I don’t re-listen to the intro. If I do, I’ll pick it apart until it dies.
The next afternoon I drive to my mother’s apartment with the mic in my backpack and the prom photo tucked into a spiral notebook. Theo rides shotgun, feet on the dash until I give him the look and he drops them with a sigh.
“Do I have to come up?” he asks, watching the water flash between houses.
“You can stay in the car,” I say. “I won’t be long. Homework?”
He pats his backpack. “Math. The worst.”
“Bring it,” I tell him. “If you get stuck, Grandma loves fractions.”
“Grandma loves gossip,” he mutters, but he zips the bag anyway.
My mother’s building sits three blocks from the harbor, a red-brick rectangle with flower boxes that fight for life against salty air. I smell the bay before I step out of the car, a mix of seaweed and gasoline and the distant drift of fryer oil from the boardwalk shack. Inside, the stairwell adds onions and old carpet cleaner.
Mom answers my knock on the second floor before I finish the second rap. Her hair is pinned on top of her head with a glittery clip, a holdover from the days she called herself “Celeste” at the salon instead of plain Lorna Lane.
“You look thin,” she says by way of greeting. “Where’s Theo?”
“In the car. I told him you’d weaponize his math worksheet.”
She snorts and steps aside. “He’s not wrong. Bring him up if he gets bored. I made brownies.”
Her apartment smells like cocoa powder and aerosol hairspray, sugar and chemicals braided together. The living room doubles as a home salon: rolling chair, mirror framed with dollar-store jewels, cart of brushes and curling irons, mannequin head with foiled hair staring blankly from the corner.
“You really brought your little radio thing?” she asks, eyeing my backpack.
“Podcast,” I say, already setting my mic case on the coffee table. “And yes. I want to talk about Juliet. Hair, makeup, everything you remember from that day.”
Her shoulders stiffen under her faded Crescent Bay Regatta T-shirt. “You’re already moving on this?”
“If I wait, my internet gets shut off,” I say lightly. “Not ideal for an audio career.”
She presses her lips together, then exhales. “Fine. But you’re not making me sound like one of those talking heads. I’m not crying on command.”
“I don’t do that,” I say, even though I have trimmed pauses and layered music under interviews until emotion swelled on cue. I flip open the mic stand and screw the mic in, my fingers steady from muscle memory.
I hit record and set the mic between us. The little red light winks to life.
“Okay,” I say, sliding into the voice Theo calls my “episode voice.” “Can you state your name for me?”
Mom rolls her eyes but leans in. “Lorna Lane. Mother of the famous host of Glass Roses.”
“Title inflation is free,” I say. “Can you tell me what you did back in ‘97?”
“I did hair,” she says. “For half the town’s daughters. Proms, weddings, regattas, those charity balls the yacht club loved. I did Juliet Reeves’s hair for her prom.”
“How did she book you?” I ask.
Mom smiles at the memory. Her hands automatically reach for a brush that isn’t there, fingers tightening around air. “She walked right into the shop without an appointment. Said, ‘Celeste, I know you’re booked solid, but my mother’s out of her mind and you’re the only person I trust not to make me look like I’m going to my own coronation.’”
“How did she look when she came in?”
“Like she already owned the night.” Mom’s eyes go soft, tracking the mannequin head like it’s a younger version of herself. “Ivory dress bag over her arm, hair in a messy bun. Smelled like vanilla body spray and that expensive shampoo her mother ordered from France. She handed me a glass rose.”
I lean forward. “The centerpieces?”
“Not yet,” she says. “This was a corsage. Glass rose on a silver band. She said they were doing a whole theme, ‘Midnight in Crescent Bay.’ We’d seen the mock-ups—some event planner from New York came in with swatches and attitude. Glass roses on every table, mirrored centerpieces, a big photo backdrop with the cliffs and the bay all printed up, so the kids could pretend they were on the overlook without actually hopping the fence, you know?”
I remember that backdrop. I remember staring at it during setup, the glossy version of the cliffs too smooth, the rock shelf below too neat, not a hint of the jagged edges where real waves smashed themselves flat.
“Talk me through the hair,” I say. “From the top.”
She laughs. “You’re your father when you say it like that. Okay. We washed, we blow-dried. She wanted curls, but not pageant curls. ‘Like I fell into a beautiful disaster,’ she told me. So I did loose waves, pinned some up, left some down. Sprayed in rhinestones so her hair caught the light when she moved. Every time I finished a section, she checked herself in the mirror and practiced her prom queen wave.”
“How was her mood?”
Mom shrugs, but her hands tighten in her lap. “Excited. Nervous. She kept asking what time it was. Said Noah was picking her up, then her mother called and asked three times if I’d charged it to the right card. Typical Crescent Bay High prom night: rich girl, working-class boyfriend, big night under rented lights before life carries everyone off to Dartmouth and disaster.”
My throat dries. I pull a water bottle from my bag, the plastic crinkling in my hand. I take a sip and keep my voice level.
“Did she say anything about being scared?” I ask. “About anyone bothering her?”
Mom glances at the mic. “Why are you asking that?”
“Because the official story says she got drunk and fought with Noah, then wandered out to the overlook and fell,” I say. “I want context.”
“Context.” Mom breathes out sharply. The hairspray smell intensifies as a burst escapes a can in the cart, triggered by a shift of her elbow. “I saw her walk out my door in that dress, Mara. Perfect hair, perfect makeup. She hugged me and said, ‘See you on the yacht club wall.’”
“The donor plaques,” I say.
“They already had space for her name.” Mom’s voice goes low. “She didn’t look scared. She looked like she believed the night belonged to her.”
The red recording light keeps glowing, steady and merciless.
“And the next morning,” I prompt.
Her jaw works. She stares past me at the TV, where a muted daytime talk show host gestures in bright colors.
“The next morning,” she says slowly, “I woke up to the phone ringing at six a.m. Your aunt Bri called, crying so hard I could barely understand her. She said Juliet was dead. Found at the bottom of the cliff, still in that damn dress, on the rocks by the shelf where you kids used to sneak out and smoke.”
My stomach twists. I remember the shelf: the drop, the slick algae, the way the waves slapped against stone like an angry hand.
“They said she’d been drinking,” Mom continues. “Said she and Noah had a scene at the overlook. Everyone started talking right away. PTA moms, yacht club wives, people who’d never even cut their own hair, acting like they knew those kids better than the kids knew themselves.”
“What did you think?” I ask.
She looks straight at me. “I thought that deck at the overlook was never safe. I thought drunk teenagers and dark paths and thin rails don’t mix. I thought somebody should have been watching, but nobody watches the pretty ones because everyone assumes they land on their feet.”
Her hands shake. She folds them so tightly her knuckles pale.
“You don’t talk about Noah,” I say. “Why?”
“Because that’s the part where the town turned mean,” she says. “They called him trouble before they had proof. Said a boy from the wrong neighborhood was bound to explode sooner or later. When they charged him, people nodded like it made sense.”
“You didn’t think it did?”
“I thought it was fast,” she says. “Too fast. But what was I going to do? I was the hairstylist who sprayed glitter in a dead girl’s hair. Nobody wanted my insight on blood and bruises.”
I swallow hard. She hears the click in my throat and reaches for the mic, then stops herself.
“Don’t make this your circus, Mara,” she says. “These people love a show until they don’t. Juliet’s story already chewed up enough girls.”
“I’m not turning her into entertainment,” I say. “I want the truth.”
“Truth is what the people with plaques on the wall say it is,” she answers. “You know that.”
I let the silence rest for three beats, then hit stop. The meters flatten. The red light dies.
My heart keeps racing.
Theo is sprawled in the passenger seat, pencil behind his ear, when I climb back into the car. A brownie wrapper crinkles under his elbow.
“How many did she give you?” I ask, turning the key.
“Three,” he says around a mouthful. “I’m her favorite grandchild.”
“You’re her only grandchild.”
“That’s why I’m winning.”
I laugh, tension loosening a notch. The cliffs rise in the distance through the windshield, a shadowed line framed by an expanse of chilly blue water. The rock shelf hides beneath, invisible from this angle, waiting.
“How’d the interview go?” he asks.
I tap the steering wheel. “Messy. Good messy.”
“Do I get to hear it?”
“When it’s edited,” I say.
“So, like, next July.”
“Rude,” I say, but my mouth tugs up. “Tonight. I need this episode up tomorrow or we’re podcasting via smoke signal.”
He snorts and goes back to his math, and I drive home with Juliet’s name buzzing under my skin.
That night, after Theo falls asleep on his mattress with a comic book open over his face, I turn the apartment into a studio.
I drape quilts over the kitchen chairs and stack them along the wall to muffle the echo. The hum of the laundromat seeps through anyway—slosh, tumble, metal clanks, the soft squeak of rubber soles on tile below. The floor is cool under my bare feet. Salt air sneaks through the cracked window, sticky and damp.
I slip on my headphones and cue up Mom’s interview. Her voice fills my ears, close and intimate. Every breath, every stray click of her tongue, every tiny tremor becomes visible in the waveform. I trim dead space, shave off the parts where she swears at the memory of the yacht club wives, leave in the parts where she laughs at Juliet’s insistence on “beautiful disaster” curls.
Between takes, I scroll through a folder of royalty-free 90s-adjacent tracks: echoing drums, jangly guitars, synth pads that smell like nostalgia instead of originality. I pick one that sounds like the edges of a prom slow dance and weave it under my narration where I describe the gym—parquet floor, balloons, glass roses catching light like ice.
I drag in a ripped clip of the local news from ‘97, audio warped from age and poor VHS-to-digital transfer. The anchor’s voice crackles through my headphones:
“Prom tragedy in Crescent Bay. Seventeen-year-old Juliet Reeves, beloved senior and regatta queen, was found early this morning at the rocky base of the clifftop overlook in her prom dress…”
The words “rocky base” rasp with static. My stomach clenches anyway.
“…police believe she fell during a drunken altercation with her boyfriend, Noah Pike. Authorities are calling it a tragic accident pending further investigation.”
Tragic accident. I highlight that phrase and drop a marker. Later, I’ll loop back to it, question it, peel it apart. For now, I layer my own voice in after the clip.
“On paper,” I say into the mic, watching the waveform form in real time, “Juliet’s story reads like so many others: beautiful girl, dangerous boyfriend, bad night on the wrong side of the railing. But paper doesn’t show you what else this town had at stake. It doesn’t show you the donor lists, the regatta programs, the way certain last names echo through every meeting agenda and police roster.”
My fingers tremble over the keyboard, but my voice stays even. I keep going.
“When you listen closely to this case,” I say, “you hear more than one story. The version the bay carried back against the rocks, and the version that got printed in the Crescent Bay Herald. This season, we’re going to listen until those versions collide.”
I cut the track, reposition the music, replay the sequence three times. Each pass tighter, sharper. The hum of dryers below becomes a low, steady bassline under everything.
A glance at the corner of the screen shows the time: 11:12 p.m. The internet notice lies next to the laptop, the red FINAL NOTICE still loud even in the dim kitchen light. My shoulders knot.
I export the episode, watching the progress bar crawl forward. During the last ten percent, I pace between stove and window, rubbing my thumb over the edge of the prom photo. Light from the liquor store sign outside washes the edges of Juliet’s dress in sickly green.
“All right,” I tell her glossy face. “Showtime.”
The file finishes. I upload it to the hosting platform, type the title with cramped fingers: S2E1: The Prom Queen in the Bay. The description comes next, molded to hook strangers with short attention spans:
In 1997, Juliet Reeves left Crescent Bay High’s prom in an ivory dress and never came home. Officially, it was a tragic fall during a fight with her boyfriend at the clifftop overlook. Unofficially, everyone in town has a different version. Including me.
I stare at the “publish” button. My pulse drums in my ears loud enough to distort the room.
If this tanks, the numbers will stay flat, the ad revenue will stay microscopic, and I’ll start looking at job postings that ask for “team players willing to multi-task in a fast-paced environment.” If this works, people with power in Crescent Bay will hear their town’s prettiest story called into question in my voice.
Either way, the minute I hit that button, I can’t swallow this episode back down.
My finger settles on the trackpad. I press.
The button grays out. A tiny celebratory confetti animation bursts across the screen, absurd in its cheerfulness.
“That’s it?” I whisper. “That’s the part where my life turns into public comment?”
The site tells me my feed will update within the hour. The episode is live.
I close the laptop halfway, leaving a crack of light. For a second, I want to wake Theo up, tell him I did it, that maybe things will change now. Instead I stand at the window, hand flat on the sill. The night outside smells like low tide and distant bass from some waterfront party, muffled, the way it did back then when I watched older kids sneak out to the cliffs.
In this town, people love a show. They love it even more when they can pretend they’re not the ones on stage.
I go to bed with my phone face-down on the crate I use as a nightstand. Sleep doesn’t come right away; my brain keeps replaying the news anchor’s voice, Mom’s warning, Juliet’s laugh. Eventually the rhythm of the washers below and the buzz of distant traffic blur into a kind of lullaby.
The smell of coffee and detergent wakes me.
Morning light pushes through the thin curtains, pale and unforgiving. The laundromat below is already in full swing, metal doors clanging, people shouting greetings over the hum. I taste morning breath and stale anxiety before I even open my eyes.
My phone vibrates against the crate. Once, twice, then in a series of stuttering buzzes.
I roll over and grab it, thumb smearing across the screen. A wall of notifications greets me: new downloads, new followers, a couple of “your episode is live on…” auto-emails.
My brain takes a second to process the numbers. The download count isn’t astronomical, but it’s higher than anything I’ve seen on release day. The little graph line, so used to plateauing, angles upward.
Heat rushes to my face. My fingers go cold.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
In the kitchen, the coffee maker sputters on its timer, filling the room with the smell of burnt beans and plastic. Theo shuffles out of his room in socks, hair sticking up.
“Morning,” he mumbles. “Did people listen?”
I angle the phone toward him. “Looks like it.”
His eyes widen behind his glasses. “Whoa. Does that mean we’re rich?”
“That’s not how podcasts work,” I say, laughing once. “But if this keeps up, it might at least mean keeping the Wi-Fi.”
“Cool.” He opens a cupboard, digs past canned soup to find cereal. “Just don’t forget me when you’re famous.”
“You’re literally in my intro,” I say. “I can’t forget you.”
He grins and pours cereal, the clatter loud in the small kitchen. I pour coffee, hands still shaky enough to slosh a little on the counter. The town’s sensory cocktail drifts in through the open window: salt air, hair spray from someone downstairs getting ready for work, a faint thump of bass from a car stereo idling at the light.
My phone buzzes again, a different tone. A DM notification.
I swipe it open, expecting some true-crime fan username from another state. The handle makes my skin prickle.
@CBAlum97.
Their profile picture is a distant shot of the Crescent Bay cliffs at sunset, the kind you’d find framed in the yacht club hallways. No face. No name. Just that fall of land into dark water.
The message preview shows only the first words: You need to…
I tap.
You need to leave this alone. You don’t know what you’re opening.
I read it three times. No emojis, no greeting, no praise. The words land in my chest like stones dropped into the bay.
Under the message, I see the tiny line of text: Follower since Season One.
Someone who’s been listening for a while. Someone who heard my voice in their earbuds, who chose to click on Juliet’s name within hours of release, who knows enough about this town to pick “CBAlum97” and the cliffs as their avatar.
Someone who graduated the year Juliet died.
Theo crunches cereal next to me, milk droplets on his chin. “Who’s texting you?”
“No one,” I say automatically, then wince at my own tone. I lock the screen and set the phone face-down again. “Just a listener.”
“A nice one?” he asks.
I rinse the coffee spill with shaking fingers, watching the brown streak swirl down the drain.
“That’s what I’m going to find out,” I say.
My thumb hovers over the phone, itching to unlock, to type back, to ask the question that keeps pressing against my ribs: What are you so afraid I’ll find?
In the silence between washer cycles, the town feels very awake, and for the first time since hitting “publish,” I’m not sure whether the surge of listeners is the lifeline I wanted or the tide that’s already pulling me out.