Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
It couldn’t just be for revenge.
And it wasn’t.
He told me why. And this was the real truth.
“She never loved me. Not like I loved her. She told me. She said the words. But shouldn’t you be able to feel loved without hearing the words?”
Even all these years later, I can’t say I disagree.
Mercer and I break away from our kiss as this thought is floating through my mind.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – NOVA
You can get lost in the right kiss. The right kiss can change a life.
I say these words over and over in my head.
These two sentences take up the whole first inside spread so it’s not until I turn the page that I realize this isn’t my story after all.
It’s Olsen’s.
But it’s not just a story.
It’s a love letter.
Dear Nova,
The very first memory I have of you is the first day of third grade. You were a hot mess.
I pause here and almost laugh out loud, but then I remember that I’m caught in some kind of weird web of conspiracy theories and Olsen is doing his very best to cut me loose. So I just look up at him and smile.
He lets out a long breath, then grins back as he looks away and says, “Relax, Nova.” Not for my benefit, but for the microphone in one of my earrings. “It’s a long trip. You might as well relax.”
I nod at him and look back down at the book.
You were a hot mess. But I mean this in the best way. Your blonde hair was long and kinda wild. You were wearing the ugliest pee-green shorts and a red tank top. The kids were calling you Christmas Ball. They even made up a song about you.
If that was it, maybe I would’ve gone about my days and just done my multiplication tables and handed in my made-up book reports like the half-assed student I was.
But that’s not all there was to you, Nova Ryanzski.
You sang that stupid song all year. And when you weren’t singing it, you were humming it.
You had no friends. Not even one. You sat alone at lunch, you played alone during recess, and you walked home alone after school.
To the trailer park. Where I also lived just a few trailers down.
I don’t know how long you had been living there with your mom and your ‘uncle,’ but I had only been there a week, so that first day of school was the first time I ever saw you.
I hated the trailer park. My parents had split up a few months back, my mother killed herself over it, and then we lived in my dad’s car for a few months before some relative or do-gooder or someone found us and gave him the trailer to live in rent-free for a little while. Until he could get back on his feet.
It was a disgusting trailer park. I know how you described it to me last weekend, and if you want to keep that fantasy, be my guest. I would not blame you. But this letter is about facts and the fact is—your mom was a prostitute and whoever that ‘uncle’ of yours was, he wasn’t your father. He was probably her pimp.
I don’t know what happened to you in that trailer. But Mercer does. And he planted that happy memory of your childhood and your parents in each and every trial you’ve been in. So I’m going to assume he did that for a reason and I’m going to suggest that you don’t try to replace that one.
But it’s up to you.
The whole point of my intervention is to set you free. Because you see, Nova, I love you. I have always loved you. And most of the memories about your best friend, Travis, are real.
When I realized we were walking to the same place at the end of the first day of third grade I wanted you. I wanted to be your everything.
It took me a while—nearly three years, in fact—to get you to even talk to me. But on the last day of sixth grade, you let me walk home with you.
And then all my hard work paid off.
We were inseparable that summer and we spent every day in the library reading. You and your books. I didn’t care for the stories, really. But you would read to me under a weeping willow tree out front and I’d just lie there enjoying the shade, listening to your voice.
You used to tell me, “This is going to be us.” In every book, it was about us. “We’re going to have amazing lives, Travis. We’re going to get out of this trailer park, and this town, and we’re going to be different people one day.”
Kind of ironic how true that turned out to be.
At least for you.
I’ve never taken the drug. They never gave me a fantasy. They used me to recruit people. The same way that Mercer used Locke to do the same.