Trying to make links disappear with variables

Hey!

It's my first time using variables and I've run into an issue I wonder if anyone could assist with. I hope this comes out making sense! I'm on SugarCube2.14

In the situation the player is posed a question and has five possible choices of answer. One is correct and will lead out of the "loop", and every other answer will lead to a passage with text specific to that answer, with the same choices as before minus the one they just clicked.

My attempt to do this was the following: I have two passages: startpage and startpage2.

In startpage the first link is

[[Pray?->startpage2][$pray to "true"]]

and in startpage2 I put

<<if $pray is true>>'That may be the dumbest thing I've heard all day, and trust me, I've heard a LOT of dumb sh*t today.'<</if>>

I did the same for the other resulting answers, and for the choices displayed in startpage2 I put

<<if $pray is false>>[[Pray?]]<</if>>

so that it won't display when you have already clicked it in startpage.

Anyone know if this is the right approach, or am I completely mad? I must be somewhat mad, because my version doesn't work - the startpage2 answer doesn't display.

Another issue I see with this is the empty space created by the hidden answers in startpage2.

I would really appreciate any help with this. Cheers,
Jellyfoosh