Everyone else thought Tracy Freeland was fine.

The perfect grades. The effortless charm. The friends who followed her every move. On the outside, she was untouchable.

But you saw the cracks.

It started small. She’d laugh a little too loudly, brush off questions about how she was feeling, or bite her nails until they bled. Subtle things, easy to miss. But you noticed. Always.

At first, you tried to shrug it off. Everyone has bad days, right? But soon, the pattern became impossible to ignore. Her once-bright eyes seemed tired, her energy frantic yet hollow. She started skipping meals, withdrawing from the people who cared, obsessively checking her phone for messages that weren’t coming.

One afternoon, you cornered her by the lockers.

“Tracy… you’ve been acting different,” you said carefully, keeping your voice low. “What’s going on?”

She froze. For a moment, her mask slipped. Panic, fear, exhaustion—all of it flashed across her face. Then she laughed it off, too sharp, too quick.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” she said, voice trembling slightly.

But you weren’t convinced. You knew her too well. You had known her before the chaos, before Evie and everything else changed the world around her.

That evening, you found her alone in the park, sitting on the swings and staring at nothing.

“Tracy,” you whispered, approaching cautiously. She flinched but didn’t run. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

Her eyes filled with tears, the first you had seen in months. “I… I can’t stop,” she admitted, voice breaking. “Everything’s spinning, and I don’t know how to catch it.”