[early chapter bc I won't update tomorrow with my zillion tests]

The set for the second half of the opening scene is a deserted road a mile or two away from a local high school. I'm not that old, but old enough to the point where I probably shouldn't be playing a high school senior, but I do anyways. The actors that are about the age of eighteen are not fit to play the part.

I spend two hours with the costume department as they try to add any final spots of blood to the front of my white tux. Dallas dies in the first scene while driving Taylor and himself to their senior prom. It's a brutal death by a hit and run, which leaves her essentially uninjured. She's in shock, and stupidly decides to drive the half-dead car to the nearest hotel down the street, convinced she can save him. Then he dies.

I still wonder how the book was a best seller. It doesn't make sense.

We already taped the part at Taylor Winchester's house where we pose for photos and have a heart-to-heart in her living room and the sappiest kiss known to man. It was done in seven takes, and we moved on. Everyone had already read the book anyways.

Brendon tries to avoid looking at the faux blood while we wait to start filming again under one of the several canopies. The car needed to be replaced with a semi-demolished version, and it was behind schedule. Taylor stands near the snack table, trying to eat as much potato salad as possible without messing her purposely smeared lipstick. There's a large cut plastered to her hairline, and large tears in her silver dress. It's formfitting and reaches her knees, but it's stained with drops of blood and torn at the low neckline. She holds her pale stilettos over her shoulder.

"Is my blood still good?" I tap Brendon's shoulder and point to my chest. I can't exactly look down, because then my hair will fall out of place and then the hair department will come back for another hour.

He glances for a half second and goes back to scrolling through social media with one hand and loosely holding my sleeve in the other. "Yeah."

He really hates it. I'd feel bad, but I don't. "You don't have to stay. There is a coffee shop a few miles away, I believe. You like coffee."

"I know and I do, but the food is good here, and it's closer. It's also free." He's eyeing the large platter of chocolate covered strawberries and the three trays of sandwiches from the local deli. He'd already eaten a few scoops of spaghetti and a mountain of macaroni salad.

I nod. I only had a handful of the supermarket brand pretzels the crew dumped in a plastic popcorn bowl, but they were the best pretzels I'd ever eaten.

The director wanders back on the set, chatting with some girl a whole head shorter than he is, and significantly younger. He doesn't give a shit about the movie. The author of the actual book is supposed to be joining us in a few days, and Brendon has expressed multiple times that he prays they'll improve the film. I don't doubt it. A chimpanzee could do better than the current director.

Then the mangled car rolls up beside the power line tower Dallas had crashed into, and the scrawny prop manager hops out with a clipboard and an extra large soda cup from the AM/PM a mile or two away. It doesn't take a stable person to recognize the fact that he is an asshole. I bet I could kill him with his straw if I tried hard enough. There wouldn't be much blood though, not as much as I want there to be.

As Taylor and I wander over to the car, the camera crew rolls back out and starts to set up the tracks for their cameras again. They look like little train rails, but smaller and stupid.

Taylor grabs my shoulder with both hands as she drops her heels to the road and tries to slip into them without needing to bend down at all. Her acrylic nails dig into my skin. "This movie is a fucking nightmare," she hisses and nods toward the director staring down the other girl with wolfish eyes, "can't wait until he gets fired and the author actually gets here. Heard they've got film experience."

I watch her struggle with the straps around her ankles until I'm sure she's about to add actual blood to my stage makeup, and I kneel down to thread the band through the loop for her. She stands tall, unashamed. It's admirable.

"How do you feel, Dallon?" She's still holding on to me by her fingertips while I work, watching the separate committees of production finally talk to the other in person for the first time. "Do you hate it here? Does Brendon? I kinda hate it here."

"Unfortunately," I mutter, "he's not too fond of all the blood and gore-y prosthetics that go into the look I've got going on here. I think it freaks him out a little bit."

"Poor guy — hope he doesn't get sick. And I asked how you feel too."

I'm indifferent. I couldn't care any less, as long as nobody realized I was already wearing a mask. "I'm making money, so I love it. I absolutely love the gross hotel sheets and smelly air conditioning, and I always look forward to filming for hours with twenty pounds of makeup on all at once."

She laughs with her body and a sweet smile. I didn't think it was that funny, but I grin with her and continue the joke. "Oh, you laugh, but I think something died in the vents."

I see Brendon out of the corner of my eye. He's snacking on a small plate of the strawberries he wanted earlier, and he shoots a subtle thumbs-up, then returns to his dish.

We climb into our respective sides of the car, and the closest crew member eases the doors shut behind us. It's cramped and stuffy, and it smells like old Taco Bell. Touching gently for the faux gash on my forehead, I line it up with the steering wheel and slump over it, facing Taylor as she fixes her hair in the side mirrors with help from the makeup girl.

I shut my eyes as soon as she closes hers and leans forward as far as the purposely locked seatbelt will allow. The lights around the tents dim and the camera rolls silently beside her, and the filming begins.

🔪

Brendon and I head out to the nearest IHOP after I finish filming for the day. I had to die dozens of times because something would malfunction or the director would crunch on his chips a little too loud. I saw bottomless pancakes as a reward for not strangling anybody on set, even though I was dangerously close to doing such.

We're the only two people in the restaurant, spare the staff forced to tend to empty booths and tables and the chefs in the kitchen who will be making another few sets of pancake stacks before I surrender. There's something satisfying about stabbing them with a fork and slicing through them all at once with a blade. It's no person, but it's edible and tasty, and therefore it's a thousand times better at the moment.

"If you don't straight up murder the director," He viciously cuts through a whole plate of hash browns, his comfort food, "I'll do it. What an unprofessional little..."

He frowns and stares at the table, searching for an adequate insult for such an annoying and careless jerk.

"Hermit crab?"

He nearly chokes on the food in his cheek. "What?"

"Hermit crabs live a long time, they are irritating, pointless in most terms, and are very easy to step on."

It takes him a moment to fully process it, but he pinches the bridge of his nose as soon as it clicks. "Idiot would've worked better, but it's alright. I like the implication that you can squash him like a bug. I'll accept it. 'S cool. All good."

"Something seems to be bothering you. What is it?"

He gestures wildly to himself and myself, then the vacant IHOP. "Everything, Dallon! Look where we are, look at what we're doing, look at what you're hiding? Why did you ever get into acting?! God, I feel like I'm stuck in some never ending nightmare hellhole."

He was the one that said I should act instead of just trying to hide in my room for the remainder of my presumably limited days, but I don't remind him of that. It would most likely upset him further, and then he gets angry when I don't understand. "Because I love you. I want to give you everything you could ever want."

He glares at me. His grip around the fork in his hand shakes the utensil. "You don't even know what that means. Quit saying that to me, okay? You're a fucking psychopath, you don't even know what love is. I d—"

I push my chair back and lean over the table to grab the front of his sweatshirt and pull him closer so I can kiss him. His eyes are shut as he gives in, but mine are open, and I watch the emotion mold over his features. I don't understand why it's an act of intimacy; it's unsanitary and increases the spread of germs.

Part of wearing a mask is convincing him that it's not all an act. It usually never works, but for sparse and scattered moments, it does, and then he's fully engaged in the fact that I'm normal, and absolutely, irrevocably, in love with him. I like to believe I would be if I was just like him.

I am not.