Periods

Everyone falls into periods of their lives where everything is repetitive and depersonalized. When each day melds seamlessly into the next and nothing truly significant occurs. As Nova sits starring at the clock in the last class of the day, she decides that she is in one of those periods. She also decides that once she gets out of school, she is going to do something to get her life moving again.

The bell rings and she gets up, hoists her backpack onto her shoulder, and heads for the main exit along with the other chattering students. Nova was a Senior at one of those really rich and preppy high schools with really rich and preppy students. Once she was outside, Nova took a look around and it looked like the majority of the students were getting on buses to go to some sort of event. She followed them and boarded one of the buses. Nova wasn’t sure where this bus would take her, but she was determined to break her repetitive cycle. As she walked down the aisle trying to find a place to sit, no one particularly paid her any mind except for one girl who waived and offered a friendly smile. Nova recognized her from one of her classes and smiled back, but the girl had already turned back to her group of friends. “Imma see all ya’ll at the dance after right?”, one of the girls asked out loud to everyone with a slight southern drawl that heard from time to time around southern Maryland. The bus erupted in cheers and applause. The homecoming dance Nova though. They were probably going to the homecoming game now. Nova plopped herself down in the last seat on the bus next to a boy who was studying a little black notebook. She noticed how his eyebrows were nearly touching with concentration and how he squinted to see what was on the page. Nova leaned in to see what was so interesting. This startled him. He quickly tucked the book under his leg and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. “What are you reading?”, Nova asked, attempting to be polite. “Huh?”, he mumbled still scanning the bus. “Your book… what are you reading?” She repeated while pointing to the notebook under his thigh. A few moments passed and the bus began to move. He finally rested his gaze on her. “Ummm… just something for English”. Nova slowly nodded, simply accepting his vague answer, and gave up trying to conversate with him. She turned around so that her back was to him and her legs were in the aisle so that she could peer out of the back window. She wondered what the football game would be like. Nova had never been to one. Surely something exciting would happen there. She tried to think about high school football games she had on t.v. when the boy started speaking to her again. “What’s your name?”, the boy asked. Nova tried to think of something snarky to say in return but decided against it. “Nova”, she said as she turned around to face him again. “I’m Eli”, he said with a crooked smile as he offered his hand to her. She hesitated a bit then took his hand in hers and briefly shook it. “So what are you reading Eli?”, she asked. He retrieved the little black notebook trapped under his thigh, opened it to the page he was studying, and motioned for Nova to lean over and look. She moved toward Eli and peered over his shoulder to see the page. Nova didn’t have a clue what she was looking at. There were lines and shapes scrawled all over the page. There were also word that she couldn’t make out. She looked back up at him in confusion. “I’m showing you this because I think you can help me”, he said. She tilted her head and tried to figure out what he was talking about. “My brother buried some treasure when he was in high school and this is a map to find it”. Eli struggled to read Nova’s expression as she processed this information. He thought that she was about to ask an overflow of questions, but instead, she simply said, “Cool, I’m in”.

They had followed the map to the east side of the school and dug around for 20 minutes with shovels they found in an outdoor storage structure near the football field. Nova finally hit a small tin lunch box. She picked it up a called Eli over. He jogged toward her and opened the small box. Nova looked down at 20,000 dollars that was separated into two sandwich bags in the box. “Eli this is a lot of money!”, Nova almost yelled then looked around to see if anyone was around to hear her. “Is it?”, Eli said sincerely. Nova figured that he was like most of the other kids at their school and he had no perception of what the true value of a dollar was because his family had so many of them. She could afford to go to their school because her household’s income was low enough to qualify for full financial aid. Eli had told her that they were looking for a prize his brother won in high school, but this didn’t look like a prize to Nova. It looked like stolen money. She didn’t want anything to do with this anymore. Nova set the box down and noticed a blinking light on the latch. The light did not start blinking until they opened the box. Nova starting making her way back to the bus. “Wait up. What’s wrong?”, Eli said as he jogged behind her, but not before picking up the two sandwich bags of money. Nova spun around. “Put that down, you’re gonna get your fingerprints on-”, she looked past Eli and noticed a dark van with its headlights on. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon and there was no reason that a van should have its headlights on. She started walking towards the bus again, a little faster this time. Eli was right by her side. Nova wasn’t sure if she was overreacting or if she should be grateful that they found all this money, all she knew was that she had exited a period of repetitiveness and entered one of precariousness.