The air in my trailer smells like fake smoke and powdered sugar.
Someone left a box of glazed donuts on the tiny table by the door, lid askew, frosting sweating under the refrigerated hum of the air conditioning. A strip of gaffer tape curls near the threshold, catching at the bottom of my sneaker when I step in. Outside, the steady groan of a generator undercuts the higher whine of a leaf blower somewhere on the lot.
On the built-in couch, next to the folded throw blanket wardrobe insists I use for continuity, an envelope sits dead center.
No production stamp, no courier logo, no assistant’s neat handwriting. Just a regular manila envelope, legal-sized, the flap tucked but not sealed. My name is on it in black pen, all caps, not quite straight: NORA HAYES.
I close the trailer door behind me, shutting out the shout of a PA and the clatter of a rolling cart. The latch clicks. The hum of the AC grows louder, a constant white noise that fills the tiny space.
“Fan mail,” I say under my breath.
My voice sounds thin in here. I toss my tote onto the opposite end of the couch, shoulder aching from the weight of the overnight bag I still haven’t unpacked from the talk show. Glitter from last night’s hair spray winks on the cushion.
I tell myself it’s probably a script revision Marcus forgot to warn me about. Or a heartfelt letter someone begged their way past security with. Fans have become creative since the studio tightened mail intake; sometimes things slip through.
My fingers slide under the flap. The paper rasps, dry against my skin.
Inside, there’s no letter. No note. Just a stack of three-hole-punched pages bound with brass brads, the weight of a low-budget feature.
The title page stares up at me in twelve-point Courier.
THE ACTRESS WHO PUSHED
My thumbnail catches on the edge of the page. The skin there is already shredded from the past week; I dig the nail in anyway, pushing down on the sting.
“Not subtle,” I murmur.
I glance toward the narrow frosted window. A slice of sun bleeds around the edges of the blind, bright enough to outline the dust on the sill. I can’t see anyone outside, but awareness prickles along the back of my neck, like the glass has become one-way and someone’s watching from the shadows between trailers.
“Okay,” I say, louder this time, to the empty room. “Let’s see what you think you know.”
I sit, script in my lap, the paper cool against my bare thighs where my skirt rides up. The metal brad head presses into my skin through the top page, a tiny circle of pressure.
FADE IN:
The first line hits me like a hand to the chest.
EXT. ABANDONED MILL – NIGHT
Rain needles the rusted skeleton of a riverside TEXTILE MILL. A teenage girl — THE ACTRESS, 16, pretty in the way cameras like — runs toward it, breath steaming in the cold.
My throat tightens. It’s the same language the location scout used the first time we drove out to the real mill. Rusted skeleton. I know that phrase because I repeated it in early interviews, turning my hometown into edgy scenery for late-night anecdotes.
I flip to the next page.
INT. MILL STAIRCASE – LATER
Wet metal stairs climb into darkness. WATER drips from overhead pipes. The ACTRESS and another girl — THE GIRL WHO FELL — argue in low, sharp whispers.
The description of the air—smells of oil and river rot—matches the memory lodged in my sinuses. I can almost taste the metallic damp, feel the slick rail under my teenage palm. The script calls the rail COLD, capital letters, like a sound cue.
I scan down the scene, heart thudding in my ears.
The dialogue isn’t exact, but it’s close enough to tilt the floor under me.
ACTRESS
You’re not going to the press. You’re not blowing up our shot at getting out of here.GIRL WHO FELL
Out of what? This town? Yourself?
I hear Lila’s voice in those lines, even though the words are different. I remember her chin lifted, the way the fluorescent spill from the emergency light cut across her cheekbone, the way I wanted to wipe that look off her face.
I grip the edges of the script harder. The paper digs into my fingers.
“Who wrote you,” I whisper, “and who did they talk to?”
I turn another page. Stage directions underline little humiliations I’ve spent a decade training myself not to think about. The way my hands shook when the fixer showed up. The way my mother signed papers without reading them because the man in the suit promised college for my sister and a mortgage instead of rent.
Each choice is translated into shorthand: The Actress stares at the blood on the rail. She chooses the camera over the ambulance.
“That’s not—” The sentence cracks in my mouth. I swallow the rest.
My eyes catch on a scene heading.
INT. GLASS HOUSE – NIGHT
My stomach gives a sharp twist.
Floor-to-ceiling WINDOWS turn a Laurel Canyon house into a fishbowl above the city. Adult ACTRESS, now 30, swims laps in a glowing pool. Her body cuts the water in clean lines, but her face is a blank mask.
Last night’s chlorine still clings to my hair, faint under the layers of product. The script notes the way she rehearses an apology into the dark, how she never dials the number. My number.
“You weren’t there,” I tell the page.
It doesn’t matter. The scene tracks my movements with unnerving precision: the braced breath before I opened my emergency contacts, the phantom feeling of the phone vibrating in my wet hand, the way I slid so easily into the talk-show cadence Marcus had coached me on.
I flip ahead.
A new sequence: a late-night talk show set, a fake city skyline, me laughing about teen mischief and wild child rumors. The host in the script pokes the same bear as the real one. The Actress talks about trespassing in a mill, about learning respect for safety, about systems that failed.
The scene ends with a CLOSE ON: her smile, frozen just a heartbeat too long, the skin around her eyes not matching the rest of her face.
My own talk show grin flashes in my mind, split-screened with the mill stills and Quinn’s thread. My tongue tastes like stale lip gloss and the bitter coffee I threw back between takes.
I blow out a breath, shallow and shaky.
“You’re a fan,” I say to the script. “Or you hate me. Or both.”
I flip to the title page again, searching for a name.
No writer credit. No agent info. Just the title and a blank line where representation should go.
The brass brads are slightly tarnished, dark finger smudges around the edges like whoever bound it did it in a rush, hands not quite clean. A faint chemical scent rises from the pages—toner and fresh paper, the smell of table reads and coverage meetings.
My thumb traces a line in the margin where someone has penciled a note: Too much sympathy here? Sharpen her selfishness.
“Are you kidding me,” I breathe.
I force myself back into the story.
Midway through the script, there’s a stunt sequence at a soundstage that reads like a mashup of Stage 14 days. A falling sandbag. A fire drill gone wrong. A harness that fails. The stunt double dies on page in a clean slug line: She hits the mat. Her chest doesn’t rise.
I skim the margins. More notes in the same tight handwriting.
Make it clearer this isn’t an accident.
We need to see that she sees the tape over the emergency stop.
She chooses silence here. Again.
My fingertips itch. I rub them against my skirt, fabric catching on skin.
On one page, the writer has underlined a line of dialogue from the Actress and written: She’s good at sounding sorry without changing anything.
“You’ve been listening,” I say. My voice scrapes. “To my interviews. To the podcast. To everything.”
I turn another page with more force than I mean to. The brad squeaks.
The script shifts into scenes that haven’t happened yet. Not exactly. A meeting in a sleek attorney’s office where the Actress is coached on what she can and cannot say. A podcast host who looks nothing like Quinn but speaks with the same careful cadence, offering the wounded girl’s side to an eager audience.
And then: the third act.
INT. RECREATED MILL SET – NIGHT
The description could have come straight from our production designs.
A soundstage dressed to look like the old textile mill. Rusted rails, wet stairs, fake river mist pumped in from machines. CREW members swarm under hot lights. An emergency exit door stands on one side of the set; on the other, a narrow corridor lined with prop machinery.
The stage directions describe a stunt sequence with controlled fire, rigging, extras in background costumes. Then the fire jumps, climbing out of its designated frame.
I lick my lips. My mouth tastes like the sugary glaze off the donut I ate this morning when I told myself food would settle my nerves.
In the script, the suppression system fails. The exits are blocked by falling set pieces. Smoke eats the oxygen.
The Actress hears two screams.
From the corridor to her LEFT: the JOURNALIST, the one who has been investigating the mill incident, hacking coughs, calling her name.
From the corridor to her RIGHT: a YOUNG EXTRA, pinned under a fallen beam, face streaked with soot and terror.
The pages blur for a second, then sharpen again. Sweat beads under my blouse despite the overactive AC. The trailer suddenly feels smaller than it did five minutes ago.
“No,” I say, though I don’t know which part I’m denying.
The scene directions slow down here, line by line.
The ACTRESS looks left.
The ACTRESS looks right.
She calculates.
A note in the margin: This is her true face. Don’t cut away.
My heart hammers against my ribs, faster now, not the soft anxiety hum of press days but the sharp, electric pulse of stunt rehearsals when I have to trust a cable and a harness with my life.
I force myself to read the rest of the scene.
The ACTRESS chooses the corridor with the JOURNALIST.
She drags the JOURNALIST toward safety, shouting for someone else to get the EXTRA, but the smoke is too thick. The crew can’t reach both in time.
Behind them, through the haze, we glimpse the EXTRA, reaching out. No one takes her hand.
The script doesn’t show the actual death. It cuts away to the Actress giving a statement outside the burned soundstage, eyes red, voice steady. She talks about tragedy. She talks about the importance of safety. She does not mention the moment she chose which scream to follow.
The last scene is simple.
INT. GLASS HOUSE – DAWN
The ACTRESS sits on the floor of her pristine, glass-walled home, laptop open in front of her. A blank email draft fills the screen, cursor blinking. The TO line is empty. The SUBJECT line reads: CONFESSION.
She stares.
She closes the laptop instead.
A final note engraved itself into my brain before I even finish reading it.
She will always choose the version of herself she can live with on camera over the one other people can live with in real life.
My hands tremble.
I set the script down on the cushion beside me and stand too fast. Blood rushes from my head. The trailer sways for a second, a soft tilt that makes the walls feel closer. I brace my palm against the narrow counter, fingertips pressing into the cool laminate.
Outside, someone shouts “Rolling!” and a distant director calls “Action!” through a megaphone. The sound muffles through the trailer walls, turning into a drawn-out roar.
“Is that what you think I am?” I ask the room. “A foregone conclusion?”
Nobody answers. The AC kicks into a higher gear, blowing cold air directly into my face. It smells faintly of dust and the citrus cleaner they use between days.
I look back at the script.
Someone sat down and wrote my life into a screenplay, then jumped ahead to a fire I haven’t walked into yet and decided what I’ll do when it comes. They gave me one corridor. One choice. They wrote me as a person who will let another girl burn to protect her own redemption arc.
I picture Lila on the staircase. Rhea on the mat. The extra under the sandbag. The anonymous PA talking to Quinn. The diner in Pennsylvania where people argued over whether I pushed or saved a girl they only half remember.
I picture Quinn, phone in hand, stitching my talk show smile to the mill photo in real time.
Someone knows all of it—the mill, the glass house, the talk show couch—and believes they can predict my next confession, or lack of one, line for line.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I fish it out with numb fingers. A text from Marcus flashes on the screen: Great numbers on last night. Network thrilled. Let’s talk next steps after you wrap today.
I stare at his words, then at the title on the abandoned script.
THE ACTRESS WHO PUSHED.
I don’t know which scares me more: that the person who wrote it wants to destroy me, or that they might be right about the story I’m about to tell with whatever comes next.