The Russian Next Door

CHAPTER 1 -Bad choices

I am the best person when it comes to bad choices. Not at dealing with them, of course, but at making them. That is totally my specialty. Sometimes I wonder how it comes that my mouth speaks without consulting with my brain first. Or how my brain makes all these decisions by itself and I act on impulse, not really thinking things through and then I am left there to live with the consequences. You know, it is like there is an ON/OFF switch in my brain that functions at its own will. Or maybe someone is controlling it, but surely not me.

I've had a couple of bad choices and decisions throughout my life, mostly in my last year: like letting Mason get into that damn car while being drunk (this thing will always haunt me, because he got angry on me for something I did that night and simply wanted to leave, not to see me anymore; somehow, his death is on me), like getting involved with that bastard, Jesse (but thank God that there was Mason to stop me from making a stupid thing with him because I was wasted that night of the terrible car accident), like giving up on trying to make my mother proud of me, even a bit (but gosh, sometimes I swear that this woman has something against me; and she was always so hard to please! so I would do whatever I wanted and let her quarrel all by herself; I just simply didn't care anymore), and my most recent stupidity, the choice to move to Russia. Yep, that's right everybody, Rose Hathaway-Mazur strikes again.

Let me start from the beginning. I have finished high school recently, and I have never ever done anything important with my life, as my mother would gladly always remind me. And she was pretty right, you know? At least this time. I have never really excelled at anything. I was perfectly mediocre. I have never involved myself in any extracurricular activities, I never had a job (why would I, when my father was a successful businessman?). All I was good at was getting myself into trouble. And my mother was always there to compare me with my sweet, beloved friend, Lissa (I swear to God, this girl is pure gold; she is so good, so gentle, and so generous; and I really love this girl). Sometimes, I think that Janine would have gladly traded me for Lissa if she would have had the chance. And with her perfection, it was impossible for me to not compare myself with her too and to see that I was a very flat person. I've never even had a decent boyfriend, for fuck's sake! Not like Lissa, who had Christian, a guy that I totally hated at first. But I got to understand that he wasn't in fact such a bad guy as I thought. He really loved her and he was making her happy. If Lissa was happy, I could at least have the decency to get along with her boyfriend. And we really did started getting along, after I got over my initial unfounded hate. But as I was saying, not a single decent boyfriend. Just some fuckboys in high school (gosh, I really had a talent at picking them), that I would have some fun with for a couple of weeks (but never had sex with them, because I didn't want to give myself to a guy like that; I wanted my first time to be special; I wanted to do it with someone that really mattered to me) and after that, it was all over. The only guy who ever truly cared for me was Mason. But he was dead now, and while he was still alive, I couldn't open my eyes and realize that he had feelings for me.

So, since my grades were not so high, my mother had constantly pressured me to send college applications my whole senior year, so that I would at least have a chance at a ''decent life'' as she always says. And as I was searching through colleges as far as possible from home, I stumbled upon a perfect program abroad. The program didn't actually involve going to many classes. It was a thing that you were supposed to attend once a week, have a three hour class, get your materials, ask some questions and at the end of every semester you had to take some exams. I immediately enjoyed the idea, because I was no fan of going to classes. Or school in general. In addition, the specialization was something that I have always been passionate about: Botany. And the program was only two years long. Of course, the best part about this program was how far away from my home it would take me: Russia. I applied immediately, but trust me: I didn't really think I would get into that college. Like what chances did I really have with all that competition from all around the world? That was the reason I didn't tell anybody about that application in particular.

But this morning I got a couple of letters. All rejections. Yay to me! My mom was going to be so proud of me. But to my surprise, not all of them were rejections. The last of them was informing me that their institution would be very delighted to have me as a student. I got so excited. But there was a tiny little problem. The college was St. Vladimir, in Moscow, Russia. Well, what was I going to do? I didn't afford not to go. My mother will go nuts when she would find out that I got rejected from every other college. And she would be so disappointed. Could I bear the look of pity, disappointment and self-blaming from her face again? The quick answer is no. God, it was so hard to be a constant disappointment to your parents. So I decided to go. Well, it was more of a thing I did in the absence of other options, rather than a voluntary choice, but still. And how hard could two years pass, right? I would manage to survive somehow.