Prologue/Intro
" Hope, you’re finally up.” I hear my mother say as I get up. “Well, hurry up and get changed before you go.” She smiles at me. A smile I’d seen almost every day of my life. It made me feel content yet exposed. It was the kind of warm, reassuring smile that caught you off-guard regardless of how many times you’d seen it before. ‘It means everything’s fine’ is what I’d tell myself. That everything would work out for me.
I was wrong.