one shots ›› girl meets world

4 ➼ ❝fallen❞ (rucas)

a/n: set in post-canon verse (senior year) & for reference this was written after GM Hollyworld (3.17) prompt by @hartmas ;; riley matthews used to be the highschool goody two shoes who never did anything wrong. until she did. when rumors spread, what'll happen to her friendship with everyone? sides are chosen and the clique 6 is no longer. will riley's prince step up to the challenge of protecting his princess? or will he cower away, believing the rumors between her and charlie.  please let me know what you think! - ellie xx

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Rumors are the epitome of the High School experience. The four years inside the same four walls are never quite complete until the whispering behind your back begins. Until the same people you've trusted, some even longer than the years you've been here, turn their backs on you. Until sides are taken and word spreads.  Until the same four walls that surrounded you for all this time felt like they were caving in. Until you felt like you couldn't last here for another four days, let alone four years.

For some this happens early in the High School career. The first year or second when you're young and vulnerable. When you don't know how to deal with it. These are the crucial years to figuring yourself out, where you stand, and who your friends are. But rumors can derail those plans. Make you feel like someone you're not. Make others believe this someone else is you.

For others this happens late. After you've seemingly figured out who you are, and subsequently who you want to become. You're in your junior or senior year and all you want to focus on is your friends and your future. But something happens to shift you off course, to run you into the dirt.

In some ways it's worse in the latter. You already know who you are, and you assume everyone else has an idea of it too. And to see it shift from one thing to another in the blink of an eye is one of the most terrifying things that could happen. One minute you're the 'goody two shoes' the one who always follows the rules, the one who is sweet and kind to everyone. The one everyone likes, the one everyone trusts.

And in the next blink, you're not.

This was how Riley Matthews felt. Paranoia, sickness, anxiety; all perfectly appropriate descriptors for the situation. And yet so inappropriate she couldn't wrap her head around them.

It only took four simple days for the impossible to happen.  After almost four years; four days in to her senior year and Riley Matthews was already falling apart.

It all started on day one. It was the first day back from summer break and the air was filled with the laughter of reunited friends and acquaintances, and the anticipation of class schedules.  Riley had seen her friends almost everyday the past summer except for the one week she spent in Philadelphia with her grandparents and younger brother. Everything was perfect.

She had been in a long term relationship with her boyfriend, Lucas, since freshman year, her best friend Maya had even begun dating his best friend, Zay, over the summer. Their other best friends, Farkle and Smackle, one-upping all of them; going strong since middle school.

But if there was one thing Riley learned in all of this, it was that things change. And they can change fast. Way faster than she ever anticipated, or hoped of anticipating.

It took only first period for Riley to notice the shift in the atmosphere of the school she's always known.  Her group of friends had all been placed in the same homeroom English class.  But even though all of her friends were ecstatic about this arrangement, Riley's attention was elsewhere.  She noticed every time a new student entered the room, before class even began, their eyes would fixate on hers for an alarming amount of time before either looking away or whispering something to someone else.