PRETENSE

In the quiet town of Lakeview, Sophie lived with her family—a family she loved as much as she hated.

Sometimes, she wondered if it was even possible to feel both things at once. To love someone so deeply and yet resent them just as deeply. To miss the people who had hurt you. To hate what they had done and still wish, desperately, that things could go back to the way they were.

Life had become difficult for Sophie. Very difficult.

There were days when she couldn't understand what was happening around her, and even more days when she couldn't understand herself. She kept going over the same questions in her mind, searching for answers that never seemed to come.

Was everything that happened meant to happen?

Was there a reason behind it all?

Sophie had always believed there was.

There had to be an explanation for everything.

There had to be an explanation for why her family had ended up this way. Why everything that once seemed so perfect had slowly fallen apart.

But more importantly, there had to be an explanation for why she had ended up this way.

Hadn't she done everything right?

Hadn't she worked hard?

Hadn't she followed the rules?

Hadn't she tried to be the daughter everyone wanted her to be?

She had spent years believing that if she did everything correctly, life would reward her for it. That good choices would lead to good things. That if she kept smiling, kept working, kept being the person everyone expected her to be, everything would eventually work out.

But it hadn't.

Instead, her life had become something she barely recognized.

And the more Sophie thought about it, the more she kept returning to one particular day.

That day.

The day everything changed.

She remembered the choices she had made. The decisions that had seemed so small at the time. The moments she hadn't thought twice about.

Now, she couldn't stop thinking about them.

What if she had chosen differently?

What if she had taken another path?

What if she had listened to that small voice in the back of her mind telling her that something wasn't right?

Maybe everything would have been different.

Maybe her family would still be alive.

Maybe Sophie wouldn't be sitting here, trying to understand how the life of the girl who had once believed she had everything could have gone so terribly wrong.

But there was no going back.

There was only the past, the choices she had made, and the truth she had spent so long trying to bury.

And Sophie knew one thing for certain:

It had all started that day.