Earth Can't Hold Us All

Nova's POV: Issues & Tissues

June 3rd, 2080
"Nova, get your brother's lunch bag ready," my mother demands.

"I'm already getting it!" I shout. My mother expects me to take care of everything for the family, which I do, but she only sees me failing.

"Jax!" I call across the room. Jax, my older brother with narrow dark eyes and a lean face like mine finishes tying his boots. He leaps up as I toss his paper bag lunch at him. He manages to catch it.

"Thanks, sis," he says, running out the door. "I'm late for work."

"Arbitrary," I grumble to myself, shoving a tin can of tuna into another paper bag. I can hear my father's boots stomping down the hall from his bedroom.

"Lemme guess," he says, "there's a thing of tuna in there. Am I right?"

"Yeah," I say. "Sorry, father, it's all we have lately."

"It's all we ever can afford for as long as there's so many mouths to feed in this family." Father gestures to the row of five paper bag lunches left on the table.

"Have fun at work," I say, handing him his bag, not wanting to hear what else he has to say.

"You too." He stomps out the door. My triplet brothers, who are very hard to tell apart, run out of their bedroom, wrestling over a hat. Filip, Nerone, and Mace take their three bags, neither uttering a word to me. They forget about the hat and start arguing about whose lunch bag is whose.

"Shut up," I say to my immature teenage brothers. "They all have the same crap inside them."

"I haaaate eating crap, Nova," Mace whines. "I refuse to eat until we get edible food."

"Yeah, me too," says Filip. He flips his long hair to one side to show his half shaved head.

"We're going on a food strike, Nova," Nerone exclaims, dropping his lunch bag.

"I don't give a shit. Starve yourselves, no one cares," I tell them. Even though I did care. Very much actually. Because they will actually go on a food strike, they have before. Last time they didn't eat for three days. Nerone fainted and fell off the fishing boat at work, he almost drowned himself. He didn't stop eating for a while after that.

"K, fine then," says Filip looking a bit offended.

"Yeah, I bet you'd love to find out that I fainted in the sea from hunger. I bet you'd love me to die," Nerone threatens.

"Okay, okay," I say. "That would be terrible. I don't want you to go on a food strike. But I can't change the food. Dad was just telling me about how we'll forever eat tin tuna."

The three boys glare at me, then walk out the door, their middle fingers held up so that I can see. They leave their food bags behind.

"Mom!" I call. "Time for work!"

"I know, I know." She walks into the small kitchen, Mulan bouncing on her hip. "You have to take Mulan with you."

"I take her almost everyday," I sigh. Mulan reaches her short arms to me, I pull her to my hip.

"The other day you were gone all day with Hinge, and I had to be with her the whole day. She cried a lot and wouldn't stop messing in her pants," my mom complains.

"That's what babies do. And she's your baby, you should be the one with her everyday, the whole day."

"My point is, I know what you're up to with that boy. I know you're off having fun with him, running away from your responsibilities."