Nova.

She goes to the bathroom, not because she wants to, but because she can’t stand the people in her microbiology class and she just wants to get out. She can’t stand the whispers and the teasing and the pinching and jabbing and kicking and tripping and how it just never ends. She’s miserable. She’s never been so upset in her life. She would go to school somewhere else, like Carver, where Drake goes, but she has Rhett and that’s what stops her.

She likes him.

A lot.

It’s kind of scary sometimes.

She rushes down the hallway and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her quietly. She drops her bag in the sink and leans against it with both hands, head hanging between her shoulders, quiet sobs leaving her body.

She’s going crazy. She feels like she’s losing it and she can’t stay here for another minute. She needs to leave.

Carver’s teachers are striking, so Drake doesn’t have school today. It’s like second nature, whipping out her phone with a shaky hand to call him. She wipes the tears off her face, dragging her bag and herself into the nearest stall. She locks herself in, starting to cry again.

She can’t stand it.

She wants to go home.

“Go for Drake,” he answers, laughing. She simply sniffles and whimpers in response, shaking a little. “Nova?” He sounds worried. “Hey, Nova? What’s wrong?”

“Can—” A sob escapes. “Can you just—can you just come get me, please?”

“What’s going on?”

“I just—please,” she mumbles, wrapping her arms around herself, balancing her phone on her shoulders.

“Yeah, yeah, just give me a couple of minutes. What do I tell them?”

“Tell them I have a doctor’s appointment or something, just—just come, okay?”

She hangs up and walks out of the stall. She washes her face and then goes back to class, willing herself not to snap on the girl behind her who keeps kicking her seat with her pointy shoe or the boy next to her who’s throwing crumbled paper at her back or the other girl who keeps making fun of her hair with hissed whispers.

She’s tired.

She wants to go home and sleep and cry.

A few minutes later, the phone rings and the teacher tells Nova that she’s going home early and to gather her things. She does and can’t get out of the room fast enough.

Drake is sitting in one of the plastic chairs, hands shoved in his coat pockets.

“Ready to go?” She nods sadly, walking out with him to the car. He tries to make a joke about how fancy the school is. She chuckles without much emotion, walking to the car at the end of the parking lot. She sits in the middle of the front seat, setting her books down near the window. The car is kind of like the Vista Cruiser on That’s 70s Show, with a seat in the middle instead of an arm rest. The thought cheers Nova up a little, but she’s still upset, wiping her nose and eyes with her sweater sleeve.

“So…you gonna tell me what’s the matter or what?” Drake says, clearing his throat awkwardly. She sniffles and starts crying again, mostly because she really doesn’t want to talk about it, because she hopes that they’ll just stop and leave her alone one day, but they won’t and she can’t make them stop. There’s nothing she can do but wait for it to end somehow. That’s the worst part, because she knows it just won’t stop.

Ever.

She’s never felt so out of control in her entire life.

“Okay, okay, relax,” he mumbles, pulling over to the side of the road. She hiccups and looks down, feeling the tears rolling down, hot and burning, embarrassed. “What’s wrong?”

“I—” She stops herself because she doesn’t know what to say or how to say it or if he’ll even understand, which he probably won’t, which just makes it worse. He wraps an arm around her shoulder and she cries into it, gulping and sighing and tries to catch her breath.

“Hey, hey,” he mumbles, stroking her hair. “It’s gonna be okay, just take a nice deep breath and take it easy.” He holds her closer, and she cries into his chest, sniffling and sighing and hiccupping. He feels awful. “What happened?”

A light bulb goes off in her head, and she suddenly realizes she can kill two birds with one stone. She would rather not do it this way but desperate times call for desperate measures.

“My—He—I—” She stops herself again. He holds her face in his hands, wiping her tears away with his thumb. “He—He just—”

“What?”

“We—He—He b-broke up with me,” Nova mumbles quietly.

“Who?”

“My boyfriend.” She looks down. “Well…ex-boyfriend, now,” she adds, glancing back up at him.

“What happened?”

His eyes are sweet and ambivalent and she has to force herself to think about Rhett, because this is just a charade and he didn’t really break up with her and she hopes he won’t, not for a long time. She has to remind herself because she feels like she could melt and she does have a boyfriend—or whatever—and this is just a lie so that Drake doesn’t find out about what happens every day at school.

“I—We…well, he said he thinks we should see other people because I don’t uh, really, um…I just wanted to take things a little too slow for his liking I guess.” She shrugs, sniffling a little. “I don’t—I don’t know what I did wrong.”

He hugs her again.

“If he’s making you cry, he’s really not worth it, okay?”

“I just—I miss him,” she stammers.

“You’re better than that, you know? You’re better than some guy who can’t keep it in his pants or something. You’re a lot better,” he says, turning on the car. She stays there and he keeps his arms around her shoulders, driving with one hand.

It’s friendly. She tries to convince herself that it’s friendly because that’s how she interprets it, but she can’t help but to feel like this might give Drake ideas. He’s nice and cute—kind of—but she doesn’t want him to see this as an opportunity. She would move, but he’s warm and comfortable.

She kind of wishes he was Rhett.

She wonders what he would say if he knew that she had been cuddling with and crying to Drake.

She doesn’t want to think about it.



The first time she ever lies to Rhett is that night.

She’s never lied to him and doesn’t think she’ll ever have to, but when push comes to shove, she finds herself doing it anyway.

Lisa is tired and Dante is working nights, so she tells the kids to buy some pizza after she goes to bed. It’s still pretty early in the night, and Nova thinks she’ll come down eventually. Drake saves Lisa a slice at Nova’s request. They’re on the couch, watching some reality show in the living room. They’re sitting on the couch together, and he does the very cliché yawn-arm-stretch-that-casually-ends-up-around-your-shoulders thing. She’s about to say something about it, but her phone vibrates on her lap before she can.

She looks down, wiping her hands on her jeans.

“Hey,” she answers. It’s Rhett. He says hello and she sighs, smiling. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing much, really, I was just…well, you kind of disappeared today. Did something happen?”

She’s never really told Rhett about what’s been going on in school. Not because she can’t or because he won’t believe her, because he sees it and he knows and she doesn’t really care to tell him anyway, because there isn’t really anything he can do about it.

“No, no, I just…had a doctor’s appointment, that’s all.”

“Oh…are you okay?”

“Yeah, definitely, it was just a check-up.” Drake looks at her strangely and she shakes her head, making a face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I just thought something happened to you or something, but if you’re okay…”

“I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” she says quickly, desperate to get off the phone.

“Yeah, bye.”

She feels guilty, but tells herself she had to. Even if he did find out about what happened in school, what would he do anyway?



The auditorium is cold and drafty and she shivers in her black leotard. She stretches out her back, hopping up and down on her toes anxiously. The girl before her ran off the stage in tears because Miss Flora told her, in layman’s terms, that she should really consider giving up dance because she was simply awful and should have taken up something rougher, like football.

Nova’s scared. Miss Flora is a no-nonsense lady, painfully so, and has no qualms about telling you how awful you are straight to your face. She’s an elitist, a perfectionist, and she will have nothing less than the best. Anything else would be blasphemy, and Nova knows that.

Amelia told Nova that the only way that she was going to try out was if Nova tried out, so that’s what she’s doing. She sighs, shaking her hands out and clears her throat.

She really hopes Amelia gets the part.

“Nova?” Miss Flora calls out from her seat in the audience. She walks out onto the stage, which is bare and empty. There’s a bright spotlight waiting for her there and she steps into it. She has to close her eyes at first, it’s so bright. “Cue music!” the instructor exclaims from her seat.

Five, six—five, six, seven, eight—

I’m losin’ blood, I’mma leave my bones, I don’t want your heart, it leaves me cold—

It’s like she’s watching herself do it; like an out of body experience in which she is the star. For a couple of minutes, she forgets everything and everybody and even herself, and just is, and she loves it. The song lasts for four and a half minutes.

In the middle of a pirouette, she hears the auditorium doors creak open. She tries not to focus on it, but she has to smile a little anyway. He’s being stupid and reckless, but it’s for her sake, so she can’t be too upset by it.

Said, I’m gonna leave my body, movin’ up to higher ground, I’m gonna lose my, lose my mind—

She spins and jumps and falls and bends and arches and sighs and flits and flees and at the end, she falls to the floor, partly because it’s part of her big finale, but also because she’s exhausted and just wants to be done with it all. The song ends with a flourish. All she could hear were the sounds of some of Miss Flora’s papers rustling and her quiet sighing. She sounds indifferent, as per usual. Nova picks herself and stands with tired poise, looking at the woman sitting in the front row.

“Fittings for your costume will be this Saturday at six AM sharp,” she says after a bit of silence. “Please don’t be late. You’ll be lead and since you’re so tall, they’ll probably need to take your measurements again to get it all right. You were simply lovely.” She says this all flatly and without any excitement. Nova doesn’t know whether Miss Flora is so mad she can’t put her feelings into words, or so happy that she can’t contain herself.

She’s odd sometimes.

Nova smiles a little and murmurs thanks as Miss Flora gets up and leaves, shutting the doors behind her lightly. She sighs and Rhett walks down the steps to where the stage is. She sits and sighs more, her exhaustion growing more and more apparent. She rolls her neck and stretches her arms over her head, looking at him with a small smile. She hops off the stage when Rhett makes it there. He hugs her tightly and she laughs, swatting his chest.

“Go away, I’m all sweaty!” she giggles, hitting him. He presses playful kisses to her face and she kisses him properly, giggling some more.

“You did so good!” he exclaims, kissing her forehead.

“Really?”

“It was awesome.”

“Your sister is going to be so mad at me,” she replies, resting her head on his shoulder. “I told her that if she just tried out, she was definitely going to get the part. She wouldn’t try out unless I did, and look what happened.” Nova made a face.

“Amy will get over it,” he says dismissively. “Do you wanna go out to celebrate?” She nods.

“Pizza sounds awesome right now,” she mumbles, looking up at him. He kisses her again and she smiles, because they’re alone and happy and together, and a small part of her wishes she could be with him like this around other people.

It’s almost enough to make her cry.