The city blinks under me like a board of tiny status lights, and I lie on my back in bed watching them through the glass.
The numbers on the digital clock change without meaning: 2:37, 2:51, 3:09. The air conditioner hums low and steady in the walls, pushing out expensive, filtered cool air that never quite reaches the back of my neck. My phone glows on the nightstand, a white rectangle of accusation. Every time I shut my eyes, I hear Rhea’s partner saying, Was the shot worth her life?
I throw the covers off. My skin sticks for a second, the sweat a thin film, then peels away from the sheets. My feet hit the floor, polished concrete that leaches heat straight out of me. The whole house feels like a showroom at this hour—perfectly staged, no one living in it.
I don’t turn on any lights. I let the city light do the work, all that distant amber bleeding in through glass walls, catching the chrome edges of picture frames, the slivers of awards on the shelves. My reflection follows me down the hallway, a dark shape cut out of darker glass.
The sliding door to the patio whispers open when I hit the sensor. Night air rushes in, cooler than the manufactured chill inside, carrying eucalyptus and distant exhaust. Somewhere down the hill, a siren wails, then fades. For a second I imagine it coming for me.
The pool spreads out like a black tablet under the sky. The underwater lights are off; only the city and a thin slice of moon give any shape to it. The surface holds a blurry version of LA, all those lights broken apart and rippling. Paparazzi flashes used to look like that to me—white explosions at the edges of vision, here and gone, leaving spots behind.
I drop my towel on a chaise and step to the edge. The stone is rough under my toes. My heart taps too fast, like I’m about to walk onstage instead of into my own backyard.
I dive on the exhale.
The water hits like a held breath made solid, cool and dense around my head. Chlorine bites my nose and the inside of my throat. For a second there’s only the rush in my ears and the long, bright smear of the city ahead of me, warped by the moving surface.
I glide under for as long as my lungs let me. Arms forward, fingers slicing, my body remembers choreography better than it remembers anything else. Stroke, stroke, breath. The world goes quiet except for the muffled thunder of my own motion. Up above, the city bends and slants with every ripple, a thousand tiny cameras catching their perfect shot of me suspended under glass.
When my chest burns, I surface.
I suck in air, the night hitting my tongue with the taste of pool chemicals and LA dust. I flip at the wall and push off again. I count in my head—one, two, three, four—like I’m back on a treadmill with a trainer yelling pacing cues. Out here, no one is watching, but my body still performs for invisible eyes.
On the fourth lap, the water in my ears changes. The slap of my arms hitting the surface morphs into the snap of a rope, the shriek of metal under strain. For a split second, my vision trades the city for rafters and rigging.
Rhea drops again.
I see the platform in my mind, the rig we rehearsed until the motion became boring, until boredom hid danger. The harness line goes slack, and her body does that horrible marionette thing, off-time with gravity. Then the mat catches her with a heavy, wet thud that vibrates through every version of the memory I own.
Under it, behind it, another sound waits. A sharper impact. Metal against bone.
Lila.
In my head, she keeps falling in the wrong order. Sometimes Rhea hits first, sometimes Lila. Sometimes they land on top of each other like I stacked the accidents to save time. I blink water out of my eyes and kick harder, but the memories keep merging.
I see the mill staircase under the safety rig, rusty railings spiking up through the padded mats. I hear the hollow boom of Lila’s head against the landing, that sick, drum-like note that never made it into any sound design. The air in my lungs tastes like river fog and fake smoke at the same time.
I choke on pool water and come up coughing.
I grab the edge, fingers digging into tile, nails squeaking. My throat burns with chlorine and that sudden animal panic that hits when I lose the beat of my own breath. I rest my forehead on my arm and listen to the city.
Cars hiss by down on Laurel Canyon. A helicopter slices distant air. Somewhere up the hill, a coyote yips and the sound falls away. My own gasps echo off the glass walls behind me, coming back thinner, like someone else doing a worse impression.
“Get it together,” I whisper.
My voice cracks on the word together. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste iron. The water presses against my ribs, holding me up and pinning me in place at the same time.
I let go of the edge and sink down just enough so the surface closes over my ears. The sound of the house disappears. The city muffles into a low hum, like the air conditioning on Stage 14. I float there with my face turned upward, mouth just above waterline, staring at my own ceiling of distorted light.
I think, suddenly, of what would happen if I stopped counting.
If I stayed under past the burn, past the panic. If I turned off the part of me that always calculates angles—career angles, camera angles, liability angles—and just let gravity and lungs settle the question for me.
The thought hits with a jolt of shame and relief. Not because I actually plan to do it. Because a part of me likes that the option exists, neat and quiet, right underneath my own skin.
I kick back up, breaking the surface harder than I need to, sending waves slapping against the sides.
“Drama queen,” I mutter. “Even for yourself.”
I swim to the steps and sit on the bottom one, water up to my chest, arms draped on the higher tiers. My fingers wrinkle, the skin on my palms softening. In the glass wall, my reflection floats in front of the framed talk show stills and magazine covers—Nora in gowns, Nora laughing on couches, Nora wiping a tasteful tear.
My phone sits on the concrete ledge, screen dark.
I haul myself out of the water, limbs heavy, and grab it with damp fingers. The screen wakes up under my thumb: notifications stacked like tiny screaming headlines. Mentions. Hashtags. Links to Quinn’s latest episode about the call sheet. A gossip account screenshot of my face at Rhea’s memorial, red-eyed and blurred.
At the top is Marcus’s last text.
MARCUS: We locked the late-night spot. Huge opportunity. We control the narrative. I’ll send talking points tomorrow. Get rest. You’re safe.
I snort water out of my nose, half laugh, half cough.
“Sure,” I say to nobody. “Safe.”
My thumb drifts down to the phone app. I open it. The keypad glows clean and white. I hover for a second, then start tapping.
9.
1.
My fingertip hangs over the last 1. My heart climbs into my throat, pounding against the inside of it.
I picture the operator on the other end. Calm voice, script-ready.
911, what’s your emergency?
“Hi,” I whisper to the empty yard. “I’d like to report—”
My throat closes.
What would I say? I pushed a girl at sixteen and a man fixed it so it disappeared? I didn’t cut the harness but I climbed onto a production that runs on the same shortcuts? I’ve been letting everyone call it cursed when really it’s just built on rot?
The phone grows slick in my hand. My fingers shake hard enough that tiny droplets fling off and darken the concrete.
I try again.
“I’d like to make a statement,” I tell the water. “I’d like to tell you what really happened at the mill and on Stage 14 and in every meeting where we chose spin over someone’s bruises.”
The words taste both terrifying and rehearsed, like I’m reading the monologue of a character who has been living in my chest rent-free for years.
I can already see the next steps: police reports, leaked documents, pundits with perfectly calibrated outrage. I see Marcus’s face going grey as lawyers crowd in. I see my mother’s hands shaking, just like they did when she signed that first NDA.
The keypad blurs. I hang up before I ever dial the last digit.
The phone asks me politely if I want to end the call that never started. I hit cancel, then lock the screen. My reflection stares back from the black glass.
“Coward,” I whisper at her.
Her mouth moves in perfect sync.
I sit there shivering in my own backyard in LA, chlorine drying on my shoulders, and do the thing I’ve always done when I’m cornered: I rehearse.
I unlock the phone again, not for 911 this time, but for the comfortingly stupid glow of my Notes app. Then I stop myself. I don’t need to type. I already know the beats. Marcus drilled them into me, and I drilled them into my muscles.
“Okay,” I tell the empty patio. “Cold open. Host makes a joke about ‘those rumors.’ I laugh, tuck hair behind ear, lean forward. And then I say…”
I straighten my spine a fraction, shoulders pulling back, chin dipping to the angle I know reads vulnerable. My voice shifts without my permission into that softer register, the one that plays well through late-night speakers.
“Look,” I say, “I’m not here tonight to relitigate the past or to center myself in other people’s pain.”
I pause, hear the phantom audience murmur. In my mind, the host nods solemnly.
“What happened to Rhea was a tragedy,” I continue. “She was my friend, my colleague, and she was part of my stunt family. I trusted the system that was supposed to keep her safe, and that system failed.”
The word family catches in my throat. I swallow it down and keep going. The rhythm is too smooth.
“Since the accident,” I say, “I’ve been working with the studio and with safety experts—”
I cut myself off with a sharp, disgusted bark of a laugh.
“Nope,” I say. “That’s a lie. Try again.”
I run my wet hands back through my hair. Drops fall on my shoulders, cold streaks on warmer skin. The city keeps blinking below, indifferent to my script edits.
“Since the accident,” I repeat, forcing myself to look at my own reflection, “I’ve been asking hard questions about how a set like ours, with all its resources and supposed safeguards, could still let this happen. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I am committed—”
My mouth wraps around committed with the ease of a thousand recycled apologies.
“God,” I say. “Listen to you.”
My voice is raw now, rasping at the edges. I hear Lila in my head, the version of her that lives there even when Elle isn’t speaking: You’re so good at sounding sorry that you don’t remember how to be sorry.
I try again, this time dropping my gaze to the water.
“Rhea is dead,” I say, and the words land on the patio between my bare feet. “A girl got hurt at a mill when I was sixteen. Those things are connected. They have to be.”
No punchy follow-up. No pivot to systemic critique. Just that.
Silence expands around it. The pool filter hums quietly. A palm frond whispers against the glass behind me. The house holds its breath with me, a box of sharp-edged transparency containing one very breakable liar.
I know I won’t say it like that on the show. I can already feel the muscles in my cheeks pulling toward a gentler spin, the way my hands will fold on my lap instead of fisting at my sides. My sense of self has fossilized around the red light of a camera. I don’t know how to talk without picturing the edit.
I stand, knees popping, and wrap the towel around myself. The terrycloth drinks up water and heat in one greedy sweep. I pad back toward the open door, leaving damp footprints on the stone, each one fading as the night air drinks them.
Inside, the glass walls catch me from every angle. Nora in the window, Nora in the shiny black of the TV screen, Nora in the framed talk show still laughing at a joke that isn’t funny anymore.
On the kitchen counter, my phone buzzes once—a calendar alert. TALK SHOW: 5 DAYS.
I swipe it away.
“I’m heartbroken,” I tell the reflection in the microwave, testing the line one more time, “but I’m strong, and I know we can use this moment to do better.”
The words float there, perfect and useless. I watch my own mouth shape them and wait for the part of me that still wants to dial three numbers instead.
It stays quiet.
I turn off the patio light I never turned on, leaving the pool to merge back into the dark, and walk down the hallway toward bed, rehearsing the smile that will convince millions I’m telling the truth and wondering what my face would look like if I ever did.