She was only 8 years old.
8 years old and she saw her mother get killed by a drive by. From that day poor Nova has been traumatized and has been to foster home to foster home. At the age of 12, Nova has anger and trust issues, never letting anyo...
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N O V A
I woke up to the sound of waves.
For a few seconds, I didn't open my eyes. I just lay there, listening to the water roll toward the shore and retreat again. It was gentle, almost rhythmic, nothing like the sounds I'd become accustomed to hearing lately.
There were no shouting voices.
No footsteps outside my bedroom.
No doors slamming.
No guards.
No one telling me where I could or couldn't go.
Just the ocean.
I slowly opened my eyes.
The first thing I noticed was the sky.
It wasn't blue. It was a mixture of soft pink and orange, the colors blending together across the horizon as streaks of darkness stretched through them. There was a little bit of black scattered throughout the clouds, almost as though night hadn't completely decided to leave.
I pushed myself up onto my elbows.
Sand.
I was lying on a beach.
I looked down at myself, and my confusion only grew. I was wearing a white sundress that moved gently in the breeze, the fabric soft against my skin. I ran my fingers over it, trying to remember where it had come from.
I couldn't.
I couldn't remember how I'd gotten here either.
The last thing I remembered was—
My thoughts stopped.
I stared at the ocean.
Something inside me told me not to think about it.
So I didn't.
I sat up completely and looked around. The beach seemed endless. The shoreline continued in both directions until it disappeared into the distance, with nothing but the ocean on one side and the vast stretch of sand on the other.
It should have scared me.
Instead, I felt strangely calm.
Actually, calm wasn't the right word.
I felt peaceful.
It was a feeling I almost didn't recognize anymore.
For so long, my mind had been filled with noise. Anger. Fear. Questions. Memories. Faces. My brothers. Ricardo. Trevor. Everything that had happened to me.
Here, none of it seemed to matter.
For the first time in what felt like years, I wasn't thinking about what I was supposed to do next.
