A New Beginning

 Nova reached her hand into a small, translucent container, her eyes still fixed on her computer screen. She moved her hand around the container for a few seconds and dumped the last few chips in her mouth, slowly chewing them while enjoying the silence in the room. Suddenly, this silence was interrupted by a gentle knock on the door.

“Come in!” Nova reluctantly yelled.

The sliding doors were slowly pushed open, a girl appearing behind. She had wavy black hair, a small portion tied behind with the rest left open, and was wearing a bright red dress and a sleek black coat.

She walked in and took a seat next to Nova.

“Your mom said you’ve practically been living in this room,” she said in a concerned tone, “really?”

Nova stared at the screen for a minute before pausing the show she was watching. She then turned towards the girl.

“Yeah, but can you blame me, Ira? It’s so quiet in this room, and so calm. The rest of the house is so chaotic! Seems like my choice is entirely reasonable if you look at it like that. Besides, why are you even here?”

“No, it isn’t! The only people living in this house are you, your parents, and your sister! And for that matter, your sister is pretty quiet! And I’m here to convince you to change your attitude, to tell you that what you’re doing is wrong.” Ira said in a very harsh tone.

Nova paused as if she were thinking about what Ira said, but then seemed to be interrupted by a beep from her computer. She switched her tabs only to see that an assignment from her teacher had been marked late. Ira frowned and tapped her shoulder.

“What happened?” Ira asked, “You’re possibly the most talented individual I know, why are you acting this way?”

Nova shifted uncomfortably in her chair, “You wouldn’t understand.” she replied defiantly.

Ira sighed, “But I will try to, and I’m certain whatever it is, you don’t have to be behaving this way.”

Nova said dismissively, “There’s a lot going wrong in my life right now. But what would you know about stuff like that? You always get what you want, your friends completely respect you, your parents give you their complete attention and appreciation, one of the many perks of being an only child I’d say. Besides, the story’s so long, you’d be bored by the first ten minutes of it.”

“Well, then I’d certainly like to hear it.”

She once again shifted uncomfortably in her chair,  “You won’t stop nagging me until I tell you, won’t you?”

“You got that right.”

Nova bit her lip and reached out to the far end of her table. She then brought out yarn, needles, scissors, and a crochet hook. Ira knit her brows.

“What are you doing?” She asked.

“Hey, it’s going to be a long story. I might as well have something to play with during the entire thing.”

Ira nodded, “Sure. Go on now.”

“Before this entire change in me happened,” Nova commented, “I had always felt somewhat ignored, overshadowed I’d say. This all would’ve been fine, but for who I was overshadowed by; my sister. Time and time again, she would do something ridiculous and useless, though she was younger and adorable, so whatever I did would be ignored, and she would receive all the praise. This of course was noticed by me, and though I felt very dejected by this, I was still motivated to do my very best. After all, having a lot of friends still allowed for me to receive praise and appreciation from them as well, at this point, I still felt like all the effort I was putting in was worthwhile. Of course, then I lost the people who were motivating me to act as I was.

It all began during the beginning of this year. Up until this time, I never truly felt like I needed to have a lot of attention or a lot of friends. As a matter of fact, I never thought of friends as something I needed to have, but rather tried to focus on my studies and things as such. Though I soon began to wonder if I was an outcast of some sort, I only had one friend that was incredibly close to me after all, everyone else being more like acquaintances. That one friend was someone I used to do everything with, including this thing where we’d go walking every single day and talk about random things going on in our lives. As a matter of fact, she was the only person I ever hung out with at home, and this kind of bothered me,” she seemed to be hurt when she said this as if she was filled with a sort of regret. Ira thought back to previous conversations, she knew Nova had mentioned this friend of hers before.

“This friend of yours, is it by chance Ariana you’re talking about?” she asked.

Nova nodded, “Yeah, we were pretty close. But then, one day, Alicia, someone I had known for a long time but never really talked to, asked if I and Ariana wanted to hang out with her. I was incredibly excited at this thought and replied almost immediately that both of us would love to, and then suggested that she could come walking with us when we went that day. She seemed to be quite thrilled with the suggestion and we both agreed to meet the next evening.

The following day had been really quite boring, where nothing special had really happened, putting me in a sort of sleepy state. I did however look forward to seeing Alicia and had just come out of my house, speeding towards the park where we had thought of meeting. The day was warm, yet slightly breezy, much like any other time in September. I walked slowly and calmly, observing the change of color in the leaves and the various cloud formations in the sky. As I came closer to the park I could see Alicia sitting on an iron bench, and waved my hands to catch her attention. After spotting me she ran closer and immediately began to talk.

‘So how’s your day been today?’ she asked.

‘Okay I suppose, there was a lot of homework though,’ I replied.

There was an awkward amount of silence after this, which was eventually interrupted by Ariana who had approached us from behind. She looked at Alicia for a second and looked at me as if to ask why she was there, I took notice of this and realized I had forgotten to tell her about Alicia coming. After informing her all about how we had agreed to meet today the day before, she began to look slightly irritated that we had done all of this without even bothering to talk to her about it. Despite this, she seemed to shrug it off, and we soon began walking. At the start, the walk was going quite fine, although soon I began to feel a sense of exclusion. Alicia and Ariana had gone into an entire conversation about some sort of book series that I had never even heard of, and as I tried to change the topic, they went even deeper into the one they were currently speaking of. I soon began to feel a bit left out, and after attempting to bear with this conversation I soon got bored and said I had to leave. Alicia replied saying she had to go too, but it was what she said after that made me feel kind of jealous. Before she had left, the last thing she said was to Ariana, where she had stated just how nice of a person she was, and how lucky I was to have her as my friend.

Those words truly stung, and I started to feel like yet again I was being overshadowed, but this time by my closest friend. I felt incredibly mad but calmed myself down believing that this was only a one-time thing. Though our next walk was with Alicia, and yet again, the same scenario happened once more, except this time she had brought more of her friends. Soon, I wasn’t able to do anything with Ariana, as suddenly she was surrounded by people all the time. This made me very jealous, and eventually one day this feeling of mine finally showed. Ariana had once again invited me to one of these walks of hers, and yet again I was excluded, causing me to yell at everyone who was present there. I can’t even remember the rude things I said while overcome by this anger and jealousy, though I do remember just how much it hurt everyone there. After this I had stormed off to my house, not knowing exactly what I had done. 

The following day I went back to school, pretending as if I never said anything, and believing everything would be alright, not knowing just how much I hurt everyone there. But no one seemed to want to talk with me, and I was ignored the entire day. Yet I still believed this was only temporary, and went back the next day expecting things to get better, but nothing had changed. Soon, this became a permanent change, leaving me feeling extremely hurt and far less motivated to try in anything at all.” she said with a sigh at the end.

Ira listened carefully. Everything Nova seemed to be saying was quite dramatic, though, it also seemed quite genuine, like all this stuff really did matter to her very much. She paused to think about everything she had heard so far when she realized Nova hadn’t mentioned something that would’ve made a quite large difference to the telling of her story.

“Did you apologize for what you did?” she asked. Nova seemed to be hit by that word, apologize, Ira continued, “Besides, what led you to believe your parents don’t care about your accomplishments? Just because they care about your sister, doesn’t take away the fact that they care about you.”

Nova seemed to have her eyes stuck on what she was crocheting, though her mind seemed to be elsewhere. The yarn slowly began to fall apart, though she didn’t budge. Ira didn’t say anything, she hoped more than ever that Nova was thinking about what she had just said, She has to, she thought, I know she can do better than how she’s doing right now.

This awkward silence lasted for quite some time, when the aroma of spices came flooding into the room, waking Nova up from whatever thoughts she was having, and prompting her to finally speak.

“That smells good,” she said,” are we having anything special for dinner?”

Ira sighed, she hoped whatever for her to say something different, something more along the lines of what they had previously talked about, but obviously she wasn’t willing to admit that she was just looking at all this the wrong way, “Poori,” she said feeling somewhat dejected, “your moms making poori.”

“Oh, are you staying for dinner?” Nova asked.

“Well, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure we’re leaving now. But before I go,” Ira paused contemplating what she was going to say, pondering over whether she should say it or not, “think about our conversation today, will you?”

Just as she had expected, Nova grew silent, filling the room with the same awkward silence from before, “See you later,” and leaving it at that Nova turned and resumed watching her show. Taking the message, Ira left the room, taking one last look at what her friend had become, and then softly closed the door.

Nova woke up, the sun shining on her face. She turned and attempted to block the light with her blanket, though it was futile. Finally, she vigorously kicked the blanket off and went to brush her teeth. She then went and checked in the kitchen to see what her mom had made for breakfast, though she couldn’t find anything that seemed to have been prepared, nor did she see her mom. Nova slowly dragged herself to the living room, where she found her mom enjoying a hot cup of tea.

“What did you make to eat?” she asked irritably.

“Well, I thought today we could make breakfast together!” her mother replied, obviously excited.

Nova grimaced, “I’m too tired right now to do that. Besides, it’s a Saturday, I just want to chill.”

Her mom pursed her lips, “Come on Nova, you’re always ‘chilling’. Can’t you do something that doesn’t involve you and your laptop for once?”

“I can use the iPad if that makes you feel any better.”

Nova’s mom seemed to want to respond, but got up and walked to the kitchen. As her mom walked away, Nova’s eyes began to follow her, and out of nowhere, she began to feel a sudden pang of guilt. Trying to shake it off, she walked towards her room, although, as she kept going, she began to think about all Ira had said. Perhaps there was some truth to the statements Ira had made before, she could sense there was. Sitting down in her chair, she opened her laptop and tried to find something to do in order to distract her mind from her current thoughts. She didn’t particularly find it thrilling to feel as if she were wrong, and wasn’t willing to admit it either, she had to have been right, she had been so certain about her beliefs just the day before after all.

After a few minutes of searching for something to do, she soon realized it was futile to try to find something to do like this, her laptop in whole simply just reminded her of her conversation with Ira. 

Feeling this entire search to be pointless, she leaned forward to close her laptop, when suddenly she heard the doorbell. Reluctantly, she went to the front door and peeked through the peephole to see who it was. Instantaneously, her heart seemed to stop beating, and a tingling sensation overcame her body. Her hand shook and slipped off the doorknob, and she grew quite sweaty all in the blink of a second. Her eyes enlarged as she looked closer into the peephole, trying to verify if it was really who she thought she saw; It was Ariana.

Nova began debating inside her mind on whether or not to open the door for her. On one hand, she was extremely agitated by how Ariana had left her as soon as she found other friends, while on the other hand, she truly missed having her around. While she regretted her actions deep down, that didn’t change the frustration that she still felt for her former best friend. Feeling as if she had made her decision, Nova backed away from the door and turned to walk back to her bedroom.

Although, she froze in her footsteps as she heard, this time, a knock on the door. Not knowing why she turned and swung the door open with great force, and then attempting to remain calm, asked as politely as she could of why she had come.

Ariana played with her fingers and stuttered as she spoke, “Maybe y-you would like to ta-talk, for a bit?” she said quietly.

Nova tried to maintain a neutral expression, although regardless of whether she would’ve admitted it, inside she felt an extreme sense of excitement. Perhaps there was still a chance for their friendship to remain. She stepped back and pulled the door all the way open, and signaled for Ariana to enter. As she stepped in, she noticed that

Ariana had already gotten ready, while she was still in her pajamas. She normally wouldn’t have cared, but right now she felt less prepared than Ariana, and she certainly did not like this feeling.

Both the girls took a seat on the couch. Ariana continued to play with her fingers, while Nova swung her feet back and forth, the room abruptly drifting away into pin-drop silence. Finally, Nova started talking.

“So, what did you want to say?”

The sound of screaming seemed to erupt right as she said this, her sister finally waking up. Ariana ignored this and stopped playing with her fingers.

“Well, I’m not sure how exactly I can say this, but,” she gave a heavy sigh, “let me try starting from the beginning.”

“Go ahead,” Nova responded.

Ariana, now playing with her hair, began speaking, “Right after that day where we had that argument, you had left, leaving everyone somewhat agitated. Due to this feeling of agitation, everyone else had made the decision not to speak to you, under the belief that you would eventually apologize. Now, I must admit, at the time I was absolutely certain you wouldn’t apologize any sooner or later, although, I thought you were being completely unreasonable and agreed to this decision everyone else had made.

For the next few days or so everyone acted quite nice to me, just as they had previously when you were there, yet in a week or so, it was as if they had completely forgotten about me. At this point, they were rather always around this other girl, I believe Nia or something. But the point was, they didn’t give me any attention at all, and then I realized how you must have felt.

Now what I’m trying to say here is,” she seemed pretty emotional as she said the next part, “I guess I’m really, extremely sorry for how I acted,” she smiled and ended, “will you forgive me?”

Nova grinned in return, but as she tried to say yes, she realized she didn’t quite want to. She knew she herself had done something wrong, although she still had somewhat of a grudge against Ariana. Thinking out her next words carefully, she replied.

“I’m sorry for what I did too. It would’ve been a lot cooler of me to just be upfront with you about how I felt. Although,” her voice grew serious, “I’m not certain if I can forgive you just yet, as I’m still a bit mad at you. I guess what I am trying to say is, maybe we can be friends again soon, but just not now.”

Ariana’s eyes widened as she said this, it was almost as if she were expecting Nova’s response to be positive.

“Oh, okay. I suppose I’ll leave now,” she headed for the door and turned one last time, “I do hope we can be friends again soon though.”

Saying this she left, gently closing the door. The room grew silent yet again as Nova got up and headed for her bedroom. Her mind had completely been taken off of all the things she had not wanted to think much about, therefore she leaned back on her chair and began watching a video. Things finally seemed to have been going right, it was just that it could be better.

Almost three weeks had passed ever since Nova had spoken with Ariana. While for the first few days after this incident she was upbeat, she slowly had begun to return to her previous self after not much time and went back to staying on her own in her room. Although today was a pretty special day, it was Christmas, and though her family didn’t exactly celebrate Christmas, they were still going to a festival just for fun. She reluctantly zipped up her jacket and trudged to the car.

“Excited for the festival?” her dad asked, sounding very excited himself.

Nova groaned, “No, why would I want to go to a festival meant for five-year-olds,” her parents seemed to be hurt by this comment. In an instant, she felt the same guilty feeling she had before, and the urge to say something to brighten the mood, although, she once again attempted to fight against it. Why should I care how they feel, she thought, they don’t care about me.

The rest of the car ride went on in the same gloomy manner, and soon, they came to a halt as they stopped by a park. The park was decorated with several Christmas trees lit up with colorful lights. Random stalls and large balloons littered the area, a buzzing crowd swarming the place. Nova could feel a surge of excitement pass through her as she came out of the car, dazzled by how lively it was. Her mom came towards her and pointed towards an array of benches, filled with kids of all ages, sitting in pairs. Art items were tossed around with the kids grabbing for them, making it seem to be a chaotic crowd. Despite this noisy nature of the crowd, Nova still felt drawn towards the area, it was filled with a sort of energy she hadn’t seen for long, maybe it was time she became a part of it.

“In those benches, an activity is going on, and it’s for little sisters and big sisters, where you have to work together to do any sort of art project,” she then asked her in a hopeful tone, “do you want to do it with Nyla?”

Nova smiled, she had an odd feeling where she wanted to say no, but yes at the same time. It was as if she wanted to get on her parents’ nerves just for the sake of it, but at the same time felt bad for doing so. She pursed her lips, it did seem like something fun to do. After a moment of thought, she replied simply, “Sure”.Nova grabbed Nyla’s hand and dragged her to the bench. Clambering through the crowd, she finally found a vacant spot and seated both herself and her sister on the bench.

“What are we supposed to do?” Nyla asked her.

Nova looked around for a bit and then responded, “Create anything we’d like to.”

For the next hour, Nova and Nyla spent their time at the bench. Nova had completely forgotten about all her grudges and seemed to purely enjoy the time she was spending. Finally, her parents called for them to come back to the car when Nova suddenly realized how exactly she was acting. Snapping herself out of her current attitude, she attempted to restore her typical monotonous nature. Yet as she went back home, she began to think of the behavior she was doing, the grudges she was holding, and whether it was all truly worth it.

After going home, rather than being on her laptop for the next few hours as she usually would’ve, she went straight to bed, laying awake and staring at the ceiling, thinking about all the thoughts she had been avoiding all this time. Maybe Ira was right, she thought, maybe my parents do care about me, maybe I have been overreacting about all my problems, maybe...I am just looking at my life the wrong way. Nova out of a sudden felt a sense of regret, of wasting her time in her room while she had the potential to do so much more. It sounded so cliché, but it was true. She got up and turned the light off in her room, and closed her eyes, there was still time to change a few things about herself, and she was going to start changing these things tomorrow.

The next morning the light fell over Nova, waking her up from her sleep. She began to turn and use her blanket to shield herself from the brightness, although stopped herself from doing so. She then forced herself off her bed and got ready. After a shower and a change of clothes, she went to the kitchen to find her mom making breakfast.

“So, what’s for breakfast?” she said cheerfully.

Her mom was caught off guard by this statement and was taken aback by the positivity Nova was displaying. She cleared her throat and replied, “I was making toast, is there anything particular you would like your toast with?”

“A plain toast is fine with me!” and saying so Nova left the kitchen and started heading to her room when she stopped in her tracks. She remembered back to when Ariana had asked if they could be friends again, and how they had left things. Nova raced to the front door and threw on her jacket.

“Mom! I’ll be leaving now and be back in about an hour!” she yelled

Her mom was yet again startled, it had been days since Nova had gone out due to her actually wanting to, “Sure! But where are you going?”

Nova cried back just as she went out, “Ariana’s house!”

Nova quite literally ran to Ariana’s house, it wasn’t too hard though considering it was right across the street. Once she reached she rapped the door, catching her breath for a moment. It had certainly been a long time since she did any running of any sort, and she was way out of practice. Finally, the door slowly creaked open, and Ariana stood behind, only her head sticking out. After seeing Nova she fully emerged from behind the door.

“Hey Nova! It’s been some time since we’ve seen each other!”

Nova replied, still panting, “Yeah!” she took a deep breath, “Well, I just wanted to ask if we could be friends again? I was being absolutely ridiculous last time, so, yeah I guess,” Nova had no idea of what she wanted to really say, she really hoped Ariana could understand her though.

Ariana smiled, “Of course! And don’t worry, I can understand how you must’ve felt,” she stopped talking.

A strong wind pushed at Nova, causing her to wish she had brought a thicker jacket. She took a second to understand what Ariana had just said. That was way easier than I imagined it’s be, she thought.

“Well then, I guess I’ll see you around! Bye!” she said.

“Bye!”

Nova turned and walked towards her house. Her lazy and negative attitude she now realized, was just making things harder for her, not to mention only making her feel more terrible. Now, she felt pride, proud of how she had acted responsibly, and more importantly, proud of how she was more considerate towards others. Nova grinned, things were only going to get better.

Nova took a slice of pizza and poured herself a glass of water. It was New Year’s Eve, and they had invited Ira’s family over to have a rather small, but fun party. So far they had played a few board games and a somewhat tiring game of dumb charades, which she had only sat through for the sake of everyone else as they seemed to enjoy it. It was ten minutes to the New Year, and she couldn’t have been more elated. Nova sat down next to Ira and took a bite out of her pizza.

“So, have any resolutions for the New Year?”

“I don’t know,” Nova paused and looked back at the past month or so. She remembered the day Ira had come over to give her that advice, the day Ariana had come to apologize, the festival she and her family had gone to, and most of all, just how foolish she had been acting the entire time. She hadn’t given too much thought to come up with a whole lot of resolutions but she didn’t have to think very much to know what she hoped to do the next year, “My resolution would be to have a positive attitude towards everything, and just to be able to respect others and be empathetic towards them, as well as to be as calm and patient as I can be. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that my resolution is to try to be a positive person who people can both respect and feel comfortable.”

Ira grinned and nodded her head, “That's one of the best resolutions I’ve ever heard I must say, and also one of the most achievable for the person who had it.”

Just as she said this Ira’s mom came and handed them a party popper.

Everyone in the room began to countdown for the New Year.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!”, the room filled with confetti and noise.

“Happy New Year!” Ira said.

Nova chuckled, “Yeah, it's going to be a good year!”