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Ana
The birds are chirping, the quiet hum of distant traffic wafts muffled through the tree-scattered grounds of my university campus, and the sun—an actual, real life sun—beams brightly down as I take a gentle jog along a concrete path winding through the grounds.
“Your face is getting all splotchy and red.”
I puff a mist of icy breath before me and glare at the minuscule camera drone hovering beside my face, projecting a colored hologram screen of my sister sitting in the kitchen.
“Yeah, thanks, Elena, that’s because I’m running.”
She grins at me and flicks her dark brown hair, which is straightened to within an inch of its life and glossy as all hell, dramatically over one shoulder. “You’re ugly when you run.”
“You’re the one that demanded to talk to me right now,” I huff as my sneakers continue to tap against the pavement, “so you can just suffer through my ugly face.”
“You’re not ugly, Ana!” my younger sister Mari calls from somewhere off-screen. “You’re the prettiest one out of all the sisters!”
“No, you’re the prettiest,” I call back with a grin.
Elena rolls her bright, hazel-green eyes and leans back in the scuffed wooden chair at our rickety dining table. “You guys are on crack, I’m the hottest sister and everyone knows it.”
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes, which are the same shade as Elena’s. The two of us actually look the most similar of all the girls in the house. With her defined jawline, full lips and thick, arched eyebrows, if you put our faces side by side, most people seem to think we could be twins, except that I’m a foot taller and maybe three dress sizes bigger.
I’ve only been on this planet for about a month now, and I miss my family so much already—yes, even Elena—but there are some things I don’t miss. And Elena’s insistence that she’s the prettiest, the thinnest, the most loved and most important person in the universe is definitely one of those things.
“Listen,” I say, spotting my favorite vendor stall in the distance and heading towards it. “I’m a very busy woman, so if you don’t have anything nice to say…”
“No, Ana, wait!” I hear the sounds of pots clanging in the background as Mari yells. “I’m coming, don’t leave yet, I wanna say hi properly!”
The front door behind Elena opens suddenly to show the dim hallway outside our apartment, and our fourteen-year-old sister Bianca storms in with our youngest and only brother, Marco, both of them home from school and seemingly in a mood as they slam the door behind them.
“Okay, I’m ready!” Mari chirps, wafting onto the screen as she wipes a hand against the frilly half-apron tied around her thick waist, balancing a plate of food and completely ignoring as the two youngest start a yelling match behind her. “So what’s been going on with you, Ana?”
I snigger under my breath when Marco throws a pillow at Bianca’s chubby cheeks, as I give my order to the large Zvezdi woman behind the cart. One thing I do enjoy about being here is that all the women are larger; thick and healthy like I am. After listening my whole life as Elena talks about how thin she is compared to the rest of us, it’s so refreshing to come here and see that most women are more like me and Mari—just, much taller.
“Nothing much, really,” I reply, plucking up the juiciest looking fruit scroll in the cart while the vendor makes my hot drink. “I finally got a job working at the dodgiest restaurant in the galaxy, but otherwise it’s all the same.”
“Pff, work,” Elena drawls, “who cares about that? What about men? They’re all so tall over there, lucky you. You must have hooked a guy by now, you’ve been there long enough.”
I sigh. “Don’t you ever think about anything else?”
“Nope.”
With a tap of my wrist com to pay, I take the hot drink of kafe I ordered from the Zvezdi, whose white, almost-human face slides into a polite smile with a row of pointed teeth. “Well, I’ve never had a boyfriend before and I don’t see any reason to start now. I’ve got too much on my plate as it is.”
“You’re so boring,” Elena huffs.
“Mari, did you make paella for dinner?” I ask, not even trying to be subtle about changing the subject as my sister takes a happy spoonful of rich yellow rice and settles herself at the table. “That looks really good!”
There’s a pre-pubescent screech across the house and Elena suddenly whips up from her chair with a yell of, “Marco, stop that!” before disappearing from view, and Mari blushes at my compliment.. “Tell me about classes, you computer genius!” she says around a mouthful of hot food. “I want to know everything!”
“I start next Monday,” I say, and my breath puffs out in a crisp, misty huff as I blow on my drink and head towards a bench. It’s still so odd for me to experience temperature extremes like this, after coming from a strictly controlled environment on our space station.. “How’s everything back at home? I heard they just announced overcrowding on earth has reached peak again, and they’ll be sending more people up to the space stations to relieve it.”
“Oh, god, yeah that announcement was last week. We don’t have any room left up here either, though! I don’t know where they’re going to fit everyone.”
“Don’t worry, that’s why I’m here!” I take a fat mouthful of my scroll, and try to smile cheerily. “Once I finish this degree and get a real job, I’m going to bring all of you here..”
“It looks beautiful on Zvezden.”.Mari sighs wistfully. “And you look so pretty in the sunlight, look at how it’s made your skin all caramel and gorgeous…”
My smile gets even more stale and I look down, feeling guilty that I get to experience this and my family doesn’t. “Your skin would do the same thing if you could get outside, too,” I murmur.
