Saving Quinton (Nova #2)(4)
Author: Jessica Sorensen

She leans closer to the screen again, her long black hair falling into her eyes. “No…it says that it was both drivers’ fault…that Quinton was driving too fast, but that the car in the other lane was, too and the other car took the corner way too wide and swerved into the wrong lane…it was a head-on crash and some of them weren’t wearing seat belts.”

“Does it say anything about the other two people in the car being Quinton’s girlfriend or his cousin?” Sadness shoves its way into my heart.

She pauses, reading something over. “It says something about a Lexi Davis and a Ryder Morganson, but not how they knew Quinton.”

“Morganson.” The painful reality seeps into my skin and I prop myself up on my elbows. “That’s Tristan’s last name…oh my God…Ryder has to be Tristan’s sister.” The pieces start to connect, but it’s like the outside of the puzzle is put together and the middle pieces are still missing, so it’s still incomplete and doesn’t make sense. “I don’t get it…why would Tristan let Quinton live with him after that?”

“Maybe because he’s a forgiving guy,” Lea suggests with a shrug, and when I give her a doubtful look, she adds, “Hey, some people are like that. Some people can forgive and forget easily and when you’re high all the time…well, I’m guessing it’s really easy to forget, although I have no way to know if this is true or not. I’m just guessing.”

“It is,” I admit, remembering the few months I spent wandering around in trailer parks and fields, tasting but never fully indulging in the land of drugs and misdirection. “And now that I think about it, there was tension between the two of them…God, I can’t believe I didn’t know about this…I spent all that time with him and never knew.”

She twirls a strand of her black hair around her finger. “Nova, I think you and I both know that you could spend a hundred years with a person and still not know them if they don’t want you to know them.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I knew Landon for years and even though I knew he was sad, I didn’t understand why. When he died, I was even more confused—still am. Lea knew her dad for twelve years, and then he took his own life. She told me that he always seemed content, not ecstatic about life or anything, but still she’d never thought he’d do that. A lot of people don’t think someone they love will end their life.

Lea reads the screen for a few minutes longer, while I mess around with my long brown hair, braiding it to the side, trying not to think about the many places Quinton could be, how much harm he has to be doing to his body and mind, but it’s all I can think about. I can feel myself drifting to that place where I don’t have control, just like I didn’t with my dad and Landon. Everything is just happening and I’m lying here, unable to know how to stop it.

“Please tell me why you’re so sad,” I whisper as I watch Landon flip through the pages of his sketchbook, desperately searching for a specific drawing.

He shakes his head as he tilts it to the side, observing a sketch. “I’m not sad, Nova, so stop asking.”

I pull my knees to my chest and lean back against the wall. “You look sad, though.”

He glances up at me and the anguish in his eyes makes it hard to breathe. “Nova, seriously. I’m okay. I just need to figure out a few things about…with this project I’m working on.” He roughly flips another page and then another.

I sigh, then get up from the floor and walk over to him, sitting down on the bed beside him. I can smell the pungent scent of weed and his eyes are a little red. “You know, you can always talk to me about stuff, if you’re like having a bad day or something.” I want to reach out and touch him, but I’m afraid. Afraid he’ll get mad at me. Afraid he’ll ask me to go. Afraid he’ll break down and cry, tell me what’s wrong, and it might be something really bad.

He keeps sifting through his pages and tugging his fingers through his inky black hair. When he finally looks up at me again, his honey-brown eyes are not full of anguish, but irritation. “Would you mind giving me some time alone for a little while?”

“You want me to go?” I ask, hurt.

He nods and I catch him glancing at the glass bong on his desk. “Just for a little while…I’ll call you when I’m ready for you to come back.”

I don’t want to leave at all, yet I don’t want to argue with him either, so I get up and go home, feeling like I’ve done everything wrong.

Feeling like I shouldn’t have walked out on him.

“You know what?” Lea shuts the laptop, then gets to her feet, interrupting my thoughts. She’s wearing a torn black T-shirt and cutoffs and when she rubs her fingers under her eyes to eliminate any smudged eyeliner, I can see the tattoo on her wrist: Live life with no regrets. It’s the one she got with me and it’s pretty much her life motto, at least from what she tells me. “I think you need to go turn in your final project for film class.”

I secure my braid with an elastic band I had around my wrist and then sit up on the bed. “Lea, I need to find out where he is…I need to talk to him and see if he’s okay.” I stand up, tugging on the bottoms of my shorts. “Besides, I don’t have a final project to turn in.”

She puts her hands on her hips and gives me a firm look. “That’s not true. You have a nice project put together, just not with Quinton’s clip in it.”

I dither, unsure I want to turn in the video without Quinton’s recording on it, the one from last summer when he told me a coded, brief part of his life. It’s so raw and emotional, which is what my final project is supposed to be, and the project feels incomplete without it, but my professor won’t let me include it without Quinton’s signing a permission form. “But…it’s…”

“But nothing.” She strides up to me and shoos me toward the door. “Go turn what you have in so you don’t fail, then get some coffee because I know you didn’t sleep last night and you look really tired.”

“But what about Quinton?” It’s been over nine months since I’ve seen him and I know it seems absurd to be panicking about waiting a few more hours to find him, but after I found out from Delilah about the accident and that he’s been doing crystal meth, it seems really urgent to find him.