The crew clears for lunch, and Stage 14 exhales.
Voices recede toward the bright hallway and the smell of curry from the food truck outside. The big doors thump shut. The AC hum rises to fill the silence, steady and impersonal. Haze lingers in the light like dust trapped in amber.
I stay on the stairs.
“You sure you don’t want anything?” the second AD had asked a minute ago, hovering at the base like a nervous camp counselor.
“I’ll grab something later,” I’d told her. “I just want to sit in it for a second.”
She’d read that as Method, not self-harm. “Cool,” she’d said, half impressed, half wary. “I’ll have someone bring you water.”
Now the mill set belongs to me and the AC and the faint chemical sweetness of fake smoke.
I lower myself onto the step that nearly took my legs out from under me earlier—third from the landing, same one, Elle had said. My knee twinges in agreement. I stretch my legs out along the tread, back against the railing, and rest my palms on the cool metal on either side of my hips.
“All right,” I whisper to nobody. “No edits this time.”
The words fog in the chilled air.
I close my eyes.
The studio smells thin and manufactured. I push past it, searching for the deeper scents engraved in my blood. Oil. Wet stone. River water sneaking through cracked foundations. That night, the air in the real mill tasted of broken lights and cheap coffee and the damp wool of crew jackets.
I let my breathing slow until it matches the low thrum of remembered generators.
The stair under me shivers.
When I open my eyes again, I am still on Stage 14 and I am sixteen in Pennsylvania, both at once. The glassy smoothness of the studio rail overlays the rough, flaking steel of the real thing. The set brick tilts into the older, darker walls, graffiti fresher, tags sharper, no art department patina yet.
“You stole my scene.”
Lila’s voice hits first. It always does.
She stands one step above me in the memory, hair escaping her ponytail in frizzed curls from the humidity. The river town never really dries; fog crawls up from the water at night and clings to the mill like a second skin. Her breath forms faint clouds in the cold.
She’s in costume—distressed hoodie, plaid skirt, knees scraped from take three—clutching a handful of crumpled pages. The fluorescent work lights overhead buzz, flickering in a long, uneven line down the stairwell.
“I didn’t steal anything,” I hear myself say. My voice comes out tight, trying for breezy. “The showrunner rewrote. That’s his job.”
I’m on the landing below her, body angled toward the camera that isn’t rolling, too aware of where my best light would be. Script pages stick out from under my arm, edges soft from being reread until the toner started to fade.
“Then why are half my lines in your mouth now?” she asks.
She waves the pages between us, words highlighted in neon yellow. The pink marker I use has bled into my own pages in my hand. Whole chunks of monologue migrated between our characters overnight, like someone picked up my highlighter strokes and laid them over hers.
“He said it tracked better with my arc,” I say. “It’s not personal.”
“It’s not personal that the angry Asian girl gets reduced to sarcastic reaction shots while America’s sweetheart gets the big ‘my dad drank too much’ speech?” she fires back.
I wince. I never asked anyone to call me that, but I never corrected them either. The first time a teen magazine used the phrase, Marcus had framed it in my mom’s kitchen. That glossy page still hangs by her fridge, behind coupons and a chipped magnet from the riverboat casino.
“Lila, I don’t run the writers’ room,” I say. “I barely run my own lines.”
“You run to the right people when you don’t like something,” she says. “They listen to you. They pat my shoulder and say ‘we’ll look at that next pass’ and then they tell me to smile more.”
The river grumbles under us, low and constant. Somewhere downstage, a PA drops a C-stand; the clatter bounces off iron beams.
“This isn’t about you being—” I start.
“Don’t finish that sentence,” she snaps. “We both know what it’s about.”
Her hand slides down the rail. The metal leaves gray dust along the side of her palm. She wipes it on her skirt, frustrated.
“This place is a hazard,” she says. “You feel that, right? The stairs move when we hit the mark. Water comes through the floor whenever the tide goes up. You heard that guy say there’s no full structural report.”
I did hear him. A local guy on the location crew, muttering about permits over his cigarette. I’d filed the warning away under “not my department.”
“They wouldn’t let us shoot here if it wasn’t safe,” I say. “We’re minors. There are rules.”
She laughs, sharp and humorless.
“You believe that?” she asks. “They’re already breaking half of them. We’ve been here twelve hours. I watched the stunt coordinator argue for spotters and get steamrolled. They care more about one pretty shot of you running up these stairs than whether I land on my feet.”
The words echo in the stairwell, scuffing against my ribs in the present.
On Stage 14, the AC kicks on higher. The fake fog shifts around my ankles. In the mill, chill river air swirls, smelling of algae and rust. My throat tightens.
“We’ll get through tonight,” I say to her younger face. “Then the schedule moves on. There’s, like, two more episodes here.”
“I’m not talking about tonight,” she says. “I’m talking about all of it. The hours, the rewrites, the way they talk around me in meetings until they need ‘spice’ in a scene.”
Her voice shakes now, not from cold.
“I’m talking to my mom about a lawyer,” she says. “And there’s a reporter from the Ledger who keeps calling the production office about local working conditions. Maybe I start picking up.”
My heart jerks up into my throat.
“You can’t do that,” I say. “You’ll kill the show.”
“Maybe the show deserves to die if it needs kids in a condemned building to stay alive,” she shoots back.
The word condemned rattles around the stairwell. I remember seeing the faded notice on the back door, the day we first scouted. I remember Marcus saying, Don’t worry, the paperwork’s handled, while he straightened my scarf and told me not to bring it up on camera.
“Think about what you’re saying,” I insist. “This job is… it’s everything for me. For you too. Do you want to go back to working regional theater in church basements?”
Her mouth twists.
“So the choice is I shut up and take it or I ruin your big break?” she says. “Good to know.”
“That’s not what I—”
“You know what they told my mom?” she cuts in. “That if we make trouble, there are fifty other girls who would ‘kill’ to be in my spot. That they’re giving us an opportunity. That we should be grateful they’re writing a role ‘for someone like her’ at all.”
Her impression of the casting director lands with a sick accuracy that would’ve killed in a different scene. In this one, it just burns.
“They told my mom we’d get health insurance,” she says. “Does your contract have that?”
I look away.
“Of course it does,” she answers for me. “Just not mine. You’re on the poster. I’m in the background with a ‘special thanks.’ I’m done letting that slide.”
The fluorescent lights buzz louder, matching my pulse.
“So what?” I ask. “You blow everything up? You talk to some guy from the Ledger who wants a ‘troubled teen drama’ headline, and the network cancels, and all of us go home broke? You think they’re going to take care of you after that?”
“I think I’d like to leave here with my spine intact,” she says. “And maybe make sure the next girl they throw on these stairs has a harness.”
Her hand taps the rail, fingers drumming.
“You’re exaggerating,” I say.
“I watched a guy tape over a crack in the landing with gaffer tape,” she replies. “The PA who called it in got reassigned to parking. Your little manager fix that too?”
My cheeks flood hot; the air stays freezing.
“Leave Marcus out of this,” I say.
She leans down, closer, anger sharpening her features.
“Why?” she asks. “Because he promised you you’d never have to go back to the diner? Because he bought your mom a newer car? Because he told you he’d make everything that came before disappear?”
The word disappear perches at the edge of my memory like a bird ready to bolt. On Stage 14, a distant metal clang from somewhere up in the grid jolts through both versions of the staircase.
“He said he’d protect me,” I say.
“He meant he’d protect the asset,” she snaps. “They don’t see me when they look at you. They see insurance. They see ratings. They see a girl who hits her mark and says the lines and smiles on cue when the talk show host brings up ‘wild child rumors.’”
My stomach lurches; the future she describes has already happened.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“I know enough,” she says. “I know I’m not dying here so they can spin your grief into a season two arc.”
The railing under her hand vibrates when a grip moves equipment somewhere below. The shake runs up through my calves. The river smell thickens, tinged with something sour—metal and mildew.
“I’m calling the reporter,” she says. “Tonight. I’m telling him the hours. The non-union stunts. The way they make us run on wet metal without proper sign-off. I’m done being your background trauma.”
“My what?” I ask.
“Your backdrop,” she says. “They frame you against me. The poor girl from nowhere who teaches your character empathy. I get bruises; you get character development.”
The words land straight in my sternum.
“We’re both from nowhere,” I snap. “You’re not the only one who had a crappy childhood.”
“Difference is you want to keep living in this one,” she says, gesturing around at the mill. “I want out.”
The fear underneath her anger finally shows itself. It pulls at the corners of her eyes, tightens her grip on the rail. I see it now in a way I didn’t at sixteen. Her voice drops, lower.
“I slip on these stairs, they’ll call it an accident,” she says. “They’ll say I wasn’t careful. I heard the AD joking about it. You think they’re going to shut production down for me?”
My throat closes.
“Nobody’s slipping,” I say, too fast.
“Then help me,” she says. “Back me up when I say this isn’t safe. Tell them you won’t run the scene without proper rigging. They’ll listen to you.”
She looks at me like I’m the hinge everything swings on. In the present, my fingers curl tight around the Stage 14 rail.
“You’re asking me to blow my shot,” I say.
“I’m asking you not to let them kill me for your shot,” she replies.
The stairwell hangs on that difference.
On Stage 14, my lunch water bottle sweats beside my foot, condensation slicking the label. In the mill, real water sneaks under the door from the swollen river, pooling on the lower level. A PA’s radio crackles, calling for reset. We have five minutes before the next take.
“I can’t,” I say.
The words leave a raw taste.
“Of course you can,” she says. “You just won’t.”
Her jaw sets. The hurt in her eyes hardens.
“Fine,” she says. “Then get out of my way.”
She moves to step past me down toward the landing, toward the darkness where the lower level gapes. Her shoulder brushes mine. All the fear I’ve been swallowing spikes into anger.
“You can’t ruin this,” I hiss. “You can’t go to the press. You’ll drag me into it. You’ll drag my family.”
“Maybe they need to know what you’re standing on,” she snaps.
Something in me snaps back.
My hand shoots out.
I see it now in slow, merciless clarity: my palm flat against the center of her chest, heel of my hand hitting just under her collarbone. I don’t brush her. I don’t graze. I shove.
All my weight, all my rage, all my terror that everything I’ve clawed my way toward will vanish. The impact jolts up my arm. Her body rocks backward, heel finding the slick patch on the third step from the landing—the one I slipped on this morning.
Her foot slides.
Time fractures.
She teeters, arms flailing for the rail. Fingers catch, miss, catch again. Her gaze locks onto mine for one bright, disbelieving instant.
“Nora—”
In the present, my heart claws against my ribs.
This is the frame that has always been a smear in my memory. The second after the shove, before the fall. I force myself not to look away.
My hand moves again.
I reach. I know I reach; my biceps flex, shoulder wrenching forward. My fingers close around something—her wrist, her sleeve, the cold edge of the rail where her skin just was. The contact is real; the texture imprints itself on my palm.
And yet.
My grip doesn’t hold. The angle of my arm jerks upward. I feel her weight yank against me, pulling me toward the drop. Instinct or panic—or both—fire at once inside my muscles: tighten, let go, protect your balance.
The tape in my head glitches.
In one version, my fingers slip because the rail is wet and her skin is slick and we never had a chance. In another, my hand flinches, traction lost because a part of me recoils from being dragged over with her.
I hear two sounds layered: my own startled gasp and the tiny exhale a body makes when it accepts gravity.
Her weight vanishes from my hand.
Lila’s back hits the rail with a deep metal clang. The sound vibrates up through my arm and lodges in my teeth. Then she’s over, a smear of motion dropping past the landing into the dark.
The crack when she hits the floor below slices through every version of the memory alike.
For a moment, there is no air. The river roars louder, or maybe that’s my blood. Light flickers; someone screams; the PA’s radio shrieks a burst of static before cutting off. My hand finds the rail again blindly.
When I pull it back, blood streaks my palm.
Warm, sticky, metallic, darker than the rust. It coats the heel of my hand, traces along the life line like a bad joke. I stare at it, waiting for the cut on my skin that will justify it.
There isn’t one.
“Don’t move!” someone shouts from below. “Call 911!”
In the present, I hear the faint echo of a real siren from some unrelated LA street, faint through the studio’s thick walls. The AC hum rolls over it, trying to smooth everything out.
On memory’s lower level, bodies rush toward the crumpled shape on the wet concrete. I don’t see her face; an angle of jaw, the spill of dark hair, a leg twisted in a way legs aren’t supposed to go. A pool spreads under her head, reaching for the puddles.
“She fell,” someone says.
“She slipped,” another voice adds.
“Nobody touch her neck,” the stunt coordinator barks, too late, because a grip is already kneeling, hands shaking inches from her shoulder.
I stand frozen on the landing, blood drying tacky on my palm. My back presses into the brick, scraping flaking paint into my jacket. The cold from the rail seeped into my spine a long time ago.
“Nora.” A hand clamps on my arm.
In the memory, it’s the assistant director. In the present, it’s nobody; I’m alone. Both grips feel the same: firm, directing.
“You didn’t see anything,” the AD says under the chaos. His breath stinks of coffee and wintergreen gum. “She tripped. We’ll get your mom. Don’t say anything until Marcus gets here, okay? Just breathe.”
I look down at my hand, at the smear of red.
“I pushed her,” I whisper.
“You’re in shock,” he says. “These stairs are a nightmare. We told them that. This isn’t on you.”
He steers me away from the railing, toward the safer center of the landing, toward a future where that line will harden into gospel.
On Stage 14, my shoulders curl inward around an invisible impact. My cheeks are wet; I don’t remember when that started. The studio rail under my fingers is clean, sealed, smelling faintly of paint and the technician’s latex gloves.
“I pushed her,” I say again, out loud this time.
My voice bounces off fake brick and scaffolding. No one answers.
The memory releases me enough to let oxygen back in. My chest aches like I’ve run stairs for an hour. The AC hums, unbothered. The faint scent of donuts from craft services drifts in, absurdly sweet, cutting through the ghost of river rot.
I look down at my hands.
They’re steady now, palm lines pale, no blood. I rub my thumb along the heel of my right hand, chasing the phantom stickiness.
The one thing I can’t pry open is the exact microsecond between my reach and the fall. My mind still refuses to zoom in any closer. Did I loosen my hold to save myself? Did the slick metal betray both of us? Did I do both at once?
I don’t know.
What I do know sits in the center of my chest like a stone: I shoved her. Not a stumble, not a misstep, not a shared fall. I put my hand on her and drove her backwards, onto a staircase we both knew was dangerous, in a building we both knew should have been condemned.
She wanted to tell the truth about it. I wanted to protect the lie.
Healing loves privacy. Cover stories, locked files, NDAs with nice fonts. Justice needs light and a microphone and someone willing to say, into that light, I did this.
For ten years, I have told myself I didn’t remember enough to be sure. That the system used me as much as it used her. That I was a kid, a victim of bad adults and worse safety protocols.
All of that can be true.
And I can still have pushed her.
My breath shudders out. A small sound breaks loose from my throat, closer to a bark than a sob. Grief and horror tangle, but under them, a thin, dangerous filament of relief glows.
At least now I know. Not everything, not the final frame, but enough to stop hiding behind edited footage in my own head.
Footsteps echo faintly in the hallway outside. The crew will be back from lunch soon. They’ll expect me to hit my marks, cry on the right line, give them usable takes. The cameras will stare, glass eyes waiting to capture a performance about a character who thinks a mill accident made her stronger.
I press my palm flat to the rail one more time.
“You were trying to speak up,” I say into the empty set, to the girl on the floor below who isn’t here. “And I made you the story they buried.”
The words hang in the cold air, fragile and heavy at once.
Somewhere in the building, Elle will be checking rigging diagrams, running through safety notes, watching every tread. She remembers this place from another angle. She thinks I still don’t.
I wipe my face with the back of my wrist, feeling the tender bruise blooming on my knee, the one I earned when I caught myself where she didn’t.
The next time someone asks what happened in that mill, I realize, I won’t be able to say “I don’t remember” without tasting blood in my mouth.
The question now isn’t whether I pushed her.
It’s who hears me admit it first—and how many lives are balanced on that confession.