It was the saddest thing she'd ever understood. It was also the first thing in two years that had felt like a gift.
Chapter 10: Sharp Edges
Rehearsal week had a rhythm, and the rhythm was punishment disguised as a schedule.
Call time at eight. Band practice at nine. Vocal check at eleven. Choreography review — even for the singers who didn't dance — at one. Camera blocking at three. Then notes from Evelyn Marsh's producers, which were never really notes about singing. "Smile more on the downbeat." "Can you look more grateful when the camera finds you?" "Less subway, more stage, you know what I mean?"
Harmony knew what they meant.
Vivienne Carr's schedule was, by some coincidence, always overlapping Harmony's. Twice that week — twice — Harmony arrived at the band room to find Vivienne already there, running through her own arrangement in Harmony's booked slot, all sweetness and apology when Harmony appeared in the doorway.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry — did they double-book us? I'll be done in like ten minutes." The first time, Harmony believed her. The second time, Vivienne's smile didn't reach her eyes, and Harmony stood in the hallway listening to Vivienne's perfect, gleaming voice through the door and felt her own slot shrinking like a shirt in hot water.
On Thursday morning, the blind item dropped.
It was one of those gossip accounts with a million followers and no bylines: Show insiders say the subway girl's homelessness is exaggerated — it's all producers' theater. "She has a place to stay. It's a storyline."
By noon it was everywhere. The same people who'd cried at her audition were now calling her a fraud in her comments. The pile-on was uglier this time, because betrayal has a sharper flavor than pity.
"They're saying I'm lying," Harmony told Jonah in the green room, scrolling with numb fingers. "About being homeless. About everything."
Jonah Reyes sat down beside her — he was the only contestant who ever sat beside her instead of across from her — and read over her shoulder, his jaw working.
"That's garbage," he said. "I see you get on the downtown train with your guitar case every night. I see you, Harmony."
"Seeing isn't proving," she said.
"Then watch this." He took out his phone, and right there in the green room he posted a video to his own feed — his face, no filter, no polish. "Hey. Jonah here. That rumor about Harmony is a lie, and whoever planted it is a coward. I've stood next to this girl for three weeks. Her shoes have a hole in them. Her story is real. Do better."
He posted it before she could stop him.
"Jonah —"
"They're not going to eat you alive on my watch," he said simply. "Somebody has to say it."
By that evening the video had more views than the blind item. But the damage had already moved into Harmony's chest, where it sat like something she'd swallowed. That night she told Denise she was thinking of quitting.
They were in Denise's studio, the sun long gone, the room lit by one lamp. Harmony sat on the piano bench with her hands wrapped around a cold mug.
"It's not worth it," she said. "The stage isn't worth being eaten alive."
Denise listened the way she did everything — completely, without interrupting. Then she said, "They want you small. That's the whole game, baby. They want you small enough to fit in the box they built for you — the subway girl, the pity act, the fraud, whatever's convenient. And the minute you sing big, the box breaks, and they hate you for it."
"So I should just take it?"
"No. You should sing big anyway." Denise leaned forward, and the lamplight caught the silver at her temples. "Let me tell you something about 1998. I was the biggest thing on that tour and I still had a manager who told me to smile prettier, sing smaller, don't scare the sponsors. I spent two years sanding my own edges off before I learned: the people who want you small will never love you big. They'll only love the version of you that fits."
Harmony looked down at her hands — the calluses from the guitar strings, the chipped nail polish Tee had painted on her thumb as a joke.
"Your mama quit that tour," Denise went on, quieter now. "Walked away from the biggest stage she'd ever stood on, because she was going to have you. She chose big — the biggest thing there is. Don't you dare choose small now."
Harmony was quiet a long time. Then she stood up.
The hallway outside the rehearsal rooms was empty except for Vivienne Carr, leaning against the wall with her phone, looking — for once — like a seventeen-year-old instead of a product.
"I know it was you," Harmony said. "Or somebody working for you. The blind item. The band slots."
Vivienne's face didn't change, but her thumb stopped moving on her screen. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes, you do." Harmony's voice was steady. She was surprised at how steady it was. "You don't have to like me. You don't have to be my friend. But don't lie about me. My mama died. I sleep at a shelter. That's not a storyline. That's my life."
For a second — just a second — something in Vivienne's face cracked. Not guilt, exactly. Something more like recognition, as if she'd seen herself from the outside and hadn't liked the view. For one unguarded heartbeat she looked seventeen and tired and almost human, and Harmony wondered what it cost to be Vivienne Carr — the coaches, the image, the mother probably waiting by the phone. Then the polish snapped back into place.
"I have a rehearsal," Vivienne said, and walked away, her heels clicking too fast.
Harmony stood in the empty hallway and felt something settle in her chest. She wasn't quitting. She was staying. And she knew, with a sudden clean certainty, exactly what she was going to sing.
In her notebook, in careful block letters, she wrote her semifinal song choice and slid it under Evelyn Marsh's office door.
She didn't tell anyone what it was. Some things you keep until the lights go down.
Chapter 11: The Demo Tape