A whole month went by and Nova acted like nothing had ever happened.

Granted, we hadn't seen each other much since that night. School kept us both busy, and with Elbright's near-constant essays and vocabulary quizzes, the only time we had alone was spent reading and correcting each other's stuff. Still, I wished she had at least acknowledged what had happened.

I thought about telling Rick, but he would either freak out or underreact. Instead, I just kept it to myself and became "even moodier than usual" my dad observed during dinner one night. October had us scrambling to prepare for our midterm essay in English, something that Elbright said would be a "surprise". Nova and I didn't like the sound of that, so we got together the day before to look at our notes over some piping-hot apple cider that was her Aunt Sandy's specialty.

"Hey Puck."

"Hmm?" I looked up from an old essay on Spenser's sonnets, on which I was trying to decipher some of Elbright's doctor-ish scribbles.

"Have you ever thought about what you're going to do after high school?" Nova was looking at me peculiarly, another one of my essays sprawled out in pieces in front of her. I had an A (barely), but Nova was frustrated beyond belief with her B, and had decided that studying my work would get her the A she wanted.

"Uh, I'm not quite sure," I admitted. "It's still a long time away, though."

"A long time? We're already more than halfway through school!" she said, tone rising a little.

"Woah, what's got you so worried?" I took a sip of cider, effectively disabling my taste buds for at least an hour.

"Nothing." She said dismissively. "Hey, have you ever considered becoming a writer?"

I froze.

"Um, no. Why?"

"Well, you know, this stuff is pretty good. Have you ever tried it... creatively or anything?" She was giving me a look that made me a little uncomfortable and I knew she was getting at something.

"Well, no," I lied, trying to seem uninterested. "Hey, did you see the new vocab list? He said we'd need to know it for the midterm."

"Yeah, I've looked it over," Nova pulled up a wrinkled old piece of paper out of her back pocket and tossed it over to me. "I also looked this over, I found it in your room last week. Care to explain?" Puzzled, I opened it up with fumbling fingers, hoping against hope that it wasn't something horribly embarrassing I had hidden away ages ago. Words, less than a dozen of them pumped out by what must have been a typewriter, jumped out at me off the old yellowed page.

At first I was horrified.

Memories came flooding back in a cascade of blocked memories of a solemn knock on the front door, a funeral, and the utter look of loss in my dad's eyes when they broke the news. Sadness washed over me just a moment before the anger. I didn't usually get angry, and almost never like this. For just a split second, I had the urge to storm out, to never look back, and to never look at that smugly smiling face ever again.

"Where," I said, struggling to control myself. My voice broke a little, though, and something flashed behind those eyes. "Where did you get this?"

"It was scrunched up in the bottom of your desk drawer," she said quickly, reaching for my arm. "Look, Puck--" I pulled back, getting to my feet.

"Why would you do this to me?" I tried to level my voice, but I was failing miserably. My heart had dropped into the pit of my stomach and I stumbled backward onto the carpet, hand clutching those deadly words tightly in my fist. First the kiss, then ignoring me, and now this. Nova was just playing with me, batting me around like some stupid little ball.

"Hey, hey," Nova was at my side in a second and sank down next to me. "God, I'm sorry Puck. I was just looking for a pen and, well, you know I can't stay away from words, I saw it sitting there and I was just too curious, I mean, you've always been kind of a mystery to me you know, and I just wanted to know..." It all came flooding out at once. She paused, unsure. "Was... did that have something to do with your mom?"

I nodded, not trusting my voice. I hadn't cried once since the funeral, ever. Nothing had seemed sad enough anymore after that... and here I was, blinking back tears, torn to pieces by simple curiosity.

"I think we need to talk about it," she said, matter-of-factly, and held out her hand. I hesitated, but I took it. It was warm and soft, but slender and strong, just as I remembered. She helped pull me to my feet and handed me my jacket--an old black leather motorcycle jacket from my dad's college days. She got her own jacket--the big flannel one from that fateful night at the corn maze-- and filled a thermos with her aunt's hot cider. I didn't really want to go down to the creek, but I wasn't really in much mood to object. Nova grabbed an old blanket from the basket next to the couch, took me by the hand, and led me down to our spot.

"You okay?" she finally asked when we arrived. I shrugged, plopping down in a poofy old fabric couch we had rescued from a dumpster in town just a few days after our foray at the corn maze. Nova sat down next to me and spread the blanket out over us. It wasn't that cold, at least for mid-October, but the unbroken mass of misty clouds above us threatened to start spitting snow any minute. Dark was just a few hours away and the late afternoon light rendered everything in various, rather depressing shades of grey.

"Fine, I'll start," she said, taking a deep breath and leaning a little closer. The contact was not lost on me, even through all our layers.

"When my dad lost custody of me, I thought it was all my fault. I thought I hadn't been a good enough kid, and that I had to leave so that my dad would be better off without me. When I first moved here, I tried to be as good as possible. One time, I even 'borrowed' ten dollars from my uncle and gave it to the old homeless drunk who used to live off Third Street in town. When I watched him go into the liquor store and buy a forty-ounce with it, I remember thinking it was because I hadn't given him enough money, and that nothing would ever be good enough. It's a feeling that still haunts me, you know? I feel like I have to get the best grades, like I have to be the toughest and the smartest... I even have to get the most wasted when we drink. It's just... it stalks me, I guess."

I had never truly seen Nova sad before. This... this was something new entirely. It was like someone had extinguished the fire behind her eyes and replaced them with cold, dead blue stones. She hid behind those eyes, I realized then. She had her problems, of course; she, of the three of us, had probably had the toughest childhood. I had never suspected that she dealt with any kind of self-doubt or unspoken fear. Nova just seemed so... happy. Carefree. The girl who drank and listened to indie rock in similar quantities, the girl who tried to convince me to live a little crazier every day.

I shifted my hand under the blanket and grasped hers lightly. It seemed colder now, somehow.

We all have issues, I guess. How could we ever decide that our own issues were more important than someone else's?

I began talking, slowly at first, and in spurts. I told her about how I grew up writing, loved writing, and wrote every chance I could. I told her about getting grounded, about the words I wrote, and about the car wreck that took my mom away. I had planned on stopping there, but I just kept going: I told her about living in the house with just my dad, and how it seemed empty without my mom around. I told her of my fear of words, my quest of acceptance, and my fear of causing anyone pain. By the time it was over, I was wiping a few stinging tears from my face, unable to look at Nova in embarrassment.

"You know it's not your fault, right?" Nova squeezed my hand, hard, until I turned to look at her. Her fire had returned, just a little bit. I shrugged. "Puck, you need to understand that, or this is going to haunt you forever. I know it's hard... but you have to let it go, okay?"

"Touché," I said, smiling weakly. "I guess we both have issues, huh?"

"More than I'd like to admit," she said with a grin. "Let's face it Puck, we're both fucked up!"

I couldn't help laughing.

She was just so abrupt, so honest. In a desert of lies, faces, and fallacies, Nova was a cool breath of air and a hint of rain on the horizon. Nova removed her hand from mine and began rummaging around in her coat for something. After some digging, she produced, to my open-mouthed shock, a pack of cigarettes and a neon green lighter.

"You can't be serious."

"I'm as serious as lung cancer," she cracked, laughing at her own joke. "C'mon, Puck. Don't make me try this alone!"

"Where the hell did you get those?" I asked, shaking my head slowly, wishing I had more willpower to resist than I actually did.

"Uncle Mike," she said, turning the pack upside-down and tapping it sharply against her knee a couple times. "Apparently he used to smoke all the time in the military. Said it 'calmed his nerves,' or whatever." She pulled two cigarettes out, as long and white as bleached bones, and handed one to me. I took it carefully between my forefinger and thumb. Nova laughed and corrected me, showing me how to place between my middle and forefingers.

"Your uncle just gave you these?" I inquired, raising an eyebrow.

"For once, I'm not just making this up," she said with a laugh. "At the beginning of the year my aunt was concerned that they weren't being involved enough as guardians, so she insisted he have 'the talk' with me and everything."

"Oh, great," I groaned. I could only imagine barrel-chested Mike Fletcher trying to explain, well, all that to his seventeen-year-old niece.

"Anyway, he came into my room one night with a little plastic baggie. He just dropped it on my dresser and said that if I was as smart as he thought I was, I'd smoke cigarettes instead of pot and tell the boys to 'wrap it before they tap it.'" She held her hands up in surrender. "His words, I swear. The bag had one pack of cigarettes and was literally full of condoms!"

"Nooooo!" I groaned, trying to keep from laughing too hard. Suddenly, something occurred to me. "You haven't, um, used any of..."

"JEEZ PUCK!" Nova rolled her eyes and whacked me on the head with her open hand. "Get your mind out of the sewer, pervert!" She yelled, laughing herself. "For your information, I still have the same healthy collection of condoms I started with! Seriously, Rick and you are the only guys I hang out with anyway... Obviously, we haven't... and Rick, well..."

"Rick what?" I asked, curiosity piqued.

"Nothing. He's... well, Rick. Are we going to do this, or what?"

I felt relieved and embarrassed at the same. I really wanted to keep that conversation going, but such subjects had been touchy (yeah, I know) between us since the incident in Rick's truck. The thought of Nova with another guy, even Rick, made me insanely jealous for some reason.

But, as an old Native American proverb I had once read stated, "No man can own the wind or the stars."

And Nova was definitely as wild as the wind and as bright as the stars.

I watched longingly as Nova put the cigarette between her lips and stuck the end in the open flame of the lighter, sucking in delicately. She sucked in a little more, held it, and breathed out slowly with a little cough. Then a lot more coughs. When she finally recovered, she held out the lighter to me.

"Here. Your turn"

There must be a reason men have shorter lifespans than women. I was convinced in that moment it was because when a pretty girl told you to do something, you did it, no matter how stupid it was. I put my cigarette between my lips slowly, wondering briefly if there was a way I could fake it. The unlit cigarette actually smelled pretty good, kind of an earthy, herbal scent, sweet and sour at the same time.

How bad could it really be?

I flicked the lighter on and put the flame up to the tip, trying to mimic Nova's actions. At first, nothing happened. Then, a wave of fire and hell began entering my lungs with no intentions of stopping. I coughed like someone had shoved a forest fire down my throat and into my lungs, dropping the cigarette and burning a tiny hole in the blanket before finally regaining my composure. I felt sick and light-headed and yet, somehow, Nova still looked pretty cool, sitting there with a cigarette in one hand, laughing her ass off at me, flames burning brightly behind her eyes once again.

Just for that reason, I picked up my cigarette and gave it another try.

If it made Nova happy, I guessed it was worth it.

No matter if it killed me slowly or instantly, at least we would die together.