Free Breaking Nova by Jessica Sorensen Page B

her?” My voice drops off at the end as the blunt honesty escapes my mouth. I don’t want to hear it or think about it anymore, so I shut the computer down, no longer wanting to look at myself.
    *    *    *
    Later that day, Delilah and I are hanging out in my room. The blinds are open and the sunlight flows inside, making the air stifling, even though I have a fan on full blast. I’m sifting through some of my video clips, trying to figure out what the hell the purpose is, besides watching me babble about pointless nonsense that doesn’t really make sense. Am I trying to understand myself? Who I am? Or am I trying to understand Landon? Life? Death? What he was thinking in his final moments, and why did he decide to sit down and record it?
    Why do I always have so many fucking questions in my head?
    “We should go to that concert down in Fairfield at the end of July. Wouldn’t that be fun? To feed your music addiction,” Delilah says as she sifts through a stack of CDs on my shelf and pulls a few out. She’s wearing a short red dress that matches her red-stained lips and is only a couple of shades darker than her hair. “And why do you have these still? No one listens to CDs anymore.”
    I take them from her hand and set them down on my computer desk in an orderly, alphabetized stack: Blink-182 to Taking Back Sunday. “Landon gave them to me,” I say and then keep talking to avoid going down that road with her. I close one of my video files down and try to ignore the file marked “Landon’s” as I open another video clip of mine. “And what concert? I don’t remember hearing about one.”
    “That’s because you live in your own little crazy Nova Land.” She crosses her eyes and circles her finger around her temple, and then she plops down on my bed and tucks her hands underneath her legs. “It’s been advertised all over town and I’ve mentioned it a few times. It’s just a bunch of indie bands. But it’s going to be like a weeklong event or something.”
    I mull over the idea of going to a concert. As much as I love music and used to love going to concerts, I don’t feel like going to them anymore. There’s too much connection to Landon with them, and there’d be a lot of noise and a lot of people and a lot of unfamiliarity, which would make it hard to keep track of everything around me. Plus, if it’s a weeklong concert, my morning routine would be wrecked and my anxiety would probably go through the roof, unstable, out of control. “I’m not sure I’m up for a concert, Delilah, or if I’ll have time.” I move the cursor across the screen to click on another video file. “I think I might enroll in some summer classes… maybe a film one or something.”
    She shakes her head as she shoves to her feet, then she stomps over to the computer and hammers her thumb against the off button on the tower. “No way. We made a pact not to do classes this summer. Besides—” she taps her finger on the computer screen “—you already got your own little film lesson going on here. Although I don’t get why. You’ve never really been into filming before, at least not to the point where you did it for fun.”
    “I’m still trying to figure out what the point is, too.” Sighing, I rotate the chair around to face her and change the subject. “I know we said no classes, but I need a distraction.”
    She plants her hands on her hips and narrows her eyes at me. “From what?”
    I shrug and put my hand over the scar on my wrist. “This town… my own head. Life.”
    “Isn’t that going to be hard, since we’re here?” She points out the window at the undersized, nearly identical houses that line the street. “And I don’t know what to tell you about escaping your own head or life other than you could get high.”
    “Are you being serious right now?” I ask. I’ve never smoked weed myself. Landon did though… always smoking it, all the time… and telling me I shouldn’t. I always just