Page 6 of Searching for Nova

“We would’ve if we had somewhere to go,” Elsa says. She turns her phone so Jenna can see it. “What do you think? Should I get it?”

Jenna shrugs. “If your Mom will buy it for you, then yeah.”

That’s all the two of them ever do. Sit around and shop for stuff on their phones.

Continuing to the kitchen, I go straight to the pantry to find something to eat. I grab an energy bar from the bin. My mom has bins of every possible snack you could ever want. It’s like a mini grocery store. I pause a moment as a memory flashes in my head. Empty shelves. An empty fridge.

“Fuck,” I mutter, squeezing my eyes shut as I shove those memories away. That’s not my life anymore. I don’t even want to think about it, and I haven’t, until tonight. I didn’t think finding Nova would do this to me, make me feel this way. Maybe I should just forget about her, and forget about going back there to see her. It was the past, and I should leave it there.

When I’m up in my room, I walk in my closet and find the box. It’s on the top shelf, way in the back, hidden behind a pile of baseball caps. I get it down and open it. My chest immediately tightens and my throat goes dry as I see the stack of photos. I hate seeing them, which is why I never look at them, but I have to make sure it’s her. Shuffling through the stack, I find the one I was searching for.

We were both five. She had long brown hair and big blue eyes. I thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I didn’t like girls back then, even as a friend, but I liked Nova. Unlike other girls, she was into trucks, like me, especially dump trucks, which happened to be my favorite. Our foster mom had a sand box in the back yard and Nova and I would play in it for hours with our trucks. Or sometimes we’d just sit on the grass and talk. She became my best friend… until I left.

“It’s her,” I whisper as I stare at the photo. I run my finger over her face. It was fuller and rounder then, the face of a little girl. But her eyes are the same. And I bet if she’d smiled at me tonight, her smile would’ve been the same. I remember her smile most of all because I was the only one who made her smile. She was sad, like me, like all of us who lived in that house. But I was able to make her smile, and she did the same for me.

“Fuck!” I say, wiping a tear from my eye. I toss the photo in the box and slam the lid on. I get up from the floor and hide the box back where it was, where it should’ve remained.

What the hell am I thinking, letting myself go back there, back to that time I want to forget? It’s over. Done. Like it never existed.

I’m Easton Voss now. Sean Camden is gone. I don’t even want to remember him. All these years, I’ve been able to forget about him and immerse myself in the life I have now, pretending it’s all I’ve ever known. But I couldn’t make myself forget Nova. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about her, wondering where she was, if she was okay, if I’d ever see her again.

I finally found her, but now I don’t know what to do. I want to go see her, but part of me is telling me to leave the past behind.

3

Nova

“What were you doing last night?”Ted says in an accusatory tone as I come in the kitchen. He’s in his recliner, staring at the TV, a can of beer in his hand. He starts his morning with a beer, claiming it’s like morning coffee, but better for him because it doesn’t have all that caffeine. “I heard you coming in after midnight.”

“Lenny made us stay late,” I say as I crack two eggs into the skillet. Every morning, I make Ted two over-easy eggs with a slice of toast, then make another piece of toast for me. “All these high school kids came in and Lenny didn’t want to close and lose sales.”

“Does that mean you made extra last night?” Ted asks, putting his hand out and rubbing his fingers together, telling me to pay up.

“I guess it does. But I don’t have it. It’ll be in my next paycheck.”

I hate that Ted makes me give him money. It’s bad enough he takes the money he’s supposed to be using to raise me and spends it all on himself. The least he could do is let me keep what I earn, but the one time I didn’t give him his cut, he threatened to kick me out.

“Here’s your breakfast,” I say, setting it on the tray next to his chair.

“I’m eating at the table today.”

I take the plate from his tray and set it on the kitchen table, next to the pile of mail he hasn’t opened.

He slowly gets up from his recliner, then finishes his beer and tosses the can on the floor. It’s my job to clean the place so he doesn’t care if he makes a mess. I stand by the sink and eat my toast, watching him stumble over to the table and struggle to pull out the chair. He’s drunk. That wasn’t his first beer of the morning, even though he’ll swear that it was.

“You going to the store today?” he asks, landing on the chair with a thud. He picks up his fork and starts shoveling food in his mouth.

“Why? What do you need?” I turn toward the sink and scrub the pan I used to cook the eggs.

“Hamburger. Get a couple pounds. And get a couple steaks, the thick ones.”

“Steak is expensive,” I remind him.

“Did I ask for your fucking opinion?”

“No,” I mutter. “I’ll get the steaks.”

“Don’t you be forgetting who’s in charge here.”

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