I wasn’t always this way. I use to be responsible. In fact, it was something my mom always took pride in when she was bragging to her friends. I was supposed to go to a good college, probably with Lexi, where we’d date until we graduated, then we’d get married and start our lives together. At least that was the plan. But that plan’s no longer possible, and even a plan for a day seems pretty much out of my reach.

* * *

June 28, Day 40 if Summer Break

I sit up in bed and swing my legs over the edge, stretching my arms above my head when someone knocks on the door. “Come in,” I call out, thinking it’s probably Tristan coming to lecture me again about getting out of bed.

But when the door opens up, Nova is on the other side. Her hair is pulled up, and wisps frame her face. She’s wearing a short black dress with red stripes and slender straps that show off her bare shoulders and collarbone. There’s black liner framing her blue eyes, and her full lips look glossy. But other than that I don’t think she’s wearing any makeup, because I can still see the freckles on her nose.

She stares at my bare chest as she clutches her phone in her hand, and I’m suddenly very hyperaware that I’m only in my boxers. She can see the nasty scar on my chest, leftover from the accident that nearly ripped me in half, both mentally and physically, and the tattoos on my bicep of everyone I killed that day. Her cheeks flush, but surprisingly she doesn’t leave the room. She points over her shoulder at the hallway. “I came here with Delilah, and Dylan said that you’d been back here sleeping for a quite a while and that I needed to come wake you up.”

“He did?” I shake my head. I don’t know much about Dylan, but the longer I stay here, the more I realize that he seems to like starting trouble. I stand up and head to my dresser, working to put a smile on my face. “All right, you did your job. I’m up.”

She nods and I expect her to leave, but she dithers in the doorway. Then, looking nervous as shit, she takes a deep breath, steps over the threshold into my room, and starts wandering around. There are clothes and sketches all over the floor, the dresser, and the bed. She assesses each one closely, and I squirm uncomfortably as I take a shirt out of my dresser.

She stops at my bed and eyes the drawing I made back in high school of Lexi wearing nothing but her underwear and bra. I wonder what she’s thinking. If she’s offended? Do I care if she is?

Her head tips to the side as she reaches out to pick it up, and I open my mouth to tell her not to touch it because it feels wrong somehow, seeing Lexi’s picture in another girl’s hand. But then she decides against it, pulling her hand away.

She glances over her shoulder at me. “She’s pretty.”

I nod, swallowing the lump in my throat, and then slip my shirt over my head. “Yeah, she was.”

Her lips part a little when I say was, which I didn’t mean to say. In fact, I wish I could take it back. Luckily, Nova seems to be understanding and she steps up to my wall and starts studying a drawing I made of vines weaving around a bag of Skittles. I made it when I decided to take a hit of acid, because weed wasn’t doing anything for the internal agony. It turned out to be a very bad idea and did nothing for numbing my emotions, instead bringing out a very dark, almost insane side of me.

“This one’s interesting,” she muses, glancing at me. “What were you thinking when you drew it?”

I reach for a pair of jeans in the top drawer of the banged-up dresser that only has two of the four drawers. “Honestly, I don’t remember.” I unfold the jeans and transfer my weight to one leg so I can slip them on. “I think it had something to do with the fact that I’d smoked a lot of weed and did… other stuff, and then fell in a rosebush that day and went home and ate some Skittles.”

She laughs, looking bewildered, and I find myself smiling, too. “Do you do that a lot?”

“What? Fall into rosebushes? Or eat Skittles?” I ask, zipping up my jeans.

She sucks her bottom lip in between her teeth, and I catch her gaze flicking to my hands as I button up my jeans, which makes me wonder what she’s thinking about. “No, do you smoke weed a lot? I’m just curious.”

The light mood she created plummets, and I feel deflated. “Yeah,” I say truthfully, knowing it’s probably going to scare her off.

She glances around at some of the drawings, then holding her dress in place, she crouches down to get a closer look at one. “Yeah, so do Dylan and Tristan, but you probably know that since you live with them.”

I grab my wallet off the dresser. “Yeah, I guess.”

I’m not sure what Dylan’s and Tristan’s reasons are for smoking an abundance of weed; whether Tristan does it just because or if it’s how he deals with the death of his sister, Ryder. All I know is that I do it to deaden the pain inside me. It was something I discovered after countless therapy sessions, prescriptions, and trying to draw my way through my inner turmoil. Nothing was working, and one day, while I was hanging out with the only friend I had left, he took out a joint. I’d never tried pot before—never cared to. But then I realized that I really didn’t have anything to care about anymore, so I tried it, and when it alleviated the heaviness in my body and clouded the dark thoughts inside my head, I knew it was the only way I was going to survive. I’ve been doing it pretty much every day for nine months now, and it’s part of life for me. Without it, acceptance of what my life really is—what I’ve become—would be unbearable.

Nova stands back up, smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress. When she looks at me, her eyes are enormous and crammed with worry. The abruptness of her shift in demeanor throws me off balance.

“So everyone is pretty determined to go to that concert in Fairfield,” she says, slipping her fingers below the bands on her wrist. She scratches at the skin, seeming anxious and out of her element. “And it’s like a weeklong event or something.”

“It could be fun.” I stuff my wallet into the back pocket of my jeans. “You should go.”

“Yeah… Delilah keeps pushing, but like I said, I’m not really a fan of concerts anymore.”

“Because they’re too noisy?”

She nods as she coils a strand of her hair around her finger. “Plus, I’d be there with Dylan and Delilah and sharing a tent with them and they’d probably want to do stuff… They wouldn’t even care that I could hear them.”

“Isn’t Tristan going?” I ask, grabbing my watch off the bed. “You could share a tent with him.”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know. It’d be weird with just the two of us.” By the way she says it, I suspect she knows Tristan has a thing for her and that she doesn’t like it. She unravels her hair from her finger and then stands up straight. “You could go, too, and then I wouldn’t have to share a tent alone with Tristan.”

I fasten the buckle on my leather band watch. “But why would you want to share a tent with me, too? You barely know me.”

She skims my body and then steadily maintains my gaze, even though her hands are trembling at her side. I feel very vulnerable, as if she’s reading me like an open book. It’s like she’s been hiding this fiery personality from me, and it’s starting to show. I’m not sure if I like it or hate it or if I should even be analyzing it. “That’s okay. Then I can get to know you,” she says.

“You don’t want to do that,” I assure her, doing her a huge favor. I start to step around her, but she matches my movement, cutting me off.

“Please.” Her tone carries a silent plea. I have no idea where it stems from, but I get the feeling it has nothing to do with me. But I know I should say no, because I promised Lexi that no matter what, I would never forget her, and Nova seems like the kind of girl a lot of guys could get caught up in: sad, vulnerable, determined. And those goddamn big blue eyes of hers… they’re seriously getting to me. I rub my hand across my face, preparing to turn her down, but when I open my mouth my answer completely contradicts my thoughts.

“Okay,” I tell her and my hand falls to my side. I’m stunned and thoroughly pissed off at myself. I’m about to tell her I didn’t mean it, but her eyes light up.

“Good,” she says and then she takes a step forward, lifting her hands up. I have no idea what the hell she’s doing and she looks as baffled as I feel. And terrified. Then all of a sudden she’s wrapping her arms around me and giving me a hug. Her heart is knocking in her chest, going about as fast as mine.

I tense, unsure what to do. Then I start to pull back, but like a moron, gravity pulls me forward and I fold my arms around her waist, giving her a hug back, feeling guilty from the gratifying contact, but completely consumed by it at the same time. I blame it on the weed still lingering in my system, because I’m normally more careful than this. I’ve become a pro at pushing people away, and now suddenly I’m fucking careless—it has to be the weed.

“Look… Nova…” My eyes shut as I inhale in the sweet scent of her. “I don’t think—”

She rapidly pulls away. “So I think Dylan or Delilah will drive. Or maybe Tristan. I think everyone’s still deciding who’s driving.”

Does she know what she’s doing? Does she know that I don’t want to go, so she keeps talking so I can’t get out of it? “I’m not a fan of road trips,” I lie in a lame attempt to get out of it without making a big deal.

A smile accentuates her lips, and it enhances the green specks in her eyes. “Neither am I, but it’s only like a four-hour drive.” She playfully pinches my arm, stunning me, and I flinch. “And you can sit by me.” Before I can even begin to respond to her extreme flip of attitude, she turns toward the door and opens it. “Everyone’s hanging out in the living room. You should come out there.” Then she walks out and closes the door.

I stand in the middle of my small, shitty-ass room, stunned and speechless. This isn’t how I work. I don’t just go on road trips and go to concerts with a girl who obviously wants to hang out and get to know me. I get high, I draw meaningless shit, and I fuck. That’s it. Because if I do anything else, my life will have purpose, and I deserve to be miserable until my life comes to an end, which is hopefully soon.

Nova

I run straight to the bathroom to throw up, moving so swiftly I don’t have time to count my steps. I’m not even sure why I get nauseous; whether it’s due to the fact that I pretty much made a commitment to go to the concert or because I’m nervous to be flirting with someone or that I feel guilty over flirting. I was never good at flirting, and it always made me come off as an awkward weirdo. That’s why I lucked out with Landon. He did all the pursuing, otherwise we’d never have gotten anywhere past just being friends.

I burst into the bathroom and I barely make it to the toilet as vomit burns at the back of my throat. After I barf up the chicken sandwich I had for lunch, I spread a towel down on the grimy linoleum floor and sit down on it. There’s very little space between the toilet and the bathtub, and I have to keep my elbows tucked in from touching either one, because they both look equally disgusting. I tap my finger on the video icon on the screen of my phone and then hit record.