The summer between my freshman and sophomore years was the summer I started my first job: I mowed lawns. I woke up every day before 8:00, pulled out the older-than-dirt push mower out of the tool shed out back, and rolled it down the street to get most of the work done before it got hot. I was on a tight schedule: on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I mowed all the even-numbered houses in our country neighborhood, and did the odd-numbered houses on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Because everything is further apart in the middle of nowhere, I pushed that mower almost a mile in each direction to get all my houses. I earned thirty-five dollars a week and was very proud of the fact.
That same summer was also the summer that Nova got her first boyfriend.
Nova was one of those "early developers," one of the girls who grew into their curves just ahead enough of the other girls for every boy in the school to notice, especially me. I had always thought my friend was pretty, but that summer she went from "proportionally pleasing" to "freakin' hot, I guess" (Rick's words). On some days, on my way home from mowing lawns, I would see her stretched out in the grass in her front yard tanning. Her uncle Mike wouldn't stand to let his niece wear such an "indecent" outfit as a bikini in public, so she settled on a rather revealing halter top and a pair of cutoff jean shorts that didn't leave much to the imagination. I wasn't the only one who had noticed the changes. In just a few months, Nova went from being an outcast like me to being the focus of quite a few boys' attention. For a short while, the attention went to her head and she didn't seem to enjoy hanging out with the two of us as much as she used to. Rick didn't seem to mind that much. I on the other hand, was wounded deeply and began to resent this version of Nova I wasn't familiar with.
Nova's boyfriend was going to be a junior at Dale High School, a greasy haired "white-neck" named Chris Thomson. See, the difference between a "redneck" and a "white-neck" in our little town was defined by the actual amount of time each spent doing the back-woods kind of stuff they bragged about. Though Chris could go on all day about how "rough" he liked to live, he was actually the son of Dale's biggest (and only) real estate broker and lived in the fifteen-home gated community (Dale's only gated community) called The Charter. He drove a brand new Ford pick-up, wore brand new boots, and had Cabela's caps in just about every imaginable color, each one brand new, and stuck a big ol' bent fishhook in each one.
"I hate that asshole," Rick remarked one day (asshole was one of his new favorite words) as we watched Chris's too-clean F-150 pull into Nova's driveway and honk in the most irritating way possible. The two of us were sitting on my front porch with a can of Mountain Dew Code Red each, inactively seeking something to get rid of our mid-summer boredom. Nova emerged from the house a few seconds later, clearly dressed up for a date. Silently, I agreed with Rick, but I couldn't tell him that; he suspected my crush on her and I couldn't give him any reason to press any accusations.
"Yeah," was all I said.
"It's too hot out here," he complained, downing the rest of his soda and watching the truck disappear around the bend in the road. "Let's go play some video games," I mumbled in agreement, still half-angry at seeing Nova get in Chris's truck, and let him lead the way to my basement, where I kept one of my most prized possessions: my Xbox.
The thing was practically ancient, bought by my dad as a birthday present from a garage sale two years ago. I only owned three games, but Rick and I wasted hours away in front of the screen anyway, taking special delight in blowing each other heads off in gruesome and violent Alien Slayer death matches. Rick had always been far better at it than I was, but I enjoyed it anyway, even though "LOSER" appeared in big red letters four out of five times on my screen.
After three games (all of which I lost), Rick dropped his controller on my bed and complained that I wasn't into it enough. I really wasn't. The mental image of Nova getting into Chris's truck was lurking in the back of my mind and making me sick. I wished I could do something about it or that I could at least tell someone about it, but I was stuck.
"Dude, we've only got two more months of summer left, and we're wasting it!" he declared, falling back onto my bed with a groan. "This is the last summer we'll ever be able to do something fun!"
"What do you mean?" I asked, only half listening.
"We're gonna be sophomores, man, that means no more playing around. No more being a kid. It's gonna be all work and no fun."
"Sounds good," I said, staring at the wall and imagining it was Nova who was laying on my bed and not Rick, and how much better that would make my life.
"Are you even listening?" Rick sat up and looked at me with impatient eyes. I nodded vigorously, trying to look interested. Rick turned and looked at the "Pause" screen blankly, the thousand-yard stare of summer boredom etched clearly on his features. Then, as if stricken by a profound epiphany, he whipped back around and looked at me with wide eyes. "You know what we need to do?" he asked, excitement barely contained in his voice.
"What?"
"We've got to have the best summer ever! No more slacking off!"
"Yeah?"
Rick sighed and rolled his eyes. "Sometimes, man, you're useless."
"Sure," I answered letting out a long breath, Nova still on my mind.
The thing about Rick was that he kept me fairly grounded in all things considered "normal" for boys my age, and he was my partner in crime, not to mention the instigator of most of our mischief. Since I was a year younger, I was just sort of the tagalong in our friendship. It had never really occurred to me that Rick didn't seem bothered by hanging out with a younger kid, but we were in the same grade, so maybe that was it. In hindsight, I probably should have asked Rick what he meant by "the best summer ever."
An hour later, I found myself keeping watch on Mr. Bennett's farmhouse from a clump of bushes while Rick primed and loaded his five-foot-long potato cannon, nicknamed "Bessie."
For those of you who don't know what a potato cannon is, picture this: a five-foot-long length of pipe with a raw potato crammed in one end and the other end packed with a combustible aerosol. Did you catch that? A raw potato, hard as a rock. There was no way this was going to end well. In the boonies, as they say, you can't buy your fun; you have to make your fun. As always with Rick's crazy schemes, I was dragged into the middle of something that would probably get us both in a lot of trouble. Still, it kept my mind off Nova, which was what I really needed.
"Is anyone coming?" Rick screwed the end-cap on after spraying in a copious amount of Madame March's dollar-store hairspray and picked up the igniter switch, which came from his dad's old gas grill.
"I don't think this is a good idea," I offered weakly. Hey, I liked cannons as much as the next guy, but this particular cannon was pointed at a huddle of big, beefy dairy cows in Mr. Bennett's pasture.
"If it's gonna be our best summer ever, we've gotta take some risks." Rick grinned at me sweetly, reminding me once again that he probably could have charmed the pants off the Third Reich. With that, Rick jammed his finger down on the little red button. Two seconds later, a tremendous BANG! shook the air around us and we watched the brown missile hurtle toward its unsuspecting targets faster than either of us had predicted it could have.
What we had pictured was a reasonably soft potato splattering harmlessly against a fleshy rump and sending the herd into a chaotic but harmless frenzy.
What actually happened was that the potato, a very solid little spud to be sure, hit a small heifer right between the eyes with a sickening WHACK! The cow dropped like a stone into the grass, and we along with it.
"Dude! I think we killed it!" Rick hissed, panic overwhelming his voice and driving his already puberty-stricken tones even more out of whack.
"We?!" I hissed back, imagining all the creative and horrible ways in which my dad could figure out how to punish me if he ever found out about this. "It was your idea!" It only took us ten more seconds of muted arguing to come up with an organized and decisive plan of action:
Run like hell.
Running like hell, though, isn't easily accomplished when dragging a five-foot potato cannon behind you. To this day, I swear that "Bessie" is still buried under the bush where Rick and I shoved it as we hauled ass back to my basement and spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding Mr. Bennet's house calls and angry horn-honking. (We found out later that the cow was fine; we had merely knocked it unconscious).
Rick headed back to his house to get cleaned up for dinner. Since it wasn't quite six o'clock yet, I settled on taking a shower and starting a book full of mini-biographies on America's most influential poets. Somewhere around seven o'clock, as I was reading about how Walt Whitman stopped going to school at age eleven, my dad got home from his job at the little law office in town. We ate dinner and exchanged a few words but I was eager to get back to my reading and he was tired, so we parted to our respective rooms. Sometime around eight-thirty, in the middle of a paragraph describing Sylvia Plath's gruesome suicide (she stuck her head in the oven), my phone buzzed on my bedside table.
[You still awake?] It was from Nova. I had totally forgotten about her and her stupid date for a few blissful hours.
[Duh. It's only 8:30]
[Smartass. Meet me at the creek?]
The creek? What could Nova possibly need at the creek this late? I considered declining, but my phone went off again:
[Please?]
If Nova said "please" it was definitely some sort of emergency. I pulled on a pair of jeans and my Converse sneakers, zipped up my hoodie, and slipped out the back door.
One of the things (among many) that I loved about living in a small town were the stars. Before I quit writing I must have written twenty poems about them. There were so many visible here away from big-city lights, sprinkled across the vastness of the sky like glowing dust. The night sky, for the record, is not merely "black" like everyone believes...
But you'll hear more about that later.
When I reached our hangout at the bend, an unfamiliar smell met my nostrils. I had smelled it before, I was sure, but I couldn't quite recognize it. As I came around the last bush, I was met with the sight of Nova sprawled out in the grass, long limbs splayed out as far as they could go.
The smell came from an open bottle of wine clutched in her hand.
"Want a drink?" She offered me the bottle. I shook my head no and sat down next to her, trying not to freak out and wondering what could have gotten her in this state. I wasn't sure if she was drunk or not but she seemed well on the way.
"What's wrong?" I asked after a heavy silence. Nova turned to me, her blue eyes bright in the darkness. Most of her face was hidden in shadow but something morose was etched on the visible parts of her pale features. She gave half a shrug.
"Boys suck," was all she answered. I couldn't help but let out a laugh. She stared at me and I realized there was something more. I shut up.
"What happened?" For a long time, she didn't answer; then, with a sigh and an impressive pull off the wine bottle, she shook her head.
"Chris. He tried to... well, you know. I told him 'no way' and he got angry and said... said some stuff. Stuff that hurt."
I felt a knot tighten in my stomach. "I'll kick his ass!" I declared, enraged. Now it was her turn to laugh.
"You'd last half a second against him," she said, taking another drink. This was true, but it didn't make me hate her saying it any less. "Besides, I can take care of myself."
"Sure you can. Give me that." I pointed to the wine in her hand. It came out a little more forceful than I had intended. Nova hesitated, then passed the bottle. It was about half-full; I raised it to my lips. The glass felt cold against them. I had expected it to taste like sour grape juice, but I wasn't expecting the burn. Only my determination in self-destruction at that moment allowed me to keep the vile stuff down.
"Good, isn't it?" She was watching me and gauging my reaction. I nodded, eyes watering, and took another long swallow to prove it. I was already light-headed and my stomach didn't take to the cheap alcohol well. Nova took the bottle back and held it in her hand, staring sightlessly at the label. "You know; I've never drank before. I don't even want to get drunk or anything."
"Yeah?" I closed my eyes, resisting the urge to gag.
"Yeah. I think I just thought it would be fun to be 'bad.' An excuse, you know?" I watched as she took one last drink, then leaned over and poured out the rest into the tall grass. She then dipped the bottle into the creek and let it fill with clear, cold water, as if it washed away our little sin. We both lay back, staring up at the stars in a comfortable silence.
"Hey, Nova?"
"Yeah, Puck?" Her words slurred slightly.
"You're not going to keep seeing Chris, are you?" I had heard of girls who gravitated toward jerks and was suddenly finding myself very worried. Nova rolled over and let her head drop onto my chest, filling my nostrils with the scent of her cherry shampoo. I felt a little too weird to be surprised.
"Not in a million years," She mumbled. "Chris was just a phase." Half a minute later she was asleep, snoring softly into my jacket.
A phase, huh? What, exactly, did she mean by that? I stared down into the creek and caught a glimpse of my own reflection. My muddy-brown, messy hair. Sharp nose I got from my dad that looked sort of out of place on my thin face. My mom's eyes stared back up at me, green and unblinking. Nova sighed and snuggled a little closer.
I smiled to myself and rana single finger through her auburn hair, knowing deep down that we had to leavebefore the sun came up