Friday Night, Unfortunately
At 7:12 PM on a Friday night, Ivana was losing a game of cards to her mother. Not metaphorically.
Literally.
“Three of hearts,” her mother announced smugly, placing the card down with the confidence of a woman who had never once faced academic probation.
Ivana stared at her own cards in silence. The television buzzed softly in the background. Some soap opera her father watched religiously despite claiming every single day that television was “rotting society.” The ceiling fan spun lazily overhead. The entire house smelled faintly of detergent and cardamom. It was all deeply upsetting.
Six months ago, people at college referred to Ivana as:
“that terrifying girl from Block C”
“an emotional biohazard”
and, according to one particularly aggressive anonymous confession page, “the human equivalent of a vodka Red Bull.”
Now she was home by 7 PM voluntarily.
Worse.
She was sleepy.
“Your turn,” her father said without looking up from the TV.
Ivana blinked slowly.
There had once been a period in her life where she considered 7 PM “pre-going out hours.” A transitional time. The hour for eyeliner, bad decisions, and lying to your friends about how much alcohol you could handle.
Now she was wearing an oversized university sweatshirt and fuzzy socks with tiny cartoon strawberries on them.
Humiliation came in many forms.
“You’re distracted,” her mother observed.
“I’m reflecting.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
It was.
Because the problem with suddenly having free time and stable sleep was that your brain finally got the opportunity to revisit every catastrophic decision you’d spent the last year aggressively avoiding. And unfortunately, Ivana had made enough catastrophic decisions to occupy several business days.
There were multiple reasons she was back home.
Officially, her mother referred to it as:“Taking some time for herself.”
Unofficially, the college had referred to it as:“Temporary suspension pending further review.”
Which, in Ivana’s opinion, sounded dramatic. The disciplinary board clearly lacked whimsy.
“Are you still thinking about college?” her father asked carefully.
“No,” Ivana lied instantly.
This was concerning for several reasons, the primary one being that she had not stopped thinking about college even once since leaving it. The city lived inside her head now.
The neon signs. The sticky dorm floors. The humid beach air at two in the morning. Loud music bleeding through apartment walls. Makeup-stained bathroom sinks. Girls crying in club bathrooms while strangers fixed their eyeliner.
Freedom had smelled like cigarette smoke and vanilla perfume.
Disaster had smelled almost identical.
“Your move,” her mother reminded her.
Ivana placed down a random card.
“Wrong card,” her mother said immediately.
“Oh.”
There was a time when Ivana had been good at things. Before college, she had been organized. Predictable. Slightly dramatic, yes, but in an academically acceptable way. She had color-coded notes. She replied to texts on time. At eighteen, she genuinely believed college would transform her into the kind of girl who wore leather jackets and understood how taxes worked.
Instead, it transformed her into a person banned from entering one specific nightclub near campus.
Life was strange that way.
“You know,” her mother said casually while rearranging her cards, “you used to be very quiet.”
Ivana laughed so suddenly she nearly choked.
Quiet.
That was a good one.
The funny thing was, her mother wasn’t even wrong.
Before the city, before the parties, before the platform heels and glitter and catastrophically attractive people, Ivana had mostly existed online. She spent her last year of school lying on her bedroom floor scrolling through pictures of girls who looked impossibly cool and deeply unstable. Girls with smudged eyeliner and low-rise jeans standing outside nightclubs. Girls smoking cigarettes they probably didn’t inhale correctly. Girls who looked like they had ruined someone’s life recently.
Ivana wanted that kind of existence desperately. Not the ruining lives part specifically. Just the feeling of being someone unforgettable.
And then she got into college.
Back then, her life had felt painfully small. The same roads. The same cafés. The same people who had known her since childhood and still thought of her as “the quiet one.” Most evenings, she sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor surrounded by half-packed boxes while pretending to study. Her mother kept buying unnecessary things for college.
Bedsheets.
Storage baskets.
Tiny sewing kits as if Ivana was about to start repairing her own clothes like a Victorian orphan.
“You’ll need this,” her mother insisted every single day while handing her random objects.
At one point, she bought Ivana a small emergency medicine organizer with labeled compartments.
The irony of this would later become genuinely unbelievable.
Meanwhile, her father approached the entire situation like he was sending a soldier off to war.
“Don’t trust strangers too quickly.”
“Keep your location on.”
“Call if you’re out late.”
“I know,” Ivana repeated constantly.
She didn’t tell them that “out late” sounded thrilling.
That was the thing about Ivana before college.
She wasn’t unhappy exactly.
Just restless.
Like her actual life hadn’t started yet.
Every night she scrolled through pictures of girls online who looked impossibly cool and deeply unstable. Girls in tiny dresses standing outside clubs at 3 AM. Girls with smeared lip gloss and expensive-looking problems. Girls who seemed to exist entirely under pink lighting.
Ivana wanted desperately to become someone like that.
Someone interesting. Someone unforgettable.
During her final week before leaving, everyone suddenly became emotional in the most embarrassing way possible. Her school friends organized a goodbye dinner at a café they’d been going to since they were fourteen. The food was terrible. The lighting was worse. One of her friends cried before the appetizers even arrived.
“You’re literally acting like I’m dying,” Ivana complained.
“You’re moving across the country!”
“It’s two hours away.”
“Emotionally, it’s farther.”
Someone made a slideshow.
A slideshow.
There were childhood photos. Awkward birthday parties. Screenshots of old conversations. One particularly evil picture of Ivana from age thirteen with braces and orange foundation.
“You’re all deeply sick people,” she informed them lovingly.
But later that night, after everyone hugged goodbye in the parking lot and promised to visit and remain best friends forever, Ivana sat in the backseat of her father’s car feeling strangely hollow. For the first time, leaving felt real. Her room looked different after that. Not hers anymore. Half empty. Suitcases by the door. Tiny signs of disappearance everywhere. The night before moving, she barely slept. She stayed awake staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars still stuck to her ceiling from middle school while imagining the version of herself waiting in the city.
In her head, college looked cinematic.
She imagined rooftop parties and spontaneous road trips and becoming effortlessly beautiful overnight. She imagined herself transformed. Cooler. Hotter. Less afraid. The actual transformation ended up being significantly more psychologically damaging than anticipated.
Everything after that happened very quickly.
The city had looked enormous through the car window the day her parents drove her there. Tall buildings. Too many people. Huge glowing billboards stretching above crowded roads. Ivana remembered pressing her forehead against the glass while her father complained about traffic and her mother kept turning around every few minutes to ask if she was nervous.
“No,” Ivana had said for the fifth time.
Which was also a lie.
She had never been more terrified in her life.
Or more excited.
Their hotel room smelled aggressively of air freshener and new bedsheets. Her mother spent two days looking for good accommodation. This was very important to Ivana, she already knew where she wanted to live for the next six months. ‘RCube’ was a newly built accommodation for students which was known for it’s leniency. It was one of the few Co-ed accommodations available. It was everything Ivana could have imagined and more.
The dorm lobby was chaos. Parents dragged suitcases across the tiled floor while students stood around pretending they weren’t terrified. Someone was already crying near the elevators. A girl in a rhinestone Juicy Couture tracksuit argued loudly with her father about mini fridges. Ivana stood beside a mountain of boxes holding an iced coffee she was too stressed to drink.
“This place is nice,” her mother said for the sixth time.
“It looks expensive,” her father muttered suspiciously.
Ivana was only half listening.
Because across the lobby, standing near the reception desk like a curse specifically designed for her, was Yuvan.
No.
Absolutely not.
For a brief moment, Ivana genuinely considered turning around and walking directly back out of the building.
Unfortunately, Yuvan looked up at the exact same moment.
Their eyes met.
And then -horrifyingly - he smiled.
Not even an awkward smile.
A real one.
Like they were old friends reconnecting after years apart instead of a person who had spent most of 12th grade psychologically tormenting her.
“Ivana?” he called out casually.
She stared at him.
Yuvan had somehow gotten more self righteous since school, which felt deeply unfair considering he had already been insufferable before.
Same stupid smile.
Same smug voice.
Same ability to make Ivana feel sixteen and homicidal simultaneously.
“Oh my God,” he said, walking over. “No way. You’re here?”
Ivana blinked slowly.
Her mother immediately lit up.
“You know each other?”
Before Ivana could answer, Yuvan smiled politely and held out his hand toward her father.
“Yuvan, uncle. We went to school together.”
Uncle.
Uncle.
The betrayal happened instantly.
“Oh!” her mother exclaimed. “You’re Yuvan? Ivana’s mentioned you before.”
Ivana nearly choked to death.
“No I haven’t.”
“You used to fight all the time,” her mother continued happily.
Yuvan laughed.
Laughed.
Like this was charming.
Like he hadn’t once told an entire classroom that Ivana had sex with an 80 year old.
Which, she hadn’t.
“You’ve grown up so much,” her mother told him warmly.
“Thank you, aunty.”
This was becoming unbearable.
Meanwhile, her father had already switched into polite-parent mode.
“What course are you taking?”
“Business and marketing, uncle.”
“Very good field.”
Ivana watched this interaction with the detached horror of someone witnessing a hostage negotiation going poorly.
Yuvan turned back toward her with that same infuriatingly easy smile.
“What room no. are you in?”
“Why?”
“Relax,” he said. “I’m not stalking you.”
“1002. You?”
“602” he said like it was supposed to be something he’s proud of.
Ivana hated him with the intensity of a thousand collapsing stars.
And somehow, standing there in the crowded lobby with her parents smiling politely beside her, she suddenly felt fifteen again.
Awkward.
Defensive.
Too loud when nervous.
She hated that feeling most of all.
“Well,” Yuvan said, grabbing the handle of one of her suitcases before she could stop him, “welcome to RCube. I’ll call you, let’s catchup.”
Ivana watched him wheel her luggage toward the elevator like he hadn’t once ruined her entire high school life.
“You should focus on academics first,” her dad said suddenly while carrying in boxes.
“I know.”
“And avoid bad company.”
“I know.”
“And call us every day.”
“I know.”
At the time, all of this had seemed extremely unnecessary.
By October, Ivana would ignore twenty-three consecutive calls from them while sitting on a stranger’s kitchen counter at four in the morning eating dry cereal out of the box.
Character development.
The first night in the city, after her parents fell asleep at the hotel, Ivana stood alone by the window looking down at the glowing streets below.
Everything felt possible there.
Reinvention.
Freedom.
Catastrophic humiliation.
She just didn’t know about the last one yet.
Her phone buzzed suddenly.
A notification.
Yuvan: Call me.
Then another.
Yuvan: Are you free? Come to the roof.
Ivana stared at the messages.
Then slowly smiled.
Looking back now, she would later realize there were still several moments where she could have become a completely normal person.
This was one of the last ones.
