“Hey, Chlo, I’msoglad I ran into you. Look, I hate to do this—” Glen starts, his tone wheedling. He places a hand on my arm and gives me a saccharine smile that says “I need something from you.”
“Sure, what’s up?” Internally, I’m screaming. All I want to do is take a hot shower and wash this day off me before I spend the rest of the night with a twenty-pound camera strapped to my shoulder.
But I don’t want to appear like I’mtoo muchfor Glen.
“I’m going to need your eyes on Demi’s contestant tonight.”
“The difficult one?”
“Yup—the blond. I can’t remember her name. Misty? Moira?” he says, his tone becoming hushed. “Demi has been working her all day. She’s a bit of a diva, that’s for sure. Several tantrums, very high-maintenance. But she’s also a bit cold. I’m hoping to mix in a bit of tequila and see what kind of spicy confessionals we might get from her tonight.”
There’s hunger in his eyes. I know the more drama that happens on-camera, the bigger Glen’s bonus will be, but it feels…wrong, to cheer for someone’s very public downfall for the sake of ratings.
The poor girl.
But then I think about Demi’s face, twisted in a sour grimace as she berated Glen this morning. Maybe I should be more worried about Demi. If this contestant really is as difficult as they say, I’m just hoping I can keep out of her way.
“No problem, Glen. Anything else?”
“You’re the best, Chlo. No, nothing else, I’m just going to—” Before he can finish his sentence, a PA hauling a load of gear on a dolly a few feet away manages to bump into a woman holding a champagne flute. She whirls to give the poor kid a piece of her mind, and Glen is off in a flash to fix the problem.
I take the opportunity to escape, and head down a hallway that leads to the cabins.
Once I’ve found my room, I collapse onto the bed. I feel the familiar tug of jet lag as it tries to pull my body into sleep, but I resist. I can’t nap right now.
Thankfully, a knock at my door quickly has me back on my feet, and I swing the door open with a little more force than necessary. Sora smiles at me from the other side, her cheeks flushed. The dark purple circles that sat under her eyes this morning are still there, though, and I feel for her.
“Hey! How are you feeling?”
“Oh, I’m alright,” she replies. “Mind if I come in?”
I hold the door open and she lurches forward, then plops down on the edge of the bed with a groan that tells me her exhaustion is bone-deep.
Scrubbing a hand over her face, she sets her dark eyes on me with a sober frown—there’s no sign of the perky, ambitious young woman I met on the plane.
“Thanks again for what you did at the hotel this morning. I…wasn’t myself.”
“Yeah, no problem. This—” I gesture vaguely to our surroundings, “is a lot. Believe me, I get it.”
I busy myself with unpacking my camera and setting up the battery chargers.
“Yeah, itisa lot,” she repeats. She looks shell-shocked. For a minute I wonder if she’s fallen asleep with her eyes open, what with the way she’s blankly staring off into the distance, but then she lets out a long, deep sigh.
“I’m sure it’s obvious by now, but this is my first shoot. Like…not just my first time traveling, but my firstrealgig. I don’t even graduate until June.”
Itisobvious, but I’m not going to tell her that.
Defeat laces her words. Her shoulders are hunched inwards, and I recognize the turbulence brewing in her expression.
I know that girl. The one who’s so overwhelmed by this new world that she’s frozen with fear, second-guessing everything she does or says, her inner monologue repeating the same thing over and over again:run.
I was that girl.
Honestly, I’m still that girl.
Well, I guess thatwoman. Or ma’am, if you’re every person I meet before they learn my name…
The pain on Sora’s face transports me back to a time in my life when I was floundering on the set of my first gig, putting myself out there, taking that daunting step into the unknown for the first time.
