Chapter One

I knew from the beginning what it was like to be two-sided.

Melodramatic, I know. But there were two sides of me, from my earliest memories. First, there was the part of me everyone saw. This person was totally content with their daily life, not a mystery in the slightest, and safe to show pretty much everyone.

Then there was the other person.

This person was who I was inside. This person was who I wanted to be. This person was who I had to hide. This person wondered if anyone else ever walked around feeling like their life was supposed to have been something different, like they'd been cheated out of something vital that everyone else had.

You think I'm being an angsty teenager, don't you? You think I'm being metaphorical, emotional, over the top.

Yeah. I figured.

But see, I have to start out with that, even if it's a bit icky and twelve years old ish. Because I have to explain to you that when I started writing this story, I wasn't sure which part of myself to show first. Because it's never that simple or black and white, is it? It's never that you are one person and you pretend to be another. It's not that clear cut.

So where to begin, when there are two Nova Kents?

I'm going to show you one half of me first. This is a true part of me, but it's also the person I always preferred everyone see.

Flashback to childhood.

I was raised by two salt of the earth Kansas farmers, Jonathan and Martha Kent. I was their only daughter, their only child in fact. They named me Nova. I lived out in the wilds of the Heartland countryside. I could walk out onto our ramshackle back porch, the white paint chipping off the wood, the screens against insects lifted, and around me would be nothing but barns and silos, waves of livestock, dust and dirt roads and golden fields, the dark green forests and twisting deep blue, foamy rivers way off in the distance. A shimmer hung over the hot, humid air. Mosquitos flicked past.

It was quiet. I remember that. It was silent. No alarms ever went wailing by. No shouting. No gunfire. No cars zooming past. No drunk people arguing in the streets.

Silence. Chirping crickets, maybe, on a summer's night.

Our town was called Smallville. No, I am not kidding. By the time I was a teenager, its population had grown to a whopping 45,000. When most people think of small country towns, they think of the Hallmark channel or a Norman Rockwell painting, and that's true. But like with me, it's only part of the truth. Small towns have their problems - the biggest one being chronic boredom and crippling depression. Some people drank or took drugs chronically; some graffitied or smashed mailboxes. The way I saw it, there were advantages to both styles of living.

Small towns aren't perfect.

But my town was small. I could take Hickory Lane, a bumpy dirt road, past Hansen and Reilly Fields in clouds of dust, and arrive to more clouds of dust right in the heart of downtown, which was a single main road with one-story shops that went for about five miles. There was a one-screen theater, a drive in, and a single multiplex. That was it. There was one antiques store. One flower shop. A town hall straight out of the 1800's. A water tower. One school for each set of grades. One coffee shop. That was about it.

Somehow we always found things to do. My parents liked to take me as a kid to this little diner, Rosie's, over on the ambitiously named Third Avenue. We would sit in a shiny wood and red cushion booth, me sandwiched between the wall and a parent on one side, the other parent across the table from us. I would be treated to a milkshake, a burger, and a slice of pie. I don't actually know if Rosie's sold much else, come to think of it. I remember swinging my legs and watching little beads of sweat appear on the cold chocolate milkshake glass, the same kind of old-fashioned model used for ice cream sodas.

In my memory, my parents break from their amiable chatter beside me and my father laughs. "You'd better drink that before it melts," he says.

My Mom had been a pretty redhead from a snooty rich family in Metropolis City. Super independent, on the fast track to business or law. High expectations. Then in college she met a broad-shouldered farmer with golden hair, tan skin, a drawl, and a broad grin. She left Metropolis with him and moved out to join him on his farm. My Dad had been a real rebel as a teenager, high school football star, motorcycle rider, always arguing with his Dad, temperamental and stubborn. Then his Dad died of cancer. My father never spoke much about it, but I always got the suspicious feeling he carried a lot of family-related regrets. He ended up doing what he'd sworn he'd never do, and taking over the family farm. My mother did what she'd sworn she'd never do, and became a poor farmer's wife. They adopted me after learning they couldn't have kids.

It sounds like a sad story, doesn't it? But my parents were never sad people. They were warm and loving, had fun with each other.

"Weirdly enough," my Mom told me once, "I think your father and I turned out happier than any of our teenage friends. We don't have a lot, we have to count every penny, but, well -" Here she smiled. "Jonathan always promised me we'd never have a lot. He was very upfront about it. He said we'd never be rich. He said we'd never travel the world. That was part of his proposal."

"Then why did you marry him?" I asked.

"Because he promised me he would always love me. That doesn't sound like much, but I had a thousand suitors in Metropolis and none of them ever felt they could promise me that one simple thing."

"Did he keep his promise?" I asked.

"What do you think?" We'd been leaning up against a tractor near the barn. My Mom turned to my Dad, smiled and waved. He looked up. He was confused, but he grinned and waved back, cheerful warmth in his eyes. I could see it then - he did still love her.

"Wow," I said suddenly. "You're really smart!"

My Mom laughed. "I actually approached him," she told me mischievously. "I went up to him in college and asked him for his class notes. Don't tell your father, but I was actually the class note taker. He was just really hot." She leaned forward conspiratorially.

"Thanks," I said flatly. "I'm nine."

Mom laughed. "Well he was! And he gave me his notes without even asking me who I was. I asked him how he was sure I'd give them back. He said that he just preferred to believe the best in people. And you're just like him, Nova, and you grew up here, so you don't know how wonderful it sounds to hear someone that genuine when you come from a big city.

"And I had the stupid thought: God, I hope he marries me."

"Are you sorry?" I said. "That you couldn't have kids?"

"We do have a kid," she said.

"You know what I mean."

"And you know what I mean." She gave me a very certain look and walked back toward the simple little farmhouse.

In my head, we go to the Church in town every Sunday and I believe every word - even though I don't like wearing a dress, I still believe. I try to sit patiently, even though I don't want to and I still fidget a lot and my Mom scolds me quietly. That was back when I was still totally certain of how the world worked.

In my head, I take a book or a comic and go outside to the organic orchard on the Kent farm. I grab an apple, sit underneath the shade of a tree, and munch away as I read for hours, as ladybugs and beetles and ants crawl in the soft green grass all around me and the light dapples onto the book or the comic through the leaves and the trunk itches against my back.

In my head, I saddle and get on a horse, yell for the farm dogs, and we all wade off into the nearby woods, the dogs scurrying and barking around the horse's hooves. We stay away from the bridges because I don't like heights, but we go everywhere else. We hike through treacherous trails, I duck underneath low hanging branches, I stop to take my shoes and socks off and let my feet get wet in the water of the creek. Everything is darker and cooler in the woods, so this is a perfect summer's day. The dogs pant around me and the horse ducks and lowers his head, still saddled for the trip back.

In my head, I get up at dawn, tie my hair back in a ponytail, and wade through muck and manure in work boots as I do chores in the pearly pinkish light, cleaning out the stalls and feeding the chickens and mending the fences. This is what I get instead of gifts every second week, and I am okay with that, and even when I'm not I pretend to be because I love my parents.

In my head, I swing my feet in the loft my Dad built for me up above the barn floor, listening to him blast classic rock music as he fixes farm equipment a short trip down the rickety staircase. This is the music of my childhood.

In my head, I moan at bedtime and I'm grumpy when I get up in the mornings. In my head, my parents scold me with some good nature and everything's alright. In my head, I have a map of the world taped above my bedroom's headboard, pinned with the growing list of all the places I want to see someday.

I can always go back to that place. Because in my head, you see, life is perfect. Was I adopted? Yes. Closed adoption. I was three. And I didn't remember my life before being a Kent. But I knew that from an early age and that was okay, because my parents loved me and no matter how much I wondered about my past, I knew that was what mattered. Their love.

I was Daddy's tomboy as a little girl. Nova Kent prided herself on never being girly, and occasionally referred to herself in the third person. Nova Kent wore ponytails and baseball caps, jeans and capris. She sat in the bleachers and snacked at ball games with her father, went fishing with him in swampy rivers, loved playing sports. She knew big words, read too many books.

My friends were all girls, though. From the beginning, I was determined to make friends with other tough, interesting girls. With sheer force of will, I would introduce myself to them and they would eventually find me again because calm is often mistaken for confidence and I am rarely not calm. Even when I lose my temper, some inner center rides within me, separate from the rest, like the eye of a hurricane. For some reason, together with the humanity my parents taught me, people seem to find this comforting.

So in my head, I have other memories, too. Camping trips with childhood girlfriends, stargazing in mesh tents in the cool night air, that sky so big and clear through the net above us, and making s'mores around the glowing orange-red campfire, setting them on fire and then blowing them out. Bike riding to their houses or into town, wheels clattering and skimming as I lean forward against the handlebars, graceful in sporting, martial movement the way I never am in dancing.

I would try, though. It was one of my greatest and most embarrassing childhood secrets, just as big as some far vaster ones in my dramatic young mind where everything was out of proportion. I had a childhood obsession with Disney princesses. I would watch them on the TV and try to mimic what they did, every smile and song, every graceful movement.

It was useless. I couldn't dance, I wasn't girly, and I was tone deaf. Too intellectual, boyish, and awkward, I felt oddly like I was studying a foreign culture, like I was trying to be everything I was not.

That was the side of me people knew about.

But I had… what my father and mother insisted I call "gifts," but they were gifts I had to keep a secret from everyone but my parents. So they didn't feel much like gifts. In my young mind, they were simply God-given. It was obvious and easy where they came from.

I was born with the ability to lift things over six times my own body weight and run faster than the speed of light. I never got an illness, never a single scrape, never got cold. I could read sixty pages a minute, master languages like they were totally natural to me in a matter of months, do advanced calculations in my head, think faster than any normal human could, and I had a photographic memory. Trying to cut my hair just broke the scissors, bending them into uselessness, which seemed like a problem until my family discovered I could grow or retract my long, wavy black hair at will, making it any style I wanted.

It's hard to describe these things to someone who's never experienced them, though I can say that when you run fast enough, everything starts to slow down until it finally freezes - raindrops, mid expressions, and all - into total stillness. The world stops. Anytime I wanted to, I learned, I could stop the world. That's to say nothing of my ability to think faster and talk faster than any normal human could.

My parents stressed patience with everyone else - patience, and compassion. "They weren't born with your gifts," my father would remind me. "Try to be nice, okay?"

It was hard. "Blessed" with an innate intensity and opinionatedness even when I actually knew nothing, an expert at debate with a wincing talent for unflinching honesty, I found it difficult cutting down on my "take no prisoners" mode to the point where I didn't upset the people I was closest to.

But I learned. My parents stressed control of my gifts, and limited my youthful contact with the outside world until they were satisfied with that level of control, though they certainly never forbade me from seeing people or leaving the house. They just told me I couldn't be true about myself - that I would be locked away, that I would frighten people.

So I learned. I learned how to hold increasingly more delicate things until my strength was never a problem unless I lost all emotional control. I learned to run like normal people, hide my speed. I learned what was "smart" and what was "creepy." I started making excuses to the outside world when it came to any weirdness.

I didn't like lying. It wasn't my style. But I especially didn't like lying because of the idea that anyone would think I was a monster if they found out the truth. I wasn't a monster. I didn't want to hurt anyone. But, my parents explained to me painfully, I couldn't expect the world to understand that. I couldn't expect the world to give me a normal life - not unless I kept myself hidden.

Then Emily came along.

Emily Dinsmore's father offered a playdate, and at first my parents weren't going to accept. I managed to convince them otherwise, eager to have a close friend who actually got to spend regular time at my place.

"We've just finished saying my control might be good enough to have a close friend!" I said, throwing my arms wide. "I promise not to hurt her. Please let me try this."

So though they were skeptical, they arranged my first play date with Emily.

Emily thought the loft above my barn was amazing. "A whole place all to yourself!" she cried, running around the loft, a little girl with brown curls and a cheerful smile.

"Uh, yeah." I was somewhat amused. "My Dad built it. He calls it my Fortress of Solitude. So… do you know any games?"

"What, like tea party games?" Emily blinked big brown eyes at me.

I felt a course of dread. "No," I said slowly. "I mean sports games. Games outside."

She gasped. "No other girl I know does those things!" she said in shock. I remembered that Emily's parents were more the garden-club, real-estate variety of Smallville clientele.

"Well, do you want to go out and try? I promise I'll go easy on you." I tried to smile.

"Yes!" She pumped her fists in the air and sprinted down the loft stairs. Emily, I was to learn, was full of mischievous energy.

I ended up teaching her the rules of soccer and we ran around the backyard, kicking a soccer ball, giggling together. "You're cheating!" I shouted, laughing instead of angry.

"You're better than I am!" she fired back without pause. I had just made my first best friend.

Over the ensuing months, I probably completely ruined Emily in the eyes of most of the Smallvillians of her own social echelon. She took a liking to warm and filling farm food, got more into sports, and started pulling pranks. She even learned a few swear words from my father as he was working out in the barn. She took to capris and fancy tees in place of her previous frilly pink dresses.

"To be honest," I said, as we burned the final dress ceremoniously out in a Kent farm field, "they were nauseating."

"Nova Kent, what are you doing?!" Mom was running out toward us. I grabbed the fire extinguisher next to me, blew out the fire, and dropped it with a thud.

"RUN!" I shouted, and we sprinted away from my Mom across the farm fields in the setting sun, laughing till our sides hurt.

Later, when he came to pick her up, Emily's father was surprisingly not angry. "I want to thank you guys for what you've done for my daughter," he told me and my parents, each parent with a hand on my shoulder. We were standing outside the fly-speckled front screen door. "Ever since her Mom died, I haven't known how to be around her. She seems much happier with you around."

"Oh, well. My daughter's a little troublemaker but she has a good heart," said my mother, thus cementing a reputation that would follow me around for the rest of my life. I ducked my head and scowled, kicking at the dirt. I saw my father trying not to smile.

"My Emily's the same," said Mr Dinsmore cheerfully. "Together they'll make a good team."

Suddenly, the horn honked behind him. Emily was already in the car. "Dad, come on!" she called impatiently out the window.

"Oh, look," said my Dad to me, "she already sounds like you."

"Come on, Nova! Usually you're the fearless one!" Emily was calling from her perch on the bridge above the dam. I could barely hear her, as I was down on the bank and water rushed by below her, foaming.

"I don't like heights!" I called, nervous. Usually playing in the woods was fun, but today Emily had gotten the wrong idea. She thought dangling over the edge of the bridge was her idea of a good time.

"Look, it's fine!" she called. "See!" She dangled herself half over the edge of the bridge, head pitched toward the water below, and I gasped. She grinned and stuck her tongue out at me, twiddling her legs. "Scaredy cat, scaredy cat!" she began chanting.

Then her legs slipped on the wet stone and she fell right over the side of the bridge. I screamed and so did she as her little ragdoll body fell limply toward the water below.

Time slowed down. Literally, not figuratively. In my childish panic I had gone into speed-running mode. I ran up the steps as she fell slowly, ran right up to the edge of the bridge and grabbed at her leg - but it was just beyond my reach.

Time moved back and she fell with a splash into the water.

"Emily!" I screamed, distraught, as her tiny form was pitched this way and that toward the dam by the moving current.

"Nova! HELP!" she called. She screamed as she was very nearly slammed against a rock on her way to her death at the dam.

I could help her. I could get her out, I knew. There was just one problem.

I was nine years old and afraid of heights.

I took deep breaths, the rushing of the water loud in my ears, feeling dizzy as I slowly stepped back from the edge of the bridge, looking out over it. "Come on," I whispered to myself, jiggling my feet. "Come on, you can do this. Move." I very nearly went to the edge of the bridge - and felt a churn of nauseousness. I couldn't move.

"NOVA!" Emily screamed as she was plunged right toward a rock.

"EMILY!" In the end, the trick was not to look at the drop below. As I leaped toward that water, all I could see was soaking wet Emily, tears on her face that was twisted in panic, hand reached out for me. Then I looked down, saw the water coming up quick in front of me - I hit it, and was unhurt as I found myself underwater with a deep lungful of oxygen. I plunged downward in the blue, murky, fast-moving river.

I was fine, I realized. And that was the last time I was ever afraid of heights - or of saving someone.

I swam fast toward Emily. That current was strong, but it had nothing on me. In seconds, I was at her, just reaching her before she hit the rock. I grabbed her by the waist and held her to me, calm against the currents. I came up for a breath of air, and found myself looking hard at her sobbing, confused face.

Somehow, in that moment, there was only the person who needed help and what I needed to do to get there. There was no fear.

"Emily," I said loudly over the rush of water, "hold onto me. We're going to make it to the shoreline." The iron voice sounded so unlike my own I barely recognized it.

Emily took a deep breath - and she didn't question me. Her tears dried; her face held firm. "Okay," she said.

She held on fast to me, her little face fierce and her eyes fiery. I swam as hard as I could against the currents, and slowly, little by little, we made it to the muddy bank. I pulled her up onto the bank with a great gasp and a rush of pouring water.

She lay there on her back and I was crouched on my hands and knees shaking. We gasped for air. There was silence for a long time as I became weak with relief. It finally started to hit me what had happened.

"How… how did you do that?" Emily's voice shook as she spoke.

I looked around. "What?"

"You were so fast - on the bank and then at the bridge. And that - that strength and speed - no kid could make it from there to here so fast with no help." She was looking at me, totally uncomprehending.

Horror choked me, stopping my heart. I only realized I was backing up when Emily sat up in concern but seemed like she was moving further away from me. "Please - please don't be scared," I gasped out, soaking wet. My baseball cap was gone, my black hair had come undone, and my pale translucent skin was muddy. In that moment, I felt utterly pathetic. "I - I promise I'm not going to hurt you!"

"What are you talking about? Of course you're not going to hurt me. You - saved me," Emily said, standing despite her trembling. She seemed genuinely so bewildered that I paused.

"I…" I swallowed. "I was cursed by God," I whispered hoarsely.

Emily frowned in concern. "Sit down," she said quietly, and slowly, slowly, I came over and sat down next to her on the riverbank.

I took a deep breath - and decided to test this idea of friendship. I told her everything.

"I… I don't think that's a curse," Emily finally said quietly, concerned. "I think that's really amazing. You could save… so many other people the way you saved me today."

"So - you're not afraid of me?" I asked tentatively.

"No!" She laughed and pulled me into a hug. "Nova, only someone who has no idea who you are would be afraid of you! You don't even like other kids getting picked on in school!" She began laughing - but stopped when I hugged her suddenly and she realized my eyes were burning, the world blurring.

"Thank you," I whispered.

She smiled. "Anytime."

I sat back and sniffled. "So… you won't tell anyone?"

She smiled mischievously. "That you have amazing world-saving superpowers or that you've been crying?"

"Both."

She giggled. "No, I won't tell anyone!" she promised. "Come on. Friends don't rat each other out." She nudged me.

I felt so weak with relief I began laughing in response. Soon we were both busting a gut there on the side of the river together.

"So… this is very important, Emily… you won't even tell your father?" My Dad was deadly serious in the kitchen that afternoon, kneeling down before Emily with me standing beside her. Mom stood worried in the background.

"No," she said sturdily. "Not if you don't want me to. In all the comics Nova has showed me, all the hero's best friends never rat out the hero. I'm not a snitch." She scowled fiercely, leaning forward as she said this. "I won't say anything unless Nova suddenly turns evil and starts attacking somebody. And only then after I've tried to stop her."

"That's not your responsibility," said my mother, but both of my parents had let out deep sighs of relief.

"That's sort of the tack they take as well," I confided to Emily, mock conspiratorially.

"Now, Emily, this comes with a lot of new responsibilities and risks. This is a big secret to keep, and I hate doing this to your Dad, but it's very important that you keep it," said my Dad, looking torn.

"I know," said Emily. She nodded matter of factly.

Dad relaxed in the same kind of weak relief I recognized from myself earlier, putting a hand over his eyes.

"Now I've gotta go call my Dad," said Emily brightly. "And tell him about everything except Nova's superpowers. By the way." She turned back at the kitchen doorway on her way to use the telephone. "Nova saved my life and she got over her fear of heights to do it. So you should tell her she did a really good job."

Emily left and walked down the hall to the phone.

My parents turned to me. "It was dangerous…" said my Mom. "But honey, I am so proud of you." She reached over to hug me, and I teared up a little. Mom was warm and she smelled familiar, like honey and cinnamon. Carefully as always, I hugged her back.

"Emily said what you guys said. That it's a gift, not a curse." I stood back and smiled tremblingly. "I feel like I can believe that… a little better now. My powers saved my best friend."

"See?" My Dad smiled proudly and put a hand on my shoulder. "Not all bad after all, right?"

Even on that day, I felt myself already becoming more secure about my secret. More able to give excuses easily about weirdness, but also more ready to accept the risk of letting the next person completely into my life.

Emily gave me a great gift that day, too - the gift of acceptance.