Chapter 1

Her body was littered with tattoos, and she was littered on the ground - strewn on the side of the street like yesterday's trash. Piercings punctuated her skin, like an exclamation mark. Nothing too extreme, unless you thought that piercing both sides of the nose was over-kill.

Long, thick blond hair fell down her slumped shoulders; dirty blond, in more ways than one.

Next to her, an open book. November (her name, not the month) had fallen asleep while pouring over her textbook. She was sitting at the entrance to a park, up against the chain-link fence. Fall was easy, because it was warm out and she could sleep just about anywhere. Winter would take a little more cunning, but she knew how to survive. She hadn't had a "home" in 2 years, and had figured out how to manage. She did pretty well for herself. When it got cold she would rotate between the library, McDonald's, and movie theaters. Luckily winter coincided with term finals, and the libraries tended to stay open for 24 hours.

November was a wild child. She called herself Nova, and it was a very suitable nickname. A nova is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion that occurs in space, essentially, an exploding star. This sums up Nova much better than "November" ever could.

So much about Nova was not from this planet; she often felt very far apart and different from the earthlings surrounding her. Also, the universe above is part of the reason Nova didn't mind sleeping outside.

The word "nova" also means "new", and Nova was obsessed with new experiences and learning. Every day was a new day, and she started them off right by embodying the uniqueness of varied experience.

When she craved the feeling of a bed or needed a shower, she went to Shopper's Drug Mart or Sephora and used their make-up to paint on her beauty: shiny and fake. That was the sort of look that appealed to most guys. She'd go to bars and get friendly with men that she knew wouldn't push for sex - they might settle for making out, or sometimes even just talking. Regardless she'd end up at their house, and this beautiful, witty, adventurous girl would sleep in their bed. In the morning, she'd shower and scrub off accumulated filth. Then, feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, Nova would politely say goodbye and venture out.

She was a very bright girl. Nova loved to learn and spent her days reading - always absorbing knowledge from tomes of words. She devoured new words, rolling them on her tongue and enjoying the satisfying taste of "Spackle" and "aplomb". She immersed herself in concepts - trigonometry, relativity, and metaphysics. Music was a little harder, because it wasn't realistic to carry around a lot - but slowly she was improving on the harmonica. Life was too short, but Nova intended to spend it learning.

Sitting in McDonald's, salt raining down on her already salty fries, Nova considered her options. There was a speaker presenting at the University in the afternoon, but that would mean leaving the free yoga-in-the-park half-way through the session.