Page 34 of How To Plot a Payback

The reality is a little bit nauseating.

At any rate, Kye’s choice right here is straight for the Airport Farewell.

It makes sense. It is Lance and Ashley’s first time, in all these years, getting engaged.

“End scene!” someone calls in the distance, and the roars and cheers grow.

Kye pulls back, grinning like he’s just left the candy store with every gram of sugar in stock. “What was that?” he calls over the eardrum-breaking cheers. Then, grinning madly, he pans his eyes across the studio. “Look what you did.”

I know.

It’s one thing to throw in an occasional line. It’s another to change the course of the entire scene.

And the way the staff are looking around at the audience now, I know something big is about to happen.

The room is thundering with applause like we’re soldiers just returned from war.

More than one person is actually weeping.

I wince at the writers, who are arguing so loudly over one another they look like they’re on the fringe of throwing punches. “I’m not sure if they’re going to thank me or kill me.”

Kye throws an arm around my shoulder and gives a hearty squeeze. “Chin up, Lavie. If they try, they’ll have to go through me first. Well, and Sonya. And you know how terrified they are of her.”

I laugh loudly and feel my tension easing up. Because what he’s not saying in all this is the truth. Everything’s fine. Worst-case scenario—and even that is a very small probability—is a collective frown followed by a reshoot. But my team has my back, and they don’t so much as let me get a tongue-lashing around here.

Kye and Sonya. My friends. My family. My people.

In the earliest years after I reached the States, I had nothing. Truly nothing. Except a scribbled address (252 Parker Ave., Apt. B), $200 in cash, and a shiny-but-astronomically-high-interest-rate-to-the-point-it-was-worthless credit card.

I rented a slice of a bedroom in a two-bedroom flat shared by six girls, all Hollywood hopefuls from around the world, all connected by the same agent. I knocked and there was Sonya, holding open the door, all bright and beautiful despite the Pepto-Bismol-pink rollers snaking through her hair and the green mask covering all but her large brown eyes. She had a script in her hand even then.

All of us found jobs in the restaurant business, like every other hopeful in town. But two weeks in, in true Sonya form, she informed us she ran the stats on waitressing, didn’t like the numbers she saw, and determined to beat the system.

She started a dog-walking business.

And not just any dog-walking business but a high-end dog-walking business.

Quick money, flexible enough to allow us to make casting calls when we wanted, she declared, and the money, if the business worked, would be 34 percent higher than the wages she’d drawn up figures for in our restaurant gigs. We would walk the dogs and clean their paws with monogrammed towels; she would handle the scheduling, marketing, and accounting.

She didn’t know anyone in town, but in the same way she had figured out how to make a five-figure income selling computer paper on Etsy, she was confident she could figure this out too.

She was very compelling. Sonya always is when she walks in with a PowerPoint.

She laid out the proposal to all the girls in the flat; I was the only one who took her up.

And sure enough, the other four girls didn’t make it in LA five months.

Sonya, meanwhile, started a franchise.

Sonya has always been the glue in our little group, the leader.

She’s the one who took me along to the first LAANG—aka the Los Angeles Actors Networking Group. A group of monetarily challenged actors who couldn’t afford classes and didn’t have connections (Sonya and I were the lucky ones back then), they met in a basement coffee shop and took turns sharing acting tips learned on wikiHow while secretly trying to gather news about casting calls without giving away any secrets about casting calls.

It was there, at one of these meetings, we met Kye.

And we formed a little pact.

A group of friends devoted to helping one another up the ranks. United on every front. Which is why, when Sonya got news about the audition for Neighbors, we all got news about the audition for Neighbors. And when the casting director decided that Sonya was perfect for the role of uptight but lovable Maya Ahluwalia, it was only a matter of time before he connected how perfect Kye and I would be for her mates.