Nova.

Rhett has been… different as of late.

Distant.

Nova feels like maybe she pushed him too far with the whole ‘boyfriend-girlfriend’ thing and wants to take it all back. What if she does and that wasn’t what was wrong at all? She would be worse off than before. Whatever stolen moments they have together are always short and awkward and tense now and she isn’t sure about what she did wrong. Whatever it is, she screwed up, badly, and it’s all her fault. She has no idea what she’s done, but it has to be pretty awful.

Maybe he’s upset with how much time she spends with Drake.

That has to be it, she muses.

She tells Drake that she can start taking herself to school and to dance practice and so on, despite the fact that she lives at least thirty blocks away from each of those places. She’s desperate.

It’s all part of a huge act of desperation.

A little exercise never hurt anybody.

She just wants to know what’s happening and why it’s happening and if it’s her fault or not, which it probably is, because most things are her fault. She likes Rhett, she likes him a lot, and she wants this, whatever it is, to actually work out, so she’ll do whatever she can to make it so.

Rhett’s been skipping school and Nova’s almost sure it’s her fault and that he’s merely trying to avoid her. Maybe things got too serious too fast. She could cry. She’s just so anxious to hear from him again that she’s moments away from tearing her hair out.

Any and all of her calls are going straight to voicemail. All replies to her texts are uninterested one word answers. She can’t just ask Amelia about his whereabouts, can she? She can’t, because it’ll be too suspicious and she’s the only person Nova can ask, which complicates matters even more.

She feels desperate, stuck, and depressed, all at the same time.

She wants to curl up into a little ball and cry.

She can’t stand it anymore, so she does, she breaks down and sobs for a good hour on the third day after school. Miss Flora is giving them a much needed break. They’ll be back at practice the day after the next. She can’t even manage to get out of bed for dinner and lies in her bed and weeps. It’s all her fault and she knows it.

Something feels dreadfully wrong, so she knows it’s her fault.

When Drake comes upstairs with some leftovers, she throws her pillow and tells him to go away. He leaves the plate near the door regardless, rolling his eyes. She’s been acting weird lately, and he figures that he’ll just let her get over whatever the hell she’s going through right now and he can talk to her again after.

After he leaves, her phone rings. It’s probably Blanche or Yolanda or something, she thinks with mild annoyance. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone at all, so she lets it go to voicemail and throws herself on her pillows again, wiping her face with her old quilt. The phone starts ringing again and she scowls, grabbing it and answering it blindly, ready to tell whoever it is on the other line to leave her alone.

“Hello?” she answers sullenly, wiping her face with a shaky hand.

“Nova?” It’s Rhett, and it only makes her cry even more than she was before. Here it comes. It’s the end. He’s calling to break it off. She knew this day was coming, so she doesn’t know why she’s so upset about it. “Nova? What’s wrong?” She sniffles in response, not able to begin to explain what she’s feeling. “Did something happen?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbles.

“What’s going on?”

“Where have you been? You haven’t answered any of my calls or texts or anything. Did I do something? Are you mad at me?” He sighs and she sniffles again, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything, Nova,” he mumbles and she frowns. If she didn’t do anything, why was he acting so strangely? He breathes heavily. “I’ve been kind of sick lately.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I have a really bad cold.”

“Oh.” She sniffles. “You could have just told me, you know.” Rhett sounds nervous and she bites her lip, trying not to keep crying, even though she wants to and thinks she’s going to in a couple of seconds. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t even—” He sighs, clearing his throat. “I don’t… I don’t know how it happened, and I’m sorry and it’s not like I wanted it to but it did and I’m sorry.”

“What?” She gets a sinking feeling in her gut, and feels like she’s going to be sick pretty soon. She’s desperate, and desperation makes people do crazy things, like accept guilt and blame for something they have nothing to do with in the first place. Nova can’t shake the feeling that he’s done something, but she’s willing to say that it’s her fault and that it’s okay because she’s…desperate.

She hates this.

“I… There’s, well, there’s this girl, you know. I don’t like her, okay? I really, really don’t. She’s just not my type, I guess. I don’t know. Anyway… we kind of went to her place for dinner the other night.”

“Okay…?” Nova asks with mild confusion. “Why would I get mad that you had dinner with her family or whatever?” She almost wants to laugh, because Rhett’s so sensitive and considerate and cute and she feels lucky, but he continues and the happy feeling is quickly replaced by the sinking, sickly feeling she’s been feeling all week.

“I’m not done.” She sighs and tells him to keep going, so he does. “You’re going to be so mad, Nova.”

“Why?”

“’Cause… well, my parents are… crazy, sort of, and so are hers, and I guess they want something to happen between us, I don’t know. It was awkward.”

“What happened?” He’s quiet. “Rhett?”

“It wasn’t my idea, okay?” She’s quiet. “We just kind of, um, convinced our families that we’re…together.” Nova frowns, picking at the thread on her blanket.

“What?”

“I don’t want you to think I wanted it or like I asked for it or like I made her do it or something, because I didn’t. I was actually kind of uncomfortable, to be honest. I’m still uncomfortable. It just kind of happened.”

“What just kind of happened?” She’s quiet because she’s scared and frightened and mad, but she doesn’t know what she’s feeling the most. She’s quiet and bites her lip because she doesn’t want to cry but fears she might all the same, because he’s done something with some other girl. She actually does feel like it’s her fault, because if she hadn’t been so pushy and distant, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

“Nova—” She starts crying again, mostly because of what happened and because he felt like he couldn’t tell her before. She wants to blame herself regardless, because if he didn’t want to be exclusive or official or whatever, she would have let it go, just for him, just so he wouldn’t have to do things like this. “Please don’t cry, sweetheart, I’m—”

She holds her knees close to her chest with one arm, trying not to cry. It doesn’t work out very well. It sounds so ridiculous that she’s not sure if he’s lying or what and it just makes her want to cry more, so she does. This is her fault. It’s all her fault.

“Rhett, I’m sorry, I can try harder, I swear, I just—”

“Why are you apologizing? You didn’t do anything!”

“’Cause it’s my fault, Rhett. I mean, maybe if I just…” She trails off with a quiet sigh, picking at her nail polish. “Do you want to be with her?”

It would make sense, after all, but the thought itself makes her want to start crying all over again.

“No.” She frowns again. She doesn’t understand. “I didn’t ask her to do it. It just kind of happened…”

“If you don’t want to be with her, then why’d you have to fake wanting to be with her in the first place?” She frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s… complicated.” He sneezes.

“Does she like you?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

They fall into a short silence.

“Are we breaking up?” she asks finally, her voice quiet and small.

“What?”

“Are we? I mean, if you want her—”

“I want you.” He sighs. “I was thinking… if my parents think I’m with her all the time, then that means we can be together and they’ll be none the wiser. So it’s kind of a good thing. Sort of.”

“So you did it for us?”

She’s confused. For the first time, it dawns on her that maybe Rhett’s family, with the exception of his sister, isn’t as open minded as he is, and might not exactly be thrilled if they find out who he’s been seeing behind their back. It explains why he’s so secretive and why he doesn’t talk about them very often. It explains a lot of things, now that she thinks about it.

“Yeah, Nova, but if it bothers you I can call it off—”

Her usual sadness creeps in.

“No, no, it’s… it’s a good idea, Rhett.”

She wishes things didn’t have to be this way, that they didn’t have to go to such lengths to stay together, and she gets that Rhett had good intentions, but it still bothers her, slightly, because he didn’t say it but she knows it: it’s only because she’s not white.



Nova doesn’t know who this girl is, and Rhett doesn’t exactly tell her either. But then again, she doesn’t ask. He probably wouldn’t tell her anyway, so she’s taken to spying again. She’s afraid that she won’t be able to bear it if she knows.

All she knows about her is that her name is Delilah.

There are at least four Delilah’s at their school, so at least she can narrow it down a little. She wants to see the girl because she wants to know if she’s pretty or not and if she knows her. What could she be like? She doesn’t know why she needs to know so badly, but she does.

Today in lunch, Nova hides behind her Calculus book instead of Hamlet, partly because she has to study and partly because nobody’s going to believe that she’s still reading Hamlet.

A girl comes into their lunch, and she thinks she’s seen her somewhere but isn’t quite sure where, but she seems familiar nonetheless.

She walks right over to where Rhett is sitting and tucks herself between Roslyn and him. Nova narrows her eyes at her. The girl flips her hair over her shoulder and Rhett looks at her, almost uncomfortable. He doesn’t even notice that Nova’s spying, and for once, she’s glad. She inches closer to him and he slides down the bench a little, looking down at his lunch. The girl frowns and moves closer to him.

Delilah’s pretty, kind of, but she looks like she doesn’t eat very frequently, so Nova doesn’t really think she has much to worry about. She stares at them through narrowed eyes. The girl tries wrapping her arm around him and he shrugs her off casually, not bothering to look up. She leans over and whispers something in his ear. He flushes and stands up suddenly, going to throw out his lunch. He doesn’t turn back, though, he just leaves. The girl and Roslyn stare at him then look at each other, frowning.

Nova has a feeling that he’s going to the library, but she doesn’t follow him. She just sits and stares at the girl.

She feels like she’s seen her before.



In second period the next morning, Nova finally realizes where she’s seen the girl that’s taken to going to her lunch and tries every day, without fail, to get Rhett’s attention. She’s the girl that Roslyn is attached at the hip with. She sits behind the girl who sits next to Roslyn.

She isn’t one for eavesdropping, but today’s class boring and the girls think that they’re somehow immune to being heard by the people around them.

The teacher’s out today.

Nova’s in the middle of sketching the back of the girls’ heads because she has nothing better to do when she hears them talking about Rhett.

“He’s so cute,” Delilah says to Roslyn, twirling some of her hair with her thin fingers. “You had to see him the other night, he was so nervous—”

She almost snaps her pencil in half. While she’s not really that mad at Rhett—because she can’t stay mad at him—she has to be mad at somebody, and that somebody is Delilah, because it has to have been her idea, after all. Rhett is sweet and kind and wonderful and perfect and she doesn’t think he’s capable of thinking of something like that on his own. Nova doesn’t know what Delilah told Rhett, but it kind of does sound like she likes him.

She wants to feel pity for the girl, but she can’t, not really.

Rhett was her boyfriend first.

Roslyn makes a face and they both giggle. Nova wants to be sick. She wishes it could be different, that they could all be different, that they lived somewhere different and that people weren’t so close minded and judgmental and that it just wasn’t like this and that she didn’t have to hear some girl talk about him like he was just some hunk of meat or whatever and not be able to say anything.

It’s not fair.

“He hasn’t called me, though,” the girl muses. Nova smiles a little. “I don’t want to seem desperate.”

“Rhett’s just shy,” Roslyn explains. She starts drawing again, trying to make herself not pay any attention to them. “He’s just… I don’t know. He’s been weird lately. I think he had a girlfriend and it didn’t work out or something, I don’t know.” Roslyn looks over at the girl. “What do you think he’ll say if he calls, ’Lilah?”

“Well he’ll ask me out,” Delilah says snootily. “Duh. I mean, why wouldn’t he?”

Maybe because he’s already seeing somebody else, Nova thinks bitterly, making dark marks on her paper.

“You guys are going to be so perfect.”

It doesn’t seem like an act to Nova, but maybe it is. She doesn’t know.

She sighs. If only things weren’t like this, if only they were different, if only everything but Rhett and her were different, if only they could just tell people, she thinks, because moments like these, hearing girls like Delilah talk about him like that, make her feel sick to her stomach and the fact that she can’t say anything about it makes her feel even worse.



They have taken to meeting up in a rather dusty, deserted corner of the library during seventh period. The reason they choose seventh period is because the librarian takes this period off and spends it in the teachers’ lounge with the geography teacher. Nova’s free period is seventh and Rhett doesn’t do much in his Spanish class anymore either, so it’s ideal.

Rhett kisses her swiftly but Nova frowns. He does too.

“What?”

“She likes you,” she mumbles into his chest.

“Who does?”

“Delilah or whatever her name is.” She looks up at him. “They were talking about you in art today.”

“Yeah?” He laughs and she frowns again, sighing. “What?”

“It’s just… she’s really excited and I think she kind of likes you.”

“I know.” She knits her eyebrows at him. “Roslyn told me.”

“Do you like her?”

“No.” She raises an eyebrow.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, she’s nice enough, I guess, but I don’t really see her like that.”

“She seems to really like you. I mean, really like you.” He shrugs and kisses the top of her head.

“That’s too bad for her, then, because I like you. I mean, really like you. It’s actually starting to get a little bit ridiculous.” She beams up at him and smiles and they’re okay, for now, because they have each other and regardless of touchy-feely, overly sensitive teenage girls, that’s all they really need.

He’s all she really wants, anyway.



Delilah is starting to slowly but surely grate on her nerves.

This can’t just be an act, and she doesn’t know if Rhett is catching on to it or not, but Delilah likes him. It’s almost like a slap to the face. But Rhett acts like he doesn’t notice and pays her no mind. Or maybe he really doesn’t notice (he’s kind of oblivious) or maybe he doesn’t care. She doesn’t know, but she’s mad anyway.

She’s found out—more eavesdropping is to thank—that she doesn’t have Rhett and Nova’s lunch but skips class to go to it anyway. She literally spends thirty minutes trying to get his attention (unsuccessfully), and Nova watches with quiet satisfaction as day after day, her attempts fail. She’s so desperate it’s almost a little funny, and Nova would laugh… had Delilah not been trying to get with her boyfriend.

She knows that it’s fake, that it’s all fake, that she doesn’t really like him (supposedly), but if Delilah really doesn’t like him, she’s showing it in a strange way. Maybe she’s a really good actress. Or maybe Nova’s just jealous.

Who knows?