Chapter 1
Anna: We have been friends forever...
Kevin: I’ve been in love with her for a very long time.........
Chapter1:
I am a very messy human. Some would say clumsy; some would say “clumsy pro.” Some might even go as far as “clumsy pro max,” but my mom? She’d say I’m the “clumsy pro max 2TB” edition.
I am the eldest daughter of the Polinova household. I am Ana—Ana Polinova.
If you want to know about me... well, I don’t really know what to tell you. I don’t know how to physically describe myself. I read books where the authors spend two whole pages just iterating the appearance of the protagonist—how she looks, what she feels like, how she behaves, and blah, blah, blah.
I can do it in one line:
“Hi, I’m Ana Polinova: a clumsy, curly-headed, plus-sized eldest daughter working an exhausting job while studying and hitting the gym to lose weight, all while battling body dysmorphia and struggling with PCOS.”
See? I told you I could do it.
The rest, my mom can tell you—though it won’t be very nice. According to her, I’m immature. I don’t “push through.” I cry too easily. I am a nerd among nerds, possessing knowledge about anything and everything, yet my GPA refuses to prove it. She watches me binge Netflix all day and tells me she’s scared for my life.
But today is going to be different. Today, I get a do-over.
I am starting my final year at the University of Saccharimenta, a school for gifted students, in the Department of Literature, under a student exchange program. I am finally moving out. I’m mostly packed; I just need to tuck away my stationery. I know I should have done it yesterday, but I needed a day off from everything—from my job, from my family (which is nothing but total chaos), from my dad (who is the root of it all), and from my mom (who does nothing but yell all day long).
After hugging her family and her only best friend, Nexa, Ana finally left.
She never liked her town. She never liked the environment or her so-called “friends,” who were really just a bunch of bullies. They always had a comment ready about her size 32D chest, her sixteen-inch-wide arms, and her “oh-so-thick” legs. Somehow, she had made peace with it. She knew she could never fully change her body type, but she was still ready to fight her PCOS.
Most of all, she wanted to forget him. That one guy who brought her to her knees. The guy she gave her heart to—that arrogant, snobby, self-entitled asshole of a prince. He told her he was into her. He kissed her and touched her in places she didn’t even want to name, only to casually mention afterward that he had a girlfriend.
She had thought someone finally accepted her for who she was, but it turned out all he wanted was to touch her. She was just glad it never led to sex. Good riddance.
She allowed herself to remember him one last time before stepping onto that train. She was moving on to live the life she was meant to live.
Little did she know, she would be sent back home in just one month. COVID-19 changed the world, and everything shifted online.
And so it happened. The world turned upside down. I lost my cashier job at the restaurant and was forced to stay home.
I hate it. I hate it! I hate it here. I hate being dependent on my dad again. I hate listening to my mom being fed up with her life. My dad doesn’t “harm” her, per se, but they just don’t love each other. I hate that they aren’t adult enough to talk it out; instead, they just sulk.
But what I hate most is the thought of seeing him again.
I live in a small town. It’s not the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, but you still end up running into people you wish didn’t exist.
Three months into the pandemic, and everything is depressing. People are dying, and we are all locked in our homes. Most of my friends are trying to blow up on TikTok or YouTube, while I’ve started pouring my feelings into poetry and books.
Life is weird. My weight has gone up significantly, and my PCOS has worsened to the point where my periods have stopped entirely. But through this dark time, my parents have found a strange kind of empathy for one another. They aren’t in love, but they are, at least, friends now.
Although the duty of the eldest daughter never truly ends—not through distance, space, or time—it is bearable now. I can breathe. Through all the hardship, we are a little closer than before.
Also, for the record: I’m not a bestseller or anything, but a few people actually love my work. I don’t even know how they discovered it.
I’ve started meditating fifteen minutes a day. I play Call of Duty with my brother. I have three classes a day. I watch rom-coms constantly—mostly Christmas movies—because why not? I don’t know when we’ll get our normal lives back, and I’ve heard they are working on a cure.
But does it even matter? Nah. I’m growing accustomed to being a homebody.
The Phantom in the Cabinet
As she opens the cabinet,
The phantom awaits...
Scanning the rows of silent bottles,
She remembers every shade of her pain.
The agony of being misunderstood,
The slow theft of her youth—
As her sorrows pull her
Into a suffocating, warm embrace.
She lets herself drown.
The irony is cruel:
You can never truly find that bliss,
That solace, or those protective arms.
“Oh, my cherished memories,” she whispers,
“Go away.”
