She walked out into the cold parking lot, her spine straight for the first time in ten years. Behind her, she heard Marcus laughing. Then calling her a name. Then the slamming of a door. It didn’t matter.

“What the hell, Lila?” Marcus said, finally looking up.

And the audience? They loved it. Clips of Lila nearly tipping over went viral. “Stool Girl” memes. Fan edits set to sad violin music. One night, a late-night host joked, “Someone get that woman a chair, or at least a helmet.” The laugh track was thunderous. Entertainment, it turned out, was just watching someone else stay balanced on three legs.

That night, after the taping, she waited in the empty green room. Marcus came in, already on his phone, and absentmindedly kicked the stool toward her. “Sit. We need to talk about next week’s elimination.”

She picked up the stool by its splintered top, walked to the loading dock, and threw it into the dumpster. The sound it made—a hollow, wooden clatter against the metal—was the most honest noise she’d heard in a decade.

The stool was part of the brand. “It makes you vulnerable,” said Marcus, the showrunner, a man whose neck smelled of cigarettes and regret. “America doesn’t trust a woman in a throne. But a stool? That’s authentic.”

The pushing began subtly. At first, it was a stagehand nudging the stool into the mark with his boot. Then it was Marcus’s hand on her shoulder, applying downward pressure. “Lower,” he’d whisper. “Make yourself smaller.”