By three in the morning, the studio is a different planet.
The glass towers stop pretending to be important and just glow, humming softly against the sky. Hallway lights dim to half power. Posters of blockbusters stare down like glossy ghosts. The air smells like industrial cleaner and old popcorn.
My cart squeaks as I push it down the thirty-second floor corridor, a sad metallic whine that echoes past locked doors.
“Shut up,” I mutter at it, because if I don’t talk to something, the silence starts pressing on my eardrums.
I swipe my badge against the door marked DEVELOPMENT. The red light flips to green with an obedient beep. The door resists for a second—heavy, expensive wood—then swings inward.
The room beyond looks like every behind-the-scenes documentary I’ve devoured online: long conference table scattered with water bottles, coffee cups with lipstick stains, half-erased beat sheets taped to one wall. The city sprawls in the windows beyond, a glittering blanket I can’t afford to touch.
I wheel my cart in and let the door close behind me. It clicks too loudly.
“Just two more rooms,” I tell myself. “Then pages.”
The thought calms my chest. My notebook is tucked in the bottom of the cart, hidden under trash liners and a coil of blue gloves. My flash drive—my whole heart—is in the zipped pocket of my hoodie.
I grab the trash bag from the nearest can and knot it, the thin plastic biting my fingers. Used cups, crumpled scripts, somebody’s abandoned sushi. I move on autopilot. Trash, recycling, wipe, vacuum, onto the next. It’s the only way to survive graveyard shifts without thinking too hard about the fact that the stories developed in these rooms make more in an hour than I make in a month.
On the table, a scribbled list reads:
EP 103 BEATS
– Hero confesses lie
– Muse leaves (too early?)
– Network note: needs more sex
I snort under my breath and resist the urge to smooth the paper. Everything here is temporary. Disposable. Don’t touch anything you aren’t paid to touch, Emily.
I should not be in love with a world that would never notice me.
I tuck a stray coffee stirrer into the trash bag and glance at the screen of the conference room’s computer, glowing in sleep mode. My reflection hovers there, pale and smudged—dark ponytail, tired brown eyes, blue hoodie from a clearance rack three years ago. Cleaner.
But underneath the hoodie, zipped up tight?
Writer.
“Stop it,” I whisper. “Finish the room.”
I do, fast. When the vac’s low rumble cuts off, the silence folds back over me, thicker now. The last room on my rotation is my favorite: the tiny corner office with the good ergonomic chair and the view straight down to the lot.
And, more importantly, the one computer nobody ever shuts all the way down.
I swipe in. The door opens on darkness and the faint smell of someone else’s perfume—floral with an edge of something metallic. The screensaver bounces a production company logo over black.
As I flick on the desk lamp, the city winks in the glass. I make myself empty the trash and wipe down the desk first, like a responsible employee. Only when the surface gleams, smelling faintly of lemon and bleach, do I sit in the chair and wake the computer.
