Chapter 331
Untitled
The polished wood of the laptop felt cool beneath Sophia’s fingertips as she scrolled through years of captured moments. Faces flashed by on the screen—the blinding flash of cameras at county fairs, the impossibly wide, slightly unnerving smiles of six-year-old pageant contestants, the focused intensity of a teenage gymnast suspended mid-air. She was compiling a digital album, an attempt, perhaps, to curate the noise of her past before submerging herself again, though this time, the ocean felt less like a pool and more like quicksand.
She paused on a particularly crisp photo taken during a regional competition when she was eleven. She was poised on one foot, leg extended high in a move that demanded both brute strength and delicate control—a perfect snapshot of the controlled chaos that defined her early life. Peers were envious, always. They analyzed the placement of her hands, the arch of her back, trying to reverse-engineer the magic that netted her the top prize: not just a crown, but a sprawling, mint-condition Barbie collection that made the other girls weep with frustration.
A sudden, sharp laugh from across the expansive, sun-drenched room made her jump, pulling her focus from the screen. It wasn’t the breezy, faux-enthusiastic chatter of the staff they employed for the house; this was deeper, more genuine, followed by the clink of crystal.
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