The video Cynthia posted didn't have the high-definition gloss of a music video. It was grainy, filmed from the back of a university auditorium seven years ago.
In the footage, a younger Maya—without the glasses, without the oversized sweaters, and certainly without a mask—is standing center stage in a bright red velvet dress. She is radiant, her voice projecting to the back of the rafters as she performs a monologue from Antigone. She looks like a girl who was born to be seen.
But as the video continues, the "traumatic event" unfolds.
In the middle of her climactic scene, a group of protestors bursts onto the stage. They aren't there for the play; they are there for her. They start screaming about her father—a high-profile political figure. They throw red paint, staining her velvet dress like blood, while screaming that the "daughter of a thief" shouldn't be allowed to have a voice.
The video ends with Maya frozen, shaking, and shielded by a professor as she's chased off-stage by a mob of cameras.
//
The silence in the apartment was heavy. Chloe and Sarah looked at the floor, knowing how much it had cost Maya to forget that night. Julian was staring at the screen, his jaw tight with a protective fury.
"She's calling it 'The Great Deception,'" Chloe said quietly, looking at Cynthia's caption. "She's telling the world that you didn't become M.K. Thorne because you were shy. She's saying you did it to hide your father's name so you could keep making money without being 'canceled.'"
Maya was trembling, her hands tucked into her sleeves. "I didn't hide to protect the money. I hid because I couldn't breathe. Every time someone looked at my face, they didn't see me. They saw him. I just wanted my words to belong to me."
Julian walked over and sat on the floor in front of her, forcing her to look at him. "Maya, listen to me. This doesn't change anything."
"It changes everything!" she cried out. "The world thinks I'm a fraud now. They think the 'shy writer' is a character I played to escape my family's reputation."
"Then we tell them about the paint," Sarah interjected, her eyes fierce. "We tell them about the girls who followed you to your dorm and the death threats. We tell them that you weren't hiding a 'secret'—you were surviving a trauma."
Chloe's phone buzzed. It was a message from Leo, the guitarist.
"Leo says the band is ready," Chloe said, looking at the group. "If we're doing this, we do it big. He says they'll play wherever, whenever, to drown out Cynthia's noise."
Maya looked at her friends—the two women who had shielded her for years—and at Julian, the man who had joined her in the dark.
"I'm tired of being the one who gets chased off the stage," Maya said, her voice dropping to a low, cold resolve. "Cynthia wants to talk about my father? Fine. Let's talk about him. But we're doing it on my terms."