Page 29 of How To Plot a Payback

“I just had a question about this line,” Lavender says, holding her script out with a so-sorry-I-hope-I’m-not-ruining-anything-but-am-totally-ruining-everything face.

“First tell me what you think about this idea here,” Mr. Goodwin says, beckoning her in with two fingers. He points to me. Or at least, I think he’s pointing at me—everything’s blurry as I take off my glasses and rub my eyes.

“Say it again, Masters.”

Right. Nothing too big going on here. Just trying to halt imminent blindness.

I give my eyes two more rubs and put my glasses back on just in time to discover she has relocated herself and is now settling over my shoulder. Far, far too close for comfort.

Honestly, just knowing she lives in the same town this past decade has been too close for comfort.

Which is funny, now that I think of it, because I suppose she and I lived in the same town the two decades before that. In a funny-not-so-funny way, she is very likely the sole person in my existence to have lived exactly where I have lived my entire life. Of all the billions of people in the world, it’s us. She and I together. The world’s cruel joke.

The glasses are smeared with that tropical punch scent, and I shift in my seat uncomfortably, pulling them off again. Heat creeps up my neck. I’m perspiring at the proximity of her and the way everybody else in the room is eyeing me as I rub madly at the glasses with the hem of my trouser pockets.

I feel Goodwin’s impatience as one feels a claw digging into one’s shoulder.

Give up on the glasses.

Catch a tiny crease between Lavender’s brows as she looks down at me.

Take a breath.

Pull the script close enough that the blurry words straighten up.

Clear my throat.

“Well,” I begin uncertainly, “given the arc of your overall character—”

But already Mr. Goodwin is snapping, “Speed up, Finn. Nobody knows Ashley Krane better than Lavender. We’ve got six minutes.”

I drop the script.

The thing is, you don’t consult the actors. Nobody consults the actors.

Writing is our job. Acting is theirs.

It’s like asking the patient before a root canal which tool the dentist should use.

It’s unprofessional. It just isn’t done.

“I think Ashley should shut the door in Lance’s face,” I say bluntly. “And tell him to choke on his floral arrangement.”

I don’t know what I was expecting. Nothing good, of course. I would never, could never, expect anything from our interactions to end up causing anything good. But I suppose I didn’t expect this.

I didn’t expect silence.

Eventually, the lashes over her blue eyes flap a couple of times.

“But . . . ,” she begins slowly, “Ashley doesn’t do things like that.”

I nod.

It’s probably going to be best if I avoid talking directly to her as much as possible.

“She never fights with Lance.”

I nod again.