I start with the staircase.
The paused frame fills my laptop screen: grainy 480p, dim blue lighting, fake fog curling around rusted rails. Teenage Nora stands halfway up in a red flannel shirt and wet hair, her face somehow still magnetic through the bad resolution. Next to her, the girl I can’t stop thinking about leans on the railing, denim jacket, dark braid, expression turned toward Nora, caught mid-bite of a line.
I tap the spacebar to jog back two seconds, then forward again, hunting for the cleanest still.
Jazz’s voice drifts from the kitchenette behind me over the hiss of the kettle. “You’re going to wear the pixels off that poor file,” she calls. “You know that, right?”
“I need one frame where her face isn’t a smear,” I say. “My children deserve the best content.”
“Your children deserve you to stand up once an hour.” Something clinks—mug against counter, spoon against ceramic. “You eaten today?”
“Coffee is a food group.” I hover the cursor over Nora’s co-star’s face and snap a screenshot. The cheap speakers on my laptop hum faintly, a soft electrical buzz under the loft’s usual soundtrack: traffic outside, the low rumble of some neighbor’s bass, the air conditioner wheezing against the late-afternoon heat.
I drag the screenshot into a folder already labeled MILL GIRL and immediately cringe at the name. “Okay,” I mutter. “We need something less serial killer, more crowd-sourced detective agency.”
Jazz appears at my shoulder with a steaming mug and a plate that smells like toasted sourdough and melted cheese. She sets both down by my elbow. “I vote we don’t say ‘girl’ anywhere,” she says. “She’s a person, not a spooky campfire story.”
“Good note.” I take a sip of the tea. It tastes like mint and liquorice, sweet and sharp. The warmth spreads down my throat and slows the jitter in my fingers. “Mysterious co-star? Uncredited icon?”
Jazz leans closer, squints at the screen. Her curls tickle my cheek, and I catch the faint coconut scent of her conditioner. “What about ‘the missing actress from the mill arc’?” she says. “Accurate, not objectifying.”
“Wordy,” I say, but my brain tucks it away.
I pull my phone closer and open the app that runs too much of my life. The screen’s cool glass presses against my thumb as I start a new thread. The keys are familiar and small under my fingers; the haptic feedback taps feel like a tiny heartbeat every time I hit send.
“Okay,” I say. “Teaser first, then screenshots.”
My thumbs move.
Rewatching Nora Hayes’s early work for @SecondTakePod and I fell down a weird rabbit hole. Remember the mill arc in RIVER’S EDGE HIGH? There’s a background character who keeps showing up… but she’s not in the credits.
I attach the first still, Nora and the girl in profile, fog haloing them in pale blue.
“Too extra?” I ask.
“You’re genetically incapable of not being extra,” Jazz says. “Lean in.”
“Love you,” I murmur, and keep typing.
I checked streaming, DVD, fan wiki, even old recap blogs. No name. No credit. No ‘guest starring.’ Nothing.
I add the second screenshot: the same girl in a hallway scene, laughing at something just off-camera, hand resting on a locker door. Timestamp in the corner: 13:47.
I label the image: S01E06 – 13:47.
“Who is she?” I say aloud as I type it.
Jazz smiles. “There’s your hook.”
I shape the final tweet in the thread.
Internet, do your thing. Who is she? 👇
My thumb hovers for a beat. Going public means letting go of control; once this thread leaves my phone, it belongs to whoever grabs it. Listeners. Trolls. The kind of fans who can identify an extra from a blurry convention pic taken fifteen years ago.
The thrill that rises in my chest tastes like sugar and static. It slides right over the quieter thought that whispering her into existence invites a spotlight she may not want.
I hit “Post” anyway.
The notifications start almost immediately—little pings, then the dry buzz of my phone vibrating against the table. I turn the sound down, but the lockscreen still lights up with numbers jumping: 3, 9, 21, 58. Little hearts bloom next to the thread. Quote-tweets multiply.
“You’ve unleashed the beasts,” Jazz says, retreating to her own laptop on the couch. Her keyboard clacks a familiar counterpoint to mine. “Have fun moderating.”
“I prefer ‘passionate media literacy community,’” I say, though my grin probably undermines the mock seriousness. I take a giant bite of the toast. Butter slicks my fingers, crumbs scattering onto the space bar.
I start scrolling.
Omg I REMEMBER HER.
I had a crush on that girl and literally never knew her name wtf
not Quinn soft-launching a true crime arc
I like a few responses, reply to one with a heart, and mentally bookmark a long comment from a user whose handle I recognize—a librarian who always has obscure scans. The air in the loft feels warmer suddenly, the bricks on the far wall glowing orange in the late sun leaking through the big factory windows.
A new notification pops up, different from the stream of hearts and retweets. A DM request.
@riveredgecon2009 wants to send you a message.
My skin prickles. I accept.
A photo loads, slowly, line by line. It’s washed out, the way old digital pictures get when they’re dragged through a dozen devices. I recognize the convention backdrop: a banner with the River’s Edge High logo in that aggressively early-2000s font, all jagged edges and metallic sheen.
Nora’s there, center of the group, hair curled, eyeliner sharp. Two other teen cast members flank her. On the far left, slightly cut off, stands the girl from the mill. Same eyes, same angular jaw, but healthy and lit by flash instead of moody set lighting. She’s wearing a pink hoodie with the show’s logo and holding a Sharpie, mouth caught half-open like she’s in the middle of a joke.
Under the picture, my DM sender has typed:
Found this on an old hard drive – River’s Edge con in Philly, 2009. I tagged everyone I recognized back then. Check the top left.
I zoom in. Above the girl’s head floats a faded username and, next to it, the words: Lila Park 💕
My heart bangs once, hard. The sound in the room drops away for a second. Just me, my breathing, the faint whir of the ceiling fan.
“Jazz?” My voice comes out tighter than I intend.
“Yeah?” she calls from the couch.
“We have a name.”
She pads over, socked feet silent on the concrete, and leans in. I tilt the phone so we can both see. Her hand lands on my shoulder, warm and steady.
“Lila Park,” she reads, brows rising. “That’s… not a background character. That’s an actual person they put in merch.”
I nod, throat working around words that won’t arrange themselves yet.
Jazz squeezes my shoulder. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say automatically. My tongue feels dry. I take another sip of tea, now lukewarm and a little bitter. “I’m fine. Just… I didn’t expect an answer in under an hour.”
Notifications keep interrupting the photo, banners sliding over Nora’s frozen smile. I flip my phone on Do Not Disturb and forward the image to myself so I can pull it up on my laptop, where it’s easier to examine.
The loft’s big windows have started to catch the sunset; a band of pink streaks across the smoggy sky, reflecting faintly on the glass. The reflection overlays the photo on my screen so Nora and Lila’s faces glow under a thin sheen of light, like they’re pressed behind another layer of distance.
I drag the image into the MILL GIRL—no, Lila folder and rename it: CONPHOTO_LILA_PARK.
“Do you want to post it?” Jazz asks.
My thumb circles the trackpad, hovering over the share button. “Not yet,” I say. “I want to be sure this isn’t just, like, a mis-tag from a fan who thought she knew the name.”
“Welcome to fact-checking,” Jazz says. “Population: you.”
I open a browser tab and type: “Lila Park” “River’s Edge High”.
The results page loads, blank, then fills. A few hits show up—a LinkedIn for some totally different woman, a Facebook post in Korean with ten likes, a Pinterest board. Nothing that ties Lila Park to the show. Nothing that ties her to Nora.
My fingers itch. I refine the search: “Lila Park” actress.
A tiny role in a short film from 2010. A theater program PDF where the name appears in small print. Then nothing. It’s like someone cut a thread that should have continued and left frayed ends hanging in separate drawers.
I lean back and rub my eyes until stars pop against the inside of my lids. “She was on promo stuff,” I say. “She went to a convention. You don’t drag a random background extra to Philly and put her in a branded hoodie.”
“Promo equals contract,” Jazz says. “Contract equals paperwork. Paperwork equals credits.”
I swallow. The tea sits heavy in my stomach now. “Unless someone decided she didn’t exist anymore.”
The words hang between us for a beat, tasting like cheap metal.
Jazz shifts her weight. “Want to look at posters?”
I snap my fingers. “Yes. The tumblog.”
I cross the room to our corkboard, where we’ve pinned a few old River’s Edge posters we printed from a fan archival blog. The paper’s matte and thin under my fingertips, edges curling from the humidity the AC never fully clears. In the main season one poster, teenage Nora stands front and center in a leather jacket, the mill ghosting the background in sepia. Off to the side, near the railing, three other teen actors pose. On the far edge, leaning on the metal rail in that same denim jacket, is Lila.
“See?” I say. “She’s not a blur. She’s literally in the hero shot.”
“Look at the credits block,” Jazz says.
I crouch, knees popping, and trace the names in the tiny white text at the bottom. Nora. Two other actors. A “special guest star.” No Lila.
“Could be poster crop,” Jazz offers. “Sometimes secondary regulars get left off to appease egos.”
“Check this one,” I say.
I grab another page from the board—a horizontal banner version. The image changes slightly, angle shifted, but Lila’s still there, now clearer, hand wrapped around the mill railing. The credit block matches the first.
No Lila Park.
I go back to the laptop, pull up the digital file of the same poster on an old entertainment site. I zoom in until the pixels break into blocks. Same names. Same order. No sign of her in the metadata either; when I right-click and check properties, all I get is a generic file name.
Something tightens under my ribs, a slow twist.
“Okay, so maybe posters are messy,” I say. My voice sounds too bright in my own ears. “Let’s check the official cast lists.”
I open the streaming app on my laptop and navigate to River’s Edge High, Season One, Episode Six. The mill episode. The thumbnail shows the factory against a foggy Pennsylvania river, surreal in low-res.
I click into the details and scroll.
Main cast. Guest stars. Co-stars.
“No Lila,” I whisper.
Jazz sits back on the couch, drawing her knees up to her chest. The lamplight turns her into a warm silhouette against the exposed brick. “She’s not on the wiki either,” she says quietly. “I checked when you first mentioned her.”
I cycle through episodes five, six, seven, eight—the arc where I’ve already spotted her in the background shots. Same credits template each time, same neat list of names that stops just short of where hers should land.
“If she quit,” I say, “there’d be something. ‘Creative differences.’ A recasting announcement. A tiny note buried in an article. But this is like… like someone pulled her out by the root.”
Jazz doesn’t answer. I hear the couch fabric rustle, the tiny snap of her knuckles; she only does that when she’s chewing on something she doesn’t want to say out loud yet.
I open a new tab and type “Lila Park” “River’s Edge” again, this time switching to image search. The convention photo I just saved doesn’t appear—of course it doesn’t; it lived on a fan’s hard drive until an hour ago. What does appear is the series of posters we saw on the corkboard, the mill looming in the background.
In some early promo images, Lila is there, tucked onto the edge of group shots. In others, the cropping has changed, cutting her out so the composition tightens around Nora and the two other leads. The newer uploads, the ones hosted on official network archives, favor the latter.
“Look at this,” I say.
Jazz joins me again, arms folded. I toggle between an older fan-uploaded poster and a later official version. In the fan version, there’s Lila: denim jacket, braid, hand on the railing. In the network version, the frame slides inward just enough that her body disappears, leaving only a sliver of railing and empty air.
“That’s not an accident,” Jazz says.
My tongue feels thick. “Yeah.”
I pull my chair closer to the desk, the legs screeching softly against the concrete. The air smells like dust and tea and the faint tang of the pizza box we never threw out at lunch. The city through the windows has slipped into full dark now, headlights sliding past in streaks.
I flick my phone off Do Not Disturb. Notifications roar back in: hundreds of replies, DMs, quote-tweets. Fans tagging each other, spinning theories, posting their own screenshots and GIFs.
I REMEMBER her. She was EVERYWHERE for like three episodes and then nada???
weird that press materials never mention her right?
not to be dramatic but did they delete a human being
I stare at that last one for a long time. The joke lands with a hollow thud in my chest.
I could back off. I could post the convention photo with a simple, “Looks like her name was Lila Park? Thanks, fandom, case closed!” and pivot to some nostalgic segment about forgotten supporting players. I could not follow the fact that her name vanishes from every official record right after the mill arc.
Except I’m the one who invited thousands of eyes to look at that staircase.
Jazz nudges my arm. “You’re very quiet,” she says.
“I just realized,” I say slowly, “that I turned a missing credit into a party game, and the prize might be… this.”
I gesture at the screen, at the empty space where a name should be.
“You didn’t erase her,” Jazz says. “You noticed the gap.”
“And now a lot of other people are noticing it too.” I rest my fingertips lightly against the laptop’s glass, tracing the invisible line where the crop cut Lila out. The surface is cool, a thin barrier between my skin and pixels. “If this leads somewhere ugly, I don’t get to pretend I was just having fun.”
My cursor hovers over the empty space in the credits section, blinking on a line that never held her name. The thread I started less than two hours ago is still exploding on my phone, more people joining every second, eager to solve the puzzle I handed them.
I open a new document and type a title at the top: Working: The Missing Credits (Lila Park).
The blinking cursor waits under her name, impatient.
“Okay,” I whisper, more to myself than to Jazz. “If they went to this much trouble to erase her, I need to know why.”
I save the file, the tiny chime of the confirmation sounding louder than it should in the quiet loft, and stare at Lila’s tagged face on my screen, knowing I’ve just made it a lot harder to walk away.