A Tale Of Two Sisters

A/N: This is my first Anna fic, tribute to all the Anna likers out there.

It's 180 degrees different from all the Anna fics I've ever read, and I

think it's original. Please, people, REVIEW! It's the only way I get to

know what you think; I'm not a mind reader, you know.

Chapter I: As Different As Day And Night

Wysteria Park, 7:00 pm

A young girl could be seen sitting on one of the few swings the neighbourhood children had not yet managed to vandalise. Her arms were coiled around the chains, and she was staring listlessly at her own feet, her eyes glassy with unshed tears, her whole body trembling with the effort it took to suppress her sobs. She felt abandoned by everyone, save for the mournful clicking of the metal chains that kept her company, and echoed her mood.

Why, Anna kept asking herself, oh why? And unbidden into her mind came a second voice, the voice that spoke with her parents' disappointment, her teachers' authority, even Nina's loftiness and arrogance: in other words, the voice of the truth. Snippets of conversation burst like bubbles in her mind:

I wish you could have been more like your sister...

Mediocre to the last degree...

You're nothing, Anna...

She was thirteen for goodness' sake, trying so hard to see where she fit in, attempting to carve out her own identity, and yet, people had their own plans and expectations laid for her; she was supposed to be a "chip off the old block", and by that they did not mean her parents, but her sister, Nina.

Nina. There had been a time, not too long ago, when Anna had idolised her older sister. Now that seemed eternities ago. Now Anna could not think of Nina without hatred and bitterness suffusing her heart. Perhaps it had something to do with Nina's academic superiority. She was a straight A student, while Anna had to make do with B's and the occasional C. Maybe it had to do with Nina's looks. At fifteen, she was blessed with voluptious curves, luxuriously thick blond hair that cascaded down her back, and cerulean blue eyes that resembled fragments of a clear summer sky. Anna on the other hand, at thirteen, had few curves to speak of, she was pale and mousey haired, and did not receive the automatic regard given to blondes. Then again, her bitterness might have been due to Nina's social status. She was at the top of the ladder, one of the popular ones, the elite,while Anna was hovering just above the bottommost rung.Whereas Nina was constantly flanked by half a dozen giggling girlfriends, and admired by a score of boys, Anna was virtually invisible to them all.

But if Nina had left her well alone,then perhaps things would have been dramatically different for Anna. Fact was, Nina never missed an opportunity to taunt her younger sister, to remind her of how inferior she was, and Anna was used to those daily doses of torture. She was used to hearing things like "Anna's adopted"; it was Nina's classical answer to people who wondered why the sisters were so different. "She's a clumsy clod" was another Nina-fashioned response to anyone asking why Anna was so accident prone. But hadn't it been Nina who had surreptitiously set her sister's dress on fire when Anna had been trying to light the candles on her birthday cake once? Hadn't it been Nina who had tampered with Anna's saddle, when they were learning how to ride, so that Anna had been thrown from her mount, and was lucky to avoid serious injury?

Why was Nina constantly out to get her?Anna wondered. She suddenly recalled how she had been stuck with Nina and her friends in summercamp last year; she had called her parents on the first night, and begged them to return her home. She shook her head, attempting to clear it, but found herself sparking more memories in her mind: Nina's last slumber party, when she and her friends had doubled over in laughter after reading the contents of Anna's secret diary. Anna's cheeks flushed at this thought, but she continued to turn the wheel of memory. She had a flashback of herself in Nina's bedroom, which was out of bounds to her, searching the inner contents of the wardrobe for her favourite pair of silk stockings, which she was sure Nina had stolen. She had found instead a small packet of a powder-like substance, along with a syringe and needle. She remembered thinking naively,what a strange hiding place for the equipment of a science experiment, before Nina had come tearing into the room, and had slapped her and screamed abuse her way. Their mother, who remained ignorant of Anna's finding, had told her to respect her sister's privacy.

And now it was time for Anna to relive her worst memory yet: of Christopher, Nina's current boyfriend, who had once noticed Anna, had smiled at her and helped her with her books. Anna had been foolish enough to consider sending him a thank you letter by e-mail." Dear Chrissy",it had started,"with love", it had ended. A draft of the letter had been saved, and Anna had been logged on, when her mother had asked her to run an errand. Nina had come, checked Anna's mail, forwarded it to one of her friends, and asked him to spam it to the entire student body of their school. The next day, Anna had been humiliated before everyone, while Nina had sat there, nonchalantly applying her makeup.

As Anna's mind reeled back to the present, she remembered why she was sitting in this desolate little park in the first place. She had not been able to stand the sight of Christopher as he had turned up to whisk Nina off to the spring dance. She had not wanted to see them kissing, so she had slipped out of the house, unnoticed. But now as she glanced at the digital display of her watch, she realised with a jolt that she had been sitting there for four straight hours. Surely her parents had missed her?

Anna jogged all the way home and stopped breathlessly at the front door, noticing how the lights were all out and the curtains were drawn. Were her parents out as well? She entered and found them huddled in the kitchen, her father's arms draped over her mother, who was shaking like a leaf. " It's all right, I'm here," she told them. Richard Williams looked up at her, his eyes voids of despair, and and Anna instantly knew that something was terribly wrong.

"Mum, Dad, what's wrong?" she asked, near panic.

"It's Nina..." her father whispered.

A/N: That's all for now. Wonder what's wrong with Nina...