Hero

Chapter Seven

My eyes flew open as I woke to my name being screamed into my face by a very energetic Nova and an alarm blaring across the room.  Where Nova had gotten her unimaginable energy from, I had no clue, but she was up and ready to face the day.  “Come on!  Diner!  We have to go or Anne won’t hold our table for us.”

“Nova…” I groaned, rolling over and holding a pillow over my face.  “It’s too early.”  My internal clock- which hadn’t been wrong since the accident- was telling me that it was only about seven in the morning and that was way too early for me to have to deal with Nova in this kind of a mood.  “Wake me up again in two hours and we’ll talk about maybe leaving the room to get breakfast.”

“No, Mina, this is important!”  She picked up my phone, which I’d plugged in prior to going to sleep the night before and shined the light in my face.  “Look at it!  You’ve got a text from Ezra waiting for a reply!”

I grabbed the phone from her hand without looking and peeked open an eye to glimpse at what he’d said.  Unable to contain my smile as I read, I sat up in bed, now fully awake.  “He wants to take me out again tonight.  Something more ‘my style’, he said.”  I glanced over at Nova, who had calmed down and was now more interested in her computer than in me.  “What do you think I should say back to him?”

“Invite him out to go mini-golfing with you.”  I frowned and looked at her with an expression that clearly told her that I thought she was out of her mind.  When she looked at me again, she shrugged.  “Hey, it is more your style.  Less flash and cash, more glitch and kitsch.  You could suggest bowling, too.”

“I’m sorry, ‘glitch and kitsch’?”  I asked, frowning even more.  “What are you implying there, Nova?”

She shrugged again.  “Nothing, honest.  It’s just that…well, you don’t have a lot of money and you like kitschy things.  You know, Niagara Falls, foam hats, collectible bobble heads, and lava lamps.  I mean, you genuinely enjoy that stuff.”

“Yeah, but glitch?”

“Glitch.  You’re very pretty, Mina.  Even with the gorgeous parents you have, you shouldn’t be this pretty, but you are.  It’s like a…glitch in genetics.”

“Oh.”  The answer wasn’t the best she’d ever given and I didn’t think that was what she actually meant when she called me ‘glitch and kitsch’.  Still, I knew that I wasn’t going to actually get it out of her without a Hail Mary miracle and I didn’t want to press her any further; it seemed like she was already in a mood.  I didn’t know why, but it seemed like today was going to be a Nova day.  I’d have to text Simon and warn him before the inevitable clash happened between them.

The banging on Nova’s door made me wince and, as I stood up to open it, I knew that there was already a hurricane sized storm brewing between my friends.  “What the hell is your problem, bitch?” Simon demanded, shoving his way past me to push Nova and her wheeled chair up against the wall.  "I don’t know what the fuck is up with you, but you had better fucking leave me out of it.  I’m done with your shit!”

“Hey, whoa!” I said, pushing the two of them apart.  Nova’s chair was already against one wall and I managed to shove Simon just as far the opposite way.

It wasn’t a long distance, but score one for robot strength.

“Let’s solve this with words, okay?  No need to get upset, no need to touch each other, you hear me?  Now, Simon, what did Nova do this time?”  I had just woken up and I was a mediator.  I was going to need some coffee soon, because it seemed like I was going to be here for quite a while before we went to breakfast.

“You know how I don’t like to be rushed about things?”  I nodded.  He’d already been a textbook procrastinator.  All homework had to be done at midnight the night before it was due and, if it was a particularly important paper or project, it was normally delayed even longer than that.  His procrastination wasn’t a very desirable trait, but it was one that Nova and I had learned to tolerate for the most part.