I find out I’m trending because my phone won’t stop vibrating on the coffee table.
The glass surface rattles under it, a mosquito buzz of notifications I try to ignore until one banner slices across the top: #DidNoraPushLila is trending.
My stomach tightens. For a heartbeat, I pretend I didn’t read it. I stare past the phone, out at the city lights sprayed across the hills, at the soft reflection of my own face in the window. The glass turns me into a faint double-exposure: me and my curated view, stacked on top of each other.
The phone buzzes again.
“Fine,” I say to the empty room. “Show me the damage.”
I unlock the screen. My name fills the feed: reaction threads, screenshot carousels, podcast link embeds, an endless scroll of people who now not only know there was a mill, but think they know what I did there.
A fan account I recognize has posted a video. The caption reads: “The Truth About Nora Hayes (TW: violence)”
I tap it before I can stop myself.
The edit opens on the uncropped still from “River’s Edge High”: teenage me on the mill staircase, jaw clenched, hand gripping the railing. They’ve slowed the footage so my blink drags like a flinch. Text fades in over my sixteen-year-old face: “This is the moment she decided.”
Ominous music throbs under Quinn’s clipped audio: “According to multiple independent sources… the actress arguing with Lila on that staircase was Nora Elise Hayes.”
The video cuts to a talk show clip from three weeks ago, me laughing under hot studio lights.
“We got into some trouble on that set,” I say on-screen, eyes sparkling. The editor has zoomed in, sharpened my pupils. “There’s one night I promised my lawyer I’d never talk about.”
They freeze-frame my smile and slap the word CONFESSION in red over it.
“Oh, come on,” I whisper at my own face.
The edit jumps to paparazzi footage of me leaving a restaurant with Marcus, then to a slow pan over the abandoned mill from some fan’s location pilgrimage. The river looks like spilled oil in the low light. The caption over the final shot reads: “Believe victims.”
I thumb down to the comments.
“Knew she was fake from day one.”
“This is what happens when they make bullies into role models.”
“Imagine being Lila and watching her get a prestige show called Second Chances I’m going to choke.”
My throat tightens. My head buzzes with twenty defenses at once: they weren’t there, they don’t know, the memory wasn’t even clear until last week.
None of those facts care about the edit.
Another push notification slides in, this one with a different tone: “NORA HAYES CANCELLED?? Here’s why she deserves grace.”
I click that one too.
This edit uses piano music. It opens on my charity gala appearances, my speeches about “supporting young girls in the industry,” my tearful moment accepting an award last year, thanking “everyone who believed I could grow.”
A voiceover—some influencer with the smooth cadence of someone who records everything in bed with a ring light—floats over the montage.
“Nora Hayes has never pretended to be perfect,” she says. “She has always been honest about her messy teenage years.”
The editor cuts in a clip of me saying, “I was kind of a hurricane at sixteen,” then another where I joke, “I was lucky to have people around me who kept me out of serious trouble.”
“She’s clearly a victim of cancel culture,” the influencer continues. “Digging up something that may or may not have happened decades ago? We don’t even know if she pushed anyone. This is a young woman who has done so much good.”
The video jumps to footage of me hugging an extra on set after the sandbag accident, my hand rubbing circles on her back.
“Look how caring she is,” text appears underneath. “Does this look like an abuser to you?”
I press my thumb hard into the corner of my phone until the case squeaks.
“They’re talking about me like I’m a meme,” I tell the empty room. “Not a person. Not—”
Not like the girl who hit the stairs.
My name fills the screen in two fonts now: NORA HAYES MONSTER and LEAVE NORA ALONE. Both sides grab the same clips and paint them opposite colors.
In none of these edits does Lila’s face appear for more than half a second.
My phone buzzes with an incoming call. Marcus.
I let it ring out.
A text follows immediately.
Marcus: Do NOT post. I’m handling it. Call you in 10.
I toss the phone onto the couch beside me and reach for the remote. Maybe if I change the way the house sounds, I can change the way my brain feels.
The TV flares to life, jumping to a glossy entertainment news show.
“…podcast ‘Second Take’ has social media ablaze today,” the host chirps, rooftop set glowing behind her. “Its latest episode, ‘Naming Names,’ connects America’s sweetheart Nora Hayes to an alleged violent incident on the set of the cult teen drama ‘River’s Edge High.’”
A panel of commentators pops up in a grid—critic, publicist, some TikTok culture guy. My face floats behind them on a giant screen, talk-show smile stretched across thirty feet of LED.
“We don’t know what happened that night,” the critic says. “But I think we need to ask why we’re so eager to destroy a woman for something she did as a child.”
“Or why we let her become the face of empowerment in the first place,” the TikTok guy counters. “Where was this energy when the injured actress disappeared from the show?”
No one says her name.
I mute the TV and the house drops back into the low hum of the AC, the faint rush of cars on Laurel Canyon below, a neighbor’s sprinkler sputtering somewhere down the hill. The silence presses in harder than the noise.
My phone buzzes again, this time with the percussive double tap of an email notification.
I pick it up, already braced.
Subject line: Important: Our Partnership
My vision tunnels before I even open it. I tap with a finger that doesn’t feel attached to me.
Hi Nora,
In light of recent allegations circulating online, we’ve made the difficult decision to pause our partnership pending further information. This is not a reflection of our personal regard for you and the work we’ve done together. However, as a family-centered wellness brand, we must remain sensitive to consumer concerns.
We hope to revisit this when things have settled. In the meantime, please refrain from publicly mentioning our products or campaigns. Our legal team will follow up.
Wishing you clarity and peace in this challenging time,
—The GlowWell Team
My thumb hovers over “Reply.” I picture the sweat-dampened ad shoot last month: the white cyc wall, the smell of hair spray and fake citrus in the air, the photographer yelling, “Turn the bottle label out!” like it was a life-and-death matter. I picture the craft-service table piled with sticky donuts and cut fruit slowly browning under studio lights.
I delete the half-formed “Thanks for letting me know” I’ve typed and lock my phone instead.
“Family-centered wellness,” I say to the glass walls. “Great. Love that for us.”
The little green juice bottle from that same campaign sits on my coffee table, half full, sweating into a ring on the wood. I pick it up, take a sip, and taste chalk and cucumber and the faint bitterness of spirulina. My stomach rolls.
Marcus calls again. This time I answer.
“Tell me you haven’t tweeted,” he says by way of greeting.
“Good afternoon to you too,” I say. My voice comes out tight. “Or is it evening? Hard to tell when time is measured in hashtags.”
“Nora.” He lowers his voice like someone might be listening, even though we both know the only ears in this house are mine. “Our position has not changed. No admission, no comment. We stay with the original line: you don’t recall any serious injuries on that set.”
I stare at my reflection in the window, at the mouth that just said hashtags, not Lila.
“That line isn’t true anymore,” I say.
He exhales sharply. “Your memories are not evidence. They are vulnerable. They are being weaponized against you. The podcast twisted—”
“She played the audio of the PA,” I cut in. “They heard a shove.”
“Allegedly,” he snaps. “We don’t know what they heard. We do know that your entire career, and by extension a lot of people’s livelihoods, are riding on you not panicking.”
“Brand partnership number one just paused,” I say. “I think the panic ship left dock.”
“GlowWell will be back,” he says. “They’re skittish. They build their whole image on moms drinking compost out of glass bottles. They’ll go wherever the wind blows. Right now, we need to shore up the others. I have calls with two sponsors in the morning. You do not engage online. You do not say her name.”
“Whose?” I ask. “Lila’s or mine?”
He goes quiet, just for a second.
“Let me handle this,” he says. “We’re exploring options with the podcast, with whoever fed them that old call sheet. There are pressure points. For now, focus on work. Show up on set, hit your marks, don’t give them any real-time meltdowns to splice into their little villain edits.”
The word villain hits like a physical thing.
“What if I’m tired of being edited by everybody else?” I ask, more to the room than to him.
“Then take a deep breath and remember they loved you yesterday,” he says. “Public outrage has the attention span of a gnat. We just have to get through this cycle.”
I picture a gnat bouncing against a window, battering itself against glass it can’t see.
“I have to go,” I say. “Call me after your sponsor charm offensive.”
“Nora—”
I hang up and drop the phone onto the couch, where it immediately starts buzzing again, indignant.
I don’t pick it up this time.
Instead, I open my laptop.
The glow from the screen bleaches the room, flattening the soft gray of the couch, the honey of the wood floor. My own face stares back from three different thumbnails on the news site homepage, each frozen mid-expression: frown, laugh, red-carpet glare.
I type my own name into the social search bar and hit enter.
The number at the top—mentions in the last hour—updates so fast I can’t read it.
I scroll, the wheel under my finger turning into an extension of my pulse.
“She was a kid, get over it.”
“Tell that to the girl with the scars.”
“This is what cancel culture wants: blood.”
“You’re all forgetting she built a foundation for stunt safety, look at this link.”
“She only built that after she killed someone, allegedly.”
Screenshots of Quinn’s episode notes circulate alongside clips from old interviews and stills of me at the mill. Someone has dug up a fan selfie from a Pennsylvania diner years ago; my eyes in it are ringed with exhaustion, my smile rigid.
The caption reads: “I SAW HER THE WEEK AFTER ‘THE INCIDENT’ SHE LOOKED GUILTY AF.”
I scroll until I feel my brain detach, the words turning into vague shapes, my own name a pattern of familiar letters without meaning.
To shake it, I type Lila’s name instead.
Lila Park.
The search results shrink.
There are posts from hardcore fans who’ve been following Quinn’s series from the beginning, a few older threads from die-hard “River’s Edge” forums wondering why she disappeared. A handful of people are sharing her convention photos, her early scene stills, the one interview she did at seventeen where she talks about wanting to direct.
The numbers next to those posts are small.
I flip back to my own tag. The numbers there cascade, impossible to pin down.
I toggle between the two tabs like a bad magic trick: Nora Hayes exploding in real time; Lila Park limping along in comparison.
My chest tightens with a familiar defensiveness.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I say to the laptop. “I didn’t ask them to make it all about me.”
Another thought slides in under it, quiet and sharp.
I never asked them not to, either.
I think about Quinn in her loft, wrapping careful words around my name. I think about Marcus in his glass office, wrapping careful language around my past. Both of them centering me, for different reasons.
My own fingers are still on the trackpad, choosing which name to search.
I click on one of the big threads dissecting Quinn’s episode. The top comment is a three-paragraph defense of me, citing my charity work and “how visibly shaken she looked after that sandbag accident.” The next top comment is a three-paragraph takedown, enumerating every time I’ve laughed off my “wild child” years in interviews.
I scroll to the bottom and type a reply without thinking.
Nobody here actually knows what happened at that mill.
I almost hit send from my personal account. The cursor blinks in the reply box, waiting. My thumb trembles over the trackpad.
I delete the comment.
I close the tab.
The laptop background pops back into view: a press photo of Stage 14, the fake suburban living room façade glowing under rigged lights. If I squint, the edges of the set blur with the real studio walls, glass of the soundstage windows reflecting key lights until I can’t tell where architecture ends and illusion begins.
Outside, a siren wails faintly down on the boulevard, echoing back from the canyon like a looped sound effect. In my mouth, I taste the phantom memory of the mill’s wet metal railing, cold and tangy under my teenage palm.
My phone pings with a new text. I flip it over.
Marcus: Elle Park is just a stunt coordinator. She’ll fold when she realizes how big this is. Trust me.
His next message arrives before I can respond.
I’m setting up a conversation. You don’t need to be involved. Focus on staying off the record.
The name Elle burns on the screen, a stand-in for the one the internet just learned: Lila.
I look from his text to my laptop, where my own name fills the browser bar, and then to the window, where my reflection sits layered over the city like a ghost.
I know which name the world cares about right now.
I also know which name hit the stairs.
My fingers tighten around the phone until my knuckles ache.
For a long moment, I hover over Marcus’s message thread, caught between typing Leave her alone and throwing the phone back onto the couch.
In the end, I do neither.
I just sit there, lit by screens, counting how many times my name pulses across the glass while the one I shoved out of frame remains small, and distant, and easy to scroll past.
And the worst part is, I’m still watching what this does to me more than I’m asking what it already did to her.