The Brand Wanted Lucy in Front

“Let her be angry,” I told Lucy. The certainty in my own voice surprised me. “You don’t have to fix it.”

She lowered the tissue from her face. Her cheeks were blotched, her eyelids puffy. Nothing about her looked like a fast-rising influencer just then. She looked like a kid who’d come home from a miserable day at school.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice unsteady. “I know you wanted that campaign. I never went after it, Tessa. I swear. I didn’t even know which company it was.”

“I believe you,” I said. And I did.

“You’ve been angry with me for ages,” she went on, words spilling out before she could stop them. “When we film, you hardly look at me now. You keep your eyes on the camera. I thought I was making your videos worse.”

My stomach seemed to drop through the bed. “Lucy, that’s not it. I thought you were happy about all the attention you’ve been getting.”

“I can’t stand it,” she cried. Tears welled up again and ran down her face. She snatched a cushion and pressed it against her chest. “I hate it, Tessa. Even when Mom says my numbers are great, I hate hearing it.”

I stared at her, unable to follow. “But she’s telling you that you did well.”

“If they’re high now, they can fall later,” Lucy said, nearly whispering. Fear had crept into her voice. “Then it’ll be because of me. When a video doesn’t do well, Mom doesn’t yell or anything. She just looks at her laptop and breathes out like she’s disappointed. She gets that line between her eyebrows. I think maybe I didn’t grin enough, or I wasn’t excited enough about some dumb vitamin chew.”

I stayed still, taking in what she was saying.

I had treated the analytics like a race. Every time I checked the dashboard, I’d thought I was watching my little sister pull ahead of me.

Lucy had never seen a finish line there. To her, those numbers were a verdict on whether she mattered to our mother.

“I pretend I like things, too,” she said. “Last week, I smiled the whole time Mom filmed that clothes haul, even though the tag kept scraping my neck. And I did the morning routine on Saturday with a headache. I just want Mom to quit watching the numbers.”

“Oh, Luce.” I reached for her and drew her against my side. She sagged into me, burying her face in my shoulder as small sobs shook her.

I rested my chin against her hair and looked past her at the wall. The sting of feeling pushed aside vanished, swallowed by a heavier guilt. I had left her to manage all of this on her own. My pride had kept me from seeing a twelve-year-old struggling beneath the attention of millions of strangers. Our family’s business had set up a contest between us, and I’d been foolish enough to compete.

A board groaned somewhere in the hall.

I lifted my head.

Our door stood ajar by a few inches.

Rachel was there, partly hidden by the doorway, her phone still in one hand. The color had drained from her face.

She’d heard Lucy.

I met her eyes through the narrow opening and held them. I didn’t flinch or glance away. Instead, I tightened my arms around my sister, as if I could keep her safe from any talk of contracts, bills, or algorithms.

Rachel looked down at Lucy, curled against me and crying into my sweater. Then she looked at me. I couldn’t read her expression. It seemed caught between shock, the urge to defend herself, and something uncomfortably close to shame.

She said nothing. Slowly, she drew the door shut until the latch clicked, leaving Lucy and me by ourselves.

I kept holding Lucy until her breaths grew steady. At last, she pulled back and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. The whole house had gone quiet.

“Do you think she called the company?” Lucy asked under her breath.

“I honestly don’t know,” I answered.

I got up and opened the door. No one was in the hall. I walked along the carpet quietly, then leaned over the wooden railing to see the living room below.

Mom sat by herself at the dining table.

Her laptop was open. Its bright display stood out against the afternoon light fading around it. From the stairs, I could make out the colored bars and lines of the channel dashboard: how long people watched, how many clicked, whether they stayed, and what turned into sales.

Every part of it measured. Every part of our lives turned into figures rising or dropping.

Rachel only watched the screen. Her hands rested folded in her lap. She neither typed nor moved the cursor. She sat motionless with the numbers she’d used to judge our lives, while the pointer blinked in the silent room.

The following morning, our house seemed like an exhibit after closing time. A thick quiet lingered, the sort that comes after something breaks, when everyone is awake but no one wants to speak first.

Saturday mornings were usually a performance of cheerful efficiency. Weekends were our best chance to make content. By eight, Mom would have brightened the kitchen with artificial daylight, the espresso machine would be hissing, and soft lo-fi music would be coming from a wireless speaker to set the scene for whatever weekend reset video we planned to film.

But that morning, our usual busy routine was gone. In its place was a weighty silence.