Chapter 1

The comments hadn't stopped pouring in since the moment I went live.

"Isn't this the girl who falsely accused her stepfather of raping her? And she still has the nerve to show her face online?"

"I remember her. The whole thing got so big she ended up in the local papers."

"Apparently she's been a pathological liar since she was a kid. She even tried to get her own father arrested!"

I sat in front of the camera and made no attempt to hide.

Acid churned in my stomach, rising into my throat. I swallowed hard and forced it back down, then looked straight into the camera and smiled.

"I'm going to wear a hidden camera and keep it running 24 hours a day. Give me three days, and maybe by the end of it, you'll finally know the whole story of my life."

The moment I finished speaking, the hospital room door opened.

Mom walked in carrying a takeout container. I quickly clipped the hidden camera to the brooch on my shirt.

She didn't even look at me. As she poured some soup into a bowl, she asked, "When did the doctor say you can go home?"

I was still clutching the results of my psychiatric evaluation. Without a word, I flipped to the final page and held it out to her.

She barely glanced at it before her expression darkened. "Severe depression?"

I nodded.

She slammed the spoon down on the table. "Did you lie on the questionnaire? Make everything sound worse on purpose so they'd keep you in the hospital longer?"

"I didn't."

She pointed to one of the questions on the evaluation. "This one asks if you've ever thought about ending your life. Why didn't you check 'never'?"

I froze.

To her, my silence must have looked like guilt.

She let out a long, irritated sigh. "Your brother told me that people with depression have physical symptoms too. They can't sleep, their hands shake, they lose their appetite... There's a word for it. Somatization, I think. You don't have any of that. Don't think I haven't noticed."

"I haven't eaten in three days," I said quietly.

Mom paused, then her mouth tightened into a disapproving frown. "There you go, lying again. I saw you throwing out a takeout container yesterday."

She pushed the bowl of soup toward me.

I shook my head. "I really can't eat."

The words had barely left my mouth when her chest rose and fell sharply.

Then her hand struck me across the face.

My head snapped to the side. My cheek burned, and for a second, my ear rang. "Weren't you just eating candy? There are wrappers all over your table! Do you think I'm blind?

"What's the difference between candy and a real meal? If you can eat one, you can eat the other!"

I parted my pale lips, but I didn't have the strength to argue.

Mom grabbed the bowl and tried to force the soup into my mouth. My stomach lurched almost immediately, and I gagged twice.

Her face lit up as if she'd just proven her point. "See? You can eat! I don't know who let you get away with all this lying for so long."

Then my brother's voice came through Mom's phone. "You can't fake the physical symptoms of anxiety, Mom. Don't let her fool you. She's just trying to make you waste more money on her."

The livestream chat exploded again.

"Exactly! Someone who's actually depressed wouldn't act like this. This girl lies about everything. Good thing her mom caught her pretending she couldn't eat."

"Just discharge her already. She's taking up a hospital bed someone else actually needs."

Mom took a deep breath and gave me a stern look. "Don't try to fool me with some bogus evaluation. Hospitals hand you a questionnaire, you check a few boxes, and suddenly that's a diagnosis? It's ridiculous."

She picked up the psychiatric evaluation from my bedside table and tossed it straight into the trash.

"And don't bother with any more of these tests. I'm not going to hold this whole pretending-to-be-sick thing against you. Now come on. Eat something, and then we're going home."

The livestream comments kept rolling in.

"Her mom is way more patient than I would've been. She even brought her homemade soup. Depression? Please. She's just got too much time on her hands."

"Kids these days spend all day glued to their phones, and suddenly they're convinced they have mental health problems. Half the time they just want attention! Didn't you guys hear? She has a younger brother. Bet that's what this is really about."

In the end, I agreed to go home.

When I was discharged, Mom brought me a dress to change into.

It was pink, with a full, flared skirt.

The moment she handed it to me, my entire body began to tremble. I hadn't worn a dress since the night I'd turned 18.

Mom seemed to have forgotten that. When I didn't move, she even helped me put it on herself.

Then she took me by the arm, led me out of the hospital, and ushered me into the car. But we didn't go home.

The car turned onto a street I knew all too well and pulled up outside a familiar restaurant.