The Color of Darkness COMPLETE NOVEL

Nova

Vivacious.

Irrepressible.

Effervescent.

Natalie Nova Fletcher moved in next door the year I started second grade. She hated the name "Natalie" for as long as I could remember, too. She was a year older than me, so we ended up in the same class at Dale's only elementary school. Rick, blissfully, happened to be a year older than myself as well, and the three of us become fast friends as social outcasts.

According to her own legend, Nova's dad wanted to name her after his favorite green muscle car while her mom wanted her to share her grandmother's name; they compromised, figuring the issue would resolve itself when she was old enough to choose what she wanted to be called. Of course, the inextinguishable mischief of Nova's very being dictated her choice, and thus "Nova" took over in place of "Natalie," which was entirely too plain of a name for a girl of her spirit.

Nova's mom was a straight-edge, the way she told it, and her father was a good ol' redneck born and bred in western Kansas. They met and fell in love while her mom was working as a flight attendant on the Dallas-New York-Atlanta route, and her dad's band was playing in a dive bar next to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. A whirlwind later, Nova was born, love cooled to indifference, and she and her dad were alone and living off of meager welfare checks in a bad neighborhood in St. Louis. Distraught, drunk, and distracted, her dad lost custody of her just months after her mother died of a heart attack halfway across the country. In the summer between second and third grade, Nova moved in with her aunt and uncle, who live right next to my dad and I in a one-story ranch on two acres.

"Uncle Mike's military pension must have racked up a ton," she joked to me one time, "because no one would live in this crappy town for less than half a million."

The day I formally met her, Nova punched me in the face.

"Andy, this is Natalie," was how her Aunt Sandy introduced us when I was six. "She's just a year older, but you two can still be friends, I'm sure." Sandy was a bit of a hippy (though her husband, Mike, was a concrete, ex-military Republican) and insisted upon forcing Nova and I to become friendly from the get-go.

The words "Hi, Natalie," had hardly cleared my mouth before her fist connected with my face. With a loud oof! I landed on my butt in the lawn, far more shocked than hurt.

"My name isn't Natalie," she said, crinkling her face up and giving me an angry look after her aunt made her apologize. "It's Nova. Like a supernova. Or a muscle car." Though she was only about two inches taller than me, she was skinny as a stick and couldn't have weighed more than sixty pounds soaking wet. That didn't stop her for scaring me so badly that I hid in my house for the rest of the day, terrified of meeting her on the street.

Thus began my long complicated relationship with Nova.

When my mom died, Nova was the only one who seemed to comprehend what I was going through, if only just the grief. She had words for me--words that anyone else had yet to offer:

Understanding.

Compassion.

Sympathy.

We had both lost someone dear, her twice. Even so, I was still a wreck. My dad took me to a psychologist that summer, desperate to figure out why it ruined me such as it did, but it didn't do any good. Even I knew I was a lost cause when the shrink suggested that I write about how I felt if I couldn't talk about it. That was the thing: I didn't want to talk about it, period, much less write about it.

Destruction.

Ruination.

Defacement.

I didn't trust myself with words.