16. "not open to any agreement"

"Where's Jared?"

I approached Nova when I saw her the next morning. I didn't feel like speaking with anyone because I had enough on my own plate, but when she was evidently going through worse than I was, it cancelled all of that out. Being there for her felt like something I needed to do, but more than that, something I wanted to do. It made me feel better if I was with her.

She was sitting outside, flat on her feet, squatting down to the ground in pajama pants when she usually did herself up. With her lips placed into a thin line, she kept to herself, spreading cream cheese on a bagel that she didn't look like she wanted to eat. She nibbled at it, and she tried to get something into her body, but every time she did, it seemed it was a chore for her.

"Don't know. Still sleeping I guess," she shrugged like last night was an ordinary night, besides maybe a bit of tossing and turning. She then took a bigger bite, like that would be proof to me that she was okay, but she couldn't fool herself, and of course not me, who could see her expressions better than she could feel them. Her face scrunched up at the feel of food in her mouth, as if she had taken a large swig of alcohol she never tried before, and it burned down her throat, too. She couldn't play poker face with that.

"By the way," she added on, thinking up something to shift the conversation. "Officer Dela Cruz stopped by this morning. Basically all he said was that he found nothing new so far, that he would continue looking into it, and to let everyone know he stopped by, you know, so that everyone is certain he won't be giving up on us anytime soon, I guess. Since you're awake, you can have that responsibility. I don't wanna be the one who'll get in trouble for forgetting."

I agreed by the movement of my head, but I didn't say anything. I didn't make any promises, and I didn't verbally say that I would do what she asked me to do. In that, we ran into a mute -- exactly what she was trying to avoid. I decided to confront what we were both thinking anyway. She didn't want it, that was obvious, but I think it was best it was addressed.

"Nova," I said her name sternly, so she knew I was serious. So she knew I did this because I had full intention of looking out for her. "Did he -- Did Jared do that to you before?"

The woman avoided looking into my eyes, peering down at her food as if it were the most interesting thing she's ever see, hiding behind her dark, dark hair, or up to the greenery in the trees, and at the moment I never seen such a little girl. I've always known she was the youngest among us, and that she was a bit naive of the world and it's trials, but this was to a whole new level. Sitting there as she was in front of me, she looked like a child. A toddler. A baby, and that baby, helpless and broken went on to talk like she didn't hear that I asked her a question.

"Isn't it ironic? They're police from the violent crimes unit, and they can't figure out who killed Ryan. They're supposed to be good at finding answers to this kind of crime, this kind of tragedy, and yet at this point, we still know more than they do. They still think he's only missing, and in a way you can say they're right, I guess. He's missing because he's dead. The world itself doesn't even know where he is anymore because it can't find the music of his heartbeat--"

"Nova--," I tried to cut her off, but she didn't stand for it. She rambled on, unstoppable.

"-- I think I have right to believe that they're wrong entirely. I think I should've always trusted the original theory I mentioned, because it makes more sense that somebody out there in this wicked world would have done such a thing to Ryan. Just because someone hates another person doesn't mean they become a killer. Maybe, fine, they have the potential, but it's slim. It's so slim! We hate people everyday, don't we?--"

"Nova--,"

" -- but we don't kill them. We might avoid them or belittle them, but we don't kill them. Maybe Ryan just had such an uncanny resemblance to someone out there suffering a dark and scary illness and they need help, badly, and now that same person who made Ryan not a person, but a victim, is out there in this world causing the same fate upon several more. Yeah, I think -- I think that none of us are killers. Everyone loved Ryan. Everyone did. Even in hate, in irritation, in annoyance we all always loved each other. A-All of us are good people. It's stupid that the police could think otherwise."

"Nova!" I said it louder than the other attempts, but somehow, I believe it to have been more gently too. Her eye settled into mine for the first time since the sun started to rise, and they seemed to not only look at me, but melt into me in a way that it hit her that this was an opportunity for her to finally rest after every year that she couldn't trampled into this trap of despair. I took that second of attention -- the moment she was all there -- and I asked her again, this time without stuttering. "Did Jared do that to you before?"

The girl shook her head. Her eyelashes fluttered back to the ground, away from me. "No," she claimed. "He never did."

I stared back at her, my head tilted slightly to better study her expression. I let the quiet set in once more, because more than me, she viewed that as an enemy on her battlefield. She could survive when there was noise to focus on and to distract herself, but the minute there was nothing to soar in and save her mind, she began to die little by little.

Silence ate her up like roadkill to a scavenger.

"He did," she admitted, right when I thought she wouldn't. "Once or twice maybe. I don't know -- something like that."

I gulped in a wad of air. I knew it. My gut was telling me that that was the truth, -- at least a slither of it -- and it was what I was digging for all along, but when she said it -- when she actually let herself mutter it out loud, I was still surprised. "Then why--?" I tried to ask her, but I struggled with how to say it -- how to present words to a person with so much trauma circled around her youth. I couldn't figure out any other way though, and I just let myself say it, even if it was wrong to be so direct. "Then why don't you report him? Why don't you get him punished? You shouldn't have to put up with that. Nobody should."

"Because he's helped a lot. He's helped me ever since we met, and it's because of him that I've gotten chances that I wouldn't have had if I didn't know him. I wouldn't even know that I had potential to do more than working retail, but now I know that I can, even if I haven't gotten the chance. He was there for me when I needed him the most all this time.

"I was this little kid -- 'prodigy' they called me, all throughout high school and I was the child when I was in college, but despite being called that, people forgot that I was actually young. They thought because maybe I was academically mature, that I was mature in every other way and I wasn't. I didn't know anything -- I didn't know that things that were done to me weren't supposed to happen, that they weren't normal. Then, I found a safeguard. I found security, and even if he snapped sometimes, it was better than what I was involved in before. He treated me better than most people do. He still does."

"Here's the thing," I brought out my hand to skim her arm, to reassure her, but I held back on it. I decided not to touch her, in case she wasn't comfortable with it, especially now, and instead, I waved my hands out to express I was against what she said. "The good things someone does for you does not and never will excuse the bad they do to you. Good is good and bad is bad. You shouldn't make excuses for him. You shouldn't defend him. He doesn't deserve that, but now he's going to think that it's okay for him to do whatever he does to you even if it's only occasionally. That he's just allowed to do that."

"But I don't want him to go to prison," she said, and for a small moment in time, I didn't think anything of it within the context she was describing. I didn't think anything of it until her eyes widened, bulging out of their sockets, so much that even when she tried to blink it didn't appear they could close all the way. She felt she gave away too much -- that she knew too much and that now I knew something that I wasn't supposed to.

"You don't want who to go to prison?" Jayvee's voice grumbled from behind us sleepily. Nova, whose expression Jayvee couldn't see from standing behind her, vowed me into silence with nothing more than a look I felt I had to obey.

"Are you talking about Jared?" The woman who had barely woken up sounded more lively to say something so deadly to our ears, but based off the way she laughed, we assumed that she was spewing names for the heck of it, and we were right. She heard near to nothing -- she just felt like talking. "I hope he goes to prison after what he said in front of the officer yesterday. What kind of gut does the man have? No one who hates my boyfriend so passionately, especially without actual basis is a friend of mine. If he apologizes or he doesn't, or if he's a killer or not, I hope he suffers. He doesn't deserve to have any friends. Ryan is dead, and he doesn't care."

"We all know he's dead, Jayvee. Can you please stop feeling the need to remind--?" I had to retaliate. I couldn't hold it back when it came to this girl, but Nova with her hand hovering over my chest, told me to stop, and I did. I listened again to her body language; she told me not to feed her devious wishes to cause drama and to turn everyone against each other all over again. Not right now. Not so early in the morning.

For the first time in a long time, or maybe for the first time ever, Nova was the mature one, but she hid it in a way that looked normal for her, and I wondered how much she's gotten away with in the past if she could do it so easily.

"We were talking about Criminal Minds again, Jayvee," she claimed. "Way to soil my lovely show with your shattering facts of reality, and if you ever do happen to gain taste and watch the show, don't say I spoiled it for you. I didn't."

Hearing that, Jayvee huffed, slightly annoyed that the mention of a show she wasn't into was consistently coming up, and she walked away.

Nova sighed, glad to have the her off her back.

But me?

I could only think about who had the most potential to be a merciless murderer.

Was it the one with aggressive tendencies and a voiced hatred for the deceased, the one who was known to have the position to love Ryan the most, or was it the one who was so incredibly skilled in hiding her secrets from the ones she didn't want to hear them?

Or could it still be someone else?