MAY 2021 — VANCOUVER, BC

Theadora wakes in a bed that isn't hers.
it's temporary housing — a rented space just outside of vancouver, modest and wood-paneled, with a fireplace that doesn't work and windows that look out into miles of pine. there are cameras nearby, of course, and trailers. and other cast members she hasn't met yet. but right now, it's just her.

her suitcase is unpacked but messy. her scripts are on the kitchen counter, pages marked with sticky notes, smudged in the corners from nervous fingers. gabriella walkers name is written in bold at the top of every scene, and theadora still isn't used to it.

she turns sixteen next month but right now she's hovering in between — no longer the girl who just finished outer banks, but not yet the girl who will be known for this.

she's not ruby from obx or charlotte from greys. not even betty from stranger things.

she's gabriella now. (kind of.)

⸻

The woods are different here; everything feels colder. not just the weather — though that's true, too — but the silence and the heaviness in the air. theadora sits on the edge of the makeup trailer one morning, wrapped in a thick parka, holding a cup of tea she doesn't even like. the air is damp and the sky is the color of unwashed cotton.

someone — one of the crew, she hasn't learned all their names yet — walks by and calls out, "walkers up next."

it takes full beat for theadora to register that they mean her. she's gabriella walker — the feral girl who's lived in the woods for years. the one with no mirror and no shoes and no lines for the first few episodes because she doesn't speak.

thea finishes her tea; she's still getting used to the silence.

⸻

The first scene they shoot is in the forest. it's got no dialogue, no blocking. just her, barefoot, crouched behind a fallen log. her clothes are threadbare, ripped and matted. dirt is painted into the creases of her neck and her hair — clean, but tangled to look otherwise — falls in knots around her face. she doesn't recognize herself in the mirror that morning, but that's kind of the point.

"roll sound." thea can hear her breath. "action!"

she doesn't move, just watches — eyes locked on an imaginary group of strangers stumbling through the clearing. she's the girl who's been alone too long, the wild thing who forgot how to speak.

but it's not hard to pretend; theadora herself feels like that sometimes.

⸻

Nights in vancouver stretch long. theadora wraps herself in sweatpants and oversized hoodies and sits on the window ledge of her temporary home, staring into the dark. she calls madelyn once but only for a few minutes. maddie's voice is soft, sleepy when she asks, "you doing good?"

theadora nods even though madelyn can't see her. "yeah. it's weird, but yeah."

"weird how?"

"i don't talk in the first few episodes, like at all."

"that sounds...kinda nice?"

"honestly?" thea shrugs. "yeah, actually. it is." there's something freeing about the silence, about disappearing into a version of herself who doesn't owe anyone words. who can scream in the woods and have no one answer, who can be quiet and powerful at the same time.

⸻

It's raining the next day. not fake rain — real, bone-deep cold. theadoras barefoot again because gabriella doesn't own shoes. her feet are numb by take three, but she doesn't say anything.

the director calls cut and comes over, laying a hand on her shoulder. "you okay, thea?"

she nods. "fine."

he watches her for a second longer. "let us know if you need anything, alright?" she nods again, still shivering.

later one of the hair and makeup girls lends her a space heater for the trailer. she wants to cry about it but doesn't, instead just saying, "thank you," and curling up by the heater until her limbs stop their aching.

⸻

The cast is older again. not by much, but enough to make theadora feel young. they're kind, though. courtney is warm. ella talks fast and cracks jokes and shares sour candy on set. sophie n offers her a pair of gloves during a particularly long day and tells her she's got great instincts. sophie thatcher compliments her scream after a stunt rehearsal, and it makes her chest glow for the rest of the week, but still, thea doesn't say much. it's not nerves, just...quiet.

theadoras used to being the baby. she's used to being the one who's growing into herself mid-scene, the one whose laugh is a little too loud and who still apologizes when she trips over her own words. but on this set, that awkwardness feels like armor.

the rain is relentless that night. theadora lies in bed and listens to it drum against the window, arms sore from stunt rehearsal and legs scratched. there's dirt under her fingernails. she should feel exhausted, empty.

but she doesn't. instead, she feels like herself in a way she never has before — stripped down and built back up again, held together with bark and blood and something ancient. she feels like a girl who could vanish into the woods and come back stronger. and as she turns off the lets and allows the dark to hold her, theadora guesses she already has.

⸻

There's a scene where gabriella doesn't blink.

it's not in the script, just a direction scrawled in red ink across the side of the page: "she watches. she doesn't blink."

it takes theadora a few tries — the wind keeps blowing her hair into her face and the light hits too sharp across her cheek. her eyes water.

"let's go again," the director calls. he's calm, patient. "just stay with it." the camera is close — too close — and she can see her own breath in the cold.

theadora stares into the dark, into nothing, into whatever's left of her when she stops thinking and just feels. and for once it doesn't scare her, at least not the way it used to.

thea doesn't blink until the director shouts, "cut!"

"that was it," someone says behind the monitor. theadora exhales quietly. it's the kind of breath you release after holding something in for too long.

⸻

The first time they put fake blood on her, she doesn't flinch, just holds her arms out and lets the special effects artist paint it into her skin, sticky and cold and so red it looks wrong in the daylight.

thea doesn't mind, just says casually, "i think i'm getting desensitized."

the makeup artist laughs. "you're fifteen. that's a hell of a thing to be desensitized to."

"i play dead a lot." theadora shrugs; it's true. in flashbacks and nightmares, in split-second hallucinations where the line between what's real and what's only memory bends and breaks like glass.

the director half-jokes that gabriella's been dead inside for years but thea doesn't laugh — not because it bothers her, but because she thinks he's right.

⸻

They shoot a dream sequence in the woods one foggy morning, just movement and no dialogue, of gabriella wandering through trees she recognizes like the back of her hand. she's barefoot, breath visible in the air.

"do you want padding?" someone asks after thea has been walking without shoes for twenty minutes straight. "we can hide it under the hem."

but she shakes her head. "she wouldn't have it."

they watch her a little longer than normal that day. not because she's messing up — she isn't. if anything, she's better than she's ever been. it's just strange, maybe, how much of her disappears into this girl in the woods.

"she's fifteen?" a producer whispers from behind the monitor. "seriously?" theadora doesn't hear it. or maybe she does and pretends not to, she's good at that now, at pretending she didn't hear, didn't notice, didn't feel the sting of doubt brush up against her work like a ghost.

she's been underestimated her whole life. overtime she's learned it's easier to use it as fuel than fight it every time.

⸻

There's a day when it rains so hard production shuts down and everyone gathers in the main tent, tucked beneath tarps and space heaters. the cast is mostly in costume, half-wet and makeup-smeared. someone puts music on. jasmin braids sophie t's hair and ella passes around hot chocolate. thea curls into a corner with a book she isn't really reading.

"you cold, baby?" one of the crew members asks, passing her an extra blanket. the pet-name slightly irks thea but everyone calls her baby on this set. she knows it's not in a condescending way, more like a term of gentle protection. she's the youngest by far, and somehow the quietest.

"thanks," she mumbles, tucking her knees to her chest. she spends the rest of that rainy afternoon quietly observing the others, listening to their conversations and laughter.

she continues to listen even after returning to the hotel and lying in bed, listening to wind through the trees, the crack of branches, the shuffle of wildlife just past the clearing. her window is always cracked open; something about the cold keeps her grounded.

she watches her phone light up across the room — texts from maddie, from jd, some from bailey. photos from set in charleston, an old polaroid of her passed out on a couch, hoodie pulled over her face. thea smiles doesn't respond, not yet

there's something sacred about the distance right now, like she's in a different timeline, a different body. like gabriella's ribs have wrapped around her own and won't quite let go until this show is finished.

⸻

On the last day of may, they film a confrontation.
it's not a fight or a battle, just gabriella — silent, filthy, terrified — caught in the middle of a dozen strangers. survivors. girls with sharp tongues and even sharper eyes. theadora stands at the center of the scene and tries to shrink and stretch at the same time. her character is starving, suspicious. fragile like a wolf on edge.

no one speaks for a moment after the scene cuts, not until the director — a different one this week, always rotating — turns to the monitor and murmurs, "she's terrifying. jesus."

as theadora walks off set barefoot, mud in her hair and something raw sitting behind her teeth, she doesn't smile, doesn't blink. but inside, something settles like maybe this is who she's been all along — a girl born for roles that don't need saving, just understanding.

by the time the sun sets that evening, thea's got a bruise blooming on her hip and mosquito bites down her shins. she texts taylor back for the first time all week. "filming's good. different, but good. i think this one's going to be the thing."

the response comes back instantly: "i already know it is. miss you." then, a second: "always with you, thee. even in the woods."

⸻

JUNE 2021 — VANCOUVER, BC

The weather warms slowly and stubbornly and thea wakes up most mornings to a chill still sitting in the air, breath visible until the sun pushes itself higher over the treeline. filming days are long, often muddy. bug spray and sunblock become part of the makeup routine and her arms stay speckled with bruises from stunts.

some days they film deep in the forest, where the trees swallow sound and everything feels like it's holding its breath. the camera operator wears a steady cam rig that makes him look like a cyborg. thea stares out past the lenses and lights, trying to anchor herself into Gabriella's body.

She's getting good at the in-between — the quiet center between pretending and being.

She doesn't cry on cue. She bleeds on cue.

"hey, that was...insane," ella says one day after a take where theadora doesn't speak for nearly four minutes — just stares, trembling, holding a handmade spear. "you scare me."

"good," thea says with a grin but it's not sarcastic, just calm. sophie thatcher calls her a 'freaky little oracle.'

⸻

One evening after wrap the cast gathers at the edge of the woods. it's not a party — more like a decompression. someone built a firepit out of stones and liv brought slightly stale marshmallows. thea sits between sophie n and courtney, passing a tin mug of cocoa that tastes faintly of smoke and instant coffee. no one's in costume. no blood, no bruises. just sweatshirts and headlamps looped around wrists like bracelets.

they talk about everything but the show.

ella's planning a trip to paris. jasmin is trying to adopt a cat. anisa reads tarot cards from a faded deck and tells thea "the page of swords is stalking you lately." theadora doesn't know what this means but lets her tuck the card into her pocket anyway.

⸻

Gabriella is eating less, speaking less. theadora had been warned beforehand that yellowjackets would be intense, but no one explained how much it would stay under her skin.

she gets back to her trailer one night and sits on the floor, doesn't even take off her coat. just rests there, back against the wall, legs out in front of her. it's not sadness exactly, not even fear. just fullness — the kind that aches.

they wrap gabriella's final flashback in mid-june. it's physically demanding, something theadora describes later as "barefoot, bruised, and brutal."

after one particularly rough scene she doesn't say much during playback, just watches the screen and sees herself — trembling, tear-stained, soaked in a fake river — and realizes she doesn't look like a child anymore. theadora doesn't know how to feel about that.

the final shot of the week is a group scene — a late-night campfire moment where the girls talk about their old lives, about before. after the first take, sophie n turns to thea and asks, "what would gabriella say?"

theadora thinks for a long time before answering.
"she wouldn't," she says softly. "she'd just listen. she's not ready to miss what she never had." the words leave her mouth and thea realizes she misheard the question — she answered what she'd say.

⸻

JUNE 2021 — VANCOUVER BC — BDAY WEEK

Theadora turns sixteen in the woods.

it snuck up on her — she hadn't counted down this year, didn't doodle the numbers in the margins of her call sheet, didn't correct anyone when they asked if she's fifteen or sixteen. just shrugs, lets the days blur.

it's not that she's dreading it. it's just...different. quieter than past years, harder to grasp. birthdays have begun to feel less like a finish line and more like a checkpoint, another dot on the map of a life that's already bent in strange directions.

she's surprised when others remember what she didn't, almost misses it.

two days before, sophie n brings her a matcha latte and says nothing about it; just sets it beside her script during their blocking rehearsal and moves on like she didn't have to hike three trailers down to get it.

and that same night, back at basecamp, she finds a sticky note on her mirror. "this week = important. don't forget to breathe. xo — e.p."

⸻

June twenty ninth is long.

they're filming a physically demanding sequence — lots of running, shouting, tripping over uneven forest floor. by the time the sun drop thea's voice is scratchy and her calves are on fire. "hey, you okay?" sophie t asks, falling into step beside her as they walk back to the trailers.

theadora nods. "yeah. just tired."

"birthday eve," sophie says casually. "that always hits weird."

thea tilts her head. "you remember?"

"course i do," she shrugs. "you're the youngest one here, remember? that makes your birthday kind of iconic."

"i don't feel iconic," thea says. "i feel like i got tackled by a tree."

sophie laughs. "welcome to sixteen."

⸻

that night thea video chats with the maddie's, who are in l.a on hiatus, lounging on baileys bed with face masks on and popcorn between them. "sixteen!" cline screams when the clock hits midnight. "you're officially my favorite grown-up child!"

"don't say grown-up," thea groans painfully, letting her head drop into her palms dramatically. they don't talk long, just enough to feel tethered to something beyond the woods, beyond the script. but her cheeks hurt from smiling when they finally say goodnight.

theadora turned sixteen on a wednesday. it doesn't feel like a milestone, not really — not in the usual sense. instead her day begins before dawn, in a trailer packed with prosthetics and heat lamps while the makeup artist airbrushes a mosaic of grime and dried blood along her jawline.

"happy birthday, by the way," the makeup lead, jenna, says around a yawn. "sixteen, huh? that was a weird one for me too."

thea nods mutely, the air around her already heavy. she's in wardrobe by six thirty, boots laced, prop rifle slung across her back. gabriella's scenes today are hard, quiet devastating ones: she has a solo moment in the attic beside her fathers corpse. there's no dialogue, just silence and breath and the weight of a girl who refuses to crack.

sophie n gives her a soft squeeze on the shoulder when they cross paths at base camp. "you okay?"

theadora shrugs. "gabby day."

sophie gets it. "happy birthday, thee."

later, sophia thatcher brings her half a protein bar wrapped in tissue paper. "it's all i had," she says sheepishly. "well, this or dried mango." thea eats the bar on a log in the clearing behind set, dirt smeared on her cheeks, fingers sticky from fake blood. the mango comes later.

that night, the cast gathers outside the motel. it's just them — liv, jasmin, ella, courtney, steven, kevin, alexa, sammi, both sophies. someone finds a lighter and another brings out a mismatched cupcake from the corner store, chocolate with one crumbling candle. they sing off-key and theadora laughs so hard her stomach aches and she nearly drops the cupcake in the grass.

"i didn't think anyone would remember," she says quietly to sophie n as they watch sam try to light the candle for a third time. "it's just...weird, being away from everything."

"you're not away from everything," sophie wraps an arm around her. "we're right here."

they break away close to midnight and theadora finds herself alone on the roof of her trailer once everyone disappears inside their own. she pulls out her phone, checks it for the first time that day.

a message from rudy, sent mid-morning: "happy birthday pigtails! sixteen! you're basically ancient now. come back soon. miss your chaos."

a notification from madelyn, who'd posted on her instagram story despite already wishing the teen a happy birthday when the clock struck midnight: "don't you dare get taller than me. happy bday you feral angel." included is a photo of the two of them mid-cartwheel on folly beach last year.

taylor's message had been sent just before lunch: "can't believe you're sixteen already. i love you so much, thee." theres a photo attached of theadora at age seven wearing heart-shaped sunglasses, taken during one of their neighborhood playdates. her hair is frizzy and lips tinged blue with some sort of sugary candy. thea doesn't even remember that day, but taylor clearly does.

she thinks about how far she's come since her last birthday, how different she feels. how strange and steady it is to grow up in front of strangers, to learn who she is while pretending to be someone else.

when she goes back inside, she washes her face and sets her alarm for five thirty. there's still work to do tomorrow, but tonight she gets to just be thea.