Then Kitty cleared her throat.
“I was thinking,” she began, and her tone shifted into careful politeness. “About the talent show.”
I kept my expression neutral, but something in me tightened anyway. I told myself it was nothing. I had agreed to help Marjorie with sound and absolutely nothing more.
Kitty looked back down at the guitar and rotated her wrist slightly like she was easing into the topic the way she eased into chords. “Lydia and I went to the committee meeting last night.”
I waited.
“It was… a lot,” she continued. “Apparently Lydia volunteered us to be lead organizers.”
I blinked. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “Lead organizers?”
“Yes,” she said, and the word came out like a confession. “I didn’t know that was what I was agreeing to.”
“Your sister didn’t tell you,” I said carefully.
Kitty’s mouth pressed into a line that was half amusement and half dread. “It wasn’t her finest moment.”
There was affection underneath the frustration, which meant the frustration was probably constant. That was how family arguments usually worked. The annoyance was real, and so was the loyalty.
She shifted on the stool. “I’m trying to pin down what we actually have to do, and the committee is waiting for direction.They already handed out flyers and the talent show date isn’t that far away.”
“You mean they haven’t figured out anything yet?” I wondered with a small amount of alarm.
“No.” Kitty glanced up at me. “You said you offered to help with sound?”
“I did,” I confirmed.
Her shoulders dropped again, visibly relieved, and that relief did something to me. It made me want to keep being the person she could lean on. It also made me wary, because leaning on me was how things got heavy.
“That was really kind,” she said. “Honestly, I was hoping you might also be able to tell me what to do to make the talent show successful.”
The sentence was simple. The meaning should have been simple.
It wasn’t.
What I heard was a dozen other conversations layered underneath it, all the ones I had tried to forget. People telling me what success looked like. People insisting that success required me, specifically, on a stage. People smilinglike they were offering an opportunity, when what they were offering was a cage.
Kitty’s eyes were earnest. She wasn’t manipulating me. She wasn’t being sly. She was asking like someone who truly didn’t know where to begin.
I told myself to answer the question she meant. “Successful how?”
She gestured with one hand, the other still resting on the guitar neck. “I don’t know. Happy people and nobody angry. No disasters.”
I nodded slowly. “Disasters happen.”
“I would like to avoid them,” she said, very sincerely.
I almost smiled, because I understood that feeling. I also understood that you could plan your heart out and the world would still do what it wanted.
Kitty continued, voice still careful. “I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t want to do. I’m just hoping for advice.”
I made myself keep my tone even. “I can help you plan the sound needs. Mic count and speaker placement. That kind of thing.”
Her face brightened. “Yes. And also, maybe… the flow.”
I felt the shift in my own posture, subtle but real. The old instinct to protect space. To protect the quiet in my life.
