Breaking Nova (15 page)

I’ve been taking a little break from trailer parks and guys for the last couple of days. It’s been neither a good break nor a bad one, which is becoming the story of my life. Nothing is good. Nothing is bad. Everything just exists, like me floating through life with no direction or meaning.

Despite my break from trailer park guys, I can’t seem to get Quinton or his sadness out of my head. I want to learn more about him, perhaps find out about the girl in the picture, but he seemed so upset that I even brought her up. I tried to search him on the Internet, even though it felt kind of wrong and nosy on my part. But I was to trying to find something else about him, other than he likes art, he lived in Seattle, and he smokes weed. But there are too many Quinton Carters, and I couldn’t find the one I was looking for, not even on Facebook or any other social media network. The more I search and come up empty-handed, the more frustrated I get, but I think there’s an underlying reason to my frustration, stemming from how I connect Landon to Quinton. It feels like I’ve stepped back into the past again, meeting the sad, haunting guy that carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, and I can’t figure out the reason why.

I wake up a couple of mornings after it happened, feeling more jumbled than I usually do. I count the seconds it takes the sun to move over the hill line, just like I always do, but there’s no sense of order and comfort this morning. I get out of bed and take a shower, then head to my computer desk and open up Landon’s video file. The longer I stare at it, the more I start wondering what exactly he said on it. Are there answers to my questions? About him? About his life? His thoughts? Stuff about us? Shit, what if there is? What if this whole time the answers have been right here, but my fear and anxiety have been getting in the way.

I put my finger on the mouse pad and let the cursor hover over the file, something I’ve never done before. My finger shakes as I consider tapping the mouse, clicking the file, letting it open up. I’d get to see his eyes again, watch his lips move as he spoke and took breaths. His heart would be beating and he wouldn’t be silent in a wooden box, at least for the moment of the clip.

My heart picks up in my chest. What does he say on it? How does he look? What does he feel? How will I see it—see him?

I instantly pull my hand back, shaking from head to toe, my nerves so contorted and confounded I can barely breathe. I’d almost turned it on, which means what exactly? That I’m starting to move on from him? That I’m starting to move on in my life?

“No… no… no…” I shake my head and shove away from the computer, turning it off, and counting as I race to the bathroom. Running away from the problem, like I always do.

*    *    *

It’s late afternoon, and this morning’s episode is a shadow of a memory in my mind. After a lot of counting, I was able to calm myself down. I’m sitting on my bed with every picture of Landon I own scattered around me, along with a few psychology books. Beneath the bed is a locked box of Landon’s drawings. They’ve been there since his parents gave them to me. The window is open, the fan on, and I pulled my hair up in a ponytail, trying to reduce the sweat forming on the back of my neck. But even in my denim shorts and grey tank top, my skin is getting a little salty.

I have the computer opened up and the web camera aimed at me as I search through photo after photo, looking for something in his eyes or expression that’ll give me a clue to why he did it. I can spot sadness in almost all of them, but there has to be more to it than that. He couldn’t have just decided to give up because he was sad.

“I know there are more pictures than this,” I mutter to myself. I uncross my legs and scoot off the bed, heading for the garage. My mom boxed up a lot of stuff when I went away to college and stacked the boxes on the garage shelves.

As soon as I step into the garage, I instantly regret it. Too many memories swarm around the drums set in the corner, covered up by a sheet. I haven’t touched them since Landon died; my passion to play died right along with him. He was the one who encouraged me to play, bought me the drums, and shared my love for music. But now it all seems pointless, and I can’t even bring myself to pick up a set of drumsticks.

I skitter around the drum set and head toward the 1967 sleek, cherry-red Nova parked in the middle of the floor and the bike leaning against it, the last thing my dad touched before his death. Painful memories of everyone I lost hit me from every direction, and I start to count each step as I maintain a steady stride around the car, dragging my hand along the shiny hood. I was never into cars, but my dad always was, and he always tried to get me into them, so I wasn’t surprised when he left the Nova to me in his will. What did surprise me was that he had a will, like he knew he was going to die young and wanted everything planned out before he went.

Sighing, I remove my hand from the car and grab the box labeled “Nova’s Photos” on the bottom shelf near the back. Then I go back to my room and dump the photos out, trying not to cringe at the mess I’ve made or the fact that there are too many photos to keep track off. Landon and I never really went anywhere important, but I loved taking pictures of him. He was so beautiful, and his beauty was only amplified in pictures—like a piece of art that looks plain and ordinary from a distance, but up close the angles and shapes and colors fit perfectly together and create something so amazing it couldn’t possibly exist.

“Knock, knock,” Delilah says as she enters my room. I haven’t seen her since I got high at Dylan’s house, but that’s because I’ve been avoiding Dylan’s house and she’s been spending most of her free time there. She has an iced coffee in her hand, and her hair is divided into two braids. She’s wearing a pink shirt and cutoffs, she has no makeup on, and she’s wearing a backpack for some reason.

“Planning on making a trip back to high school?” I tease as she shuts the door.

“Huh?” Her face contorts in puzzlement.

I point at the backpack. “What’s with that?”

She glances at the bag on her back. “Oh, that.” She jumps on the bed, landing on her knees, and the mattress bounces underneath her weight. The ice swishes in her cup, pictures start to slide to the side, and I work to keep them together on the bed. “I brought goodies.”

“Goodies?” I ask, grabbing a stack of photos and putting them on my lap.

Her eyes light up as she removes the backpack off her back and drops it onto the bed. She unzips it, and I’m starting to get really curious about what the hell she’s doing when she takes out a glass pipe and a small plastic bag full of weed.

“Where did you get that?
And why did you bring it here?

She opens the bag and picks up a pinch of weed. “From Dylan, duh?”

I align the stack of photos that are on my lap. “Okay, then why did you bring it here?”

“Because I thought we could have a nice relaxing day together now that I know you’re cool.” She fills the pipe with weed and grabs a lighter out of the backpack. “You know, I used to try and keep this as far from you as possible, but after the other day…” She trails off as she glances up at my shocked expression. “Okay, well, maybe I totally just misread you. Was it like a onetime thing or something?”

“I don’t know what it was.” I try not to look at the pipe and remember how I felt when the smoke first hit my lungs, but it’s hard not to stare at something so wonderful yet potent. “Delilah, why did you lie to me when I asked you if you were smoking weed again?”

“I just didn’t think you’d be cool with it. You always seemed like you weren’t, or at least you acted like you didn’t want to try it,” she says, shrugging. “Besides, I didn’t technically lie. I hadn’t been doing it since I left for school… I just started up again.”

“Why, though?”

“Why did you do it the other day?” There’s accusation in her eyes, like I have no right to be talking about this with her. And she’s right. I really don’t. The truth of the matter is I did smoke weed the other day, and for a few moments I’d actually felt content and soundless on the inside, something I haven’t felt in a long time.

“So do you want to smoke a bowl or not?” she asks with a slight impatience in her tone.

I wonder what she’d do if I said no. “What about my mom? She’s home… what if she comes in here?”

“Actually, she just left,” she says, setting the pipe down on her lap. “But if you don’t want me to, then I won’t.”

“Won’t she smell it, though? When she comes back?” I ask, staring at the pipe. I can almost feel the burn of the weed just from looking at it, along with the brief contentment that followed afterward, and I’m surprised how much my mind craves it.

“We’ll, turn the fan on and spray some air freshener around or something,” she replies. “Besides, you’re nineteen. What the hell is she going to do if she catches you? Ground you to your room?”

I honestly could picture my mom trying to rationalize it as me mourning and let me off the hook, because she does that a lot, like when I got really drunk and threw up on the kitchen floor, and she found me the next morning passed out beside my vomit.

“It okay, Nova,” she’d said, helping me to my feet. “We… we all make mistakes when we hurt, but we need to find a way for you to deal.” She kept saying we like it was her and me going through it together, like we did with my dad. But not this time. This time it was just me.

“If you want to smoke it, you can,” I tell Delilah, selecting a picture of Landon and me lying on our backs in the grass from the seemingly endless stack. I was holding the camera and held it above us to snap the shot. I’m laughing in it and Landon looks like he wants to be anywhere else but getting his picture taken. If I remember right, though, he was particularly irritated that day with everything.

I keep sorting through the pictures while Delilah turns on the ceiling fan, relaxes against the headboard of my twin bed, and starts smoking the weed. Smoke fills the room quickly, moving lazily around my face, and the air stinks like some sort of pungent weed burning in a field.

“You two look really beautiful together,” she says, leaning forward and examining the photos closely.

“Yeah, I guess,” I mumble, because honestly I always believed Landon was out of my league in the looks department.

“You look happy,” she remarks. “I’ve never seen you that happy.”

“Do you need anything to eat or something?” I try for a subject change.

She shakes her head and takes another hit, and her lips pucker as she blows out a cloud of smoke. “Do you ever think you’ll love someone again?” she asks, and I frown at her. “What? I’m just curious.”

“You’ve never been curious before.”
Which is why I love hanging out with you.

“I know, but it doesn’t mean I don’t wonder.” She sighs and sucks in another drag from the pipe.

I try to stay focused on the photos, but the room’s getting cloudier, along with my head. Eventually she places the pipe and lighter on my nightstand and lies down, staring at the ceiling.

“So my mom had this guy over the other day,” she divulges. “And he grabbed my ass.”

My head whips up from the photo. “What?”

She nods, without looking at me. “Yeah, but it’s how it’s always been, ever since, you know—” she points at her chest “—these bad boys came into the picture.”

Delilah rarely talks about her mom, but from what I’ve picked up, she works for a “service” that helps men with their problems. I’m not sure if it’s an escort service or a phone chat service or what, and I’ve never met her mom, because Delilah’s never taken me over to her house before.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“As okay as I’ve always been,” she replies emotionlessly.

She reaches for the pipe and puts it to her mouth, holding the lighter above it as her eyes remain on the ceiling. I look at the large quantity of photos on my bed, then press my fingers to the bottom of my eyes, my head pounding from the smoke and the emotions flowing through my body. From the outside, these pictures create a life spent together, and I wonder what I would be doing if Landon was still around. If I would be somewhere else, with a future ahead of me, with him. Or would I have ended up in this exact place, getting high and trying to find out who the hell I am without Landon? Maybe we wouldn’t have lasted and I’d have ended up crushed by a breakup instead of his death. Maybe I was destined to get to the exact moment. Maybe this is where I really belong. Perhaps he really knew this was how I would turn out, and that was why it was so easy for him to leave me behind.

Delilah starts coughing as smoke rings around her face. “Are you sure you don’t want any?” She offers me the pipe.

I try to think of a reason why I shouldn’t do it, but again I can’t find one. So I take a hit, both terrified and relieved that I do it because it’s still so unknown yet vaguely familiar and brings me so much quiet. I couldn’t even count to ten if I wanted to, and my thoughts are just a haze in my head. We lie on my bed, talking about music and classes and the time I barfed my guts out in the campus garbage cans after I downed nearly a half a bottle of tequila.

My mom eventually comes home, and we hurry and spray perfume everywhere and throw open all the windows. She sticks her head inside to check on me and asks if we want anything to eat. She either doesn’t notice the smell or doesn’t want to admit she does. Or she’s just letting me off the hook again.

“I have cookie
dough
,” she tells Delilah when Delilah asks for cookie dough ice cream. Her tone is clipped and she seems very uncomfortable. My mom’s never been a fan of Delilah or her reputation around town, but she’ll never say anything rude directly to Delilah. It’s not the kind of person she is.

“That works,” Delilah says, swiveling in the computer chair as she pretends like she’s been looking through my CD collection.

“And what about you, Nova,” my mom asks me, looking a little bit upset. I wonder if she can smell the weed or see it in my eyes. Does she know what I was just doing? “Do you want anything to snack on? You can come help me cook dinner if you want. I’m making your favorite.”

“What is my favorite?” I ask. Delilah laughs, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. I really don’t know anymore what my favorite food or color or even song is.