back & better | BEING EDITED

Annalise Starke had known her mother was going to die eventually; she just hadn't expected it to happen so soon.

At fifteen she had moved with her mother back to her home country of Australia with half a heart (metaphorically, of course) and her mother's terminal cancer diagnosis. There, she struggled with the ambiguous loss of mourning someone who was still breathing.

But nothing could've prepared her for the real thing.

Six months before her projected "death date" Annalise came home to find her mother bloodied and 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘥, and in the blink of an eye, she went from 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘮 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘳 to 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘮 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥.

𓇼

Once the police finished investigating, and with no answers to show for it, Annalise follows her mother's dying wish for her to return to the states and reunite with her father and twin brother for her final year of school.

She grasps at the strings of her mental health and social life (because as much as she wants it to stop, life moves on, time passes, and her with it) as she navigates the halls of a place that's no longer familiar and struggles to fit back into the mold of the girl she once was.

Balance is key, and with her long-time childhood best friend, Sylvie Sorren, by her side, Annalise only has to deal with 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 of the pain in silence-because one minute she's fine and the next she's taking deep breaths in the janitor's closet and wishing death upon her mother's killer an ocean away-as she takes up a new title, becoming the "new girl" all over again.

Slowly, her sense of normalcy returns bit by bit. Once again, she cares about the latest trends, loves sports, and she can keep a meal down. Things are looking up...until she gets a strange call from a man claiming to be her mother's killer, and apparently, he doesn't like loose ends.