Chapter 8 Cruising into Isolation

"So, tell me," Perla said, her warm voice gently pulling Maya out of the quiet corners of her mind where she spent far too much time. "How was your first day of school?"

Maya sighed, turning the ceramic milk glass in a slow circle on the polished granite counter. She lived almost entirely inside her own thoughts, which was precisely why Perla had suggested she attend public high school in the first place. Perla believed Maya needed to experience the real world, learn to socialize with people her own age, and gain some practical "street smarts."

But after two years in the public school system, the only concrete thing Maya had actually learned was that she thoroughly disliked teenagers, and she despised the creative ways they chose to terrorize one another.

"It was great," Maya said, her tone dripping with heavy sarcasm. "There's never a dull moment at Riverton High. At least this time they didn't start the semester by gluing my locker shut."

For the past two years, without fail, Maya had been greeted on her very first day by a locker door that had been thoroughly sealed with industrial adhesive. She had been forced to carry a mountain of heavy AP textbooks to every single class until the maintenance staff could arrive with a heat gun to pry the metal open.

After it happened for the third consecutive time, Maya decided she needed to find an escape route out of that building as quickly as humanly possible. Perla had absolutely refused to let her go back to isolation of homeschooling, and private academies were out of the question, so skipping her junior year entirely was the only logical solution left.

She spent two solid years studying late into the night, pushing her mind to the absolute limit until she successfully passed the early college entrance exams over the summer. She had spent the rest of her vacation filling out university applications, though she still hadn't settled on a declared major.

Maya hated the idea of entering college without a clear, defined path. The thought of wasting four expensive years studying a subject only to realize she hated the actual career field terrified her. Would she have to start all over again?

Perla had gone to college to become a teacher, only to realize later in life that her true calling was culinary arts. She enjoyed the act of teaching, but her real passion lay in the kitchen. It was the reason she never complained when her nanny duties slowly transformed into preparing three gourmet meals a day for a family of three. In this house, Perla had a state-of-the-art kitchen and an unlimited ingredients budget to practice the craft she loved.

Maya nibbled guiltily on her lower lip, staring at the golden crumbs on her plate. She often worried that if it weren't for her, Perla would have left this empty mansion long ago to open her own restaurant. She had been tempted to ask her about it a thousand times, but she was always too afraid of what the answer might be.

She was terrified Perla would tell her that she stayed solely out of pity. That she knew Maya was entirely alone in the world and needed someone to protect her. The thought that Perla had put her own dreams on hold for her felt like a crushing weight.

Or worse, what if Perla admitted she only stayed because the salary her father paid her was simply too generous to walk away from? Maya would be absolutely devastated if she discovered their maternal bond was nothing more than a well-compensated business transaction. And if she pushed the issue, she might accidentally give Perla the perfect opportunity to quit, leaving Maya entirely alone in this echoing mausoleum of a house.

When Maya had voiced her anxieties about not knowing what to major in, Perla had used it as leverage to convince her to stay in public school. Perla argued that having an active social life would eventually lead Maya to her true passion. But so far, the only passion Maya had developed was a deep, burning resentment toward the student body.

Still, if she was being completely honest with herself, her experiences had given her some dark inspiration. Lately, she found herself drifting toward courses in psychology and human behavior. She wanted to understand, with absolute scientific precision, what made teenagers such insufferable, cruel creatures. And more importantly, she wanted to know what went wrong in the minds of parents who chose to bring children into the world only to completely abandon them emotionally.

"Oh, honey..." Perla murmured, her eyes softening with a deep, pitying look that made Maya’s chest tighten.

Maya quickly closed her eyes, raising a hand to cut her off. "Please don't say it's going to get better, Perla, because it hasn't yet." She opened her eyes, offering a small, cynical smile. "But look on the bright side: in exactly four months, I'll graduate, and I will never have to set foot in that building again."

"I'm sure you'll have a much better experience in college," Perla insisted, her voice full of a warm, unshakeable conviction.

Maya tried her best not to snort. Perla spoke with so much optimism that anyone else would have believed her. But Maya had heard those exact same promises before she started high school, and she knew better than to trust false hope.

"I'll take that under advisement," Maya said, picking up a second cookie and taking a slow, defensive bite.

Perla laughed, reaching across the island and playfully snatching the half-eaten cookie right out of Maya's fingers. "Hey! I was eating that!" Maya protested.

With a playful shrug, Perla popped the rest of the cookie into her own mouth. But as she chewed, the amusement faded from her face, replaced by a sharp, observant look. She placed her forearms flat against the granite counter, leaning in close.

"Was there really nothing different or even mildly interesting that happened to you today, Maya?" she asked quietly.

Maya froze, her fingers tightening around her glass of milk. She didn't have to search her memory. Something incredibly different had happened today. Something that went far beyond "mildly interesting."

Someone had actually stood up for her. For the first time in her life, a boy had stepped into the line of fire to rescue her from the school's golden boy. He had dragged her into class, held her hand, and called her sweetheart in a low, gravelly baritone that had sent an unfamiliar, electric shiver straight down her spine.

Even now, just thinking about the low, vibrating texture of his voice made her cheeks grow warm.

"Aha!" Perla clapped her hands together in delight, bouncing slightly on her heels. "I knew it! Something did happen. Did you meet a boy?"

"No!" Maya blurted out, her voice squeaking in a pitch that sounded completely foreign to her own ears.