It was the day before her 3rd-grade play, and Eliza was sitting down at the table with her mother and father. Eliza had only entered into the tryouts because her friends did, and now she had to play the lead role.

The dinner was silent. The only sounds were her fork against her plate, her father writing something down as he wrote in his fancy suit and leather shoes, and her mother scrolling on social media.

The tension was finally broken when her mother spoke.

“Eliza, you’re going to be in that play tomorrow, right? The lead role?” She asked. Eliza scrunched her nose. “Yeah… But I don’t want to.”

“So?” He asked, “You’re a part of it now, you should’ve done something about it before you got the role,” he reasoned.

Her mother side-eyed her father and muttered his name.

“Don’t ‘Darrel’ me,” he snapped. “I’m right.”

She looked at the table as they spoke, tuning them out slightly. She knew this routine by heart. They’d always get angry at dinner.

“I joined because of my friends,” she admitted. Her voice whispers amongst growing shouts.

Her father looked at her, “You shouldn’t follow those friends of yours– They have no ambition.”

She only nodded at his statement.

“Besides, it doesn’t matter if you want to or not,” he said with a gritted voice as she straightened his paper. “You’re going to do good in this play– You’re the lead in it, meaning that you’re going to have to outshine the rest. Think of it like a game: You either win or you fail, and we don’t expect failures in this house, right?”

The girl was frozen to the spot. She gave a small nod before going back to her foot.

She needed to win.

The hours dragged on on. As afternoon shifted to night, Eliza couldn’t find herself asleep. When the stars drifted into being the sun, a nervous pit sat in her stomach.

When the clock dinged five times, the stage’s curtains opened wide, and when the sun started to fall, all of the actors walked out from backstage in a line and bowed to the audience.

When the whirlwind of a play came to an end, her face scanned the audience in search of her parents. Yet when she thought they’d left her, she saw them there at the very front.

Their faces were shining despite the dark gypsum. Her mother had a smile like none she had ever seen, and her father smirked while nodding his head.

Her heart was then pounding out of her chest. A smile of her own grew as pride flooded her veins. They were happy. She hadn’t failed– That means she won!

The buzzing in her body made her feel giddy. If this was what winning felt like, then she never wanted to lose. Besides, failures weren’t welcomed in her home.

Since her first win was on a stage, she chose to enter her town’s theater group, leading to a rough year.

She started getting side roles instead of the head ones, which went to the older kids. She would get busy with work instead of practicing scripts. Her parent’s frowns were ever present on their faces as they watched her play. Shame flooded her face whenever her mother reminded her that she had nothing to post if she was playing the ‘useless roles.’

After months of this, she finally got her first lead in the club.

That play was a repeat of her last lead role. Her parents smile. The cheers. The feeling. It was what she had always looked for.

After that, the year ticked by with ease. She would get the lead role, fulfill it to its fullest, and then repeat.

Yet, that feeling didn’t last for long. After a year or so, her parents seemed to stop smiling as much at her performances. The biggest win earned their glance, while the slightest mistake earned their scorn.

Their praise started to become harder and harder to receive. That win she needed growing further and further away.

She was in 6th grade when she saw the flier for a soccer team posted up on the school’s wall.

It seemed interesting. Fun. She has seen her mother’s trophies up in her living room about the time that she was on a soccer team, and has heard how highly her mother speaks of the sport.

By the end of the day, she had her mind made up.

Talked to her parents about wanting to add soccer to her list of clubs.

Her mother beamed at her, her smile was blinding. She cheered and celebrated her walking in her mother’s footsteps.

She felt giddiness fly through her after that. She knew she had made the right choice.

Theys went by in a blur as she completed homework and practiced for soccer, with her parents pestering her whenever she took breaks.

When she got onto the team, her mother couldn’t have been prouder.

As the season flew by, she earned golden trophies that she added to the shelves next to her mother’s. When it came to an end, it was clear she made a mark.

Yet, she hadn’t accounted for that, either. In her off-season of soccer, there were still practices, but never games.

Now that the season was over, there was nothing for her parents to come to. Nothing for her mother to film. Nothing for her father to smile at. There was only her theater club that remained, and they had started skipping out on those as well.

She needed something else to do. Something to fill her time with so that her parents could see how good she was doing– So that she could add to her topshelf and so the world when she has won. When her parents looked at her like she was the greatest thing alive.

That was when she heard a friend of hers in the theater talking about her dance team opening up auditions.

That was when she knew what had to be done.

She didn’t have to say anything more than ‘dance team’ for her mother to jump at her joining. She had gone on and on about how cute Eliza would look in her little outfits. How this was something her mother could constantly film, as well.

When she had just started practicing for the team, her mother’s camera was on her.

She would spend an hour in her room, practicing moves, and doing stretches. All the while, her mother was right there. So close to her, yet she never spoke a word to her.

When the month went by, she joined the dance team.

She filled the rest of her school year with dance competitions and contests. The pride she felt when she won was enough to fuel her.

During her summer, she focused on theater. Because of so many other things going on in her life, her ability in theater was treated as something new by her parents. It was like that spark was re-enlightened.

In her 7th grade year, soccer started up again, and she now qualified to become the team’s captain.

At the beginning, she held a desire to be the team captain, but when she mentioned it to her parents, her mother lit up with excitement, talking about how she was the captain of her soccer team, and how it would be like a family thing at this point.

When the week was almost over, only two contestants remained. Eliza and a girl called Ava. So when the coach called for a vote among the team, Eliza was shocked to see it come to a tie.

That was when the coach decided for there to be a tiebreaker practice game. Ava coaches one team, and Eliza coaches the other. Yet to her internal shocked, she was thrown into cold water when she realized her side was losing.

She couldn’t lose. She couldn’t let this get to her head. She had to win this– She has always won! This wasn’t fair!

She saw Ava rushing over to where she was with the ball, and Elzia knew what she was about to do. Ava was about to score– And Eliza knew that the girl was a good shooter.

She couldn’t handle this.

She ran over to where Ava was and swiped the ball from her, but she couldn’t just leave it there, no. She tripped her. Purposefully.

A smile grew on her face as she started, confidence radiating off of her as she went to the goal. She didn't know what she was expecting to come from this.

What she didn’t expect was a loud, gut-turning, crunch.

As Eliza turned around, the world was in slow motion. Her veins froze in fear as she looked at what she had done.

She saw her teammate’s knee, she had landed on it just right to make it turn.

The scream that ripped from Ava’s mouth will forever be ingrained in Eliza’s memory. The sickness she felt will remain there until the end of time.

She wanted to break down right there. She wanted to join Ava and sob her eyes out. She saw as the teammates rushed to Ava’s side and started to care for the injury.

She could hear her breath and her heart in her ears. There was a ringing next to it as well as she watched the scene play out. Horror tying her to the spot.

With Ava’s leg broken, it left Eliza as the default team captain.

When she told her parents about becoming the captain and then tackled Ava’s unfortunate accident, their reactions didn’t relieve her worries like she thought they would.

“Oh, don’t mind that you did it, Eli!” Her mother cheered. “Good riddance to that girl, she never did as she was told. You’re a much better captain,” her father gritted.

And she tried to believe it.

She tried not to let the guilt eat away at her at night. She tried not to let it bug her.

But it followed her around school, as well. Rumors spread like wildfire, and people were hot on the tea.

Her teammates were wary of her, they kept their distance and were fearful to shoot around her. Even her friends distanced themselves from her to avoid being caught in the crossfire.

Her world was spinning, and there felt like no stop to it.

Before she knew it, the season was up, and being team captain meant nothing. None of the girls talked to her now that they weren’t tied to her.

Her friends did come back, though. She begged and pleaded with them to not believe the rumors. She didn’t know what happened to Ava. That she had apologized, even though she did nothing wrong.

They believed her then. They believed the lies she had spun.

Now that kept her up as well. She wondered when they’d stop believing her. She wondered when they'd just decide to leave– Abandon her alone with her actions and leave her to stew in this well of guilt and grief for that poor girl who she hurt.

She had to though, and now she has to stop her friends from leaving to do what she had to do.

She has seen how happy her parents are whenever she wins for them, so maybe she just has to win for her friends as well.

She starts to tell them everything about her competition. What she did, how she did it, who she was up against. She told them every win. She didn’t let them see the bad. At first, it was working. They would smile at her and praise her for her efforts.

Yet, that had stopped. She could see them deflate whenever she talked now. She could see them distancing themselves.

Her mind was spinning them. Why wasn’t it working? It worked with her parents, why wasn’t it working with them?

She needed to do something big and grand. That’ll keep them looking at her– She knows it.

When the next giant play rolled around, she didn’t hesitate to apply for the lead role.

When the girl competing with her didn’t show up to rehearsal, she said she didn’t know anything.

When the girl was found in the supply closet, she didn’t say a word.

That night, she had nightmares. She kept imagining that the girl she locked in the closet hadn’t been found– That she had been discovered weeks later, nothing but bone and decay. That Eliza had killed her that way.

But she said nothing about it. Not to her parents, to her friends, or anyone else. She kept her little lies close and shared her wins with the world.

The little lies kept building, though, and she found herself in a web of them that she couldn’t get out of. A sticky mess of guilt and shame that she couldn’t wad through.

So when, in her 7th-grade year, that silver dance medal was hung around her neck, she could feel it all start to crumble to the ground.

She stood there motionless. Her mouth opened wide. She had worked so hard to be here– She had trained every night for hours. She had tripped people up, lied to people, hurt people to get her and–

It was all for nothing. Just a shining gray medal that taunted her every action.

She couldn’t look her parents in the eyes after that. She heard their scorn and yet didn’t look at them. This angered her parents beyond belief. Her father banned her from going to the theater until she improved her dance.

She was left as an empty shell at that point. She was in a panic trying to get her club back, she trained every day, and forsaken homework in order to do so.

When she went to off-season practice and was told she couldn’t join because she was failing, she shouldn’t have been surprised.

Her grades were tanking as she tried to get back to dance, when she tried to do better at school, her parents scolded her for neglecting her extra activities.

By the time the next school year rolled around, she had snapped and pushed away her friends until there were none left, she couldn’t get her theater club back, she had fully turned her back on dance, and she couldn’t go back to soccer. She was the shell of the girl she used to be.

She went through her 8th grade and flunked it. She barely passed, and by the time the year ended, her teachers had given up trying to get her to do her work.

She had forgotten to fill out her class sign-up sheet as well, so she was just dumped into a bunch of classes during her first year of high school.

Three weeks into the classes, these teachers had given up on her as well.

One of these teachers was the art teacher. Being dumped in this class meant she had no interest in it. She would just sleep through the whole class.

The one day she paid attention was the day they were drawing flowers. Eliza chose to humor the teacher and did the assignment as she was told to.

Yet, she was struggling. The flower’s petals were off. The stem was too long. The lighting was weird. It was different every time, yet it was never perfect.

She stared down at her most recent attempt and bit her lip. There were tears in her eyes as she looked at it. How fair she had fallen, she couldn’t even do this.

She grabbed her paper and was about to rip it when she heard a voice.

“Ah, what a lovely drawing, Eliza.”

She looked up to see her teacher standing here. Her eyes instinctively landed on her smile, big, bright, and proud.

She looked down at her paper. “Don’t pity me,” she snapped. Her teacher crouched down. “And why do you assume pity?”

“Because it’s bad,” she huffed. “The stem is curved weirdly, the lighting is off, and–”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Her teacher held up her hands, “Slow down there. You’re in a level one art class– This is just to see what you know.”

She crossed her arms. “Well clearly, this is a failure.”

Her teacher hummed.

Suddenly, she opened the folder she had been carrying around and pulled some papers out.

“These are the works of past students of mine,” she explained.

She placed a piece of paper down in front of Eliza with a chicken scratch drawing of the flower. The next one she put down was a realistic-looking one. The third was something that looked like a 3rd grader’s drawing.

The three looked completely different to Eliza.

“Now, Eliza. Can you tell me the two sommeliers between these three pictures?”

Eliza blinked at her teacher’s words. “Um, they’re all flowers?” She tried as she looked up.

Her teacher chuckled and shook her head. “Nope, they’re all As, and you wanna know why?”

“Because they tried.”

“I’m not looking for perfection here, I’m looking for your best, Eliza.”

Eliza could hear the words her teacher was throwing out, but she didn’t quite get it. How could these be As when they weren’t… perfect?

She voiced her question, and the teacher simply looked at her and took her paper with a smile.

“Because your best should be perfect in your eyes as well. You’re just starting, be soft on yourself.”

The next day, everyone hung up, and as she watched people proudly claim which one was there's, she couldn’t look at her own.

Yet, she didn’t have a shaking need to tear it down either.