'I came to Hollywood from Alabama, with nothing to myself but a pickup truck and twenty dollars in my pocket. For the first six months, I waited tables at a café in Westwood. I lived with four other people in a two bedroom apartment. Then I got the call back from an agent. It all started there.'

The floor of the Hollywood and Highland is riddled with these kind of quotes - success stories from people who made it in LaLa Land, engraved in stone like a prophecy. Little sparks of hope the waiters and janitors step over every day, daydreaming that it will their stories there, someday.

Yeah, cause that's how it happens. Move to L.A., wait tables for six months, get a call from an agent. "Hey, you look fabulous! Wanna star in the new Marvel thingy?"

As if.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I've met quite a lot of important people from the Dream Factory, before it all went to shit and everyone died. Mom and Dad were never in the business, but they were fairly successful at what they did, and we lived in L.A. - which means I spent my early teens in of most exclusive High Schools in all of Beverly Hills (and, consequentially, the world). Which means most of my classmates were the sons and daughters of everyone who matters in this city.

I never took an interest in it, mind you. Far be it for me to buy into the dream of so many of my colleges, eager to follow their parent's footsteps into exclusive dinners, overpriced shoes and cocaine.

Nope, Mr. and Mrs. Huttner's precious little girl wanted to be a physicist. Or a philosophy teacher, like her dad. Or a serial killer.

Really, anything but working in the entertainment industry. I'll tell you, I was probably the only teenage girl who's ever yelled to her parents, "It's my life, and I don't want to be a movie star!"

Still, you learn a thing or two from studying with the sons and daughters of movie stars and executive producers and Academy Award winning directors. The main one being you don't wanna be around these people.

Case in point: Innara Hitchens.

I remember Innara mostly from her Vanity Fair hair style in flocks of blonde, her high-end D&G dresses and the way she looked at me like I was something pulled out of a dog's nose. Innara was in my class, and both her parents worked in one of the biggest production companies in town.

Do you know what having A list stars coming to your house regularly for dinner does to a teenage girl's mind? Do you have any idea the emotional impact it has on a growing mind when you get to attend the hottest Oscars afterparties, every year? Especially when your parents are more concerned with Box Office numbers than grades?

Innara was a bitch is my point. And she haaated the fact that, despite my parents having as much to do with the glamour of Hollywood as dinosaurs have to do with outer space - despite Eve's family being what the cool kids in class would call 'not from the biz,' - it was me that Damian Madsen was dating.

Damian Madsen, whose father was one of the most successful doctors in LA, and actually had his own, crappy doctor TV show for middle-aged house wives. Damian, whose mother was the producer for said TV show. Damian, whose family was totally, one-hundred percent 'from the biz' - a fact I decided very soon didn't bother me at all.

Shut up, I know it's hypocritical. Bite me.

No, but really, he wasn't an asshole about it. I didn't even know about his parents until we started dating - I just assumed he was one of the normal people, like me, and that he was only accepted in the cool kids' group because... well, he was Damian. Everyone liked Damian.

That jawline and the dreamy eyes must have helped too, I figured.

I was in math class, the day things went from bad to 'holy-shit' between me and Innara. Friday, last period. The day before, Damian had given me a new Jack Skellington backpack, and I wore it to class.

" - blah blah, blah blah blah. Things Eve doesn't care or understand. This equals more things Eve doesn't give a shit about. Blah. Blah, blah. Which, of course, is the main idea behind that thing that I talked about last class when Eve was not paying attention. This will all be on your test, by the way," Mr. Thompson was going on, as usual. I was sketching stick figures on my notebook, playing the 'don't-look-at-your-phone-for-X-minutes' game, waiting for the class to end.

"Random numbers," Mr. Thompson continued. "Words Eve is not processing. More words. Background noise. Random facts about mathematics."

Finally, the bell rang.

I got up, feeling for the backpack strap in an automatic motion. To find nothing but air.

I turned around. There was nothing on the backrest of my chair. The backpack was gone. I frowned.

From the back row, I heard the muffled laughter. I raised my eyes to find Innara, blank expression on her face, carefully looking up like the ceiling was suddenly very interesting. Her friends all simultaneously had things in their teeth and lips they had to care for, hiding their mouths with their hands.

"All right," I said, approaching her seat. "Where is it?"

"What?" Innara asked, in an innocent voice that made me want to vomit on her.

She was wearing a Givenchy black top and Chanel leather boots. To class. I shit you not.

"Innara, come on," I replied, as her friends got up and closed in around us. "Damian's waiting for me outside, could you -"

"Oh, he's giving you a ride?" Innara asked, throwing her purse over her shoulder as she got up. "What happened to your car?"

I sighed. "Just give me my backpack."

"I don't know what happened to it. Honest," Innara replied. "Maybe one of the first graders mistaked it for their own."

Her friends laughed. Innara tried to go past me. I stopped in front of her. A mix of anger and adrenaline boiling in my stomach like lava.

"What?"

"Give it back."

"I told you, I don't have it."

"But you took it. You know where it is."

Innara rolled her eyes so hard her pupils almost came out blurred in MAC eyeliner. "Eve, I don't have time to play these silly games. Just -"

"Give. It. Back."

You know that feeling when you're confronting someone and you know you're right? That heart racing?

God, I hated her. I hated her, I hated her. I hated her.

Innara dropped one shoulder an inch, posing in front of me with a bended knee and her head tilted like I was the end of a runway. Her eyebrow rose. "Or what?"

"Eve, is it true you punched a kid in the face?" my mom asked, later that day, coming into my room without knocking.

"Word got around?" I asked. I knew this conversation would come the second my fist hit Innara's face. The second she stormed past me to the principal's office, covering her nose. I stormed straight outside and hopped into Damian's car as soon as I saw him.

I wasn't going to stick around for the lecture.

The bright side is her friends showed me where she had hidden the backpack. So, you know, violence does work.

"Principal Rosenfield called. He said you -"

"I punched Innara."

Mom sighed, sitting on the bed by my side. "Eve..."

"What? She punched me first!"

My mom's eyes went wide. "She did? Rosenfield didn't say anything about that. I'm going to call him and get this -"

"All right, she didn't," I sighed. "But she was being a bitch."

"Eve, you can't punch people for being a bitch."

"Who should I punch? People who are not being a bitch?"

My mom's eyes turned serious. "Rosenfield wants to see you first thing Monday."

"Good. Maybe they'll expel me," I replied.

"Well, they just might, Eve. The school has a no violence policy."

"Do they have a 'don't be a bitch' policy?" I folded my arms.

I was being a little bitchy too, I knew that. But mom didn't know what it was like, with these kids. Mom didn't go to a millionaire school like I did.

Ok, now I really sound like a spoiled bitch. I was angry, give me a break.

"I don't know who you take from, acting like this, Eve," my mom continued. "I swear to God, if your father was still alive -"

"Well, he's not."

My mom paused. For a second, neither of us talked, and I was making it a very serious mission to look straight ahead into the turned off TV.

"What did she do?" mom asked me, finally.

I nudged my head towards the backpack, resting against the wall by my laptop on the desk. The word 'FREAK' was written in red magic marker across Skellington's face.

Mom sighed, turning kinder eyes my way. I forced myself to look at her.

"How bad was it?"

"Oh, it was nothing, she barely bled," I replied, rolling my eyes. "She's a drama queen. She'll do very well in her parents' business."

Mom got up. "Still. You shouldn't punch people in the face."

"Noted."

"Which is why you're grounded, until you talk this out with Rosenfield. And pray to God all he gives you is a lecture, or -"

"What? I'm going out with Damian Saturday," I protested. "We got tickets for -"

"Not anymore," mom replied. "And he can't come here either."

"That's bullshit!"

By the door, mom turned a blank expression my way. "Stop punching people, Eve."

The door clicked shut. Before I had time to complain any more, my phone rang.

"Damian," I answered, annoyed. "You're not going to believe what -"

"Eve, I need to talk to you."

I paused. He sounded serious.

"Is this about Innara? Did you hear what -"

"Are you watching the news?"

"Who watches the news?"

Damian's voice sounded more serious than usual. All grown-uppy. "Turn on your TV, Eve."