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❝ And I snuck through the garden gate every night that summer just to seal my fate. ❞
— CRUEL SUMMER, TAYLOR SWIFT
NOVA VAN KIRK was a ghost.
Well, it wasn't always that way. There was a time when the blonde haired beauty had everything. She was once a girl with hope that glimmered in the darkest of times, stars and constellations twinkling in her ocean blue eyes, spreading magic and stardust wherever she seemed to go, and sparking joy in the coldest of hearts. She was the light in the darkness, a beacon of hope in the midst of all the chaos. People often described the Van Kirk girl to be as radiant as the sun that hung over their heads.
Then came the day when her life took a devastating turn. There was no denying her older brother, Riley Van Kirk, had spiralled down a dark path filled with pill popping and partying like most rich Kooks in the Outer Banks. A terrible habit Nova knew about, but never acted on it, or even reached out to her brother to try and help him. She knew drugs were never his thing. She thought it was just something he would outgrow, which unfortunately resulted in a heartbreaking outcome for the Van Kirk family.
Nova would never forget the day she came home after spending some time with her friends at the beach, only to find Riley unresponsive on the bathroom floor. Nova did everything she could to save her brother. She followed the 9-1-1 operator's instructions very clear whilst she waited for the ambulance, and even then, it wasn't enough to undo the horror that had occurred on that dark and gloomy day.
Riley Van Kirk lost his battle with addiction that day.
The loss of her brother and best friend left a dark void where her heart should've been, a gaping hole in Nova's chest that never seem to really heal. Even in the months following her brother's death, Nova couldn't seem to move on, all her guilt and grief eating her alive, wishing she had done something about her brother's addiction, maybe told someone before it was too late. Instead, she sat back and hoped he would get better on his own, and she hated herself for being so. . . so. . . naive.
