I woke to the harbor’s fog pressing fingerprints on the window and my inbox pretending to be a fire alarm. The ghost-click of overnight notifications raised gooseflesh along my forearms before I even unlocked the screen. I could taste stale neon in my mouth from yesterday’s ring lights; I could smell cinnamon from a bun I’d forgotten to throw out. Every subject line had the same undertone: We care. We want. We need you on at eight.
I flipped the phone facedown and took three slow breaths through my nose until the phantom buzzing softened. Then I sat at my desk, dragged a honeycomb-patterned coaster under my mug, and opened the laptop. The city below choreographed itself the way it always does—QR murals waking into animated pitches, delivery bikes zipping through gauzy lanes, pop-up stalls folding and unfolding like origami hearts. Larkspur Bay runs on attention and early coffee. I didn’t owe it either until I chose to.
“Interview? Morning news, afternoon pod, evening panel?” read the first email, so polished I could hear the production assistant chewing an expensive pen cap.
“Declined,” I whispered to my screen, and I meant the whole category, not just that sender. I built a text replacement macro—no to all interviews at this time; please refer to posted resources; we are centering safety and process—and then ran it like a broom through a flooded hallway. I copied the line into my clipboard until the keys took on the taste of metal.
“You’re dodging,” another email accused, sweeter than poison. “A quick live clears confusion.”
I hit reply, pasted the macro, and added one sentence with clean edges: “Silence right now is strategy, not evasion.” I trimmed the smile from the punctuation and sent it. I kept my jaw unclenched by touching my tongue to the back of my teeth, an old habit from depositions.
The phone buzzed against the wood. Nessa. I turned it over.
Nessa: “Your fans—our people—want what’s next. I can set the forum to slow if you’re drafting. Think: ‘healing mode.’”
Me: “Do it. I’ll share final copy before posting.”
Nessa: “Pinning resources. Doxx filters are hot. Soup later?”
Me: “Soup always.”
I opened a blank document and stared at the cursor long enough to hear the building breathe. Down the block, the pop-up row warmed its griddles and speakers. Salted caramel steam would slip into noon and neon would take over at dusk, because this city believes in a social compact: don’t make a scene—unless it’s profitable. I poured water over tea leaves and promised myself I would make no scenes and no profits with this note.
I wrote the bones first. No flourishes. No heroics.
Statement from Mara Chen
We’re centering accountability, safety, and process.
- If you’re hurting, here are resources.
- If you bought during panic, here’s how to request refunds.
- If you want updates, expect court documents and nothing sensational.
Boundaries: no interviews, no dramatizations, no rescue merch.
Thank you for respecting the quiet people need to heal.
I watched my hands after I typed it. They didn’t shake. They smelled like tea and cheap soap. I trimmed the verbs tighter. I took out every word that could be misused as a hook. I removed all rhetorical glitter like I was scraping confetti from a floor after a party no one should have thrown.
Sloane pinged at the exact moment I reached for the “post” button, which told me she’d read my mind or my calendar.
Sloane: “Send me the text before it leaves the house?”
Me: “On the way.”
I attached the draft and watched the typing ellipsis instead of breathing. The kettle clicked in the quiet like a metronome for my pulse. When the ellipsis blinked out, nothing came through. Instead I pictured Sloane at a desk with a dull pencil, mouth pursed, running the sentences under legal light. I sat on my free hand to keep from adding anything that would taste like performance.
Emails continued to pour—brand apologies asking to quote our words, a reactor offering a “platform for healing,” a documentary producer dangling a future. I sent the macro and muted the threads. For me, overwhelm wears cologne: citrus-forward spin with a vanilla regret base note. I didn’t breathe it in.
Micro-hook:
Sloane called instead of texting. “Your first line is sharp,” she said, voice even as always. I could hear papers sliding, the soft hiss of her desk chair. “Lose ‘process’ in line one. People read it as ‘we have a PR plan’ instead of ‘we have next steps.’ Replace with ‘steps’ or ‘path.’ Also, move ‘refunds’ to the top. Money is a legal hinge; we point it out early. Finally, ‘rescue merch’ is funny, and I appreciate the shade, but it invites argument. Say ‘no monetizing crisis.’”
“So the sentence becomes: ‘We’re centering accountability, safety, and steps,’” I said, making the swaps. “Refund guidance first. List boundaries as plain terms. End with quiet.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll send you three hotline numbers we vetted and two clinics with availability. Use those; they asked to be listed.”
“On it,” I said. “Could the defense team twist ‘thank you for respecting the quiet’ into ‘they’re ghosting’?”
“They can twist anything,” she said, and in her pause I could hear her sip cold coffee. “But brevity is your shield. No adjectives you don’t need. No promises you can’t keep. Post from your account, not from the precinct. Keep it human, not institutional.”
“Copy,” I said.
“Mara,” she added, softer, “you don’t have to carry the whole city’s comments today.”
“I know,” I said, and because she had given me a lane, I could admit the next truth. “But I have to carry my words.”
“Then carry the minimum,” she said, and hung up.
I made the changes and let the sentences breathe. I pictured the fans whose kitchen counters had held our jars, the single moms who’d written about falling asleep to Lyla’s voice, the teens who’d messaged about the way sugar and heat could turn into something soft when life felt like a blade. A wrong word could sting their mouths again. I read my draft out loud once, hear-testing for any edge that could cut.
While I waited for Sloane’s hotline list, I texted Nessa a screenshot.
Nessa: “This is clean. I’ll pin mirrors in the forum. Adding closed comments on the post so folks don’t fight under it. Healing mode is live.”
Me: “What does healing mode look like?”
Nessa: “Black banner, slow scroll, no flair. We show a honeycomb of resource cards—cells for refunds, therapy, reporting. The hive we wanted, not the trap.”
Me: “Perfect.”
A minute later, my phone buzzed with Sloane’s vetted numbers and one more line: “Add ‘We will not read DMs.’ Shield yourselves.”
I tacked that sentence on, grimaced at how mean it looked without explanation, then kept it because it was the kind thing in disguise. I posted the statement on my site, my feed, and a plain text PDF for archiving—no slideshow, no reel, no soundtrack.
Nessa’s forum changed tone in real time. My screen darkened to a charcoal header with white sans serif: HEALING MODE. The pinned post was simple—refund links, clinic contacts, community guidelines with a line I loved: Care without consumption. The comments slowed to one every few seconds, then one every minute. The air in my apartment changed with it, or my lungs believed it did. I could smell harbor salt again, not just ring-light ozone.
Lyla padded into the room in socks, hair tied in a knot that said both girl and grown woman. She held her phone like it might bite. “Text image?” she asked.
“Plain white, black letters,” I said. “One sentence. Then we put the phone under the plant and forget where we put it.”
She smiled at that and typed with her thumbs pointed inward like a little kid’s. She showed me the screen: No more danger for sale. No logo, no flourish, no hashtag.
“Post,” I said.
We watched the numbers jump and then stopped watching. Bait hooks flew under the image from reactors asking for “context,” from sponsors asking to “connect offline,” from trolls asking for “proof you’re not cashing in with this too.” I turned Lyla’s phone to Do Not Disturb and slid it under the pothos on the shelf. We didn’t need to witness any hunger to respect it. We were done feeding it.
Micro-hook:
Lunch hour hit the city and the pop-up row below us turned its pavement into stage again. A muralist rolled a new QR skin over last week’s neon, pixels of a honey jar sliding into a landscape. People lined up reflexively because line means content here. I made us broth instead—boiled ginger, scallions, an egg slipped in to cloud the surface. The steam smelled like relief without a marketing plan.
The intercom rang. I startled and then laughed at myself. Sloane’s voice scratched through. “Checking in,” she said. “I’m at the curb. I brought—please don’t mock me—prepackaged cut fruit and a bag of legal stamps.”
I buzzed her up and met her at the door. She stepped inside and put the stamps on the counter like a joke only she could tell. “Every time you sign something today, use one of these,” she said. The stamps read: REVIEWED, REDACT, RESOURCES FIRST. “It’ll slow you down.”
“I’ll pretend they’re a game,” I said, and pressed RESOURCES FIRST on the corner of a spare printout just to hear the soft thunk. Sloane took a forkful of my too-hot soup, swore, and smiled with her eyes.
“Your post is solid,” she said. “I like that you didn’t name him today. Let court filings do that.”
“If I say his name now, it turns into a chant,” I said. “I don’t want to write the soundtrack to his defense.”
“Good,” she said. “Also, don’t answer any artistically phrased questions from reporters like ‘How do you feel?’ They fish for adjectives that help opposing counsel build a narrative.”
“I’ll answer with verbs then,” I said. “We rest. We refer. We document.”
“That’s my favorite poetry,” she said, and left me three manila envelopes and a look that was almost a hug.
Afternoon folded into the kind of neon that makes even caution tape look like candy. I listened to the city, held my spine straight, and did small tasks with big intention: emailed pro bono clinic slots to Nessa; archived screenshots into evidence folders named with dates and nothing poetic; drafted a media FAQ that said “no comment” nine different ways without sounding smug.
The PR flood thinned by dinner. A sponsor sent a careful note about “standing with survivors”; I filed it under Later and did not engage. A reactor tried the olive branch angle; I blocked him without ceremony. A lawyer I didn’t know offered “guidance for a modest rate”; I forwarded it to Sloane and washed my hands because the email made them feel coated.
Evening fog returned up the cliffs and funneled into downtown until neon became mist and mist became a lid. I stood by the window and let the harbor’s damp breath slick my cheeks. The apartment held the low hum of the fridge and the gentle clink of chopsticks in the drying rack. The honeycomb coaster left a faint ring on the desk. I liked the mark; it meant a thing had lived there.
Nessa texted a final screenshot: the forum header with three pinned boxes—Refunds, Care, Boundaries—arranged like cells in a hive. “We’ll be boring until boring heals,” she wrote.
“Bless boring,” I wrote back. “Any flare-ups?”
“A few,” she said. “I removed a thread asking for ‘tea.’ I told them we’re only serving soup.”
I laughed and read her message to Lyla, who pretended to be offended and then asked for more broth. We ate by the window without music. The fog swallowed the mural’s QR code until it looked like a blank square asking nothing from anyone.
My phone vibrated once on the sill. I shouldn’t have checked, but I did. A private number. For a second, I tasted the metallic tang of the handler’s old calls. I set the phone back down, screen dark, and waited for my mouth to clear. I could decide to let unknown numbers ring forever. I could choose silence and call it care. I could mean it.
“Tomorrow,” Lyla said from the couch, “do we still say nothing?”
“We say the same amount of nothing,” I said, and felt calm settle like a weighted blanket. “We say enough to point people to help. We say nothing that feeds the court of public comments. We keep the hive a haven.”
Outside, a gull barked once, like punctuation. The city dimmed, neon to gauze again. I slid the honeycomb coaster back to the middle of the desk and touched its edge with one finger. I could hold a strategy that looked like silence without selling it as a brand. I could keep the page clean.
The phone buzzed one more time and then stopped. I didn’t answer. I breathed, and let the question that had followed me since last night sit across from me with its complicated face: how long can I keep using quiet as a tool before quiet turns into a pose?