Every night for the next three months, Mira watched that season. She learned the contestants’ names: Bodie, Morgan, Bryce. She cheered when Kim Cruse hit a run of notes that seemed to defy physics. She gasped when a favorite was eliminated. She even talked back to Blake Shelton’s jokes, her voice strange and rusty in the empty room.
She closed the laptop. The house was silent again.
That night, she made popcorn, wrapped herself in an old quilt, and pressed play.