Nova.

Nova isn’t in school that day because Lisa’s getting married and needs a witness to sign the papers. He misses her. It’s been a pretty boring day without her, and he finds himself more impatient and out of it than usual.

“Hello,” Roslyn says, sounding annoyed. He looks over at her, confused and a little embarrassed. “Did you even hear what I said?”

“Uh…”

“Ugh! Rhett, what’s with you lately? You’re all spacey and weird and—”

“I’m just…busy.” She narrows her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. She doesn’t believe him. “What?”

“It’s your girlfriend, isn’t it?” Roslyn asks scornfully.

“What?”

“Are you guys having problems? I mean, if you actually told me who she was, I could talk to her for you,” she replies.

“We’re fine,” he says dismissively, itching to change the topic.

“Who’s we?” He sighs, sitting up in his desk. “C’mon! Tell me already!” He glances at the clock on the wall and collects his things, standing up as the bell rings. “Rhett!”

He’s annoyed. It’s all Amelia’s fault. He didn’t tell her about Nova, but he’s been going out a lot with her lately, and Amelia’s noticed, so she just has to ask all of his friends if they know about whoever it is he’s going out with so much. Why can’t people just mind their own business?



Rhett’s taking a nap after school, as per usual, when his phone vibrates somewhere under the tangle of blankets and comforters on his bed. He reaches around groggily for it. He grabs it and instead of turning it off, he answers the call instead.

“Hey,” he answers sleepily, flopping onto his back, rubbing his eyes.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Nova laughs and he smiles.

“How was the wedding thing?”

“Boring. We were waiting all morning, and then the thing only lasted like, a half hour. It was stupid.”

“I’m sorry. Missed you today, though.”

“I missed you too. I’m at the new house you know, and, uh, well, Drake wants to throw a party because Lisa and Dante are going out. I’m going to be bored to tears, so you should come.”

“A party?”

“Yeah. It’s probably gonna be lame, and you’re probably doing something anyway so I mean if you can’t—”

“I’ll come.”

“Really?” She sounds excited.

“Yeah, definitely.”

“Awesome! Okay, so I’ll see you later, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Bye,” she says and he smiles.



The house is one of the nicer ones on the street, with a fence and a tree in the front yard with snow covered branches. The lights are on in all the windows, and the music is so loud he can hear it a street away. He calls her after parking the car two streets away, walking down the streetlamp-lit street.

“Are you here already?” she answers, then laughs. There’s loud music in the background and the sounds of scattered conversations and laughter. “Drake, don’t! Put me down!” She giggles. “Rhett? You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Come in through the back, okay?”

“See you soon.”

He kind of wants to meet this Drake guy, because he’s been hearing about him so much as of late without actually having seen him. He’s curious. Not jealous, just curious, because he doesn’t think Nova has it in her to fool around with someone else—though she can be pretty vicious when she wants to be in her own quiet way—and if she was, why would she invite him this party in the first place?

He shakes his head of petty thoughts and continues to walk down the street. He makes his way through the small alley between the two houses, hearing the laughter and music coming from the open windows. In the backyard, people are strewn about on old rusted lawn chairs, some laughing, some drinking, some making out, and some throwing up.

Nova’s waiting near the window and scrambles to the door when she spots him through it, jumping on him happily.

“Hi!”

“Hey,” he replies, wrapping his arms around her. The house seems pretty cramped. The lights are dimmed and the floor shakes with the rhythm of whatever song is playing. Some people stare and Nova makes a face until they look away, leaning into him.

“Let’s go somewhere quiet,” she suggests, pulling him through the crowded kitchen and to the hallway. It’s not as cramped, so it’s not as warm. It’s not as loud either, so he can actually hear himself think. They climb the stairs, stepping over people who apparently have no qualms about making out on said stairs. Upstairs, the music is muffled, but he could still feel the vibrations under his feet. There’s a line for the bathroom filled with scantily clad girls who give him the once-over, fanning themselves with their hands. Nova glares at them too.

She pushes through people to get to her room. When she flips on the lights, there are people fooling around on her bed. She clears her throat awkwardly and Rhett looks away, embarrassed. It’s not like he’s never done it, but he’s slightly uncomfortable all the same. They keep at it.

“Hey!” Nova exclaims, picking up a slipper from the floor and throwing at the couple. “The party’s downstairs!” They scramble to gather their bearings.

It only takes them a minute or so, and eventually they have the room to themselves. She shuts the door and locks it, mostly because she really doesn’t want some other couple wandering into her bedroom to fool around. This bedroom is a little bigger than her old one, but it looks pretty much the same. She’s decorated it the same way, with the same posters in the same place and with her mirror on the door instead of the wall and so on. Even though the rest of the house feels strange and unfamiliar, her room feels like home, warm and sweet and simple. She pulls him onto her bed and crosses her legs, looking at him.

“So, talk to me. How was your day?”

“It was boring.” He shrugs. He isn’t sure if he should bring up the current curiosity about his love life from Amelia and some of his other friends, but keeps mum about it when Nova starts talking about something else. She leans on him, twisting her hair between her fingers as she speaks.

Her voice is small and soft and kind of raspy but not really and he wants to hear more of it.

“I miss our old place.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I hate this room,” she mumbles, sighing.

“Why?”

“Because the bathroom’s right across the hall, and that’s cool, I guess, but I have to share it with Drake.”

Ah, the mysteriously elusive Drake.

“Where is he, anyway?”

“Probably downstairs with his friends, I don’t know.” Nova looks up at him. “Why? Wanna meet him or something?” She laughs, sitting up. She slips her hand into his and stands up, pulling him after her. “Let’s go see if we can find him.”

The hallway is a flurry of running, drunk teenagers who are tripping and falling all over the place. The music has been cut. All Rhett can hear was overlapping conversations and yelling and laughing. Nova looks around with confusion, seeing as it’s barely ten o’clock and according to Drake, these parties tended to last all night. She pulls aside a girl who seems pretty sober and asks her what’s going on. The girl eyes Rhett hesitantly before telling Nova that one of the neighbors called the police because of the noise.

They run downstairs, only to see that some of Drake’s panicked friends are yelling, “You don’t have to go home, but y’all gotta get outta here! C’mon! Let’s go!”

Meeting Drake will just have to wait.

He could already hear the sirens as Nova pulls him out of the house, running into the alley that’s filled with fleeing teenagers. She slips a little on the ice but he doesn’t let her fall—how can he? They keep running. Nova starts to slow down a little, sighing quietly, but starts running again once a siren rings out again, sounding closer. They run out into a street with closed shops that have bars over the windows and neon signs advertising their wares.

Nova pulls him into an alleyway as a cop car whizzes by, sirens as loud as can be. They lean against the brick of the building, trying to catch their breath. Rhett starts to laugh and so does Nova, just for the sake of laughing.

He’s pretty sure he has to have the most fun girlfriend (or whatever) in the whole world.



He’s not jealous.

He’s never been jealous.

Even when he’s had reason to be, he hasn’t been, not really, because he thinks it’s petty and juvenile and that being jealous is for five year olds on a playground who can’t get their way. It’s so stupid.

So, a few days after the party, when he gets Amelia from dance and sees some guy he’s never seen before talking to Nova and making her laugh and sees her getting into his car, he doesn’t know what to think. Does he get mad? Does he let it go? Does he not say anything? What does he do? Does he do something?

He doesn’t know why he’s jumping to conclusions and scolds himself for doing so. For all he knows, he could be a friend of hers or a family member or something. How would he know?

He doesn’t want to be upset, but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t bother him a little.



“So, my parents are going out of town this weekend...”

“I see.”

“And Amelia’s going out with her boyfriend or whatever…”

“Uh-huh…”

“So I thought we would have the place to ourselves and maybe we could—”

“Could you hold on for a second?” He sighs and hears her talking to someone else in the background, presumably Drake. He’s not jealous. He’s not. He has no reason to be, right? “I’ll call you back, okay? Drake needs me.”

She doesn’t even say bye.



He doesn’t say anything about Drake coming to get her from school either, because he feels like it would be petty to and he’s not a petty person, period.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a little bit of envy.



The first time he meets Drake is awkward, mostly because he’s fooling around with Nova when it happens.

He goes over because Nova thankfully has the house to herself for once—Lisa is working her mysterious ‘job’ and Dante is doing whatever it is he does and Drake is supposed to be out with some friends or something—and she wants some company.

They haven’t had a moment to themselves all week and it’s driving him crazy. The only thing that bothers him a little is keeping this a secret. He wants to be able to hold her and kiss her and be with her in public without people looking at them like they’re crazy. Nova never says anything about it, but it bothers him all the same.

They’re on her bed and he’s this close to getting her shirt off when there’s a quiet knock at the door.

“Ignore it,” she mumbles, pulling his face down to hers, kissing him softly. He wants to and plans to, but the knocking continues, a little harder this time. He stops, glancing at the door. She sighs angrily, head falling against the pillows, frustrated. “It’s probably Lisa or something,” she says, looking over at the door as well. “C’mon.”

It’s not Lisa, though, and that’s the problem.

“Nova?” It’s a boy. Her eyes widen and she sits up quickly, trying to fix her hair.

“Hide,” she tells Rhett, pointing to her closet.

“Where?”

There isn’t anywhere for him to hide. The closet is door-less—Nova says it’s just easier to find what she needs that way—and there’s no way he can fit underneath her bed.

“Nova!” He jiggles the locked doorknob and she grows more and more uncomfortable, gnawing her lip between her teeth in a way that would be way too hot right now if it weren’t for the fact that they’re about to be found out by Drake (or so he assumes).

She takes some of her school books and tosses them on the bed, sighing.

“Just go along with it, okay?” she tells him and he nods, mostly because he’s trying to anticipate what the hell is about to happen. She opens the door and leans against it casually. A boy not much older than she is stands on the other side of it, holding take out menus.

“Hey, Drake,” she says cheerily, smiling.

“Uh…hey? Why was the door locked?” He looks confused.

“Was it?” She looks down at the doorknob, frowning. “Huh.” She shrugs, shaking her head. “Well, it’s old, you know, so I guess it…sticks.” He glances at Rhett and at Nova and at Rhett again and makes a face, snorting.

“Yeah, okay. Like I’m gonna buy that.” He glances at Nova. “Lisa and Dante are comin’ home late tonight, and you can’t cook so—”

“I can so,” she protests sullenly.

“Toast doesn’t count, Nova. But it’s cool, ’cause I can’t cook much either, so I thought we could get some Chinese food or whatever.”

“Yeah!” she says eagerly, laughing. “Take out sounds awesome.”

“Who’s your friend there?” He nods his head at Rhett.

“Who?” Nova turns around and then looks at Drake again, laughing nervously. “That, uh…that’s just Rhett. Say hi, Rhett.”

“Hi.” He feels awkward and out of place and Drake has a smug smirk on his face that just screams that he knows.

“That your boyfriend or somethin’?”

“What?!” Nova laughs, shaking her head as if the idea is simply ridiculous. Rhett laughs too, albeit a bit uncertainly. “Rhett has a girlfriend, don’t you Rhett?”

“Uh, yeah. Her name’s Samantha.”

This is the part that bothers him. Lying and faking it and doing all these different things just because some people can’t accept whatever it is that Rhett and Nova have. He struggles to understand why it’s wrong, because he’s a person and Nova’s a person and you really can’t help who you like, can you? He doesn’t get what’s so bad about it. He gets why people might not like Nova, and he knows that it’s ignorant and boorish, but it bothers him all the same. He can’t begin to imagine how she feels. He’s never asked.

“Yep!” Nova exclaims. “Samantha and Rhett, Rhett and Samantha, forever and ever,” she says, laughing awkwardly. “Rhett and I are just, uh, you know, study partners, right?” He picks up her copy of Hamlet and nods, laughing. “We have an exam coming up soon, and we’re just, er…”

“Cramming.”

“Cramming!” she exclaims, sighing. “We’re cramming for the exam.”

“Right,” Rhett mumbles.

Drake looks at them both for a couple of seconds but doesn’t say anything else about it, shaking his head.

“So where do you wanna go?” he asks Nova, waving the take out menus.

“Panda Blossom sounds cool,” she says, grabbing a pink and blue one.

“Bring your friend too, if he wants to come.”

“Okay, cool. I’ll be down in a bit.” She smiles. Drake leaves and she shuts the door behind her, releasing a heavy sigh. “That was close.”



Panda Blossom was awkward too, mostly because the entire dinner conversation consisted of Drake teasing Nova about her ‘imaginary’ boyfriend. Said boyfriend was only imaginary because Drake had yet to meet him and it seemed mighty suspicious.

“I mean, you don’t have to lie about it,” Drake says, sipping his Coke. “It’s cool to be single, little thing.”

“I’m not little,” she replies, scowling.

“I can see over your head, so yeah, you’re pretty little,” he replies. Nova isn’t really that little—she’s almost five-ten, for crying out loud, and Rhett is six feet tall, but Drake is at least three inches taller than he is. “It’s not like being all alone with your books and sweaters and stuff is a bad thing,” he teases. Nova makes a face, stabbing some food with a chop stick gloomily. “It won’t last forever…probably. Can’t make any guarantees, you know.”

“Whatever,” she mumbles, annoyed. Rhett nudges her foot under the table and she glances at him over her glasses. She’s not in a good mood.

“When are we gonna meet this guy anyway?”

“You’re not,” she mumbles, eating some rice with her chopsticks.

“Why not?” She stabs some vegetables sullenly, running her tongue over the wires in her mouth with a frown.

“Because—”

“’Cause he doesn’t exist,” he finishes, laughing.

“No, actually, it’s ’cause he’s none of your business,” she corrects, glowering. Drake turns to Rhett.

“Do you know Nova’s boyfriend?”

Rhett wants to say that he’s actually her boyfriend, but refrains because Nova kicks him sharply under the table, making a face. He wants to tell people that he’s hers and she’s his and that’s that, but he can’t, because most people are loutish and crude and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“Uh…no.” He shrugs, looking down at his plate. “She hasn’t told me who he is either.”

“See? See, look, I told you. It’s ’cause he don’t exist. So, question is, where do you actually go when you supposedly go out with this kid?”

“Where do you think I go?”

“You smokin’ crack? Dope? Weed? Findin’ a pimp? Doin’ some lines in a gas station bathroom? What? Can’t you hook a brother up?” She rolls her eyes, biting into a wonton.

“Shut up, Drake.”