I nearly walked right into Zoe when I entered the cafeteria that morning.
“Your shirt’s untucked,” she said.
I didn’t even look down.
“Sorry the short didn’t work out,” she said. “I thought you guys were making good progress, but it was a pretty ambitious project.”
I shrugged.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yep,” I said.
“Last lunchtime lecture?”
“Yep.”
She paused. “Who’s your final speaker?”
“Madeline Bailey,” I said.
Zoe’s face lit up. “Madeline is the best,” she said.
It was one of the few times I’d heard anyone say anything nice about the producer. Despite everything that had happened, I felt a precious spark of curiosity.
“You like her?” I asked.
“I love her,” Zoe said. “She’s smart, she’s focused, and she’s probably the one person in this studio who doesn’t take any shit from Bryan. I wish she was working on No One Fears the Woods, but she cut back on the long hours after her kids were born. You should have heard Bryan bitch about it.” Zoe rolled her eyes. “He acts like she had children just to punish him.”
“I wouldn’t blame her if she did,” I said.
I was thinking about Reagan Davis. About how I wished Bryan hadn’t been able to get away with completely erasing her from the narrative.
“You’ll have a good time talking to her,” Zoe said.
We were meeting in Madeline’s office, not in a conference room. It was right across from Bryan’s office. His door was closed, but still, I kept my gaze down as we passed in front of it. In my memory, the whole room became even more alien and spaceship-like. I even imagined it being ice-cold, a black, starless galaxy.
Madeline’s office was the complete opposite. There was an enormous red couch along one wall, covered in fluffy gray pillows. The rug was bright slashes of color and wherever there wasn’t a comfy-looking chair, there were bookcases, crammed full with books. Her desk was tiny compared to Bryan’s—a simple wood top balanced on a skinny triangle. There was a Wallace & Gromit clock on the wall.
I loved it so much I wanted to cry.
“Come in, come in.” Madeline herself was white and of average height with thick dark hair lined with gray. It was pulled back in a twist, but some of it was escaping against her neck. She wore thin tortoiseshell frames and a blue polka-dot blouse with a pencil skirt.
I realized I recognized her from the intern banquet—she’d been the other woman sitting at Bryan’s table.
“Please sit anywhere,” she said, pulling out a chair from the other side of her desk.
I didn’t get to one of the individual chairs in time and had to sit next to Bear on the sofa. His leg was wedged against mine. I tried to ignore it. To ignore him. It was hard—he still smelled like pencil shavings. It was one of my favorite smells.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all,” Madeline said.
She had a nice smile. Her bottom teeth were crooked.
“Is everyone excited about the showcase next week?” She laughed when none of us responded. “I can see that you’re all in crunch mode. It’s a very distinct expression—and one I see a lot around here.” She crossed her eyes and let her mouth hang open a little, a pretty good impression of how some of us looked at that moment.
I gave her the best smile I could manage. It felt rude not to.
“I know this is probably the last thing you want to do right now,” she said. “I imagine everyone is distracted—thinking about everything they need to accomplish today. I’ll make this easy for you. I’ll tell you a little bit about what it means to be a producer and then I’ll send you on your way. It will be a short lecture today.”
I could see why Zoe liked her, but the PA had also called her tough. The only person capable of standing up to Bryan. And others had all but called her a bitch. Madeline seemed friendly. And nice. Not like the badass warrior producer I’d been warned about.
“I’m sure you’ve heard that producing is mostly about scheduling and money,” Madeline said. “And that’s part of it, but it’s so much more. Instead of boring you with a laundry list of things that a producer does, I thought I would tell you what qualities I think a good producer needs.”
Nick might not have thought this kind of stuff was important, but I did. And maybe that spark of interest I felt meant that I hadn’t given up. Not completely.
“A good producer is someone who understands how creative people work,” Madeline said. “They recognize when artists need to be left alone and when they need structure. Support. Sometimes when they need limitations.”
I saw some of the other interns tuning out. Tentatively, I raised my hand. I didn’t know if she was expecting questions, but Madeline turned to me with a smile.
“What do you mean by artists needing limitations?” I asked. “Isn’t that bad for creativity?”
“Great question,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Hayley.”
“Hayley.” Madeline gave me a knowing look. “Well, Hayley, sometimes giving an artist unlimited resources, funds, and time can actually have the opposite effect on creativity. There are too many options, too many choices. Having some restraints, whether its budget or schedule or a combination of the two, can sometimes force an artist to think outside the box. To find alternative solutions.”
She leaned forward onto her hand. “I always think of Jaws as the best example of this. Spielberg couldn’t get the shark to work. It kept breaking, looked fake on camera, and just wasn’t doing what it needed to do. In the end, it was his editor Verna Fields who figured out how to make it work. She cut the film so you rarely see the shark. Nowadays, Spielberg, with his massive budgets and unlimited access to CG, might not have needed her to problem-solve the way she did, and I don’t think the movie would have worked nearly as well.”
Madeline looked at me.
“I’m interested in what people do when their options are taken away. It’s not just about creativity, it’s about tenacity. It’s about taking risks. It’s about believing in yourself.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I left Madeline’s office feeling inspired and confused and completely turned upside down. After my question, it had felt like she’d spoken directly to me during the entire lecture. It had been soothing and encouraging, but overwhelming, too.
And I still didn’t have any answers. I didn’t know what to do. About anything.
We’d run out of time on the short because maybe we’d never really had enough time. It would have never worked. Madeline could talk about restraints, but sometimes they were just roadblocks. Nothing—not even tenacity—could get you around them.
“Hayley.” Bear stopped me just before I reached the staircase. It was the first time we’d really spoken since we’d broken up.
“I’m late for a meeting,” I said.
“Sally told me that you stopped working on the short,” he said.
I couldn’t look at him.
“Maybe we could talk?” he asked. “You could come over tonight?”
I could tell that he was glad—that he thought I’d made the right decision. That maybe everything could go back to the way it had been before. But I just felt sick about it.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Exactly.”
My eyes were burning by the time I got to Sloane’s office. I pressed my knuckles against my face—ordering myself to keep it together. Then I knocked on her door.
“Hayley!” She gave me a hug before pulling me into her office and closing the door. “I have something for you.”
She grabbed a box from the floor and set it on her desk with a loud thump.
“Open it,” she said.
I wrestled with the overlapping cardboard sleeves to discover that the box was full of special-edition BB Gun sketchbooks.<
br />
“I have another brand that I usually use, but they give them to us for free here, so I wanted you to have them,” Sloane said.
I was speechless. In front of me were enough sketchbooks to last years.
Before I’d started this internship, Bryan’s seal of approval was all I had needed to guide me. Now, I didn’t even know if I liked the sketchbooks because they were good or because Bryan said they were good.
“Thank you.” I didn’t want to be rude. It was an incredibly thoughtful, kind gift. I just didn’t know what to do with it.
“That’s not all,” Sloane said. “I heard you’ve been busy.”
She had a big, expectant smile on her face. A smile that faded when a tear escaped my dumb, traitorous eye and began rolling down my cheek. Why did I keep crying in front of her? It was so fucking embarrassing.
“Hey, hey, hey,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s just—Zoe told me about your short film and, oh, Hayley, it’s okay. What’s wrong?”
I was fully sobbing now—the stress of the short, of everything that had happened with Bear, and twenty minutes of what felt like Madeline Bailey directly addressing my innermost conflict and still not giving me a solution, had obviously gotten to me.
I felt like a complete failure.
Sloane grabbed a box of tissues from somewhere and sat me down in her chair. I took a handful and shoved them into my face. I fell apart, snot coming out of my nose, my shoulders heaving with huge, lung-punching sobs as everything poured out of me. When I was done, the tissues were a soggy mess in my hands and my whole body ached.
“Feel better?” Sloane asked when I lifted my head.
She handed me a fresh pile of tissues. This time I dabbed my face a little more delicately.
“What happened?” she asked.
I shrugged. I didn’t even know where to begin.
Sloane crossed her arms. “Come on,” she said. “Is this about the short?”
That seemed like a good enough place to start. I nodded.
“Zoe told me you guys were making something really special and that all of sudden you pulled the plug on it.”
There was that spark again. A warm, happy feeling at hearing that Zoe liked the short. That it was special. I wanted so badly for my work to be seen as special.
I wanted to be special.
Maybe that had been my problem all along. Maybe Bryan was right about caring too much about credit. Except, he didn’t seem to mind getting all the credit for the work BB Gun Films did. I felt so confused and unsure of everything.
Not that any of it mattered. If Zoe had said that to Sloane about our short, she was probably just being nice.
I sniffed. “It was a bad idea,” I said.
“It definitely was a daring one.” Sloane leaned against her bookcase. “What exactly were you hoping to accomplish?”
“I wanted to prove Bryan wrong,” I said.
It was as if I’d just told Sloane I was my own evil twin. She went so still that it felt like the universe had hit pause. Then she straightened. Slowly.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said, but it was too late.
“Hayley,” Sloane said. “Why did you want to prove Bryan wrong?”
I’d never told her the details of what had happened with Nick. Before or after. Only Bear knew what Bryan had said to me, and even that had been the abridged version. I let out a breath. I’d been carrying all of it—Bryan’s words, his assessment of me—around for weeks.
“I got called to Bryan’s office,” I said.
I could barely look at her, glancing around her office instead.
“Again?”
“A few weeks ago. After I—after I yelled at Nick.”
“You never told me exactly what had happened with that,” she said.
I focused on her bookcase. At the framed drawing that had been placed facedown on the shelf. The one I didn’t have to look at to remember.
“Nick stole my idea,” I said. “I’d written a new script for his short and he gave it to Bryan and told him it was his.”
There was a long pause, and I looked up to find Sloane staring at me with her mouth wide open. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
What could I say? That I’d been too ashamed? That I didn’t want to disappoint her? That I didn’t say anything because I was afraid she’d tell me that Bryan was right? How much more crying did I want to do in front of Sloane? At what point did it become truly ridiculous?
“What did Bryan say to you in that meeting?” she asked.
I hesitated. Would it do any good to rehash all this now? The internship was almost over.
“Hayley.” There was something in Sloane’s voice. Almost as if she was bracing for the worst, but also like she was prepared. As if she knew already but was just waiting to hear it out loud. Besides crying even more in front of her, what else did I have to lose? I didn’t have the short, I didn’t have Bear.
So I told her. I told her everything. From Bryan saying that I wasn’t talented enough to direct a short, to informing me that all I was good for was inspiring other people. When I was done, Sloane was silent. For a long time. A long, long time. I waited.
Sloane put her hand on her lips, then lowered it. She opened her mouth, and then closed it. Her nostrils flared.
“Excuse me,” she said.
Then she turned away from me, hands clenched into fists.
“That self-centered piece of shit,” she shouted at the ceiling. “Fuck you, BB Gun Films, and fuck you, Bryan. FUCK! YOU!”
I stared at her, shocked. When she was done, she let out a breath, her entire body deflating a little as she turned back to me.
“Hayley,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I was still too stunned to say anything, and a little surprised that no one came bursting through her door wondering what all the shouting and profanity had been about.
Sloane sat down. She inhaled and then exhaled, tucking her hair behind her ears.
“Bryan Beckett is the worst,” she said. “Don’t believe anything he said to you.”
“But—”
Sloane held up a hand. I shut my mouth.
“My first year here,” she said, “there was only one other woman in the story department, and I was one of the few people of color in the whole building. It was me, Isaac, Ron, and some other artists who no longer work here. Everyone else was white. Most of them were male.”
Maybe things had changed, but they hadn’t changed that much.
“I had a meeting with Bryan after my probationary period was up,” she said. “I wanted to renegotiate my salary, which I’d found out was a fraction of what Josh was getting.” Sloane gave me a knowing look. “Oh yeah, Josh and I were hired at the same time.”
“But he’s the executive head of story,” I said.
Sloane’s chair squeaked as she scooted forward. “I like Josh—I do—but he’s good at two things: drawing, and kissing Bryan Beckett’s ass. And he’s only really good at one of them.”
That might have been funny if it didn’t suck so very much. I thought about Josh’s mural—the one on prominent display in the lobby of the theater with a large plaque. It was entirely forgettable. Not like Sloane’s mural. How beautiful and vibrant it was. And how it was hidden in a hallway deep inside the building with nothing to indicate who had drawn it.
“I came into the meeting prepared,” Sloane said. “I had a whole argument laid out for why I deserved to be getting the same salary as someone with the same amount of experience. Of course, I didn’t realize that Josh had been hired right out of CalAn, while I had three years at other studios under my belt. I should have been getting paid more to begin with.”
She shook her head. “Anyway. Bryan not only told me that he would not be giving me a raise, but that I should be grateful for the job I already had. You see, I was a ‘diversity hire.’ ” She used aggressive air quotes. “He hadn’t really wanted to hire me. He would have
preferred someone with a more universal perspective, but Madeline was forcing his hand.”
I liked Madeline more and more. It was also, almost verbatim, what Bryan had said to me. I’d seen Sloane’s work. Calling her nothing more than a diversity hire was beyond insulting.
“I went to my mentor,” Sloane said. “Monica. The only other woman in our department. I thought she’d understand—give me advice, or at least commiserate with me about how shitty the process was.”
She’d mentioned Monica before.
“She told me that she’d had to deal with the same thing when she started out, and that I needed to suck it up.” Sloane gestured toward her bookcase. “You know that drawing of me—the caricature?”
I nodded.
“She drew it,” Sloane said. “After we had that conversation. She passed it around in a story meeting—basically as a way to tell everyone that I was being ungrateful. Difficult. Bryan thought it was hilarious. Monica was ‘one of them,’ he said. And I wasn’t. Years later, that’s how still some people see me. As a bitch.”
I got chills. Bad ones.
“Why did you keep the drawing?” I thought of the caricature Nick had done of me. How glad I was that it was at the bottom of some trash bag somewhere.
“At first I kept it up so that people would think I was in on the joke,” Sloane said. “Acted like it didn’t bother me. And when Monica retired, I thought about throwing it out, but I felt I needed the reminder. That I couldn’t let that define who I was. Because this place can mess with your head. They’ll try to tell you who you are. And you’ll start believing it, if you’re not careful.”
I could see that. A part of me still wanted to believe in Bryan—in what he said—despite everything that had happened.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” I asked.
“I should have,” she said. “But I saw how excited you were about the program—about Bryan’s work—and I didn’t want to ruin it for you. It’s clear you love animation and I didn’t want to be the person that made you question that. And I thought—I hoped—that things would be different for you.”
“But they weren’t,” I said. “They aren’t.”
When Sloane said that I loved animation, I realized I didn’t know if that was true anymore. It had been magical to me once. I didn’t know if it still was.
Drawn That Way Page 23
