The Brand Wanted Lucy in Front

“All right,” Rachel murmured. “I’ll stick to that.”

The first real test of the rules came before the week was out.

A careful kind of quiet had settled over our house. We’d uploaded two relaxed vlog videos: one of us baking, another of us sorting through a closet. Neither needed much pretending.

The comments were ordinary, and the strain between us had eased a little. Nobody called it fixed. We were all just trying not to disturb the peace.

On Thursday, Lucy sat at the coffee table in the living room, working through her math. I had been scrolling on the couch, but my phone lowered when Mom came in.

I knew that set to her shoulders. Rachel had switched herself into manager mode, though she held her tablet against her chest and seemed to be trying to soften her face.

“Lucy, could I ask you something?”

Lucy paused with her pencil above a fraction. “Sure.”

“The agency sent over a proposal,” Rachel said. “A toy brand is bringing out electronic pets, and they’d like to include one in a sponsored video.” She hesitated.

“They asked for you in particular,” she added. “They think you’re right for the age group.”

Everything in the room seemed to stop. Lucy’s shoulders drew upward, and I saw the familiar alarm cross her face—the thought of another performance, another camera.

She glanced down at the worksheet. “I don’t like those toys much, Mom. They make too much noise.”

Rachel’s fingers tightened around the tablet. I could almost see her doing the sums in her head, weighing the payment against the rule we’d made.

“It’s a really good fee, Luce,” she started. “And the script is easy. There are only three points you’d need to—”

Lucy lifted her eyes to Rachel’s. She didn’t protest or get upset. She only waited, quietly asking whether our agreement meant anything when money was involved.

For a few long seconds, Mom didn’t answer. The silence seemed delicate enough to break if one of us moved.

Then she blinked. Her shoulders dropped, and she looked toward the floor with a small, tired breath.

“You’re right,” Rachel said, the polished tone gone. “I’m sorry I tried to talk you into it. I’ll turn it down.”

Lucy released the breath she’d been holding. “Thanks, Mom.”

Rachel nodded and headed back toward her office. She moved quickly, before either of us could read the worry about the lost payment in her expression. But she did decline it.

Two days after that, another proposal arrived through the agency. This one was for a small haircare company whose products were aimed at older teenagers.

They hadn’t asked for me by name, but the audience they wanted fit mine. I said yes. We needed the income, and I wanted to know whether I could still manage it.

Some part of me wanted to show myself I hadn’t forgotten how to be on camera just because Lucy had become the algorithm’s current favorite.

By Saturday afternoon, I was alone in my bedroom with a bottle of texture spray in hand. The ring light blazed over my vanity as I reviewed the campaign notes.

The moment I faced the camera, my body stiffened. I kept thinking about the numbers, and about the comments saying I came across too much like a businessperson.

I worried over my smile, shifted my shoulders, then tried to sit straighter. The harder I worked at seeming natural, the less natural I felt.

I stopped the recording for the fourth time and bowed my head, covering my face with both hands.

My door eased open, and Lucy peered inside. “You’ve been at this for ages. Mom’s walking back and forth out there, but she’s not coming in because of the rules.”

I groaned. “I can’t make the first line sound right. I keep coming off like a robot explaining a warranty.”

Lucy crossed to the ring light and studied its hard, white glare. She turned the control, lowering the brightness and shifting the light toward a gentler gold.

The room changed at once. It felt less like somewhere I was being examined and more like my own bedroom again.

“You’re so stiff,” Lucy said, resting against the doorway. “You look like you’re about to present a report in history class.”

“I have to cover what they put in the brief,” I said, even though I knew she had a point.

“Then tell it to me,” she said. She sat on the floor below the tripod, outside the shot but right in front of me. “Act like I asked how to fix my hair when it’s a total bird’s nest.”

I looked down at her. Her big hoodie bunched around her knees, and she smiled up at me like she meant it.

There was no scorekeeping in her face, no bitterness about whose video was doing better. She was simply Lucy, my little sister, helping me through a hard moment.

I reached for the record button.

Instead of staring into the lens, I aimed my eyes just below it, toward her. “Okay, let’s talk about those mornings when your hair refuses to behave,” I began.

For once, my voice sounded like it belonged to me. I wasn’t addressing millions of strangers; I was answering my sister.

The bottle cap slipped from my fingers and tapped against the vanity. Lucy gave a quiet laugh from just beyond the frame, and I laughed too, rolling my eyes as I carried on.

We finished the haircare integration together in a single take.