The detention facility sits low and wide on the edge of the city, an ugly concrete smudge against the bright LA sky.
Out here, the air smells like hot asphalt and exhaust instead of eucalyptus and pool chlorine. No tinted SUV idles at the curb for me. I park my own gray sedan in a visitor slot, the sun burning through the windshield until sweat gathers under my collarbone.
I catch my reflection in the glass doors before I go in.
My face looks younger without the usual armor: no foundation, no eyeliner, just freckles and the faint bruise-colored crescents under my eyes. A frizz of hair curls near my temple where the canyon humidity caught it on the drive. For once, the woman in the glass matches the one I brought inside.
“ID?” the guard at the front desk asks.
The lobby smells like disinfectant and vending machine coffee. A small TV in the corner plays a morning show on mute, closed captions crawling under a smiling host who once asked me about my “clean living routine.” The constant hum of the building’s air conditioning presses against my ears, too cold and too loud, reminding me of the studio’s refrigerated soundstages.
I slide my driver’s license across the counter.
“Purpose of visit?” he asks.
I swallow.
“I’m here to see Lila Park,” I say. “She’s on my approved list.”
He checks a screen, the blue light painting his cheekbones.
“Legal visit?” he asks. “Family?”
“No,” I say. “Just… personal.”
He grunts.
“You’re on the list,” he says. “Sign here. No phone, no recording devices, no paper, no pens.”
I empty my bag into the plastic tray: phone, keys, lip balm, the folded notes I wrote on the drive about Rhea’s fund and the hearings. They look pathetic on the gray plastic, like props from a show that’s been canceled.
“I need the notes?” I say.
“You can keep your brain,” he replies. “Everything else stays.”
I huff out a laugh that feels too loud. A metal detector whines as I step through; another guard waves a handheld wand around my ankles, my wrists, the underwire of my bra. The soft beep at my chest makes me flinch.
“You good,” she says. “Hands out, please.”
Her latex gloves squeak against my sleeves. I smell powder and something faintly floral, lotion fighting the institutional air.
“First time?” she asks, not unkindly.
“First time visiting someone,” I say. “First time here.”
“Keep your hands in your lap,” she says. “Use the phone, not the glass. If you feel dizzy, look at the floor, not the bars. People forget to breathe in there.”
I nod.
I spend my life pretending to be comfortable in impossible spaces; this one already has my shoulders up near my ears.
The hallway to visitation is narrower than any hallway on Stage 14, but it carries the same echo. My sneakers squeak against linoleum with each step. Every few yards, a door with a small wired-glass window breaks up the wall, each one buzzing open as the guard with me touches a card to a reader.
“You can turn around any time,” he tells me without looking back.
“I know,” I say.
I keep walking.
A final buzzer, a final heavy door swinging inward, and I step into a room lined with glass partitions. Metal stools bolt to the floor on both sides. A strip of brushed steel runs along the base of the glass, scratched by hundreds of restless hands. The air in here is colder; the AC vent rattles in an upper corner, a monotone percussion line.
Faces dot the far side of the glass—people waiting, people already in conversation, mouths moving silently behind the barrier. To my left, a teenage boy leans into the phone, eyes rimmed in red, a woman in a jumpsuit mirroring his hunched posture. To my right, an older man presses his forehead against the glass, ignoring the “No Touching” sign.
I scan the row until I see her.
Lila sits at the third partition from the end, back straight, hands folded loosely on the metal ledge. The jumpsuit she wears is more muted tan than bright orange, layered under a soft gray sweatshirt. Her hair is pulled back into a tight bun, no loose strands, no softness.
Her eyes find mine in an instant.
I stop walking like my feet hit a mark.
For a second, the room tilts into double exposure: Lila in the mill stairwell, Lila on the recreated set, Lila at the safety meeting, Lila in Quinn’s loft with a recorder on the table. All of them stack over this version, the one behind glass, the one I put there.
She doesn’t stand. She doesn’t wave.
She just watches me, sharp and still, while I cross the room and take the stool on my side. The metal is cold through my jeans.
I pick up the black plastic phone mounted to the wall and press it to my ear, its surface slightly tacky from disinfectant. A faint buzz whispers in the line.
Lila lets me wait a beat before she takes her receiver.
“You got my name right at the desk,” she says by way of hello. “Progress.”
I swallow a nervous smile.
“Hi,” I say. “Thank you for putting me on the list.”
“My lawyer advised against it,” she replies. “This whole room is basically a live NDA in reverse. Nothing confidential, everything on tape.”
I glance at the corner camera, red light glowing.
“Yeah,” I say. “I figured.”
“And yet,” she says, “you’re here without makeup and without the manager who specialized in pretending you didn’t break girls’ bodies for a living.”
His absence sits between us for a moment, a ghost sharing the air-conditioned chill.
“Marcus is dead,” I say quietly. “You know that.”
“Death doesn’t neutralize impact,” she says. “Just complicates it.”
Her tone lands with the same dry precision she used on set the first day we met, when she told a producer she wouldn’t deliver a joke built on an Asian stereotype. That day, the crew laughed uncomfortably and the line got cut. Years later, she took a fall instead of the joke.
“Why did you say yes to me?” I ask.
“Curiosity,” she says. “Also my lawyer wants to know how serious you are about those ‘structural commitments’ you cried about on live television.”
The word cried cuts more than any insult.
“I didn’t come to get credit,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “You’re in the wrong building for applause.”
A guard moves behind her, keys clinking softly. The chemical smell of bleach drifts through a vent, layered over institutional detergent and the faint, stale tang of old coffee. A memory flashes—craft-service donuts, sticky sweetness on my fingers as I waved at background actors from my chair. There are no donuts here.
“Can I tell you what’s happened since the hearings?” I ask. “You can tell me to stop at any point.”
She raises one eyebrow.
“Elevator pitch,” she says. “Then we see if I let you go long-form.”
I grip the phone tighter, my knuckles whitening.
“Andrea’s lawyers and mine are finalizing the settlement framework,” I say. “Direct compensation to her, obviously. The safety fund is separate. It’s set up under Rhea’s full name, with governance split between a stunt performers’ union rep, an independent safety org, and someone nominated by crew from any show that applies. No corporate sponsors on the board. No branding. We fund emergency grants for injured crew, plus training on sets that aren’t union-protected.”
Lila’s eyes narrow.
“And your role?” she asks.
“Money, mostly,” I say. “Initial endowment from me, ongoing percentage of anything I earn from now on. Also mandatory testimony for any regulatory hearings the board requests. I don’t get a vote on individual grants.”
She barks out a short, humorless laugh.
“Look at you,” she says. “Learning to be a recurring character in a story that isn’t all about your development arc.”
Heat rises in my face. I let it. No makeup to crack.
“I listened to you,” I say. “Back in the loft, when you said you were tired of watching everything orbit my narrative. This is me trying to institutionalize not being the center.”
Her gaze flicks away to the side for the first time, toward another partition, another visitor leaning into a phone. When she looks back, some of the iron has melted from her jaw, leaving something more dangerous: doubt.
“The hearings?” she asks. “You kept going back?”
“Yes,” I say. “I sat behind the union rows, I answered questions when they called, I didn’t let Legal rewrite my answers to fit their risk memos. They’re drafting new stunt regulations. Some are cosmetic. Some have teeth.”
“Teeth can be pulled,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “That’s why I’m committed to boring, ongoing, public nagging. I don’t expect a standing ovation.”
“No worry there,” she says.
A small silence opens between us.
On the other side of the glass, her fingers tap an uneven rhythm on the metal ledge, the same way they used to drum on prop rails while we waited for lighting adjustments. Back then, I heard it as impatience with everyone but me.
“What about you?” I ask. “Your case?”
“Arson, assault, reckless endangerment, a cocktail,” she says. “My lawyer’s working through what the dead-man-switch and your confession do to the narrative. The DA’s office likes pretty stories. Vengeful crippled victim turned saboteur is tidy. Saboteur who also forced a confession and industry reforms is more complicated.”
Her mouth twists around the word crippled, like it tastes sour.
“I made a statement,” I say. “I told them the accidents weren’t random, but they were targeted, in a way that forced me to make a choice. That you warned people when you could. That the worst collateral damage—Rhea—wasn’t your intended target.”
Her eyes flash.
“She’s not collateral in my story,” she says. “She’s the line I crossed.”
“She’s the line we crossed,” I say. “You didn’t cut those corners alone. I walked onto unsafe sets for years. I made myself believe ‘not my department’ meant ‘not my fault.’”
She exhales slowly, fogging a tiny patch of the glass between us. The breath mark fades, leaving our reflections layered again.
“My lawyer wants me to lean into victimhood,” she says. “Wheel me in front of a jury, list the surgeries, replay your shove in every possible angle, sell the story that I snapped because I wasn’t believed.”
I picture it: the mill photos enlarged on courtroom screens, the script of “The Actress Who Pushed” used as a moral prop.
“Will you?” I ask.
She tilts her head.
“I’m still deciding,” she says. “I refuse to let them cut me down to a martyr and a motive. I’m guilty of what I did. I’m also the reason Elena got subpoenaed and Marcus’s crisis memos are evidence now. The system doesn’t know where to shelve that.”
My hand aches from gripping the phone.
“You have the right to tell it in your own words,” I say. “On the stand, in whatever interviews you choose, in whatever projects come later. That was always your right. I helped steal it when I signed those papers at seventeen.”
“You didn’t help,” she says flatly. “You led.”
The words land like a controlled fall: full force, no surprise.
My body flinches anyway.
“Yes,” I say. “I led.”
The hum of the air conditioning swells, filling the space where my defenses used to live.
Lila studies me for a long beat.
“Why are you really here, Nora?” she asks quietly. “No cameras, no podcast mics, no committees. You already burned your sainthood points on the soundstage.”
I look at her through the glass that separates us and links us, a transparent barrier that could shatter but probably won’t.
“I’m here because you’re in a cell partly because you forced me to do the right thing,” I say. “I’m here to tell you, to your face, that I am still doing it, even when it’s boring and humiliating and no one is cutting it into a feel-good montage. And I’m here to ask if there’s anything, structurally, not emotionally, that you want me to push for while you’re in here.”
Her expression flickers. For a second, I see the girl from the mill, furious and scared and unwilling to shut up.
“Structurally, not emotionally,” she repeats. “That’s new language for you.”
“I’m learning,” I say. “Very slowly, very publicly.”
She leans back a little, phone cord taut.
“Fine,” she says. “Here’s a list starter: mandatory mental health support for stunt crews that doesn’t report back to production. Blacklisting protections when people flag unsafe conditions. Funds for actors and crew who walk off when things aren’t safe, so they don’t have to choose between rent and survival.”
I nod, feeling the weight of each item click into place.
“Okay,” I say. “I can bring those into the next hearing. I can put my name behind them and then refuse to be the face of them. I can help find people who’ve been saying this longer than I have and make sure they’re at the table.”
“Good,” she says. “Use the access you stole to buy seats you don’t sit in.”
The line on that lands with the precision of a scripted button. There’s a part of me that registers how perfect it would sound in a trailer, in Quinn’s outro.
I let that part sit in the corner and stay quiet.
“And emotionally?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
She doesn’t answer right away.
Another visitor laughs loudly down the row, a brittle sound that cracks the room’s quiet. A guard calls out “five minutes,” his voice echoing off glass and concrete.
Lila looks at me like she’s weighing a stunt’s risk.
“Emotionally,” she says at last, “I’m not interested in forgiving you on anyone’s timeline but mine. I don’t know yet if that timeline ends before I die. That’s not a threat, it’s just math. You don’t get to optimize it for your healing journey.”
My throat tightens. I nod.
“Okay,” I say. “I don’t want to rush you, or frame your ‘no’ as noble. You get to be normal-level angry, too.”
Her mouth twitches.
“I passed normal a long time ago,” she says. “But I’m trying not to live in the mill forever.”
We sit in that for a moment, two women linked by a staircase and a fire and a hundred bad choices, breathing on opposite sides of a pane of glass.
“Can I tell you one selfish thing?” I ask.
Her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t hang up.
“Briefly,” she says.
“I’m considering an offer,” I say. “A low-budget indie. No stunts, minimal crew, director with a reputation for actually listening. I don’t know if taking a job again is irresponsible or part of doing something different with what I have left.”
“You want my blessing?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I want your honesty.”
She studies me through the scratched surface between us. The clock on the wall ticks toward the end of visiting hours.
“Work again if you want,” she says finally. “But don’t go back to pretending sets are churches that absolve you. If you stand on a mark, know who built it, who could get crushed if it collapses, and what you’re willing to lose to keep them safe. If you can’t answer that, say no.”
My chest loosens around something that isn’t comfort but feels like direction.
“Thank you,” I say.
She lifts her free hand to the glass, palm hovering a couple of inches away. For one stunned second, I think she’s inviting a mirror touch.
Her hand stops short.
“Don’t make this a movie moment,” she says. “We’re not there.”
I let my own hand rest on my lap, fingers curling against the denim.
“Right,” I say. “We’re not.”
The guard calls, “Time,” in a bored voice.
Lila lowers the phone slightly, then raises it again.
“One last thing,” she says. “When people ask you about me in interviews—and they will—don’t turn me into your conscience or your plot twist. Say my name. Say what I did. Say what you did. Let me stay human, not metaphor.”
My eyes sting.
“I promise,” I say. “No more editing you into an object lesson.”
“We’ll see,” she says.
She hangs up first.
I hold the phone to my ear for another heartbeat, listening to the dead line hum, then place it back in its cradle. The glass between us reflects my face over her retreating back, our shapes briefly merged before she disappears through a metal door.
On my way out, the hallway feels longer.
The sun slaps my skin when I step outside, warm and too bright. The hills beyond the parking lot rise up in hazy layers, the same city where influencers sip green juice on patios while union crews load trucks before dawn. Somewhere on those hills, my glass house waits, its windows catching the light like a question.
My phone buzzes in the plastic tray when they return it to me.
A new email sits at the top of the screen: subject line, “Offer: Lead Supporting Role – Small Ensemble Drama, Safety-Forward Production.”
I stare at it in the harsh daylight, Lila’s words still ringing in my ears, and realize the next set I step onto will answer a question neither of us has found language for yet.