Anastasia, a fearless girl full of love and kindness, is awaken on a Sunday morning by the smell of buttered sausages and pancakes coated in syrup. She makes her way downstairs and enters the kitchen, rubbing her eyes to wake herself up. As she sits down she sees her father at the head of the table, sipping his coffee and reading the newspaper. Her mother is standing over the stove and as she turns around, with two plates in hand she notices Anastasia sitting at the table and smiles as she says, ”Good morning sweetie, I made breakfast a bit early. We have to leave for church earlier than usual, your dad has to step in for Father Brian.”

Anastasia plops her elbows on the table and leans on her hand and nods in response, too tired to answer verbally. Her mother brings her plate of food and scolds her to get her elbows off the table as she sets her food down. The family prayed over their food and ate in silence with a few grunts from her father as he reads the newspaper. After eating breakfast her mother takes their plates and tells her, ”Go get ready Ana, and don’t take too long in the shower.”

Taking a long sigh, Ana gets up and heads for her room to pick out clothes for church. She chooses a knee length white skirt with purple butterflies on the bottom hem and pairs it with a matching purple shirt and black flats. After getting showered and dressed in record time her family heads to church. Anastasia sat next to her mother and grandmother in the front pew as her father speaks the Lord’s name. Mass ended and on their way home her family stops to eat at Maria’s Garden, as they do every Sunday. Soon, they finally make it home and Ana quickly runs upstairs to change so she can play. As she gets dressed in her play clothes and puts her church clothes away, she suddenly hears a weird noise in her closet. Quietly and slowly Ana walks towards the closet and in a swift like move she opens the closet doors and screams, “Gotcha!”

Nothing was there, at least not where she could see, but she did see her pile of clothes on the closet floor shaking. Tilting her head, she begins to take a closer look and picks up the pile of clothes. As she does so, a tan and white pup jumps out onto her, taking her by surprise. Anastasia falls onto her back as the pup lands on her stomach. “Bear! I’ve been wondering where you’ve been, boy! Silly dog.”

Ana laughs at her corgi pup and also at herself for getting herself worked up over nothing. Still laughing Ana stands up and sets Bear down. She turns around and her smile falls. There, on her bed is nothing she has seen before. The creature has blue fur with big green eyes and ears as big as Dumbo.

Anastasia stays still and closes her eyes, counting to ten and hoping when she opens them the creature will be gone, but that doesn’t work. Scared to move she whispers to the creature, “Who – What are you?”

The big blue fur ball starts crying and Ana, being the kind hearted girl she is, goes to comfort him,

“Don’t cry, I’m sorry if I made you upset, you just scared me. I mean, I don’t know who or what you are.”

“I just want a friend, but I’m too ugly for anyone to want to be my friend!”

“Oh, don’t say that. I’ll be your friend. What’s your name? I’m Anastasia, but my friends and family call me Ana.”

“Really? Will you really be my friend? And my name is Eugene.”

“Of course, you just scared me at first because, you know, I don’t see people or things like you every day. But we can be really good friends once we get to know each other!”

Eugene was so happy, he couldn’t contain himself. He knew that Ana and he were going to be really great friends. The next couple of days they would play together and Ana even let him sleep in her closet so he would have a place to stay. She told her parents about Eugene, but they just smiled thinking it was another one of her imaginary friends. As Ana and Eugene were spending more time together, her parents became worried. Ana was spending a lot of her time with her imaginary friend and not her real ones.

That weekend her parents set up a play date with their next door neighbor’s little boy, Ashton. When Anastasia’s parents told her, she was a little sad she could not spend the day with Eugene, but she was also happy because Ashton was a good friend from school. After her parents told her about the play date she went to go tell Eugene about it.

“I won’t be able to play with you this weekend, I’ll be over at Ashton’s, but we’ll be able to play Monday so don’t worry!”

Ana left to go play with Ashton, and Eugene sat there in her room, lonely. Eugene felt abandoned, he felt like Ana was leaving him and that she did not want to be his friend anymore. He was furious with her and her new friend, Ashton. He watched out of Ana’s window as she played with her new best friend instead of him. He couldn’t take it anymore-he left. Anastasia came back home to get ready for bed and when she could not find Eugene she became worried, but soon after a couple days of him not coming back she forgot about him and focused on Ashton. Eugene watched from afar how quickly he was forgotten and how Ashton replaced him.

The next day, after playing with Ashton, Ana was getting ready for bed when she heard something strange.

“I thought you were my friend.”

“Eugene is that you?” Anastasia called out.

“You said you would be my friend, and you abandoned me. You lied.”

Anastasia knew it was Eugene, but she could not see him anywhere. She pulled her blankets up to her face and looked frantically everywhere in search for him. She heard a bang and quickly turned her head to see that her trashcan was tipped over. She gasped and called out, ”Eugene, what are doing? You’re scaring me.”

“You lied Ana.”

“How? What did I do?”

“You lied to me. You said you would be my friend, but you left me.”

“I didn’t lie, I am your friend!”

“You forgot about me, you lied. You lied.”

Ana was looking everywhere for him, but he was nowhere to be found. He just kept repeating “you lied” to her and she was scared. She felt breathing on her neck and she closed her eyes and screamed as Eugene whispered, “You lied.”