The Voice They Didn't Deserve

Chapter 3 What Selena Knows

Selena kept her old trophies in a box under her bed instead of on a shelf.

Mira found her on the fire escape after dinner, an unlit cigarette turning between two fingers, the way she always was when the apartment got too loud with things nobody was saying.

"Mom told me." Selena didn't look over.

"I already said yes."

Selena's laugh had no humor in it. She lit the cigarette, hands steadier than her voice. "Of course you did."

"It's not the same as what happened to you."

"That's what they always say." She took a drag, watching the street instead of her sister.

Mira sat down across from her, the metal grating cold through her jeans. Below, a car alarm went off somewhere down the block, sharp and then silent, and neither of them acknowledged it. A window across the alley threw light onto the fire escape in a thin yellow bar, and Selena sat just outside the edge of it, like she'd chosen the spot on purpose.

"You used to sit right here," Mira said. "Before every competition. I remember watching you from the window."

"I remember." Selena's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "You used to bring me a glass of water and stand there like a tiny bodyguard until I drank it."

"You never drank it fast enough."

"I was savoring the moment." Selena flicked ash over the railing. "You were seven. You had no idea what savoring meant."

"I knew you were scared. I didn't need to know the word for it."

That landed somewhere Selena didn't seem ready for. She looked down at the alley for a moment, quiet, the cigarette forgotten between her fingers, before she spoke again, voice lower. "What actually happened?" Mira asked eventually. "You never told me the whole thing."

Selena's jaw worked. She looked at the cigarette instead of Mira. "Someday."

"Selena—"

"Not tonight." She reached over without looking and gripped Mira's hand, hard. "Promise me something instead. If it ever costs you more than it pays you, you walk. I don't care what the contract says."

"I promise."

Her grip loosened, but she didn't let go, and they sat there until the cigarette burned down to nothing, unsmoked past the first drag, ash finally dropping away into the alley below.

"You should go in," Selena said finally. "It's getting cold."

"You coming?"

"In a minute."

Mira paused at the window, one leg already through it. "Selena. Thank you. For tonight, on the phone, before. For not just telling me no."

Selena's mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "Don't thank me yet. Thank me if this actually goes well."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then I'll still be sitting right here. That part doesn't change." Selena said it simply, like it wasn't even a question, and something about the flatness of it made it land harder than if she'd tried to sound reassuring.

Mira climbed back through the window and left her there, the city noise filling the space behind her, one small light left burning on the fire escape long after Mira had gone to bed.

In the kitchen, Camille was still up, sitting at the table with a cup of tea gone cold in front of her, staring at nothing in particular. She looked up when Mira came through.

"Is she okay out there?"

"She will be." Mira sat down across from her. "She made me promise something. That if this whole thing ever costs more than it pays, I walk away."

Camille's expression softened into something complicated, grief and relief tangled together. "That sounds like her. Always trying to protect you from the thing she couldn't protect herself from."

"Was it really that bad? What happened to her?"

"That's her story to tell you, not mine." Camille reached across the table and squeezed Mira's hand. "Just know that whatever you decide, I'm not going to be the reason you're scared to try. I've watched both my daughters go quiet in different ways since that show ruined things for Selena. I'd rather see you loud and a little reckless than safe and disappearing."

Mira hadn't expected that, and it sat in her chest a long moment before she found anything to say back. "Thank you for saying that."

"Don't thank me yet." Camille almost smiled, echoing Selena without seeming to notice she'd done it. "Thank me if this actually goes well."

The contract arrived two days later, delivered by courier to the diner where Mira worked, which felt like its own small violation, Cross's world reaching into hers before she'd even signed anything. Hal, her manager, watched the courier leave with open curiosity and didn't ask, which was one of the few things Mira actually liked about him. He'd hired her without asking too many questions eight months ago, and he'd kept not asking ever since, which suited them both fine. He did slide an extra plate of fries across the counter that night, unprompted, the closest thing to a question he was willing to ask out loud.

"On the house," he said. "You look like you could use it."

"Thanks, Hal."

"Don't mention it. Literally. I'll deny it if the district manager asks."

She read every line twice at the kitchen table that night, Camille hovering nearby, a dish towel worried between her hands like it might unravel if she wasn't careful with it.

Full anonymity guaranteed by production. Identity reveal only by contestant's own choice, or by majority audience vote after a minimum of six masked performances. Payment per episode, escalating with audience ranking.

"Six performances," Mira said out loud, mostly to herself.

"Is that good or bad?" Camille asked.

"I don't know yet." Mira read the clause a third time. "Six chances for something to go wrong before I even get a say in whether it goes wrong."

"You don't have to do this."

"I know." Mira signed anyway, the pen heavier in her hand than a piece of plastic had any right to be.

The mask itself arrived a week later in a box with no return address, black lace and silver thread, beautiful in a way that made Mira's stomach turn when she held it up to her own reflection. It covered everything from her hairline to her jaw, leaving only her eyes and mouth exposed. She put it on alone in her room and almost didn't recognize the girl looking back at her, a stranger wearing her own face's bottom half, eyes the only part left that still looked entirely like Mira Castillo.

Good, she thought. That's the point.

Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number, one she'd been given for the show, the only line of communication Cross had authorized.

First taping is Friday. Car will pick you up at six. Tell your family you're working a double at the diner.

Mira set the mask down carefully on her desk, like it might bruise if she wasn't gentle with it, and stared at the lie already forming, already necessary, already the first of many she hadn't fully counted yet.

She practiced it once, quietly, in the mirror, the way she'd practiced apologies as a kid before delivering them to teachers. Working a double at the diner. Simple. Believable. The kind of lie her mother wouldn't think twice about, because it was the kind of thing Mira actually did most weeks anyway. That was the part that scared her most, not the lie itself, but how easily it fit into a life already built out of small sacrifices nobody questioned.

She turned off her lamp and lay in the dark with the mask still sitting on her desk, a pale shape she could just make out against the wall, and didn't sleep for a long time.