Hero

Chapter Fourteen

After changing back into the clothes that were sitting laundered and folded in the locker, I worked on my own separate elevator, sliding my new ID into the slot and heading back down to the lobby.  When I got there, I found the hoards of people still sitting around the lobby.  Luca was still within her circle desk, the headset placed down next to her computer keyboard.  Energia was leaning against the circle, chatting playfully with the receptionist.  When she saw me, she winked one hazel eye as I passed by her.

"Wait!" said Luca as I walked on.  "Mina!  I have something for you."  I backed up to the desk, leaning on the Plexiglas next to Energia.

"What's up, Luca?" I asked as Energia bumped me with her shoulder in greeting.  Luca rolled her chair over to the other side of the circle shaped desk and grabbed several things before coming back over to face me.  She placed a key ring with at least a dozen keys on the top of the glass, along with a slip of folded paper.

"Brian dropped these off a little bit ago.  He said the...paper is your new address and that those are the only keys that exist for the various locks on your apartment.  It's ready for you to move in whenever you want."  She smiled brightly at me once before glancing back to my right at Energia and talking animatedly to the girl.

"Thanks," I whispered softly, not wanting to interrupt them again, and I practically skipped out of the doors with my new keys jingling in my hands.  As I waited for the valet to bring the car around, I dialed Nova and suppressed an excited shriek when she picked up.  Her keyboard clacked away in the background.

"Yeah?" she said distractedly, and I smiled at the sound of her voice as the valet- now a teenage boy instead of a girl about my age- pulled up in the car and handed me the keys.  I climbed in the Lamborghini and slammed the door closed.  Once inside, I turned on my internal phone system again with a touch of my tongue to the specific spot in my mouth.  "What's up, Mina?  You done with your mysterious mission?"

"I have great news, Nova.  I got an apartment!"  The clacking sounds stopped suddenly and there was a loud clatter.  The crashing sound came through the line so loudly and suddenly that I had to stop the car to wince sharply and avoid swerving the car into oncoming traffic...again. 

"God, Nova!  Are you okay?"

"Yeah...yeah, I'm fine," she said, her voice growing louder as she spoke.  I assumed that it was due to the fact that she must have dropped the phone- which explained the clatter- and she was now lifting the receiver back up to her face.  "Just... I mean, I'm wondering if I heard you right.  No offense, Mina, but you?  You have an apartment?"

"Two floors, fully furnished, and right by the university," I said proudly.  "And there's a ton of extra rooms in the place, so I was wondering if you and Simon wanted to move in with me...free of charge."  She didn't say anything, which was unusual for her.  Nova was never one to stay quiet when she could be talking.

"Nova?" I asked when she didn't respond.  "Are you still there?"  I flipped my internal phone on and off several times, confirming that it was still working.  "Hello?"

"Again, Mina, I mean no offense to you by anything that I say.  And please don't take any of this the wrong way but... you're poor.  You're really poor.   Mina, you got kicked out of your house a month ago and I have no clue how you're going to afford the next semester of college.  Did you honestly find enough money to rent this dumb apartment and then blow it all at once instead of saving it like a sane human being?  How could you even afford any of this?"  These weren't unreasonable questions for her to be asking of me.  I did spend a large portion of my time with Nova, even more than I used to now that I'd moved in with her, and she had to notice that I wasn't living as frugally as someone in my situation should have been.