The Brand Wanted Lucy in Front

By morning, the kitchen had sunk into shadow. Cloud-heavy skies pressed against the closed linen drapes, and the room felt smaller without its usual staged brightness. The big ring light had been folded down and propped beside the pantry, its limbs tucked in like some abandoned creature.

I found Mom at the island, still in the place where I’d seen her the previous night.

Her white shirt was the same one she’d worn before, but sleep and worry had wrinkled it. The laptop remained open before her. Beside it, a cup of coffee had gone cold, and a legal pad was crowded with her hurried, angular notes.

The box of pink skincare products had disappeared.

I crossed to the fridge, conscious of each quiet step over the chilled floorboards. I filled a glass and waited, giving her a chance to speak first. When she kept staring at the screen, I turned toward her from the counter.

“So they canceled on us?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

Rachel’s gaze stayed on the laptop. Her fingertips hovered at the trackpad. “The company withdrew the campaign. They’re giving the money to a creator in Los Angeles instead. The agency is furious with me. We didn’t meet the schedule we signed.”

“Could they take us to court?”

“No.” Her voice sounded scraped thin. “There’s a cancellation penalty. We lose the payment for this video, and they’ll cut our commissions on the next two deals. If the agency offers us any high-end campaigns this quarter, which I doubt. You need ten million subscribers before you can make trouble for people in this business. We have three.”

At last, she raised her face. Her eyes were red, and exhaustion had darkened the skin underneath them. I’d braced myself for the anger she usually wore whenever filming plans went wrong. What I saw instead was fear, bare and frightening.

“I’m sorry about the money,” I said. The apology surprised me because I knew I meant it.

“It’s bigger than the money, Tessa,” she murmured. “We have to keep moving. The algorithm is like a predator: stop feeding it what it wants, and it drops you. It makes you invisible. And if that happens to us...” She made a small, helpless motion toward the immaculate kitchen. “I took out another mortgage on this house. I didn’t do that so we could lose everything because you girls had one terrible day.”

Her admission seemed to fill the room. Another mortgage. I had believed the channel earned enough to pay for our home; I hadn’t realized our home had been put at risk to keep the channel alive.

“You should have told us,” I said.

“You’re kids,” she answered, her guard rising again. “You shouldn’t have to think about the mortgage. Your responsibility is to do your jobs.”

“This isn’t only a job, Mom.” I left the counter and came nearer to the island. “We’re the thing being sold. Yesterday, you treated Lucy like she was more valuable than I was, and treated me like you could replace me without a second thought.”

Rachel shut her eyes and pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “I was checking the numbers. The data doesn’t care how anyone feels, Tessa. It shows what gets results.”

“But we do care.” I kept my voice gentle. “Lucy was sobbing in her room because she’s scared of disappointing you. She thinks a video doing badly means she didn’t smile enough. She thinks you love her according to how many people click.”

Mom’s hands went still. When she opened her eyes, she seemed to be looking past the island’s dark surface. “I never meant for her to think that,” she said, her voice breaking. “I thought letting you see the figures was honest. I thought I was including you as partners.”

“A chart can’t tell you what a twelve-year-old is worth,” I said softly. “You can’t turn that into a graph and expect her not to believe it.”

I dragged one of the heavy stools closer and sat opposite her. On the laptop, the creator dashboard still glowed with green and red marks, a tidy display of retention, viewing time, and audience details that made everything seem coldly simple.

“We need rules,” I said. My voice felt calmer than I did.

Rachel blinked, as if I’d called her back from a place she hadn’t meant to go. “Rules?”

“If we’re going to keep making videos. If we’re going to keep this house.” I reached across and lowered the laptop lid until it shut with a soft snap. The screen’s light vanished from the island. “First: no more telling either of us our personal numbers. You don’t share my results with me or Lucy’s with her.”

Rachel looked down at the closed computer. “How can I improve the channel if I’m not allowed to talk about how it’s performing?”

“You can talk about the videos. You can’t talk about us as if we’re figures you can adjust. And there’s another rule: if a brand asks for one sister, that sister gets to say no on her own. If I refuse, I’m out. If Lucy refuses, she’s out. No pushing, no making us feel guilty, and no swapping one of us for the other when we’re standing right here.”

Rachel exhaled slowly, unsteadily. Her eyes moved across the costly kitchen she had made our workplace, every polished surface dependent on us agreeing to smile for a camera. The power she’d relied on had shifted. Yesterday had shown her the whole arrangement stopped working when its most important parts refused to turn.

She looked at the closed laptop, then back at me. “All right,” Rachel said quietly. “We’ll do it your way. Those are the rules.”