Page 21 of Searching for Nova

“I’m at a friend’s house. I came outside so I wouldn’t wake him up.”

“You’re staying with your boyfriend?” I ask. “And your grandpa’s okay with that?”

“He’s the reason I’m here,” she mutters.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Forget it. So did you go out with your girlfriend tonight?”

“Yeah, and some other friends. The ones you met at the diner.”

“What’d you guys do?”

“Went out to eat, then went back to Jace’s house and watched movies.”

“Which one was Jace? The pickle guy?”

“Yeah. Sorry about that. He was being an ass. He’s usually not like that.”

He is, but I try to overlook it and just blame it on him being immature. I usually ignore him when he’s being like that, but it really pissed me off seeing him shove that pickle at Nova. When he did it, I didn’t even know it was her. I thought she was just some girl bussing tables. I’d been watching her race around the diner for almost an hour and felt bad that she had to work so hard on Halloween, a night when most people our age were out doing something fun. When I saw it was Nova, I felt even worse. I wanted to punch Jace for doing that to her.

“I’m used to it,” she says. “A lot of guys our age are jerks.”

“Hopefully not me,” I say with a laugh.

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t really know you.”

It makes me sad to hear her say that, but it’s true. We’re not the same people we were back then. We were just kids. Five years old. In the years since then, I’ve become someone totally different. I even have a different name.

“We could change that,” I say.

“Change what?”

“You not knowing me. We could hang out. You could get to know me. And I could get to know you.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

“We’re different people now, with different lives.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.” I pause. “I want to see you, Nova. I don’t want us to just go our separate ways, pretending like we never saw each other. There’s no way the other night was just a coincidence. I’ve never even been to that part of town, and I never would’ve considered going there if it weren’t for Paris making us go to that stupid haunted house.”

“Why wouldn’t you go to that part of town?”

“It’s dangerous. It has the highest murder rate in the city.”

She laughs a little. “You keep track of this stuff?”

“My mom’s a lawyer. She used to be a prosecutor, working on murder cases. She’s a stay-at-home mom now, but she still keeps up on all the crime stats. She would’ve grounded me if she found I went to that part of town on Friday.”

“Why did your girlfriend want to go to that haunted house? There’s other ones you could’ve gone to.”

“She heard that was the scariest one. She likes getting scared. It gives her a rush. I don’t get it, but whatever.”

“So was it scary?”

“Not really. It was just some people jumping out at you in the dark. I was more annoyed than scared, but the girls liked it. I wanted to go home when we were done, but Jace was hungry so we ended up at the diner. We almost didn’t go in because we didn’t think we’d find a place to sit, but then a booth opened up.”

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