I loosen up and move my hands up to his chest, taking the opportunity to feel the lines of his lean muscles. His fingers graze the bottom of my panties, and for a second the weight of him falls against me. I arch my body into his, knowing that our friendship that once existed is no more, but I don’t care. I want this—want him.

Our slow kiss starts to heat up as his tongue explores the inside of my mouth, and then I gasp for air as he slowly slips a finger inside me.

“I should stop, right?” he pants, pulling back for a minute to look me in the eyes.

I blink through the amazing feelings developing inside my body, trying to focus on his beautiful face and the intensity in his eyes, but I’m losing touch with reality. “No…,” I manage to get out as my neck curves and my head tips back.

He listens to me, touching me more and making me feel things I only ever imagined. He kisses me all the way through it until my body can no longer take it and he has to stop, otherwise I’d pass out from lack of oxygen. His eyes are glossy as he encircles his arm around my waist, and he pulls me with him as he rolls onto his back. I rest my head on his chest, my eyes wide at the implausibility of what just happened.

I drape my arm over his stomach as he plays with my hair. “So am I still stuck in your head?” I say and then roll my eyes at myself.

His fingers stop combing through my hair and he sketches a line down to my cheek to my jawline, where he hooks a finger underneath my chin and tips my chin up so I meet his eyes. “Yes. In fact, I think it’s worse.” He says it like he’s disappointed, almost as if he was hoping that I wouldn’t be, and it makes me sad. I’m about to ask why he looks so upset, but then he dips his mouth to mine and starts kissing me again, and just like that I forget about everything.

Chapter 5

Nova

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.