Dark Wild Night

“Don’t worry,” he says, gently interrupting me. He comes around the table to sit next to me, and his sincere wince tells me he knows how overwhelming this must be for me. I just can never tell whether or not he’s on my side. “We have all day to pore through this. I swear, Lola, you’ll have so much time with this script you’ll want to burn it soon.”


By the time Langdon arrives and the three of us sit down, my notes on the first few scenes are shakily written and disorganized. The document in front of me is one of the most exciting things to ever happen in my life, but I can’t manage to engage fully. My thoughts vacillate between Junebug and Oliver—from anxiety to relief and back again. But Langdon and Austin are already very familiar with the script, and even without the deadline panic and the Oliver obsession hijacking my brain, I feel like I’m chasing a car down the street to keep up with the conversation. I need to focus. I can’t look to see if Benny or Erik has called me back. I just need to get through the day.

Just get through the day.

Just get through—

“So, Lola,” Austin cuts into my efforts, using the tip of his pen to scratch his scalp. The loud scritch-scritch-scritch seems to echo through the room. I run my hands up over my bare arms, wondering why the air-conditioning is cranked so high. “We were thinking in the opening scene,” he continues, “Quinn could be coming back from the library rather than waking up in bed.”

I scan through the section in question, noting that I hadn’t written any comments there. I actually liked the opening scene. “Well, it’s sort of less scary to first run into Razor outside the library than it is to wake up to him standing in her bedroom,” I argue.

“I’m just not sure the audience will be sympathetic to Razor if he’s in the bedroom of an eighteen-year-old girl,” Langdon says.

I stare at both of them. “Especially since Quinn is fifteen.”

Austin glances up at Langdon and I catch his subtle head shake. “Let’s focus first on the library-versus-bedroom issue.”

“The audience isn’t supposed to be sympathetic to Razor at the beginning.” Do I really need to explain this? I feel the other stress melting away as this one begins dumping fuel on the fire in my chest. “He’s a deformed man with scales and teeth as sharp as knives. He doesn’t look like a hero because at the beginning, he’s not.”

Austin launches into an explanation about audience confidence and first impression and there’s so much jargon that after a few minutes of it my brain starts to slowly ebb away, thinking instead of Oliver, in his office.

How he told me to be quiet.

How it felt like he knew I was starting to panic at the idea of leaving for three measly days.

How much he seems to love me already, how much he trusts me to get it right.

How much I need him here right now, eyes centering mine, helping me get through this one minute at a time.

“. . . so the issue really is grabbing them up front, curling our fist around their collar, and yelling in their faces that they’ll love Razor,” Austin continues, “no matter what he does. Right up front, in the first scene. It lets us forgive him when he acts out, later.”

I nod, head swimming. What’s he saying makes sense.

But it also doesn’t, right?

And fuck, I know I missed most of his lecture, but I can’t help but fight, just a little longer. “I just think—”

Langdon sighs heavily, looking to Austin in exasperation. “We don’t have time for this.”

“No, no,” Austin says, waving easily to Langdon, and giving me a winning smile. “Let her speak.”

The words swim in my head and for several, long, painful seconds I forget what scene we’re talking about. “Um . . .”

“The open . . . ?” Austin prompts, with deliberate patience.

Nodding quickly, I say, “I prefer it to happen the way it is in the book.”

Under his breath, Langdon sneers, “Now there’s a surprise.”

I whip my head to him. “Excuse me?” I ask, my heart beating so hard I’m shaking. “Isn’t this an adaptation of the book? I edited that scene for weeks to get it right.”

A sarcastic smile curls Langdon’s mouth. “You’re how old?” he asks, leaning forward with his elbows planted on the table.

I sit up.