Chapter One – A World Too Small
They say the world is as wide as your dreams, but mine has always felt like a single narrow street, cracked sidewalks and all. My name is Annabel Johnson, and if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that life doesn’t hand you blessings wrapped in golden paper. For people like me, it’s survival. Day after day, breath after breath.
I grew up in a neighborhood most people drive past with their windows rolled up. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone, but not in the warm, comforting way. More like—if you sneeze too loudly, the whole block knows what time and how many tissues you used. We lived in a small, weathered apartment, three flights of stairs with creaky railings, and a lock that stuck in the winter.
My mother used to make it a home. She was sunshine with a smile, lavender perfume always lingering in the hallways. But when she died, all of that went with her. What remained was my father—hardworking in his better days, but worn down by grief and bad choices. And me. The daughter who had to grow up faster than she ever should have.
I don’t hate my life, not really. But sometimes it feels like I’m standing in a glass box, pressing my hands against the walls, staring at a world I can never reach. I’ve watched girls my age go off to college, travel, find careers that light them up. I had dreams, too. I wanted to study literature, maybe teach, maybe write. But dreams don’t pay overdue bills, and when rent is due, dreams stay tucked in the back of your notebook.
So I worked. Waitressing, babysitting, cleaning—whatever put food on the table. The paychecks barely stretched, but they stretched enough to keep the lights on, most months. My father tried, in his own way, but after Mom died, it was as if his ambition died too. He took odd jobs, never steady enough, and somewhere along the way, he started borrowing. “Just until payday,” he used to say. “I’ll fix it soon.” But soon never came, and the debts piled up like dirty laundry nobody wanted to touch.
I learned to ignore the knocks on the door. To avoid the men in dark coats standing on street corners. To lower my eyes when whispers about my father’s gambling followed me in the grocery store. My world was already small, but shame made it even smaller.
Still, I tried to keep a piece of myself alive. Books were my escape. Every stolen hour with a story in my lap felt like breathing air from someplace else, someplace brighter. I’d imagine myself in the pages—braver, freer, living a life larger than the one pressed around me.
But the truth is, I am ordinary. Ordinary face, ordinary hair, ordinary girl. Nothing about me screams extraordinary. Sometimes, I wonder if that’s why life never bothered to notice me, never gave me more. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe I was meant to live quietly, taking care of what little I had.
If there’s one thing I am proud of, it’s that I’ve never given up on the people I love, even when they’ve given up on themselves. My father may be flawed—broken, even—but he’s still my father. There are nights I sit across from him, watching him stare into his glass of cheap whiskey, and I remember the man he used to be. Strong hands lifting me onto his shoulders. Laughter echoing in the kitchen when Mom teased him about his singing. For that man, I can endure anything.
Endurance, I’ve learned, is a kind of armor. When bills pile high, I endure. When I’m turned away from another job, I endure. When the world feels too small and too heavy, I endure.
But sometimes, lying awake at night, I whisper a question into the dark: Is this all there is? Is this cramped apartment, this endless cycle of work and worry, really my whole life?
I’m twenty-two, but some days I feel twice that age. I can’t remember the last time I did something just for me. The last time I laughed so hard my sides hurt. The last time I didn’t feel the weight of responsibility pressing down on me.
Maybe that’s why I cling so tightly to my notebooks, the ones filled with scraps of poetry and unfinished stories. No one ever reads them, but they’re pieces of me—the me I don’t get to be out loud. In those pages, I’m not Annabel Johnson, the poor mechanic’s daughter with a father who can’t keep his promises. I’m someone braver, freer. Someone who matters.
I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t have a plan beyond surviving the week, making sure rent gets paid, keeping food in the fridge. But deep down, a part of me still believes there must be more. That maybe, one day, life will widen beyond this narrow street.
What I didn’t know then—what I couldn’t know—was that my world was about to crack wide open. And not in the way I dreamed, not in the way of happy coincidences or small blessings. No, the change that was coming for me carried sharp edges and heavy chains.
But for now, all I knew was this: I was Annabel Johnson, an ordinary girl in a world too small, doing everything I could to survive. And somewhere out there, far beyond the edges of my little life, forces I couldn’t see were already moving, already planning to drag me into a future I could never have imagined.