Growing into the Job, Post 579: Gathering Voice, p1

The room was all light and glass.

Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched along one wall, the city beyond them washed pale by cloud cover and a weird early-evening haze. Steel beams crossed overhead in clean lines, architectural and deliberate, and the polished concrete floor reflected her faintly -  a softened mirror version of herself, tall and still. A small brass plaque by the entrance had bore the music-production company’s name. Shanette had read it twice - it was a man’s name. It wasn’t one she’d heard of, and when she searched it up it seemed like they’d done more religious music than pop music. Weird. But Randi - who was friends with one of the younger executives here, knew her from some soccer thing - insisted this place would be perfect for what they want to do. Which, to be honest, was something Shanette wasn’t 100% clear on yet. 

Shanette stood a bit away from the wall of windows, phone raised, angling it just right towards the mirrored wall. Her nails were neatly shaped - Amelia had done them for her, this afternoon at work - and her breath was slow and even. Inside her chest, though, something was moving - not nerves exactly, but pressure. Like a held note waiting for release.

She smiled - not her wide, playful one, but a smaller, composed version. Calm. Confident enough. The kind of smile that tried to say I’ve got this, even if she wasn’t entirely sure she did.

<Click>

She glanced at the photo, and thought of the girls, her friends, what they were doing, what she was being sent here to do. Her smile broadened immediately. She adjusted her posture almost unconsciously, then she took another picture.

<Click>

This one felt better…bigger. More…true.

She gave it a caption, and sent it to Scottie before she could overthink it...

He replied almost immediately: 

Oh my god oh my god.

She smiled, knowing what she’d just done to him. Scottie loved her chest as much as he loved her voice. Everyone loved her voice, though, these days. At first Scottie loved it the way someone loves a familiar song - something that soothed him, that belonged to his days and nights, that made him feel safe. Lately, though, things had changed. Silence leaned toward her when she inhaled. Men’s shoulders dropped when she hummed without thinking. A single sustained note from her lungs could make someone’s eyes glass over, soft and open, like a door forgetting to stay shut.

She hadn’t meant to experiment on Scottie, at least at first. It had just…happened. A lullaby half-sung while he lay with his head in her lap. A playful croon when he was stressed. The first time she felt his body climax without her touching him, she’d gone still, voice catching, heart thudding with something like awe.

She hadn’t stopped after that.

Not just because she got a dark thrill being able to control him, manipulate his body like a puppet using her song. Not exactly. But because it felt important to understand. To know what she carried. Could she carry it to more people? She’d done it to a room, at the performance yesterday. Could she carry it further?

She blew a kiss to the camera, to Scottie.

Wish me luck, she typed, then added a heart.

Lowering the phone, she let her arm fall to her side and exhaled.

The quiet in the room wrapped around her immediately. Not empty - receptive. Sound behaved differently here. When she shifted her weight, the faint rustle of fabric seemed to linger. When she breathed in, it felt like the air waited.

Shanette closed her eyes for just a second.

She didn’t sing. Not even a hum. But the impulse was there, familiar now - a subtle gathering in her chest, the sense that if she did let her voice out, the room would come in closer. She’d learned that in a wonderful way, that her voice wasn’t just sound anymore.

She thought of Scottie again - how easily he softened when she crooned to him, how quickly his body responded even when she kept her tone gentle, soothing. She liked him a lot. She thought she did. But lately, being with him felt like practicing on a familiar instrument. Safe. Useful but predictable.

The thought made her frown faintly.

Hmm, she told herself.

Still…she couldn’t ignore the way something in her stirred when she imagined larger rooms, bigger than the crowd from the Vendare center. More people. A crowd not just listening, but opening. Yielding. The men in it collapsing. For her.

Well, not for her, exactly. For what she could help build.

Melissa’s name floated up unbidden, as it often did now. The others. The sense - still unshaped, still too big to articulate - that her voice wasn’t meant just for stages or playlists. That it could become a kind of foundation. A way in.

Randi had said something weird to her, when they’d talked about this earlier: “A hymn before there’s a doctrine.”

A knock sounded at the door.

Shanette opened her eyes, spine straightening automatically, posture settling into that effortless poise people always commented on.

“Ms. Stevens? Shanette?” a young woman’s voice called, warm but brisk as she stuck her head in. Maybe this is the girl that Randi knows? Not the boss, but their contact. “We’re ready for you.”

Shanette glanced once more at the mirrored wall, at the reflection of the city behind her, and then at herself - tall, composed, carrying something no one in this building fully understood yet.

She smiled at the young woman, who wore a sharp business jacket. “Okay,” Shanette said softly. 

Even that single word seemed to linger as she smoothed her dress once, drew in a steady breath, crossed the room and stepped through the door the woman had opened for her.

She followed the woman in, and reminded herself how confident Randi had been about this. Trust me, she’d said. This is the right place. They’ll hear what matters. But something about it made her chest feel tight - not with fear, but with a strange sense of alignment. Like her voice had always been meant for rooms different than clubs. Not just concert halls. Not just charts.

Congregations.

The door to the meeting room closed behind them. Inside waited a small group - two assistants, the woman in the tailored jacket she now definitely recognized from Randi’s emails, and further back, an older man with silver hair and a careful, appraising gaze. The young woman in the jacket had stepped around the table behind him, and put a hand on his shoulder. Something in him changed. His eyes became unfocused, and then Shanette watched as they focused again, fixated - on her.

Shanette and the woman in the jacket exchanged glances, an unspoken understanding. And suddenly, Shanette knew one thing for certain - whatever happened in the next hour was going to change things for her, for Melissa, for all the girls. They were going to be heard.

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