Girl Meets Season 4

12. Girl Meets Bullies

Riley doesn't remember how she got home, she doesn't remember what happened after she walked into her father's classroom. The only thing she remembers is the smell of cedar and warm arms carrying her away. She opened her eyes to the darkness of her bedroom, and the sound of her parents talking to someone. They had left her bedroom door open, and the voices traveled towards her room. She tried her best to sneak towards the living room to hear what was happening without the floor creaking as she walked.

"Mr. Matthews," Farkle said. "It's bad, and from the looks of it it's been going on for a while, it might have started the night of the party."

"What are you talking about Farkle," her mother said.

She heard the genius sigh. "Riley's coordination has gotten better, especially with the time she spent on the cheerleading team in middle school. So it would have been impossible for her to trip by mistake without someone making sure she did. She might have not noticed it had started at the time but there have been a lot of accidents lately."

"I think we should find out who is doing this," Lucas said and Riley felt her heart clench. She could hear the pain in his voice, the anger he was trying to hold back. "They sent her messages today, telling her that she shouldn't be with me, that she's not good enough for me, and it just breaks my heart that she didn't tell any of us that this was happening."

As his words sank in Riley realized that she didn't have her phone, she hadn't seen it on her nightstand where it had always been since she puts it there to charge. They had read the messages, and she didn't know how since she had her phone locked to keep her parents out. But she remembered that she was friends with geniuses, and Maya knew the code even though Riley had changed it several times.

"She was probably more worried about those exams that only evaluate how we've learned a certain subject and not whether it is good for our minds," Smackle said. "They are truly useless exams, if they wanted to know if we were really learning they should just administer smaller test throughout the year and not one big one at the end of every semester."

"Those test sometimes force teachers to teach material that they don't know how to teach," her father said, she could hear the weariness from him. "It's one of the reason we have to have training every summer, they want us to learn the new techniques."

"What are we going to do?" Maya said and Riley knew that it was hurting her friend. "We can't keep Lucas tied up forever, it was hard enough to drag him through the street tried up like that."

"We're lucky we didn't get arrested," Zay said.

Riley walked into the living room as if the weight of the world's problems on her shoulders. "I'm sorry for dragging you into this," she said in a quiet voice, but when she looked up she saw her friends all looking between her and Lucas.

"Riley," Lucas said, he was the first to talk the moment she stepped into the room. "Don't be sorry, fight like you did for the girls at school. Fight for yourself, please, just fight."

"Lucas, I didn't keep this from you because I wanted to but we're all stressed because of the test, I didn't want everyone to get caught up in something else that would cause problems come test day."

"It doesn't matter because I'm involved now," he said walking up to her. His body tied up in ropes. "You deserve to be treated better than they have."

"But what was I supposed to do?" she said hoping her hands on the ropes that tied him up. "I don't even know who they are, last time it was easy I knew who the person was, but this time it's like a ghost is haunting me."

He put his head on hers and held his breath for a moment. "We'll help you, we'll study together, we'll make sure that whoever it is learns that it's not okay to treat someone like this. Just don't shut me out when you need me the most."