Things Are Different Here

four

Olivia was haunting me—literally and figuratively.

It had only been four days since we'd met, and I was horrified that I'd ever been blinded by lust for her. Monica had flown down from Seattle to see me and spend a week in L.A. apartment hunting, and I'd already had too many cry sessions with her regarding the blonde devil.

Not only did Olivia hate me, she wanted me off the film. She told Demetrius that she wouldn't sit in the same room with me if we weren't running lines or doing something productive, and if she wasn't doing the film as a favor to a friend high up somewhere in Holton, she'd have already dropped it by now simply because of how unprepared and unprofessional I was. And, she never failed to remind me—when she did address me—she and I were not in the same caliber of acting, regardless of how our names would appear in the credits.

Olivia had gone to impressive lengths to make sure the rest of the cast knew how inexperienced I was, that I'd only been a commercial and music video actress, and I'd assumed threatened them with whatever she could if they chose to fraternize with me. Out of four major cast members, I'd only spoken to one, and it was her.

I was thinking about her when I wasn't at work, deleting tweets about her, unfollowing fan pages, worrying about what she'd say to me next. I felt so disillusioned, and I didn't know how I'd fallen for her gimmick.

Sitting across from her now on Thursday, I had to shield myself from her spiteful looks. We were having our third read-through today, and it was only us and an acting coach—who Olivia made sure I knew was only for me. I'd had to read over my first line five times just because of her advising me to do it more "like Lulu". She'd studied up so much on my character, I wasn't sure if she knew anything about her own. We were only four pages into our planned ten or fifteen for the day, and it had been three hours.

"Megan, I don't know how I'm going to get out of this. We haven't even found Sam, he could really be dead." I read from the page, and Olivia sighed, but didn't say anything about my line. She sucked in a breath, and I watched her transform into a character. "What if he is? Dead, I mean?"

"Lulu," she paused for effect and reached her hand over the table to grab mine. I was speculative as she gestured for me to grab her hand. It wasn't the first time she'd held my hand or touched me, unfortunately. Something I'd dreamed about for the last two years had finally come true, and she'd destroyed all of my happiness surrounding it. We'd been reading for three days, since we both got our paperwork processed quickly, and Olivia was obsessed with 'active reading', where she lightly acted out scenes as she read through them. She told me it helped her get into character, and claimed it was something Kristen Stewart or someone had taught her. Just another snub, of course.

The first day of reading had taken me completely by surprise, thinking I wouldn't be seeing her for the rest of the week. But sure enough, when I walked into the studio for the day, I was re-directed to another building on site where Olivia and the guy playing my missing ex-boyfriend's flashback scenes were waiting. Olivia wasn't happy to see me by any means, but she didn't hesitate drawing me into a deep hug when we were reading through a flashback. A hug that was meant to be comforting—and would have been—if not from her. I hated that my heart rate had still sped up when it first happened.

So now, I begrudgingly rested my hand in hers, and she continued with her lines. "We're going to find him. You know he isn't dead, he's really gone full psycho with this scheme." Olivia hardly glanced at the paper. "I'm going to do everything I can to prove you're innocent."

She was watching me, waiting for my next line, waiting for me to screw up again as she told me I did every time. "I wish it was as easy to get anyone else to believe me." I managed to say without looking at the paper, and didn't miss the little twitch in her left eye. She was impressive, and it ate away at me to think about how badly she'd had me fooled. I watched her pull her hand from mine, vexed by how quickly she became herself again.