rain ✧ lrh

1. scatter my ashes at ihop

The light was off in her room.

She only knew this because when she woke up at three in the morning she could barely see the wall in front of her. If she could've seen, the first thing she would've noticed would have been the line of drool connecting her lip to her textbook.

She had fallen asleep while doing her homework.

She couldn't even remember what she was working on. Only that it was boring enough for her to fall asleep in the most uncomfortable chair in the entire world. It wasn't like it was a rare occurrence for her, as her disastrous level of procrastination usually prohibited her from getting a good night's sleep anyway. Old habits are hard to break. Procrastination wasn't even a habit at this point, it was practically a personality trait for her.

She had come home for the weekend to visit her family; which meant her father, Patrick, and her, Nova, sitting on the couch eating popcorn out of the bag while her stepmother, Elizabeth, spent most of her days at work. Nova didn't actually mind being home; she knew her dad didn't like to be alone and she also knew that his accident had hindered his ability to work, so she came around as often as she could.

It wasn't that hard, considering she went to school just over an hour away. She'd probably live at home if she wasn't placed under constant scrutiny by her stepmother for adamantly refusing to abide by the new health regiments she adopted every other week (she always claimed it was for her father. Nova had seen the way her father cringed when he ate her food. She was pretty sure it was a torture mechanism).

This weekend was one of her first ones at home for the semester. It was mid-September and it was still nice enough for their family walks in the morning - but judging by the sound of the rain knocking on Nova's window like it was impatiently waiting for an invitation inside, they wouldn't be going outside when everyone woke up.

She wiped the line of drool from her mouth with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, an old and faded - and seemingly unidentifiable hockey team logo completely invisible in the darkness of Nova's room. She still hadn't turned the light back on. She stared into the darkness for a few seconds, almost as if trying to decipher a secret code in the silence. She sat up in her chair. Slid back down. Had an internal debate on whether or not it was worth it to go back to sleep or try to be productive again. Ultimately, she chose sleep, walked across her wood floor, and sprawled out into the nook that her bed resided in.

Her family lived in what seemed like a bungalow. It was fine, nothing special, with a porch outside and two bedrooms on the ground level (one of them was converted into Elizabeth's workspace. What she did, Nova never really figured out). Nova's bed was the only room upstairs. There was a door at the bottom of the stairs that led to her "attic," as she called it, but she loved her room. It stretched out long, a rectangle instead of the simplicity of a typical square room. Across from the stairs, there was an extra space between her walls where two pillars stood, and behind them was Nova's bed, in a seemingly random aperture that it was just large enough to fit in. Her father had put a television on the pillars in front of her bed, but it was rarely turned on; she liked to watch movies with her dad downstairs. When she lived here in high school, she always swore that the room was too big for her and that it wasn't necessary for her to have so much space. After living in a college dorm for a year, though, she began to finally appreciate the size.

She laid with her head on her pillow below the glass of her window and stared up at her ceiling. It was Sunday now, which meant by the time she fell asleep, woke back up for the day, and rewatched Dumb and Dumber with her dad, she'd be on her way back to Indiana. Her eyes could barely stay open, but she could feel her body heating to an uncomfortable temperature and she refused to fall asleep sweaty.