Breaking Nova (8 page)

June 5, Day 17 of Summer Break

The feisty tune of “Last Resort” by Papa Roach plays in the background, but I have it turned down low so it won’t drown out my words. The blinds are shut, blocking out the morning sunlight, and my hair hangs to my shoulders, still damp from the shower I just took. The computer has been recording for about five minutes, but I haven’t said a word. I’ve gotten up a few times and paced my floor, trying to get the thoughts in my head to connect and form coherent sentences. I wonder if that’s what Landon did before he made his video… I wonder if he planned it out.

Finally, I decide there shouldn’t be any preplanning, and plop down in the chair. I’m a little restless as I slant the screen and then tuck my leg under my butt to boost myself up, and then let the first sentence that pops into my head barrel out of my mouth, despite my initial instinct to censor. “Okay, so it’s been a little over two weeks since I got home from college and the dreams and memories of…” I attempt, but then trail off, knowing I’m going to have to say his name, even if I don’t want to. It’s strange, though, talking about him, while looking at myself on the screen of the computer. I can see how just the thought of uttering his name aloud makes my eyes go wide and my pupils shrink, like I’ve suddenly been possessed by a distant memory. I take a deep breath, then another, running my fingers through my hair, and sweeping it out of my face. “Landon…” My eyes enlarge. What will people think if they ever watch this? What will they wonder about me and how I saw myself? “The dreams about him are more intense than they’ve ever been,” I say. “Part of me wants to find a way to shut them off, but part of me wants to hold on to them—hold on to him… forever.”

I cross my arms on the desk, lean closer to the screen, and examine my eyes, noting the vastness in my pupils, circled by a slender blue ring. “When I look at myself, everything inside me pretty much screams to stop thinking about him and to turn off the memories… and I try to count through them… like it’s that simple… but it’s not.” I blow out a breath, gathering my hair behind my head. “I just wish I could figure out a way to know what he was thinking… somehow track things back to why he gave up so easily… why he left me… why I couldn’t see where he was headed.” I bite at my fingernail. “Or maybe I could and I was just in denial… Was that the kind of person that I was? One who denies what’s in front of her?” My voice drops off at the end as the blunt honesty escapes my mouth. I don’t want to hear it or think about it anymore, so I shut the computer down, no longer wanting to look at myself.

*    *    *

Later that day, Delilah and I are hanging out in my room. The blinds are open and the sunlight flows inside, making the air stifling, even though I have a fan on full blast. I’m sifting through some of my video clips, trying to figure out what the hell the purpose is, besides watching me babble about pointless nonsense that doesn’t really make sense. Am I trying to understand myself? Who I am? Or am I trying to understand Landon? Life? Death? What he was thinking in his final moments, and why did he decide to sit down and record it?

Why do I always have so many fucking questions in my head?

“We should go to that concert down in Fairfield at the end of July. Wouldn’t that be fun? To feed your music addiction,” Delilah says as she sifts through a stack of CDs on my shelf and pulls a few out. She’s wearing a short red dress that matches her red-stained lips and is only a couple of shades darker than her hair. “And why do you have these still? No one listens to CDs anymore.”

I take them from her hand and set them down on my computer desk in an orderly, alphabetized stack: Blink-182 to Taking Back Sunday. “Landon gave them to me,” I say and then keep talking to avoid going down that road with her. I close one of my video files down and try to ignore the file marked “Landon’s” as I open another video clip of mine. “And what concert? I don’t remember hearing about one.”

“That’s because you live in your own little crazy Nova Land.” She crosses her eyes and circles her finger around her temple, and then she plops down on my bed and tucks her hands underneath her legs. “It’s been advertised all over town and I’ve mentioned it a few times. It’s just a bunch of indie bands. But it’s going to be like a weeklong event or something.”

I mull over the idea of going to a concert. As much as I love music and used to love going to concerts, I don’t feel like going to them anymore. There’s too much connection to Landon with them, and there’d be a lot of noise and a lot of people and a lot of unfamiliarity, which would make it hard to keep track of everything around me. Plus, if it’s a weeklong concert, my morning routine would be wrecked and my anxiety would probably go through the roof, unstable, out of control. “I’m not sure I’m up for a concert, Delilah, or if I’ll have time.” I move the cursor across the screen to click on another video file. “I think I might enroll in some summer classes… maybe a film one or something.”

She shakes her head as she shoves to her feet, then she stomps over to the computer and hammers her thumb against the off button on the tower. “No way. We made a pact not to do classes this summer. Besides—” she taps her finger on the computer screen “—you already got your own little film lesson going on here. Although I don’t get why. You’ve never really been into filming before, at least not to the point where you did it for fun.”

“I’m still trying to figure out what the point is, too.” Sighing, I rotate the chair around to face her and change the subject. “I know we said no classes, but I need a distraction.”

She plants her hands on her hips and narrows her eyes at me. “From what?”

I shrug and put my hand over the scar on my wrist. “This town… my own head. Life.”

“Isn’t that going to be hard, since we’re here?” She points out the window at the undersized, nearly identical houses that line the street. “And I don’t know what to tell you about escaping your own head or life other than you could get high.”

“Are you being serious right now?” I ask. I’ve never smoked weed myself. Landon did though… always smoking it, all the time… and telling me I shouldn’t. I always just let it be, because I was never really the kind of person who wanted to. Now, though… I’m not really sure who I am. And I want to find out just what kind of person I am. Do I really like music anymore, or is my love for it gone? Do I really like making videos? Would I like getting high?

She shrugs, her expression unreadable. “I’m not saying to do it, only that you could do it.”

“Do you still do it? Smoke weed, I mean.”.

She shakes her head. “I told you I stopped when we went to college.”

I’m not sure if I believe her. We lived in the same dorm and everything, and I saw her pretty much every day, but she also went out a lot more than I did, mainly because I hate going to new places and the ones she loved to go to were unpredictable, rowdy, loud, head spinning.

She flops down on my bed, which is overflowing with purple and black throw pillows, and the mattress bounces beneath her. “Nova, I love you to death—I really do—but you are the saddest person I’ve ever met and sometimes… sometimes I think you almost are this way on purpose.”

“I’m not sad all the time, am I?” I ask. She doesn’t answer but only offers me a sympathetic look. I stretch my legs out and stare down at my feet. I have flip-flops on, and the scar where I cut my foot open the day I found Landon shows. It happened when I fell down on the floor. My foot caught on the bottom of his bookshelf, and it scraped the entire layer of skin off. It probably hurt, but the shock numbed it. I didn’t even scream. I just lay there… looking at him… like that until… My head pounds and blood roars in my eardrums as images clip the inside of my skull.
Darkness, the soft sound of music… how pale his skin looked even in daybreak…

One… two… three…
I start counting the dark threads of fabric on the carpet, forcing the thought from my head.
Four… five… six…

“Nova, what the hell.” Delilah waves her hand in front of my face and I flinch, breaking the steady pattern of numbers in my head. “You’re totally spacing out on me.”

I inhale, then progressively free the breath from my lungs, and my bangs drift to the side of my face. “Sorry.”

She vacillates, bobbing her head from side to side, and then she seizes my hand and hauls me to my feet. “We are so getting out of here.”

She leads me toward my bedroom door, and I rush to keep up with her. “Where are we going?”

She yanks open the door and tugs me out into the hall, pulling me toward the front door. “Anywhere but here.”

I don’t like that she doesn’t have a destination, and my pulse soars as we step outside and head toward her truck. I suddenly wish I had a camera in my hand, because it seems like it would be a lot more calming watching myself wander into the unknown, through the lens, because it wouldn’t seem so real.

It’s hot and I’m wearing cutoffs and a thin black tank top. My hair is a little tangled, and I only have eyeliner and mascara on, which is melting from the heat. “I’m not dressed to go anywhere,” I protest, as she swings open the front gate.

She glances over her shoulder and inspects my outfit and hair. “You look great. You always do.” She stops when we arrive at her single-cab truck parked in front of the garage. She lets go of my hand and positions herself in front of me. “Look, when I first met you, you were seriously so sad, and I was kind of terrified of you. But then I got to know you, and you know what? My opinion changed.”

“Only because Ms. Kenzingly forced us to work on that final project together.” I smile at the memory of our first awkward introduction. She was the pretty, outgoing girl who sometimes got into trouble, and I was the depressed, weird girl who used to date Landon. It had been four weeks since I’d found him in his room, and I was still the one everyone was afraid of, because I saw things no one wants to admit exists. “God, I can only image how hard it was trying to get me to even talk to you.”

She smiles, too, but it’s shadowed by a stern look. “Yeah, and to this day I’m so glad I managed to get you to say something, even though it was ‘Yes, I think so,’ because it opened the door for our friendship.” She pauses, rubbing her lips together as she shields her eyes from the sunlight with her hand. “But it was hard, you know, being your friend, because you never told me the truth about what was going on in that head of yours, but at college you seemed a little better. Not great, but better.” She waves her hand in front of me and blows out an exasperated breath. “But we’ve been back for over a couple of weeks now and you’re getting sadder, if that’s even possible.”

“It’s possible,” I say, leaning back against the truck door. “It really is.”

She’s quiet for a while and then she takes my hands in hers. “Can we just go somewhere for a while? Escape or something. Do something crazy and unexpected. We could go hang out at Dylan’s tonight and just relax.”

Crazy and unexpected?
I start counting the rocks under my feet but there are too many. “Are we just escaping from my sadness? Or from your mom?”

“Both,” she says simply, giving the top of my hand a pat.

I keep trying to count the rocks, but more and more appear in my vision, and finally it becomes overwhelming and I give up. Throwing my hands in the air, I decide to try and not be sad for the day.
Try to survive.
“Okay,”

She jumps up and down, clapping her hands. “Thank you, Nova.”

“You’re welcome.” I open the truck door and hop into the seat, feeling as though I’ve failed because the rocks remain uncounted. “But you really don’t need to be thanking me. I didn’t do anything, you crazy woman.” I shut the door and she skips around to the other side.

“Yes, you did.” She smiles as she climbs into the driver’s seat, then turns on the ignition. “You decided to be happy.”

I keep quiet and let myself drown in my thoughts, knowing that’s not what I’m doing. I’ll probably never truly be happy again, no matter how much I want to, because no matter what, Landon will always be gone and I’ll still be here.

Alone.

*    *    *

We end up stopping at the local ice cream parlor, because Delilah says that some sugar in my system will cheer me up. It was what my dad used to say all the time:
Eat some candy and you’ll feel better.
My mom hated it and would always put something healthy in my hand, like an apple or a carrot, then when she’d turn away, my dad would steal it and wink at me as he handed me a sucker or a candy bar.

I miss him so bad. His life ended way too soon, but unlike Landon’s, I couldn’t have prevented it. He had a heart condition he didn’t know about until it was too late, and there was nothing I could have done to help him. Still, it had been horrible to watch… him lying on the ground helpless and afraid, and there was nothing I could do but watch his life leave him. I never thought I’d be the same again, and then Landon came along and it felt like he understood me and he gave me a reason to smile again. But then he left me, too, out of choice, something I still can’t figure out, even after a goddamn year. And now I’m here, walking around, half the time feeling like a zombie with no real direction, lost and lonely, and everything I felt when my dad died has multiplied.

God, what the fuck? Why did you do it? Why did you leave me here? You can’t leave me here.

I’m sitting in one of the booths, watching a wind chime outside twirl in the light summer breeze as I stir the bowl of cookie dough ice cream in front of me. The chime is made of thin clear strings and shimmering pieces of aqua and teal sea glass that magically reflect the sunlight every time it hits them. There’s some cheesy ’90s music playing, and I’m totally zoning in my thoughts while Delilah tries to get the cashier guy to give her more maraschino cherries.

I hear the door’s bell ding as someone walks inside, and my gaze instinctively drifts from the chime to my barely touched bowl of ice cream, which is now melted and liquefied. Then I hear Delilah say something really loud, and I reel around in the booth and look toward the front counter. Dylan, Tristan, and Quinton are standing beside her, and she already has her arms and lips fastened on Dylan, who’s cupping her ass as he lifts her up. The cashier guy seems really uncomfortable by their public display of affection and walks back to the stocking room.