My thumb aches from scrolling, but I keep dragging the timeline up, up, up.
The phone screen throws a cold rectangle of light across my lap, bleaching my leggings and the crumpled notes scattered there into ghost colors. Tweets, quote-tweets, Reddit threads, fan forum posts—they all smear together into an endless feed of Nora gifs, Lila screenshots, and my own voice transcribed and dissected by strangers with screennames like @MillTruth and @CancelTheSaint.
The loft hums under it all: the overworked window unit chugging stale, cool air into the corner; the fridge in our little kitchenette vibrating just enough to rattle a spoon in an abandoned mug. The place smells like old coffee and printer toner and the leftover kimchi Jazz brought home two nights ago that I still haven’t put in a proper container.
On the corkboard in front of me, the mill photo sits dead center, printed in harsh black-and-white: slim teenage girls on a wet metal staircase in that foggy Pennsylvania river town, rails slick with condensation, broken glass glittering on the landing below. Red string stretches from the photo to a production memo, to a call sheet, to a grainy still of Nora on Stage 14 where the AC blows so hard hair fields ripple, trying to recreate the mill’s breath.
“Okay, this is a crime scene,” Jazz says, keys jingling across the loft before I even hear the door.
I jump, phone slipping in my hand. A tide of notifications bleeds over the screen—new mentions, new emails, a listener tip with the subject line: I WAS THERE. My heart kicks once, hard.
“Don’t sneak up on me when I’m in the red-string zone,” I say, without looking up. “There are rules.”
The paper grocery bag hits the counter with more force than necessary. Fruit thuds inside, and something glass clinks alarmingly.
“I did not sneak,” she says. “The door literally squeaked, because we should have oiled it, like, last year. You just didn’t notice, because you’re surgically attached to that phone.”
“Research,” I correct, flicking my thumb again. A new clip: Nora half-laughing on a late-night couch three years ago, telling some sanitized story about “a rough shoot” back home. The comments are now full of skull emojis and the word Foreshadowing.
Jazz walks into my peripheral vision, one hand still in the grocery bag, the other on her hip. Her hoodie smells like outside LA air—warm asphalt, faint smog, the sagey dryness that lives in the hills. She takes in the table, the corkboard, the floor.
“You printed comments?” she asks.
I blink, following her gaze to a heap of twenty or thirty sheets at my feet—screenshots of long fan theories I wanted to annotate. I’d forgotten I did that this morning.
“I needed to see the patterns,” I say. “To map how the narrative’s shifting. It’s like watching a river change course.”
“You could also just…scroll less and eat a grape,” she says. She pulls one out of the bag and drops it dramatically onto my laptop trackpad. “You’ve had coffee and three bites of a craft-service donut all day.”
The mention of the donut sends the smell back into my mouth: sticky glaze, a hint of fake vanilla, the weird chemical sweetness that always lingers around those towers on set. I’d snagged one on our last visit to Stage 14, taking small guilty bites while watching crew haul cables, invisible labor sweating under Nora’s glassy starlight.
“I’m fine,” I say, batting the grape away. “We’re close, Jazz. The last episode forced the studio’s hand. They paused the spin machine. People are actually talking about Rhea and the crew and not just Nora’s cheekbones.”
Jazz leans on the table, palm flattening a spread of call sheets. Her fingers smudge the corner of a printed DM.
“You’re shaking,” she says.
I look down. My thumb is still moving, tiny tremors over glass.
“Caffeine,” I say.
“Bullshit.” Her voice loses its usual float. “You flinched when the fridge kicked on yesterday. The fridge, Quinn.”
“The compressor sounds like the safety alarm from the fire drill video,” I say before I can stop myself. The one where the flames on Stage 14 jumped higher than planned and Nora stumbled out coughing, the chemical smoke still clinging to her hair while Marcus assured everyone that it was all under control.
Jazz’s eyes soften for half a second, and that’s almost worse than the annoyance.
“Babe,” she says, quieter. “This story is eating you alive.”
I roll my shoulders, trying to shake off the words. “It’s eating everyone alive,” I say. “That’s the point. The system has been chewing people up for decades, and we finally have enough receipts to show it.”
“You know what I mean.” She plucks the phone right out of my hand before I react and studies the screen. “You’re not just reading sources. You’re doom-scrolling what the algorithm thinks will spike your cortisol the highest.”
“Give it back,” I say, heat rising in my neck.
“Not yet.” She locks it with a smooth tap of her thumb, then sets it face-down on the table. “We need to talk about the episode.”
I cross my arms. “Which episode? Thirty? The follow-up live? The bonus with the stunt coordinator?”
“All of it,” she says. “And you. And Nora. And Lila.”
The way she says Lila—steady, unflinching—makes my chest feel tight.
“Listeners wanted context,” I argue. “We gave it to them. We were careful. We didn’t say ‘Nora pushed’ in our own words, we built the pattern and let people draw conclusions. That’s not exploitation; that’s responsible reporting.”
“Is it?” Jazz asks. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like we built a very compelling TikTok-shaped noose and then pretended we had nothing to do with the knot.”
I scoff. “Wow. Tell me how you really feel.”
She lifts both brows. “You sure?”
My heartbeat thuds in my ears. The loft suddenly feels smaller, the air from the AC sticky instead of cool.
“Go ahead,” I say. “I’m already trending as a ‘clout-chasing ghoul’ in some corners; what’s one more critic?”
She winces at that, but she doesn’t step back.
“Okay,” she says. “You want to be a journalist? Let’s start with the first question: Who benefits? Because I’m starting to think the answer is more complicated than ‘the truth.’”
“The people Nora hurt benefit,” I say immediately. “Lila. Rhea’s partner. The crew who keep almost dying around her. Fans who deserve to know what kind of sets they’re cheering for.”
“Sure,” Jazz says. “And who else?”
I hesitate.
“Us,” I admit. “Our numbers are up. Sponsors are…interested.”
“Our Patreon doubled this month,” she says, matter-of-fact. “We said we’d donate a chunk to worker safety orgs, which is good, but that doesn’t erase the fact that we’re literally making rent off Nora’s worst days.”
“We’re making rent off the system that covered them up,” I counter. “There’s a difference.”
“Only if we’re careful about where we point the mic,” she says. “And right now? You’re pointing it at Nora’s face, not the apparatus behind her.”
I bristle. “She’s the one who shoved Lila,” I say. “She’s the one who kept lying.”
“Yes,” Jazz says. “And she’s also the one having panic attacks in her glass house while executives draft their third carefully worded non-apology and sleep fine. We know her manager threatened Lila in a parking garage. We know some fixer in a suit sat at her mom’s kitchen table and bought their silence with legalese. Why are we giving those guys less airtime than we give Nora’s mascara brand?”
I open my mouth, close it.
“People care about faces,” I say finally. “That’s how you get them to care about systems. You start with the actress they think they know and then expand the frame.”
“And whose face are you starting from?” she asks. “Really?”
I stare at her. “What does that mean?”
She gestures vaguely at my chest. “You keep talking about Nora like she’s this half-fallen saint you have to personally discipline. You play clips of her jokes and wince like a disappointed big sister. You said on mic—‘I wanted Nora to be better than this’—like you’re talking about your younger self.”
“I grew up watching her,” I say. “She was my template for getting out. Funny and tough and complicated. It’s hard watching that turn out to be built on…blood.”
Jazz’s eyes search my face. “Is it hard, or is it familiar?”
A prickling runs under my skin. “Don’t psychoanalyze me,” I warn.
“You told me, Quinn.” Her voice softens but doesn’t waver. “That professor. Third year. How he harassed you, how the department closed ranks. How the school PR person slid you a brochure about counseling and talked you out of filing a formal complaint because of ‘what it would do to your future.’”
My lungs seize at the memory: dim office, institutional carpet, the mild breath of the woman who kept saying we believe you while her eyes screamed please shut up.
“That was different,” I say.
“Really?” Jazz asks. “Because from here, it looks like you became the thing you needed back then—someone who wouldn’t let the story die. And that’s powerful. But it also means you’ve got blind spots the size of Stage 14.”
“Such as?” I demand.
“Such as: your selective empathy,” she says. “You are bending yourself into knots to not fully hate Nora. You keep saying ‘context,’ ‘systemic failure,’ ‘child actress.’ You offer her interiority on mic—even when you call her out, you humanize her. But when it comes to Lila, Rhea, the extra who got hit by the sandbag? They’re symbols. They’re plot points. You don’t know how they take their coffee or if they hate olives or who tucked them into bed when they were kids. You haven’t even tried to ask.”
“Lila doesn’t exactly have a publicist,” I snap. “She’s behind layers of NDAs and burner emails. I’ve tried every address that might be hers. She hasn’t responded.”
“You tried before?” Jazz asks.
I hesitate, thinking of the one timid DM I sent months ago to a dead Tumblr that might have been hers, hastily drafted and never followed up.
“I…sent a message,” I say. “A while back. Pre-Rhea. It was mostly, ‘Hey, I’d love to hear your story.’”
Jazz’s mouth tugs down. “So: ‘Hi, stranger, wanna relive the worst night of your life on my moderately popular podcast?’”
Heat crawls up my neck again. “I said we could disguise her voice. I said we’d protect her.”
“Did you ask what she wanted from the story?” Jazz asks gently. “Not what you wanted from her?”
That lands like a physical blow. I look down at the table, at the overlapping pages—legal memos, fan transcriptions, satellite images of the mill that some dedicated listener pulled off Google Earth.
“I want the truth,” I say weakly.
“Healing and justice aren’t always the same shape as a four-part series,” Jazz says. “We know Nora built a whole second life out of secrecy. We’re watching what that did to Lila. Outing it all might be necessary, but if Lila doesn’t feel like a collaborator in that, we’re just another machine that feeds on her pain.”
I sink back in my chair, the wood creaking under my weight. My head throbs, a dull ache behind my eyes.
“So what, we stop?” I ask. “Pull the plug? Leave the finale to the access journalists and whatever shiny apology the studio scripts?”
“I didn’t say stop,” Jazz says. “I said pivot. You keep telling listeners we’re different from the nostalgia podcasts that just rehash trauma without caring about the people behind it. Prove it. Reach out to Lila again—but this time, not for content. Ask her what she wants this coverage to do. Ask if she even wants us involved anymore.”
The idea terrifies me in a way that reading hate comments doesn’t.
“What if what she wants is for us to shut up?” I ask.
“Then we seriously consider shutting up,” Jazz says. “Or at least changing how we talk. Maybe we do fewer ‘Did you catch this clue?’ breakdowns and more episodes amplifying stunt workers and background actors in general. Use the platform for worker safety. That’s what you keep saying this is about.”
My chest tightens. The red string on the corkboard wavers in my vision.
“We’ve finally got their attention,” I say. “People in Hollywood are listening. I got a DM from a showrunner today asking for a quote ‘off the record’ about intimacy coordinators. If we step back now—”
“Stepping back from making a spectacle out of one woman’s trauma doesn’t mean stepping back from the issue,” Jazz interrupts. “You don’t have to keep dropping Nora’s name in every thumbnail to push for change.”
I let that image sit there: a version of the feed where episode titles say things like The Stunt Performers You Don’t See instead of What Nora Isn’t Saying.
“The audience will shrink,” I say.
“Probably,” Jazz says. “But the ones who stay will know why we’re here.”
Silence falls for a beat, filled only by the AC’s grind and the faint honk of a horn from the street below. A neighbor’s music filters through the brick, bass heavy and indistinct.
“And what about my brain?” I say. “Because, you’re right, I’m…fried. But what’s the alternative, Jazz? Going back to recap episodes of early-2000s teen soaps like nothing happened?”
“The alternative is not burning yourself down to make a point,” she says, crouching so we’re eye level. Up close, I can see the tiny gold flecks in her dark irises. “You’re carrying Nora, Lila, Rhea, that anonymous PA, your younger self…all of them. And you’re doing it alone, because you keep locking yourself in this loft with the hum of the equipment and pretending that’s just ‘the job.’”
My throat tightens unexpectedly. I look away, focusing on a coffee ring staining the edge of a mixer.
“I don’t know how to do this halfway,” I admit. “Either I care enough to stay up reading every thread or I quit.”
“Or you remember you have a partner,” she says. “In life and audio.”
She reaches for my hand. I let her take it, our fingers lacing, my palm sweaty against her calloused one. The contact steadies me more than I want to admit.
“So,” she says. “Will you try? Not just another shot in the dark DM, but a real attempt to reach Lila? Maybe through that PA, or that union safety rep who called in last month. Someone she might already trust.”
My mind flips through options: the anonymous tip line numbers, the encrypted email from the PA, the contact info we got off a leaked crew list for Elle Park—the name Lila wears now like armor. I remember the cold expression on her face in pap shots from set, how different it looks from the girl giggling on those old mill stills.
“If I reach out and she tells us to back off, I don’t know if I can argue,” I say softly.
“Maybe that’s the point,” Jazz says. “Maybe being the ‘ethical journalist’ here means accepting that some of this story isn’t ours to narrate.”
The words scrape against my ambition, against the part of me that has always believed that careful storytelling is a form of justice. But there’s relief under the scrape too, an unexpected exhale.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll try.”
Jazz squeezes my hand, then lets go and slides my laptop closer.
“Do it now,” she says. “Before you talk yourself into twenty more think pieces.”
I open the computer. The screen wakes up to a half-written script labeled Ep. 31.5 – The Internet Trial: Fallout, paragraph after paragraph dissecting comment trends and PR statements. I minimize it and pull up the email account we use for the tip line—encrypted, messy, full of people’s darkest stories.
Near the top, the PA’s thread sits like a scar: subject line You didn’t hear this from me, with an attached voice memo and a list of names they said I could never use. At the bottom, they mentioned a coordinator they still text “for safety gossip”—someone “watching Elle’s back.”
My cursor hovers over the address.
“I’m going to write to her,” I say. “To the PA. Ask if they’re willing to pass a message to Elle. No pressure, no ask to record. Just…an offer.”
“Good,” Jazz says, backing away to give me space but not leaving the room. “I’ll cut veggies angrily in the kitchen so you can pretend you’re alone but know I’m here.”
“Such romance,” I mutter.
She blows me a kiss and retreats, the sounds of refrigerator door, running water, knife on cutting board layering in with the hum of the loft. The ordinary domesticity of it feels surreal against the words I’m about to type.
I crack my knuckles and start the email.
Hey again,
Thank you for trusting us with your story earlier. I’m reaching out with a different kind of ask. We’ve been covering the situation around Nora and the mill, but I’m increasingly worried that we’re speaking about the person at the center—Lila / Elle—without giving her real control over how she’s represented.
If you’re still in contact with her or someone she trusts, would you be willing to pass along an offer from me, off the record and off-mic?
I pause, tapping the keys lightly, then continue.
I’d like to talk with her privately, not to convince her to come on the show, but to listen to what she wants from all this—if anything. If that conversation goes nowhere, or if she tells us to stop covering her story, we’ll respect that as much as we responsibly can.
Either way, I don’t want to keep building episodes that might hurt the person they’re supposedly trying to help.
My chest feels tight, but in a different way now—less like panic, more like standing on a diving board.
“Read it?” I call toward the kitchen.
Jazz wipes her hands on a towel and comes over, leaning down to scan the screen. A slice of red bell pepper crunches between her teeth.
“You sound like a human being, not a brand,” she says. “I like it.”
“High praise,” I say.
“One more sentence,” she suggests. “Something that makes clear you’re okay not talking at all if that’s what’s safest for Lila right now.”
I nod and add:
If contacting her directly would put her in more danger or stress, please ignore this. Your safety and hers come before our content.
I sit back, fingers hovering over the trackpad.
“Once I send this,” I say, “I can’t pretend I don’t know better anymore.”
Jazz bumps my shoulder with hers. “Welcome to knowing better.”
I breathe out once, long and shaky, then hit Send.
The little paper airplane icon zips off into the void. The loft noises rush back in—the AC, the knife, a siren on the street far below. My phone lies face-down on the table, quiet for the first time in hours.
Somewhere out there, in a damp river town or under the too-bright lights of Stage 14, or in whatever in-between spaces Lila inhabits now, a decision waits to be made that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with what happens next.
For the first time since this started, I’ve handed part of the story back.
I don’t know yet whether she’ll hand any of it to me in return.