Breaking Nova (29 page)

I leave her in the pond, naked and chattering, and run back through the trees toward the tent. I’m stunned. Horrified. Hitting a full-on panic attack. She was about to hand me her fucking virginity. Me. A fucking loser, who she’ll probably regret knowing when she moves on from this lost period in her life. And to me, it’ll probably mean something to me—she means something.
She means something.
The truth stabs at my chest like a chunk of shrapnel lodged in my heart, right where the scar is. Things aren’t supposed to mean anything. I’m dead. I gave up. I’m not supposed to be here. With Nova. With anyone

The closer I get to the tent, the worse I feel. I know I shouldn’t have left her like that, and it’s one of the hardest fucking things I’ve had to do. Nova is beautiful, interesting, a good person, and she makes me feel things I thought I’d never feel again. On some level I think she understands me, even though I haven’t told her anything about me. She gets pain and loss, and that’s pretty much what exists inside me. I think in a different life I probably could have loved her, been with her, made her happy. But this is this life, and I can’t love anyone or be loved. And that’s the way it will always be—should be.

Right after the accident happened, some people tried to tell me that it would get easier and that I wouldn’t always feel this way. That time would heal the pain, the guilt, everything that I’m feeling. They’d say it’s not my fault. That I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and just happened to be behind the wheel. Some people said otherwise, like Ryder’s parents, who insisted that it was my fault and that I should have been driving more safely. They said that I ruined their family, killed their daughter. Lexi’s parents wouldn’t even talk to me or look at me anymore. Some people pretended I didn’t exist, like my father.

In the end, it all comes down to one thing: I was driving too fast. I knew that. And I wasn’t watching the road when I should have been. Lexi saw it first. That the turn was too sharp and I was going too fast. She screamed. I swerved. There was a crunch as we collided with another car. And then just like that, everything that once existed, lives, breaths, heartbeats, were gone. And I was left with blood on my hands.

Finally, after what seems like hours, I make back to the tent. The muddy field is drying in the sun, shriveling and cracking. I search for Dylan, and when I can’t find him, I look for Tristan. I find him smoking on a tailgate with a group of guys and girls who I’ve never met but he seems to know. When he sees me approaching, he hops off the tailgate, his forehead immediately creasing as he takes in the reckless state I’m in, my eyes bulging, my clothes and hair soaked with water and sweat, shuddering from head to toe with fear, desire, and need.

“What the fuck’s wrong?” he says with a joint pinched in his finger.

“I need something hard,” I say.

“Why?” he asks. “What’s wrong? Why do you look so upset?”

“Nothing’s wrong, and I won’t look upset once I get something hard.” It’s all I need to say. There’s only one thing that matters to druggies, and that’s getting high. Tristan may dither consciously for a second, but when it all comes down to it, drugs always conquer.

He nods his head at one of the larger tents near the edge of the tent area. “Come on.” He hands the joint to some girl with long, wavy black hair and crooked teeth. Her breasts are popping out of her black sleeveless dress and she’s looking me over, her mouth salivating to get a taste. I think
later
, when I’m numb. But Nova’s blue eyes and freckled face overlap the thought, and guilt creeps inside me. I tell my guilt to shut the fuck up. Because I’m already guilty of a lot of other terrible things, worse than hooking up with some random girl.

“Hurry,” I tell Tristan, my mind wanting, seeking, needing solitude. Now.

He nods, and I practically make him run toward the tent. When we reach it, we duck right in as if we both belong there. And we do. I do.

There are these greasy, cracked-out-looking guys inside and a girl with her top off, smoking what looks like a joint in the corner. But I know it’s not a joint by the dazed look on her face. She’s gone. Hollowed out by the toxic smoke. Whoever she was before all of this only exists in a locked box inside her head, and she probably can’t even remember how to get it open. This place doesn’t even exist to her, and I want to be where she is because I don’t want to feel it anymore, everything that comes with living after everything is lost. I want to leave. I want to escape.

Really, what I want to do is die.

“We need a hit,” Tristan tells a guy with a ponytail sitting in the middle of the tent with his shirt unbuttoned and his shoes off. He hands him some money and I keep staring at the girl, watching her drift further and further away from reality, right where I want to be. Gone. Gone. Gone.

Nonexistent.

When she turns her head in my direction, she smiles, but there’s nothing behind it and I’m envious of her. I want what she has. I want.

Nothing.

The guy takes the money from Tristan and then takes the joint from the girl, who groggily rolls on her side, her arms flopped out in front of her. She keeps blinking her eyes, until there’s nothing left but large massive pupils that are glazed over and bare.

Empty.

“It’s the best around,” the guy says, handing it to Tristan, like it matters, like if it wasn’t we’d take our money back and go somewhere else.

Tristan nods and puts the joint to his lips. Taking a long hit, his pupils instantly dilate, his breathing quiets and evens out, and he relaxes back on his elbows, handing the joint to me. I don’t give myself time to think, because thinking leads me to places I don’t belong. And where I belong is here.

My hands shake uncontrollably as I put up to my lips, suck in a breath, as everyone in the tent lies down on the floor, some moving their hands above their hands and others not moving at all. Then smoke crashes into my lungs, saturates, and completely sucks out the good in me, and suddenly everything stops.

Dies.

I cry until my eyes are swollen shut, remaining there for hours, and then somehow I manage to get my clothes on and climb down the rocks. Nighttime has arrived, the sky pitch-black, and the only thing I have to lead the way is the sound of the music and shouting and the small amount of stage light making it through the trees. I try not to think about how he left me like that, but it’s all I can think about. He left me. Landon left me. Quinton left me. My dad left me. Even I left me, in a sense.

It feels like I’m never going to make it through the trees, and I’m not even sure if I want to. Maybe I’ll just lay down in the dark and stay perfectly still. When I stumble over a rock and fall to the ground, I can’t seem to get up. I lie in the dirt, staring up at the night sky, counting the stars that form the constellation Cassiopeia, trying to settle myself down. But nothing is helping. Nothing. And I feel the memory prickling up against my mind, like rusty, bent, and crooked nails.

I get up from the ground and run, trying to get away from the memory, the bushes and branches slicing my palms open, and I try to keep track of my footsteps, how many I’m taking, where I’m going, but the memory catches up with me anyway…

It can’t be.

I stumble into the field and run across it, the dewy grass hissing at my legs and my bare feet scuff up dirt. I forgot to put on my shoes. I need to go back. No, I need to keep going forward. I need to keep running, moving, breathing.

I need to keep holding on to Landon.

I stumble onto the tent area, dodging around the people, and pushing my way through the crowd. Everyone is staring at me and there are so many people. Some laugh at me, others step away, there are a few guys that grab at me, telling me profane things while they cop a feel. I hit at them, shout, but this only seems to encourage them, and for a second I can feel them dragging me down and I realize how alone I really am. That no one around here cares. That I’m just another lost soul that’s lost her way, only I’m suddenly wanting to find my way back.

“Nova, no matter what happens, you’ll never be alone in this world,” my dad had said to me once. I’d gone through a weird phase where I wore different-colored socks and refused to comb my hair and no one wanted to be my friend. “You’ll always have your mother and me.”

But I’m alone now. By choice.

A guy grabs my ass and prods his fingers into my arm, saying, “Hey, sweetheart, slow down and try to relax. Don’t be in such a hurry. Have some fun. I can show you some fun.” He starts to jerk me forward, toward the people flocking to the stage, and so many people look out of it that I doubt that anyone will hear me if I scream. He keeps dragging me further into the darkness and I know if I keep going, things are going to end up bad. I knee him in the thigh and then stab my nails into his skin.

“Let me go!” I scream. He staggers back, his feet scuffing the dirt as he comes back at me, looking pissed off, and he slaps me across the face hard. I choke on the impact and the blinding pain radiating across my cheek as I cup my face with my hand.

The guy swings his arm around to hit me again, but I run. I run and run and run, even when my legs feel like there disconnecting from my body. Then I spot the purple tent. Delilah and Dylan are in front of it and they say something to me, but I have no idea what and I don’t care. I run straight for my tent and collapse onto the sleeping bag, clutching my head as tears burn my eyes and streak my cheeks.

I want it out of my head. This moment. Every moment. I want it gone. I want to be gone. From the life I fell into. This place. But how the hell can I escape it when I can’t even remember getting here? It’s like I’ve lost track of the last year or maybe all the years. I want to go back when skipping in the rain was fun and all it took was ice cream to make me happy.

I just want simplicity. Direction. Understanding.

I want… I don’t even know what I want. My head starts to race as I realize the painful truth of the revelation. I am lost. Broken. Searching for something that doesn’t exist. What Landon did may never make sense because he’s the only one who truly understands why he did it.

And he’s gone. He’s really, really gone. The rope was around his neck and he put it there and I couldn’t save him. No matter what I do, nothing will change that. Not counting. Not making videos. Not getting high. Not wandering meaninglessly though life.

He’s gone.

My mind continues to race until the anger, rage, pain, confusion, love, heartbreak—every piece of him and me builds up inside my chest like shards of jagged glass, cutting me from the inside. When I can’t take the pain anymore, I open my mouth and let out an uncontrollable scream as I reach for my phone.

My fingers tremble as I turn it on and unlock the screen. Loud voices blare around outside along with the unbearably deafening sound of the music. My heart is thrashing inside my chest as my mind searches for numbers and control, but there’s so much noise and I can’t think straight. Everything around me and inside me is a mess, unstable, erratic like my pulse and my breathing. I can’t think straight.