Life, Love, & Lies

Prologue

It's funny the way certain things, moments, memories, events, stick in our brains. The way one image, one scene can play out for years in the back of our mind for only our eyes to remember. A memory good or bad, saved in the hard drive of our mind as a photo, gif, or full scene.

Disney called it a core memory, something that affects what our character and personality is significantly, but somehow it feels like something more than that... And sometimes something less. A memory that simply will not leave even if you want it to go.

For one Lauren Anderson there are three memories that all coincide and contradict each other to form what she would call her turning point in life, the pivotal year when life went from everything she knew to nothing she could have ever predicted.

The first memory is happy, and yet the years since it's occurrence have tainted it significantly to the point it is almost painful when it randomly reappears in her mind's eye. A gif of sorts, a three second memory of the tummy tumbling moment when her best friend, the boy she'd had a massive crush on for two years finally kissed her. The shock and exhilaration that filled her seventeen year old body with so much exuberant joy that she thought she could float clear to the stars in that very moment. A moment that at the time felt like it was the only way to make her life better than it already was, when she and the boy she had pined for finally crossed the line of friends to more.

The second memory is one filled with questions, what if's about the life she had planned before her world went to hell in a handbasket in a singular night. A photographic memory of a singular email, an invite for her to do a summer study with the Paris Opera Ballet following her graduation. The most prestigious Ballet company in the world had offered her a spot. Each time that image flashes through her mind it causes confusion to fill her gut. Where would she be now in life if that opportunity hadn't been pulled away from her so harshly?

The final memory is haunting, traumatic, and the reason her life changed forever. The reason she no longer has either of the other memories. A scene that played out over the dinner table of her family's New York City penthouse on a Sunday evening. The sound of the elevator dinging announcing an unknown visitor, a rarity when the doorman knew to always call up to the family if someone came calling. Three armed police officers stalking into the dining room and producing a warrant for her fathers arrest. It was the most unexpected moment of her life, and the fall out of that arrest had set her life on a course that she never would have seen coming. A course that lost her the ballet career she had planned on and the boy teenager her loved more than anything else. When the scene decides to play out in her mind without warning it usually leaves her feeling depressed and alone, causing even the best of times to suddenly turn sour. Almost always resulting in her leaving any event or outing without much warning or explanation to head home.

Home was her only safe place, the only place she didn't feel she was living a lie. The place where the only person in the world who knows her fully is. A place where the walls she was forced to build for her own protection can fall away and she can simply be. No fears of her past, no pressure to live her lies, no fear of someone finding her secrets and exposing her to the world. A world that may not be looking for her anymore, but would instantaneously destroy her if she were to be found.

They say all is fair in love and war, but Lauren knows that is simply not the full truth, because to those who are bystanders to the war, involved not due to their own choices but their relations to those involved. For them the consequences far outweigh the participation, her personal experience is proof enough to that. And the lessons she has learned to live by are directly related to the fateful winter days following her fathers arrest, following the three months that spanned between crossing the friendship line with Matt and losing her entire life. The three months that formed her into someone who knows; knows to never trust a smile, to always be on guard, and someone who is constantly reminding herself that every person has their own agenda and the only person who is looking out for her, is her.

To say she hated her life now was far from true, she loved what she was doing, the degree she had earned in photography and digital art was very fulfilling. But part of her felt as if her life was unauthentic, as if everyone she knew and associated with only knew half of her. It's hard to be turly happy when you don't feel you are living your most real and authentic life, when being in a relationship is both thrilling and sickening, because there is no way you can tell your significant other about your childhood, at least not your real one. When your past makes you unsure if committing to someone is something you could ever do honestly. And when you go to bed each night both praying that someone finds you and the ashes fall where they fall with your past exposed, and praying harder that no one ever finds the demons you were forced to hide.

It's a life full of lies, of loss, and in a twisted way, filled with love. And for Lauren Anderson, she's simply trying to forge the path that works for her, hoping to leave the world she passes through as unscaved as possible. Wanting to give little to no influence, fearing that if she tried to be known she would follow in the way her parents went, causing a stain rather than a praiseworthy solution to those who she interacts with, and the legacy she would leave.

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Welcome to my new Young Adult Fiction story!!!

I hope this prologue got you hooked at least enough to give the story a chance!

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I love you guys!!!

~M =)