The Glassbox hums like an aquarium—fans, compressors, the low electric purr that makes my ribcage vibrate before I say a word. I sip water I won’t taste, and the studio gives me the smell I always taste: not coffee, not dust—an iron tang from the XLRs and that faint sweetness from the candy factory two blocks over. Outside, the tidal creek has crept up past the curb again, full moon doing what it does to our neighborhood: turning the sidewalk into a shallow mirror. I can feel it in my shoes when I walked in, that damp cuff at the ankle that keeps a person honest.
“We promised you ethics tonight,” I tell the mic. “No dramatics, no leaks. This is a listener-led segment. We’ll talk about what to share, when, and who decides. We’ll talk about risk. We’ll talk about a woman named Alina Brooks.”
Jonah’s hand floats into my eyeline through the glass. He taps two fingers by his temple—focus—then points to the screen where calls queue like blinking metronomes. He mouths, “Professor first.” I nod. The chat races: #SleepingAngels, #ShowThePage, and a new one that pricks like a thorn: #NoMoreDeadAir.
I press the fader. “Caller, you’re on with me. First name and field?”
“Mara, it’s Dr. Lenore Edgerton,” the voice says—warm, precise, carrying chalk dust from classrooms I never finished paying for. “Ethics of Media, St. Albans University. I emailed earlier.”
“Dr. Edgerton, thank you for making time.”
“You asked for accountability,” she says. “So let’s test it. Have you shared all material evidence with law enforcement?”
“Yes,” I say, back straightening against the chair. “Copies of both pages and the cassette’s existence are logged with Detective Park’s team. We’re following chain-of-custody instructions.”
“And yet,” she says, “you plan to read from material in evidence. Why?”
“Because silence is a story someone else tells,” I answer. The pen in my fingers ticks the desk like a second, third, fourth hand. “There’s public danger here. The Director is pre-wiring stages—literal and digital—and pulling civilians toward them. I believe selective transparency can keep people safer.”
“Selective is the hinge,” she says. “Who selects? You monetize attention. Your audience wants a hit. You are rewarded for heat.”
The sentence lands like a small public slap. I let air fill my mouth before words. “We’re ad-supported, yes, but we’ve taken losses for safety before. We refuse certain calls. We delay releases when witnesses ask.”
“But you invited an unscreened anniversary call that led to this escalation.”
The chat tangles: she said unscreened, she knows, prof’s right, don’t fold, we love you, but. I flatten my palm on the desk so the pen won’t audition for a snare drum.
“That was a mistake,” I say. “I own it. We pivoted. Tonight is about building a better protocol in public.”
“Then demonstrate restraint,” Dr. Edgerton says. “Read only what cannot harm witnesses or poison juries. And say why you’re stopping where you stop.”
I look at the cream page facedown beside my keyboard—the copy I made for quoting with brackets. The watermark cherub smiles under UV and rot under daytime. I can still taste pine from the lake house and the copper coin of fear when I saw the lens in the cattails.
“Agreed,” I say. I flip the page. Paper whispers. “From the Orpheum envelope, Act I: ‘A bow is acknowledgement. Kneel where it began.’ From the lake, Act II: ‘Give the lake its applause. Then take a bow where you learned to listen.’”
I stop. My throat wants to read the stage direction that writes my sister into a cue. My jaw locks.
“I’m stopping,” I say, “because the next line uses family language not previously public. Sharing it would increase risk to someone I love and lessens our ability to authenticate future communications. I will not—”
“So you are the gatekeeper,” Dr. Edgerton says gently. “As you have always been.”
“Tonight I’m the lock and the door,” I say, and it’s a better line than a confession. “The Director wants a spotlight. I’m dimming it where it burns a person instead of illuminating a pattern.”
“Then say it plain,” she says. “What is the public interest?”
“The public interest,” I say, “is that the Director uses pre-placed cameras to steer narrative and lure crowds. He’s staging harm as pedagogy. We must not become his production crew.”
The chat spikes: pre-placed cams???, where??, link??, don’t post, Elena will flip. Jonah lifts a hand, palm down, easing the room like he’s smoothing a wrinkle in air. I watch his thumb hover over the cough button that kills me, and I shake my head: keep me hot.
“Thank you for the clarity,” Dr. Edgerton says. “One more: Will you profit from this episode if your sponsors stay?”
I swallow. “Downloads keep the lights on and the tips line staffed. I’m committing all ad revenue from this episode to victim services and witness security. We’ll publish the receipt.”
A beat. “Then my students will have a better class tomorrow,” she says. The call drops with a soft click.
Micro-hook: The queue pulses; the next light blares red like a siren wrapped in silicone. I brace for a kind voice. I don’t get one.
“Mara,” the next caller breathes, too loud, too close, “you’re Director-lite.”
“Name?” I say, keeping the syllables clean.
“Call me AngelMaker,” they say, and the cheap God complex in the username grits my teeth. “You orchestrated this from episode one. You planted your own page. You’re reading your own script.”
“We screen for bad faith on this segment,” I say. “Do you have verifiable information? A date, a place, a link to share with detectives?”
“I have eyes,” AngelMaker sneers. “I saw your van at the Orpheum the minute you told chat not to go. Coincidence? You ‘found’ a camera because you brought it.”
Jonah raises his eyebrows through the glass: Cut? I hold his stare and let the caller hang themselves with additional rope.
“You say transparency,” the voice goes on, “but you decide which lines to read and which to hide. That’s staging. That’s production. That’s you playing innocent while feeding the mob.”
“You want me to dump unredacted evidence into a chat room,” I say, “so an abuser can index it and tune his traps?”
“I want you to admit you love the spotlight,” they hiss. “Say you are the Director’s understudy.”
My hand flinches toward the mute button. I stop it. “I love survivors more than applause,” I say. “I can prove it. I won’t risk a witness for your dopamine.”
“Fake,” the voice spits. “Director-lite.”
I cut the line.
The studio swells with the sound-canvas I control: room tone, fans, my own breath. I look into the glass. Jonah is already typing, shoulders hunched, a scowl denting his forehead. Our silent language is older than this war—tour vans and salvage gigs and bad monitors—but tonight every look is new weight.
He turns his phone so I can see it. The text glows like a razor:
Sponsor A: We need to pause placements until this settles. Safety optics are too hot.
The words jam under my ribs. Another text stacks a second bruise:
Sponsor B: Pulling this week’s midroll. Reassess after your statement.
I mouth, “Both?” Jonah nods once. He slides two faders down—not my mic, but the music beds I was going to use to cool the room. He leaves me bare.
“Listeners,” I say, and the microphone enlarges my throat like theater. “I just received messages that some sponsors are pausing placements. That’s their right. Here’s ours: we will keep reporting with safety first. We will publish receipts and timelines. We will not read lines that endanger a living person.”
The chat fractures: proud of you, sellout, Director-lite called it, we’ll fund you, Patreon?, do a pledge drive, read the line.
Sweat collects under my headphones. The foam pads smell faintly like other nights I didn’t want to remember—fear’s salt, hope’s musk. I tap the page with my nail. Paper answers with a tiny dull ring.
“Here’s the line I will read,” I say. “Act II contains a directive to notify law enforcement rather than the Night Choir. We did. We will continue to. Some updates will arrive late or not at all, because they don’t belong to me. They belong to the people we’re trying to keep whole.”
The phone bank flares again. Jonah holds up a finger: last call before break. I nod and press.
“You’re live,” I say.
“You want a suggestion?” the new caller says, voice older, smoked, the crackle of late-night diners in it. “Release a principles doc. No spoilers, just ethics. So the Choir knows where the line is.”
“We actually drafted a pledge,” I say, words untangling into an idea I can hold. “We pinned it last night—no doxxing, delay on sensitive tips, victim-first. We can expand. We can add what we owe law enforcement and what we expect from you.”
“Post it wide,” the caller says, and hangs up before I can ask their name, which feels like a benediction I haven’t earned.
I hit music for a break I didn’t plan—a thin pad without drums, just air and a slow synth that could be the creek when it breathes over rocks. I take off my headphones and rub the line they left on my hair. My head throbs in the place between temples where decisions calcify.
Jonah cracks the door and slips into the room with cat feet. The coat he hung earlier smells like rain from when he moved cables during last night’s flood. He doesn’t sit.
“They’re spooked,” he says quietly. “We can switch to listener-funded by next month if we trim payroll and kill two field rentals.”
“Field rentals are how we move in time,” I say. “They’re how we meet people off mic.”
“Then we make the case on air,” he says. “Ask for direct support without guilt and without the circus. But right now—read less. You gave them enough.”
“Elena will call me a sieve if I give more,” I say.
“Elena already calls you a lot of things,” he says, mouth twitching. “Some of them compliments.”
I exhale through my nose and stack my pages into a squared deck. My hands stop shaking against the paper when I find edges that agree.
“We could do dumplings,” Jonah says suddenly. “After. With Elena. Off-email. Off-mic. Old détente rules.”
“Off-mic,” I repeat, and the words unclench a muscle I didn’t know was locked. “Yes. Dumplings.”
He squeezes my shoulder once, warm, then slides back into the control room. I watch him like a wave about to break: reliable, salty, too strong to drink.
Micro-hook: The chat explodes with a new tag: #DirectorLite—half-joke, half-branding iron. It climbs the column. I let it climb; I have a better lever.
I lean in and bring the music down. “Night Choir,” I say, and the plural hums back in the glass, “our pledge is going up in full tonight. You will not get everything first. That’s not a punishment; that’s protection. If you have tips, you send them to detectives. If you want a show, go to a theater. We’re not a theater. We’re a bridge.”
A messenger window on Jonah’s monitor blinks. He stares. He looks at me, eyes bright with the color they turn when he’s worried and trying to be funny about it. He turns his phone again. Another sponsor: Revisit after your ‘ethics statement.’ He gives me a thumbs-up I don’t deserve.
“We can carry the costs for two months,” he mouths. “We’ll make it.”
I nod. I don’t believe my own nod yet, but it’s a verb.
I open the callers again, but before I can take one, the studio smells like the creek again—wet concrete, cold algae—because a gust slaps the building and pushes the flood stink through the door seam. The city has the timing of a heckler.
“One last question before we close,” I say. “Professor Edgerton asked who decides. Here’s my answer: When visibility harms, I dim. When silence harms, I light. And when either would feed the Director’s appetite, I starve him.”
The private line flashes. Not the studio line, not the public caller bank—the phone taped to the underside of the desk that I keep for messages I have to answer even when the show burns. The ID screens in gray letters: ELENA PARK.
Jonah sees it and points. I hold up a palm—one minute—to the glass and to my own ethics. I fade the music to nothing, eat the quiet, and think of the cherub motif the Director loves so much—innocence turned prop, salvation staged and ticketed. My voice, when I find it, tastes like metal and lake water.
“We’re going to midroll,” I lie, because there is no midroll, because sponsors are smoke tonight. I tap the mute and take the call.
“Park,” I say. “We’re live. I can’t—”
Elena cuts me off, her voice clipped, the sound of a seatbelt buckling. “Then listen. We draft terms tonight or I pull your archives in the morning. I just watched your segment. Either we set a joint protocol now, or you read your next line in a deposition.”
The call-time light on the board ticks forward like a stern metronome. Through the glass, Jonah’s phone lights again with a new banner I can’t make out, and boots splash the sidewalk outside where the creek kisses the curb.
I glance at the mic red light, still hot, and my reflection in the glass throws my face back at me—host, accused, sister. I keep my voice low for Elena and my hand on the fader for the Choir.
“Name the place,” I whisper. “And don’t say theater.”
The board answers me with a single soft pop in my headphones—a cable settling—like the room is clearing its throat for whatever comes next.