The Voice They Didn't Deserve

Chapter 5 The Lie Gets Harder

The second lie came easier than the first, which was the part that scared Mira the most.

She'd rehearsed it in her head the whole walk down from her room, the exact tone she needed, casual, a little tired, the voice of someone who genuinely minded picking up an extra shift rather than someone counting down the minutes until a car pulled up outside.

"Another double?" Camille didn't look up from the stack of mail she was sorting at the kitchen table, bills separated from everything else into two piles that both looked too thin. "You just did one Friday."

"Marisol's kid has a fever." Mira kept folding the same shirt, hands busy so they wouldn't give her away. "It's good money, Mom. I'll take it."

"You work too hard already."

"So do you." It came out sharper than she meant, and Camille's eyes flicked up for just a second, something unreadable passing behind them before she went back to the mail.

"Six o'clock again?"

"Six."

Camille nodded slowly, still sorting, and Mira slipped out the door before either of them could say anything else, the lie sitting heavier in her chest with every step down the stairwell.

Talia was waiting at the bus stop two blocks down, arms crossed, expression already unimpressed before Mira even reached her.

"You're doing the thing," Talia said.

"What thing?"

"The thing where you lie to your mother's face and think I don't notice because I'm not the one standing in the kitchen." Talia fell into step beside her, matching her pace even though Mira was walking faster than usual, faster than she needed to. "Another double at the diner. Real original."

"Talia—"

"I called Marisol. Casually. Asked if she needed help covering Mira's shift since her kid was sick." Talia let that sit for a second, watching Mira's face do exactly what she expected it to do. "Marisol's kid isn't sick. Marisol doesn't even have a kid."

Mira stopped walking. The street around them kept moving, cars and noise and someone's music drifting from an open window, and none of it touched the sudden, ringing silence between them.

"I can't tell you," Mira said finally.

"You don't have to tell me anything. I already know." Talia's voice dropped, softer now, less accusation and more worry. "I recognized the song, Mira. The one on Hidden Voices last week. I've heard you hum that exact melody in my bedroom a hundred times since freshman year. You think I wouldn't know your own voice with a mask over it?"

Mira's stomach dropped somewhere near her shoes. "You can't say anything. To anyone, not your mom, not—"

"Mira." Talia grabbed her arm, gentle but firm, forcing her to actually look at her. "I'm not going to say anything. I'm asking you why you didn't tell me yourself."

"Because I didn't know how to say it without it sounding insane. A producer offered me money to sing on TV wearing a mask so nobody knows it's me, and I said yes, and now I'm lying to my own mother every week to make it work."

"That's not insane. That's actually kind of incredible."

"It's terrifying."

"Those two things can both be true." Talia's grip softened into something closer to a hug. "I've been your best friend since sixth grade. I held your hair back the night you found out about Selena's scholarship falling through. I'm not going anywhere just because you finally have something good happening to you."

Mira felt her eyes sting and blinked hard against it. "It's not just good. It's terrifying. Cross has this whole system, the mask, the contract, six performances before anyone can even vote to unmask me, and every single day feels like it's one mistake away from falling apart."

"Then let me help carry some of it." Talia said it simply, like it wasn't even a question. "I can cover for you better than Marisol's fake sick kid, for one thing. I can actually be where you say you are if your mom calls to check."

"You'd do that?"

"I'm already doing it. I've been doing it since the day I recognized your voice and didn't say anything, because I figured you'd tell me when you were ready." Talia bumped her shoulder against Mira's, lighter now, some of the tension breaking. "You're just annoyingly slow sometimes."

Mira laughed, short and surprised, the first real laugh she'd let herself have in days. "I hate that you're right."

"I'm always right. It's exhausting, honestly, being this right all the time." Talia started walking again, pulling Mira along with her. "Okay. Tell me everything. What's the studio like. Is the producer creepy. Is Dana as intense in person as she seems on camera. I need details, I've been dying inside pretending I don't already know."

Mira told her, in pieces, the whole walk to the bus stop, the warehouse, the mask, Dana's gold one and her strange half-wistful comment about being more herself under it, Cross's clipped texts that always felt one degree short of reassuring. Talia listened without interrupting, the way she almost never did, filing every detail away like she planned to need it later.

"He sounds like he's hiding something," Talia said finally.

"Everyone in that building feels like they're hiding something. Including me."

"Fair point." Talia sat with that a second. "You're allowed to be scared and still tell me things, you know. That's kind of the whole point of me."

Mira sat with that for a moment. More you, not less.

"It's not just the money," she said slowly, testing the words before she fully committed to them. "Or even the singing, exactly. It's that for the first time in three years, I don't feel like I'm apologizing for taking up space."

Talia didn't say anything right away, just looked at her for a long moment, something soft and a little sad passing behind her eyes. She reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind Mira's ear, the same gesture she'd been doing since middle school, before she finally spoke. "You shouldn't have had to feel that way in the first place."

"I know. I'm working on believing that without a mask on."

Talia squeezed her hand once, then let it go, and they walked in comfortable silence for half a block, the kind of quiet that only worked between people who'd already said the hard part out loud.

For the first time since Cross had handed her that card outside the auditorium, Mira let herself talk without editing, without measuring every word for what it might give away, walking two blocks toward a bus stop with the one person in her life who'd caught her lie and chosen her anyway.

They were still talking, still walking, when Talia's phone buzzed in her pocket, and she glanced down at it without really looking, still mid-sentence about Dana's gold mask, when her whole face changed.

"Mira." Talia's voice had gone tight, urgent in a way it hadn't been a second ago. "You need to see this."

She turned the screen around, and Mira's stomach hit the pavement before she'd even fully read the headline scrolling across a fan account's latest post, a grainy photo attached beneath it, taken from an angle just outside the studio's loading dock two nights ago.

A girl in a black lace mask. Getting into a car with a license plate half visible in the frame.

And underneath it, already gathering comments, a caption that made Mira's blood run cold.

Does anyone recognize this street? I think Hidden Voices films closer to Ridgemont than they're letting on.

Mira read it twice, the easy warmth of the last ten minutes draining out of her all at once, replaced by the same cold, watchful feeling she used to get walking past Brianna's table before she'd learned exactly how to disappear.