marcela avelina as...
Ryan Daughtler

Ryan Daughtler was once Maryan Oswell.

For the first fourteen years of her life, that was her name. Maryan was her great grandmothers name, given to her by her overly emotional mother, who also refused to ever shorten it for a nickname, always just Maryan. Kids at school were the same, even though she didn't have any friends to give her a nickname anyways. People that did know her name were the mean ones, the ones like Brandon Darrow and Trevor Askill.

Middle school was bad enough. You were going through puberty, getting use to new hormones, finding your people, trying to figure out who you were, either having blue eyelids or heavy eyeliner, struggling to understand why letters belonged in math, and battling pepperoni face acne. Bullies made it worse, so, so, so much freaking worse. Whatever reason Maryan was targeted by people like Nicki, people like Brandon, people like Trevor, people like anyone who needed to take their anger out on people.

She'd loose her lunch money to them, shoved into a number of lockers, locked in the girls bathrooms, made fun of for getting a stutter any time she was forced to read out loud, had to get new glasses from the amount of times they'd broken them, called brace face every day, body shamed over and over. It was a lot, it was harmful, it was painful. Maryan wasn't a mean girl, she didn't deserve to be targeted and brutally bullied by the three of them.

All of that changed in the summer before freshman year.

Maryan had found a love for swimming, staying at her aunts house in Texas and spending most of her days in the long pool out back. That alone made her drop fifteen pounds in three months, even though it wasn't intentional. Her aunts girlfriend worked for a dermatologist, clearing her acne up over the summer. Her aunt had managed to help her control and take care of her curls nicely, making Maryan finally stop wearing it in a tight bun all the time. She'd gotten her braces off after two years of having them on her teeth, discovering contacts were better then wearing glasses all the time.

By the end of July, she looked like an entirely new person.

Her mother had gotten married over the summer to a man named Mason Daughtler, letting Maryan know that if she wanted to change her last name as well, he'd support her decision. She was never close with her father, and with her mom having a new last name, it seemed more then natural for her to do the same. So, she did. Now Maryan Daughtler. Now a freshman. Now looking completely different without realizing how much she'd truly changed.

She braced herself for going back to school. Being away was so nice, so peaceful to finally get out of the horrible clutches of a trio of complete assholes. But there she was. Standing in the hallway as the three walked straight past her, as if she wasn't there, as if they hadn't recognized her. It was a chain reaction, so many people at school introducing themselves and asking where she'd moved from considering they didn't recognize her.

That when Maryan made the big decision to kill who she once was, make whoever that girl was disappear to protect herself. Why would she admit to being Maryan, the same girl who never missed a day without being bullied, when now she'd been set free, no one wanting to hurt her because they simple hadn't recognized her. Maryan was no longer who she was, the last name change just making it all so much easier.

She was just Ryan.

It was easy, really. It's not like she took her birth certificate everywhere with her, or flashed her report cards. She'd just approach her teachers on the first day, asking them nicely to call her Ryan because she felt more comfortable with it, and then when they'd read attendance, it hadn't given her away. It was the perfect plan, the perfect new life she would live peacefully and without the pain of others. The perfect life where she'd never have to deal with Brandon Barrow and Trevor Askill ever again.

And then, so fast and so sudden, Brandon was next to her and striking up a conversation with the cute 'new girl'.

He didn't knew that she was the same girl behind the glasses he broke so many times, didn't know she was the same girl he body shamed over and over, didn't know she was the same girl that he poured a can of paint on when she tried out for the school play.

He didn't know, and for some reason, she pretended like she hadn't either.

Brandon was just the beginning of Ryan's new life, the entrance to being someone she never wanted to be. He'd introduced her to his friends, friends like Sean and Nicki. The same Nicki that locked Maryan in a bathroom, the same Nicki that called her pepperoni face, the same Nicki that would break into her locker and fill it with notes calling her the worst names out there. The same Nicki that became Ryan's friend. The closest of friends, Ryan pushed whatever happened to the past away, still having no clue why.

Then there was Trevor, who wasn't necessarily the sweetest, but far from mean. It was just who he was, a little brutal, a little tender, a little sweet, a little precious. Ryan pretended like he didn't make fun of her glasses, didn't mock her stutter each time she read out loud, didn't publicly humiliate her by reading her private journal entries about how much she missed her dad out loud in class. Just like she pretended with Brandon, just like she pretended with Nicki. It was a chain reaction, the most painful kind, and the worse part was that she had no clue why she did it.

Ryan was someone who would have bullied Maryan, just like she bullied everyone else now. Ryan was someone she would have hated, someone she would have wished was dead, someone who she would have went home and cried about for hours. That was Ryan. Mean, stuck up, obnoxious Ryan who fell for the power she now had over everyone else for being accepted into a friend group, who were known for being horrible. But the question still stood.

Why?

Why did she spend every Saturday with Nicki, eating pizza and learning new cheers while she use to lock herself in her house on Saturdays just to get a break from her? Why did she ride around in Sean's car, listening to a bunch of songs they loved while she use to use the same music to distract herself from thinking too much into all the times he'd called her fat? Why did she sit on Brandon roof with him, talking about where they'd be in ten years as if she use to not sit on her own roof, thinking about where she'd be in ten years and hoped it was far away from him. Why did she let Trevor show her all of his favorite films, memorizing all the lines along the way, when she use to wish she was in the same movies just to imagine life without him.

The answer? Ryan just wanted to be loved by people for once. And they did. They loved her so much, they'd do anything for her. She never had that before, not even her own mother loved her as much as her group of friends did. Them loving her now somehow was worth them being so horrible to her three years ago. It wouldn't have been that way if Ryan had friends before, if she'd ever experienced love from others, if she had someone to spend Saturday with, listen to music with, sit on roofs with, and watch movies with.

But she never did, yet now she did.

Brandon, Trevor, and Ryan got a lot closer around sophomore year. Sean and Nicki were usually off making out, leaving the trio alone to bond over stupid things, laugh over stuff that wasn't actually funny, talk about stuff they'd never talk about with anyone else. They were so close, too close, way too close. Whatever attachment you weren't suppose to get, they all did, and it was rare they weren't attached at the hip every living second.

So on Ryan's seventeenth birthday, September Twenty-Forth, at Sean's house after a massive party, when something happened it wasn't unexpected.

It was so stupid. They were juniors, drinking games weren't even cool anymore. All three of them had been drinking the entire night anyways, Sean's house completely trashed from Ryan's birthday party, leaving him passed out in the living room while the three couldn't bring themselves to sleep, sat together in the guest bathroom, sharing a bottle of tequila under blue, neon lights. It was Brandon's idea, which was ironic considering he seemed to be the one out of the three that didn't think about it nearly as much.

No one ever even heard of a drinking game that consisted of drinking the entire bottle or kissing the other two. It was his idea, his game, his plan, his want, his need, his desire for not just one, but but both of them. After searching around, they found three new bottles of tequila that were saved under the sink. It was funny, really, sitting together and watching non of them be able to drink the entire bottle.

Funny because they all knew all three of them could have downed it if they actually wanted to.

Brandon kissed her first, after only getting through more then half the bottle, but not enough. The bathroom lighting was shitty, the blue light from the hallway really all they had. But it was enough, enough for him to kiss her effortlessly. It shouldn't have felt as good as it did, shouldn't have had her wanting more. Trevor felt the same way she did when Brandon kissed him, both of them falling for not only his game, but him in the process.

Ryan didn't finish her bottle either, making it half way before deciding she couldn't drink anymore. She kissed Brandon again, because really he was all she wanted in those moments, this time familiar but still just as good as the first time. At the time, when she turned to kiss Trevor, that wasn't something she planned to feel the same. So when it did, the feeling took her off guard completely. Kissing Trevor wasn't the same as kissing Brandon, but deep down, the same want for more was just as strong and equal for the both of them, not one over the other.

That's when she realized that this was the worst idea in the entire universe.

Trevor took one sip of the tequila, pushing it to the side, spilling it on the bathroom floor, announcing he would "absolutely die" if he did it again, and had his lips on Ryan's again. His hand gripping onto Brandon's shirt, pulling him closer so he barely had to turn his head when he pulled back from Ryan to kiss him. It went back and forth for a while, Trevor mainly switching back and forth before realizing that they probably wanted to kiss too, letting Ryan and Brandon kiss as much as they wanted to before diving back in not too long after.

Maybe they should have talked about it the next morning, maybe they should have done something to ease the tension, maybe they shouldn't have let it happen anyways. Now they just acted like it didn't happen, all knowing it did, but not going to the extent of talking about it. Trevor brought it up once, Brandon pretended like he had to think before remembering, Ryan saying she had absolutely no memory of her seventeenth birthday.

But Brandon didn't have to pretend like he forgot it, because he didn't. And Ryan didn't pretend to not remember, because she remember it all. It was on her mind just as much as it was Trevor's, but she'd never say it out loud because just as he did, she thought Brandon wasn't as affected by that night as the other two were. Months later, it still replayed in her mind a number of times through out the day, wanting it to happen again most of the time.

•

kylie speaks

poor trev is just sitting
there while his bf and gf
pretend they have no clue
what he's talking about.