Mr. and Mrs. Matthews looked at the pair. Although Riley and Lucas were holding hands, their arms were completely stretched out, as if they couldn’t stand to get too close to each other.
“You’re welcome, Riley,” Lucas replied, struggling with each word. “I also had a wonderful time, as well.”
“Uhhh, what are you kids doing?” Mrs. Matthews asked. “You guys look really awkward and stiff. Is this about that kiss I heard about?”
“What?” Mr. Matthews shouted, stunned, as Mrs. Matthews got up and walked across the living room.
“Is everybody pressuring you to be something you’re not ready for?” Mrs. Matthews continued.
“Not ready!” Mr. Matthews yelled.
“Please,” Mrs. Matthews begged when she arrived at the door, where Riley and Lucas were standing. “Stop holding hands. You look crazy.”
Riley and Lucas couldn’t let go quickly enough.
“You two are a part of the best group of friends I have ever seen,” Mrs. Matthews told them, crossing her arms. “And if you’re going to let some stupid outside pressure hurt that, then you’re not anywhere near as smart as I thought you were.”
Riley stared into her mother’s eyes, eager for more answers. “But sometimes the right pressure can turn you into a diamond,” she said tentatively.
“Yeah,” Mrs. Matthews agreed. “And the wrong pressure turns you into dust. Do you want to be dust?”
Riley glanced at Lucas and then back at her mother. She shook her head. “I don’t want to be dust.” She turned to look at Lucas again. “Lucas?”
“I really like you, Riley,” he told her.
Riley liked hearing him say that. “We always have such a great time together,” she added.
After a long pause, Lucas concluded, “We should break up.”
Most girls might have been crushed by that, but it was the first thing that had made sense to Riley all day. “We should break up right now!” she agreed, her heart about to burst with excitement. “This has been my longest relationship.”
Lucas grinned. “Hey, Riley. Do you have to be home?”
Riley turned to look at her mom, who shook her head and gestured toward the door.
“No.” Riley felt like she was seeing Lucas—the real Lucas—again for the first time in forever. “We could go somewhere and talk.”
“I’d like that.”
“Yeah, like you used to when it was easy,” Mrs. Matthews said, giving them a little nudge out the door and closing it before turning back to glare at her husband. “‘Let the kids live,’ huh? ‘Let the kids live,’ huh? Hah!” As she stormed toward the kitchen, she really started shouting. “Dewey! Get back here! We’re not done, Dewey.…”
As Mr. Matthews watched his wife stomp toward their son’s room, panic flashed across his face. “Run, Doy!” he shouted.
But Mrs. Matthews was determined. She wasn’t going to let that little boy turn to dust. She was going to exert just the right kind of pressure and turn him into a child who not only could say his name correctly but would sparkle and shine like a diamond, bright as the morning dew.
Riley and Lucas were back at Topanga’s in the same matching orange chairs. But this time they had their own smoothies—and they were looking directly at each other.
“All right, so the pressure’s off. We’re friends now,” Lucas said. “What do you want to talk about?”
Even though they’d broken up, Riley felt like they were in a different kind of friend zone than before, so she was still a bit tentative. “What do you talk about when you’re with your friends?”
“Well, when I’m with my friends, we usually talk about sports,” Lucas replied. “Do you know anything about sports?”
Riley shook her head. She wasn’t supposed to talk about sports with her ex-boyfriend, was she? He could do that with his guy friends, but not with her. Right?
“No?” Lucas didn’t seem to believe her. “Any sports? What about basketball? You know anything about basketball?”
“Yeah,” Riley admitted carefully.
“Yeah?” Lucas’s blue eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Yeah, yeah.” Riley nodded. She didn’t want to give away too much.
“Yeah? Maybe?” Lucas was apparently determined to drag it out of her.
All right, fine. She released the pressure she was putting on herself before it, too, turned them to dust. “Well, we’re in New York, so obviously my favorite team is the Knicks,” she began before picking up speed and really laying it all out there in a stream-of-consciousness flurry. “And you know, this may not be our best year, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter, because we have Melo and we have Phil Jackson and that’s all that counts. We shouldn’t have traded J. R. Smith! But at the end of the day, you know what? It’s not our best season and we have a terrible record and we’re the worst in the NBA. I am at Madison Square Garden and I see all these fake fans just jumping onto bandwagons like the Heat or something like that and you know what? That is not what a true fan is! If you’re gonna be at the Garden, you better represent the Knicks!”
The longer Riley went on, the more surprised Lucas appeared, until she finally wrapped it up and coyly added, “But yeah, I don’t really know that much, obviously.”
“I really like you, Riley,” Lucas said softly, again.
Riley giggled in spite of herself. Maybe they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend anymore. But even without a label to define them, there was still something between them: a little bit more than friends, a little bit less than a couple—and that was more than fine with Riley.
At school the next day, Riley and Lucas walked in together. But they weren’t about to let anybody pressure them into making a bigger deal out of that than it was.
“Hey!” Riley shouted when they got to the top of the steps overlooking the indoor quad. “Lucas and I are friends. That’s what we are. That’s what we’ve always been. And we’re not going to hurt that because you guys want us to be something we’re not. So go back to your own lives, because nobody is moving too fast here.”
As Lucas and Riley smiled at each other, confident and firm in their decision, Farkle and Maya appeared in the quad—Maya in a lacy white wedding dress and Farkle in a black tuxedo and top hat.
“’Sup?” Maya shouted to Riley as she and Farkle headed for history class. On their way, Maya tossed a bouquet directly at Riley, who caught it.
Lucas looked into Riley’s eyes. She looked back into his. Then, with a quick laugh, she handed the bouquet over to Darby and Yogi, and she and Lucas made their way down the stairs. Riley had never felt better about where things stood with Lucas and the direction they were heading. Finally! The pressure was completely off.
Later that night, Mrs. Matthews and Dewey were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. She stared at him, he stared back at her, and Auggie looked on like he was watching a championship wrestling match.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mrs. Matthews warned Dewey ominously. “I’ve got all night.” Then she added sweetly, “Hi. My name’s Topanga. What’s your name?”
“Doy!” the little boy replied, more than ready to rumble.
“Do you know what I was doing today?” Mrs. Matthews huffed. “I was making a four-hundred-pound man confess to his crimes. You think I can’t handle you?”
“Doy!” the little boy shouted.
Mr. Matthews wandered over, bleary-eyed, in his pajamas and bathrobe. “Topanga, let the kid go to sleep.”
“I’m fine, Mr. Matthews,” Dewey said, his hands folded comfortably on the table. “I got this.”
“Okay!” Mr. Matthews smiled and headed off to brush his teeth.
“You can go to sleep anytime you want,” Mrs. Matthews whispered to the little boy. “You just have to say one little word. Do you know what that word is, kid?”
The boy paused for a moment and then declared, “Doy!”
So that was the way it was going to be. The kid was good. Better than
some lawyers, even. Not bowing to outside pressure. Refusing to be something he was certain he was not. The more Mrs. Matthews thought about it, the more she realized that perhaps she’d been wrong about him. Perhaps—regardless of what label was put on him, or what name he went by—he knew how to shine like the morning dew after all.
Friend Power Page 6