left a footnote of it 😂