If I was going to stop Barry from making one more ill-advised change to our final project before we turned it in, I needed to shut down all thoughts of Cash Donovan pronto.He was a beautiful distraction I absolutely did not need, especially not at the end of the semester when our professors were not only grading our work but also using it to determine who’d be offered summer internships with their Hollywood contacts.I had a summer job lined up at the campus PBS studio, but what I truly wanted was a shot at working with Olivia Carter at her Heart Dreams Studio.Working with her on the number of incredible music videos her studio put out on the regular would burnish my resumè almost as well as earning my own VMA.
Pulling in a long breath, I walked down the hallway to our assigned studio and stepped through the door to find Esme, Joel, Tamir, and Skye already in the room.
“Thank God you showed up early too,” Esme said, her expression apprehensive.“We need to strategize before Barry gets here.”
Though I’d been doing exactly that on my own, I held back.As a team, we’d been emailing each other to find ways to sidestep our director’s truly awful ideas, but we hadn’t stepped over the edge into full-on mutiny.Yet.
“Do we now?”I asked as I set my messenger bag on the table beside the main computer.
“Barry must not have noticed he was using the group text when he sent you those changes last night,” Tamir said as he joined me beside the screening computer.“Please tell me you didn’t actually make them.”
I pulled my laptop from my bag and went to work attaching it to the main computer to upload the finished project.“Tell me again why he chose your sci-fi script?Because based on his ‘vision,’ he’s never watched a sci-fi flick in his life—not even something as innocuous asE.T.,let alone anything in theAlienfranchise.”
Tamir let go a breath.“Thanks for not letting him completely wreck my script.”
“Hey.I have plans too.Plans that include not failing this class because we were all stuck with the worst student in our cohort.”I sighed.“I would have rather been forced to work with him in 201 when the outcomes didn’t count so much.”
“Facts,” Joel said as he joined us, Esme on his heels.
“What if after we screen this today he insists on making the changes himself?”The nervous flutter in Esme’s voice gave me pause.
I narrowed my eyes at her.“If he does, you’re not going to side with him, are you?”
Earlier in the semester, I’d had the idea that maybe Barry was trying to date Esme.If she was acting as a mole for that jerk, she and I would be having some serious words.
“After the way he treated me at the PIKE Spring Fling, the only thing holding me back from sabotaging all the special effects was my grade on them.”
“What about the rest of our grades?”Joel asked.
“Irrelevant if you knew what he did.”
That tremor in her words stopped me mid-cable hookup to look more closely at her.“He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Physically?No.Emotionally and socially?Devastating.”The sheen of moisture she blinked from her eyes bothered me so much more than her words.
“We need to talk, but we don’t have time right now.”I opened the file, and with a couple of keystrokes, sent it to the master computer.“Barry can’t make changes directly to the master file unless he downloads it from this computer.I’ll make sure to ‘accidentally’ erase it when I unhook everything after the screening.But we have to be united that this is the final cut.”
Joel crossed his arms over his chest.“How can you ask that when we haven’t seen it?”
“I just told you I didn’t make any of the changes that came through on Barry’s text last night.However, I did incorporate every jump cut, fade, and close-up you insisted on when you were behind the camera.”Turning from Joel to Tamir, I added, “Plus, I reread your most recent script edits and used the monster scene where it detaches itself from the tree and absorbs the heroine.”
Tamir reached out and hugged me.“I had no idea you’d saved that scene.”
“Between yours and Esme’s acting and Esme’s special effects, it’s the best scene in the film—and also the climax, which Barry would know if he had a clue at all how to tell a story.”I blew a breath at my bangs.“Honestly, I don’t know why he didn’t switch majors years ago.”
“Oh!You’re all here.Early too,” Barry said as he walked through the door.“Can’t wait to see how those changes improve the movie, huh?”
The guy had absolutely no clue how to read a room.
“Do you have everything downloaded, Saylor?”he asked.
“Yep.All ready to go.”
The other four of us exchanged a quick look and Joel nodded.Looked like they were all on board with my version as the final cut.
“Great.Find a seat, everyone.I’ll get the lights.”
TH: Hello, Mystery Woman.How did it go with your douchebag director today?
