Nova.

Rhett is standing at his locker with Rosyln after another mundane, loud lunch, looking for the books he'll need for the next series of classes. She’s chattering on a mile a minute and twirling her hair with one finger while holding the rest of her books to her chest with her free arm. The halls are a little more cramped than usual that afternoon for some reason. Rhett tried not to squirm. He’s never been a fan of so many people in such a small space.

“So, the party’s still at Stephen’s tonight.” She smiles brightly—but that’s just because she got her teeth bleached for the winter semi (which is literally three months away, and Rhett thinks it's a little silly because she drinks more coffee than anyone he's ever known and she'll probably need to bleach them again before the actual dance). “Are you coming?” It’s kind of rhetorical—pun kind of intended—because he’d probably end up going even if he didn’t want to—which he didn’t—just because he had a rep to keep.

To put it simply, Rhett is, for whatever reason, one of the most popular people in his school. He doesn't know why, or when, or how it happened, but it did and because of that, he had to do certain things to keep up appearances—like go to Stephen’s annoying parties, even though he's slowly but surely starting to hate him. Stephen has this weird superiority complex that Rhett has never understood and has no real desire to understand, but they're still kind of friends, and because of that rather shaky relationship, Rhett is going to force himself to go. Stephen wouldn't be so popular if he didn't come from money and if his father wasn't in the city government; his personality is shit and so are his looks, but he's well liked none the less.

“I don’t know, maybe. I mean, I have to—” Rhett stops short when someone bumps into him, glancing at the person before returning to his conversation. He mumbles an apology that's barely heard under his breath as he reaches into his neat locker to pull out his notes for his math class, sighing. "Anyway - "

“Sorry,” she replies softly, trying to get past Roslyn.

Rosyln is, and will always be, out for blood. It didn't matter whose, really. If someone slighted her, be it a perceived or real slight, Roslyn's claws came out and she became a little animal, callous and cruel and mean. Rhett is honestly a little embarrassed when she does things like that, frowning but knowing better than to get involved.

The problem now is that Roslyn has no intentions of letting the girl get away easily, and Rhett is glaring at her, telling her to cut it out. She won't, and they both know that.

Roslyn narrows her eyes and sticks her foot out, tripping the girl, upset. There’s a dull thud as her books fall. Rhett turns around and sees her kneeling, trying to pick up her scattered books and papers and notebooks. The student body goes on, oblivious, kicking her belongings this way and that. Most of them do it without even noticing, though the occasional student or two does try to gently kick the girl's books in her general vicinity. He shoots Roslyn a look, which goes ignored, because she’s busy glowering at the girl on the floor.

“You've got to be more careful, huh?” Roslyn asks before storming away, casually kicking a notebook out of her way. He shoots her another look, which goes ignored again, because she’s too busy looking for Stephen. (Rhett has his secret suspicions that they're fucking, but he isn't sure and Stephen would never confess even if they were, so.) The halls are clearing out, a little, but she’s still on the floor, trying to stack her books into a neat pile.

The girl's hands shake, fingernails painted a light blue with clouds and a sun and even a flower, too.

He sits next to her and grabs a notebook she missed, handing it to her. He brushes her hand by accident and she flinches, startled. She looks at him, startled brown eyes and fluttering black eyelashes. She looks back down and picks her things up.

“Thanks. Sorry, again.” Her voice is faint, and Rhett wonders why. She stands up and rushes in the opposite direction, footsteps echoing in the hallway as she runs around a corner in her haste.

The bell rings.

He’s late for class, but what else is new?



He doesn't know her name, but it's something that begins with an N, he thinks. Or a B? L? He doesn't know and it itches at him. She hangs out with Amani, a nice girl from his physics class who's really smart and really quiet. They're lab partners, and they get along relatively well, though she gets a lot of unnecessary flack because of her faith, and it always disappointed him to see how people shut her out and shunned her simply because she was a little different.

She was still a person, and still nice - to be honest, probably a lot nicer than most of his classmates, but.

Amani is friends with her. He sees them together at lunch, and outside during gym - he doesn't have the same gym period but he does have his free block then, for now. Rhett will probably never admit this out loud, but he's occasionally sat in the box up high in the stadium to watch the two girls, mostly out of curiosity and fascination.

She, whoever it is, has for whatever reason, piqued his interest. Rhett knows that it's probably weird, and probably morbid, and creepy, but it can't be helped. Rhett notices everything about the girl, everything. He doesn't get it. They don't even talk, at all.



She sat in front of him in his Calculus class.

Actually, she sat one row over and one seat up, but if he sat in that row, he would be right behind her. She always wore her hair braided as of late, though just a few weeks ago it had cradled her face in soft curls that looked too soft and supple to be real but he was sure they still were because, well, they fit her pretty nicely. Rhett probably spends too much time staring at it, but that's beside the point.

She doesn’t speak to anyone. She just sat there and took notes all period, making no eye contact and no sound. She’s like a mouse, and he wonders if he'll ever hear her speak at all. He doesn't wonder for very long, because a good four days into his infatuation, she gets called on by their teacher, Mr. Noir, to solve a difficult problem on the board.

No one ever volunteered to solve his problems and today is no exception.

He guesses the teacher—who was one of his father’s pompous golf playing buddies—wants to make an example out of the girl—which makes Rhett a little sad but anxious to see how it'll turn out.

“Who, me?” she asks timidly, looking up from her notebook. The class snickers and she bit her lip, anxious.

“Yes, you,” the teacher, Mr. Noir, says snidely. He smirked at her. “If you can’t do it…I suppose I can find someone else.” She stood up silently and took the chalk from him bashfully, walking up to the chalkboard. It was so quiet that he could honestly hear her footsteps and the quiet scrape of the stark white chalk against the dusty board.

The whispers started again. Most people were wondering how they could let someone like her into their school and about what a scandal it was and whatever else they heard their parents say behind closed doors.

It wasn’t much of a secret.

The inner city schools were pretty much black or white, and no one ever really tried to change that—and if they did, no one said anything. One of the few first people of color to walk through those doors as a student was the same girl who sat a row over and a seat up in Rhett’s math class and who solved Mr. Noir’s so-called ‘unsolvable problem’ without breaking a sweat. She sat down and the teacher narrowed his eyes at her after inspecting the problem for a minute or two.

“Good job,” he said icily, before going on with his lesson. He watched a small smile unfold on herself, pride and joy and secret satisfaction.

Rhett denies the flutter in his chest, staring at the mess of notes on his desk.



She sits in a corner by herself in lunch with Amani. They talk and share food and he's distinctly jealous of the middle eastern girl, of her friendship and close relationship that she'd developed suddenly with her. Today, they are talking animatedly about something Rhett isn't a part of, and he wishes above all else that he was, that he could listen to her talk and how she wraps her lips around words and the inflection in her tone. (He's grown waxing lyrical lately, much to his embarrassment.)

The girl has been packing her lunch lately, which means that Rhett doesn't get to watch her walk past his table and peer at the selections in the lunch line.

Rhett doesn't get it. Stephen and Rosyln are talking about the fight at a party Rhett didn't go to the evening before, so he follows the conversation with mild disinterest. They're talking about this kid on the swim team or chess club or something who didn't give Stephen his homework. Roslyn thinks it's rude, Stephen thinks he should shove him into a locker, and Rhett secretly wishes he was sitting at a lunch table on the other side of the room.



The first time he sees her outside of school catches him off guard. Rhett had entertained the notion that he'd only see the girl in school, seeing as he didn't know her very well and didn't know where any of her usual haunts would be. Apparently, he's known all along. He doesn’t expect it or even really understand it until after it happens, which is why it catches him off guard in the first place. He’s standing outside of a large brownstone near a magazine stand with his hands stuffed into his pockets, trying not to freeze to death. It's a blustery, dreary afternoon, and all Rhett wants to do is get his sister and go home.

Every afternoon, Rhett has to fetch Amelia, his little sister, from her dance class despite the fact that it is only a fifteen minute walk from their own brownstone in the Upper East Side. She doesn’t like it any more than he does, and doesn’t understand why he’s trying to ‘baby’ her. He isn’t. It’s because of their father and his fear of ‘all those thugs’ that apparently hang out near the dance studio.

Nobody but Rhett hangs out near the dance studio, for the record (and that’s only because he has to), and the walk (or sometimes drive) home is completely and totally safe. His parents are just paranoid. Who just hangs out in front of a dance studio for fun? Honestly?

It annoys Rhett (mostly because he knew that his father’s claim was completely and totally unfounded), but he didn’t really want to hear any more of his father’s racist ideology, so he did as he was told. He straightened up once the door opened and girls started to pour out of it, scattering in all different directions. Anastasia and Amelia walked out together, giggling about something. Amelia stood at the base of the stairs, talking to Anastasia and some other friends. Rhett kept his distance.

While he waited, a familiar teenage girl walked out amidst the throngs of dancers, wearing a big burgundy sweater over a black leotard and tights. She wore a black scarf and lugged her school bag along with her dance bag.

She was alone.

She was always alone.

“Nova!” Amelia called out, waving her hands wildly. Rhett watched with mild interest as the girl turned to face her. He didn’t hear what they said to each other, but the girl—Nova—smiled and even laughed a little. She then left and hailed a taxi, which Rhett's eyes followed until it blurred into all the other taxis at the end of the street.

He decides that it's a fitting name for a girl who seems to shine brighter than anyone he's ever met.



He catches himself staring at Nova in the middle of English class. Now that he actually knows her name, Rhett doesn't feel totally creepy whenever he watches her, as he's prone to do during any encounters they have. She’s reading aloud from Hamlet at the teacher’s insistence. It seems like Miss Faulkner is the only person who actually likes the girl. She’s a lot nicer to her than most people there, in any event. She doesn’t condescend or talk down to her or act like she’s beneath everyone else, like Amani.

It’s nice to see.

Her voice is sweet and quiet and melodic.

It trembles slightly.

He glances at her lips, a comfortable medium between overly thin and exaggeratedly thick and a pretty shade of pink. She gnaws on the bottom one lightly. It’s a nice voice coming from nice lips from a nice body—wait, what? He forces himself to look at his copy of Hamlet instead of her, but he’s been staring at her for so long that he has no idea where she’s reading from anymore.

She finishes a minute or so later and then sits, setting her book down on the desk.

“Very good, Nova. Thank you.” Nova doesn’t answer; she simply smiles a little and then looks back down at her book. “Rhett! Read, please.”

“I don’t, uh,” he stammers, unsure of himself. “I don’t…uh…where are we, exactly?” The teacher frowns, sighing.

“Rhett, you’re supposed to pay attention when one of your classmates is reading.”

He was paying attention…he was just paying too much attention. Rhett excuses himself softly, gnawing on his inner cheek.

“We’re on page 22. Act I, Scene II.”



“How was school today?” his mother asks over an ‘arduously home cooked meal’—thanks to the house keeper, Marisol, that is, because his mother hasn’t cooked or slaved over a stove a day in her life. Rhett shrugs. Amelia starts talking about cheer practice and dance. His father grumbles something sounds mildly supportive from behind the newspaper. His mother coos. Amelia is pretty much a younger version of his mother, save for her apparent friendship of sorts with Nova. His father wants Rhett to be just like him.

Rhett would rather die.

“How was school today, Rhett?”

“Alright.”

The dining room is silent, save for the soft sounds of silver cutlery against china plates. Amelia starts talking about dance again and about how Nova is definitely going to be the star in their upcoming recital. Rhett tries to feign disinterest, but he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to see the awkward girl under the spot light.

He smiles a little.