Leila’s P.O.V.
“I don’t wanna wake up, Ni,” I groan, rolling over in bed.

Niall shakes me again and says, “Come on, one more day and then it’s the weekend.”

“Noooo,” I moan.

“Lei,” Niall warns. “I’ll treat you to dinner tonight, how’s that?”

“Fine,” I compromise, sitting up. Niall leans down and kisses me before standing back up.

“I’ll make you breakfast, too,” he adds, and then exits the room. Is he perfect or what?

Grudgingly, I force myself out of the warm bed, grab my clothes, and head into the bathroom for a shower. As the water trails down my skin, I think about today. I honestly don’t want to go but I know Niall’s going to drag me there one way or another. I don’t know what’s worse: this or my high school life. They are very close in level of stress, tears, and stupid people, and I don’t know how much I can take of it.

After finishing up in the bathroom, I can smell the sweet scent of breakfast coming from the kitchen and my stomach growls. I hurry up in my bedroom and almost run into the kitchen for food.

“Woah, someone’s hungry,” Niall teases as he sets the big plate of food in front of me.

“I’m a teenage girl living in LA, what do you expect?” I reply, taking a bite. Damn, this is good.

Breakfast passes quickly and Niall and I are out the door in 10 seconds, a smile on my face, surprisingly. We walk the familiar streets to the studio a few blocks over and security meets me at the gate, scanning me over and finding obviously nothing. We are let in and Niall waits while I get ready, like usual.

“Hey, Leila!” Brittany greets. “Apparently, Mr. Conners wanted to change your outfit for today’s scenes, so here’s your new one.” She hands me a set of clothes and walks away to assist Spencer. Okay then.

I enter in the changing room and pull on my new outfit. It looks terrible, to be honest. It doesn’t match up at all! Why would Mr. Conners want to put me in something like this?! Oh, well. I head out of the room and back into the main part.

“Oh, wow,” Brittany says, shocked. “I have no idea why Mr. Conners wanted that.”

“Neither do I. He’s not exactly a fashion geek,” I answer. Suddenly, I hear chuckling from the other side and whip around to see Spencer laughing at me.

“Oh, my God, Leila, I didn’t know we were at the circus,” she snorts.

“Spencer,” Brittany warns.

“Come on, Leila, let’s get your hair and makeup done,” Bella speaks, leading me over to my chair.

Once I’m complete, I look ridiculous. Okay, it’s not too bad, but I wouldn’t be walking the streets like this. I sigh and return to the set to start off the day.

“Leila, what are you wearing?” Mr. Conners declares, approaching me. Uh, oh.

“Um,” I try, thinking of what to say. By this point, everyone’s looking at me, trying not to laugh.

“Come with me,” he demands, pulling me by the arm and guides me to the dressing room. “Brittany!”

Brittany comes running and stops almost right in front of us.

“What is this?” Mr. Conners asks, pointing at me.

“Um, Sam told us that you wanted us to change her look,” Brittany explains.

“I didn’t say anything about the outfit. It was fine before,” Mr. Conners responds, not looking happy. “Where’s Sam?”

Brittany heads inside and comes back out with none other than Sam, who looks petrified.

“Someone told me that you wanted to change Leila’s outfit,” Sam blurts out.

“Who told you that?” Mr. Conners questions.

“I don’t remember,” Sam replies nervously.

“Okay, okay, well, this isn’t acceptable for today, so you’re going to have to change her back into the outfit she had before. How long do you think it will take you?” Mr. Conners asks.

“Well, if you include hair and makeup, half an hour to 45 minutes,” Sam responds.

“Alright. Get it done fast, I’ll see what scenes we can film right now that Leila’s not in, but considering there’s only one I think, we might have to do some rescheduling,” Mr. Conners instructs, pushing me into the room. After he’s finished with us, he walks back out to the set.

Sam and Brittany literally pull me further into the room and rush to get everything ready. Bella comes out and wonders what the hell is going on and while I’m changing into a casual set of clothes, Sam explains everything to her. When I walk out, the stylists are engaged in a talk about who said what and why they might have said that and what to do with me. I really hope this isn’t the stylists’ fault and as I think about it, they don’t seem like the type of people who would do something like this. They work for this company and if they don’t do their job right, they’re gone.

45 minutes later I’m standing in front of the mirror in my usual look. Feeling better about this, I head out to the set and nobody’s actually working on anything. They’re all waiting for me, it looks like. As I walk in, all eyes are on me and my cheeks go red. I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? I don’t look like a complete fool again, do I?

“All right, Leila is back and we’re ready to start up again. Scene 5, let’s go!” Mr. Conners directs and everyone scrambles to their places.

We finish up a few scenes before lunch but there are still a lot of scenes yet to go. We’re going to be here all night…

“Before you all leave, I have an announcement to make,” Mr. Conners declares. “Because of recent events, we are behind schedule. Now, I don’t want to keep you here late tonight, so I have decided that we will finish up tomorrow. I’m very sorry about taking part of your weekend away from you, but this is what has to happen if one, we don’t want to get even more behind schedule, and two, if you want to continue with this company and be the best you can be. You’ve all done outstanding work, but sometimes things happen, so you have to step up to the plate and be the mature, talented actors you can be. You are dismissed.”

“Great,” I groan to Niall when I approach him after the announcement.

“It’ll be fine, love. I’ll be here with you,” he replies, hugging me tight.

“Thanks,” I respond, letting go. “I’m going to change for like, the fiftieth time today.”

“Have fun,” Niall answers and I pad into the dressing room.

Spencer and Alexa are just finishing up when I enter, both of them glaring at me.

“What?” I ask, stopping in my tracks.

“Thanks for keeping us here,” Alexa grumbles. “I had stuff planned for tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, it’s not my fault,” I apologize.

“Whatever,” Alexa says, grabbing her bag. Without another word, she pushes past me out of the dressing room.

“Tough luck you got there, Leila,” Spencer starts, applying lip gloss to her already shiny lips.

“Shut up, Spencer,” I reply, taking my street clothes and heading into the changing room.

“I hope you’re not dressing like a clown in there!” I hear her shout. Rolling my eyes, I finish and walk out to my bag, not saying a word to her.

“The stylists are so stupid,” Spencer says. “That’s why I’m going to hire my own personal assistants soon.”

“Our stylists aren’t bad. They wouldn’t do anything like that,” I defend.

“They would if they wanted to sabotage you,” she adds.

“Why would they want to do that?” I ask.

“Revenge,” she simply replies.

“Why would they want revenge on me?” I question. She just looks at me with a smirk on her lips and now I get it. Spencer was the one who tipped them off that Mr. Conners wanted to change my look.

“Spencer?! You did that?!” I yell. Again, she just stands there, smiling. “What do you have against me?”

“I think I made that pretty clear the first week we were here,” she responds, the smile fading. “You have something of mine and until I get him back, you’re going down.”

“Come on, Spencer, that was weeks ago! Get over it!” I scream.

“He was mine first! You can’t just come in here and steal him away from me!” she shrieks, and runs out of the room.

Huffing, I sit back down in the chair and stare at my reflection. Am I the one who’s not getting it? Am I what I see in Spencer? Is she right? No, that’s not it because if I was, Niall wouldn’t be with me. Niall hates Spencer with a burning passion and if I’m acting like her, he would dump me just like that.

Suddenly, something vibrates on the makeup counter a few feet away from me. I look down at it and realize it’s someone’s phone they accidentally left here. As my eyes scan over everything, it’s near Spencer’s area, meaning it’s Spencer’s phone. My devious mind gets the better of me and I snatch it up. Surprisingly, there’s no passcode on it, so it opens up immediately for me. But what should I do?

Well, this whole situation is messed up, so maybe the fans need a little explanation. I tap on her Twitter app and it loads up. Perfect. I press the button that allows you to create a new Tweet and I type:

So a lot of you know what’s happening with Leila and I. To clear things up, Leila didn’t have anything to do with it. It was all me.

And another Tweet:

I was jealous of Leila and Niall’s relationship, so I did things that I shouldn’t have done. I’m very sorry and I apologize to Leila and Niall’s fans.

Good job, Leila.

All of a sudden, there’s a knock at the door and I set Spencer’s phone back where it was. Niall opens the door and peers inside, meeting my eye contact.

“Hey,” he greets. “You’ve been in here for a while. Ready for lunch?”

“Yeah, sorry, got caught up in stuff,” I reply, digging out my lunch. I head for the door and follow Niall to the meeting room where we had lunch yesterday and I notice he brought a lunch, too.

“Well, I found out Spencer was the one who set the whole thing up, again,” I start.

“Really? Three times in one week?” Niall asks, surprised.

“Yeah. She really hates me,” I say.

“I can see that,” Niall replies.

“So I got revenge on her,” I blurt out.

“What? What did you do?”

“She left her phone in the dressing room, so I tweeted for her,” I explain.

“What did you tweet?”

“Open up your Twitter and find out.” While Niall does so, I finish eating my sandwich and wait for his response.

“Okay, Leila, while that may be true, you’re starting to stoop to Spencer’s level,” Niall replies, not the reaction I was going for. “I know this whole thing is messed up and I know Spencer drove you to this point, but we’ve got to get you out of it.”

“I didn’t even post anything too bad,” I complain.

“Let’s just let this slide and promise me you won’t do anything else. We will figure out what to do together,” Niall adds.

“Fine,” I agree, downing the rest of my lunch.

As soon as we exit the meeting room, Mr. Conners and Spencer are rushing in our direction, not taking their eyes off of me. Uh, oh.

“Leila, we need to talk. Now,” Mr. Conners demands, pointing inside of the meeting room. “Niall, you wait out here.”

I follow Spencer and Mr. Conners into the meeting room and he closes the door, turning around and facing us. Spencer and I don’t sit down, but just stay standing with Mr. Conners staring at us. Glancing at Spencer, I see that her eyes are red and puffy and now I know something terrible is going to happen.

“This is beyond immature, ladies. Now, I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but clearly there’s an issue. Leila, is it true that you tweeted these things on Spencer’s account?” Mr. Conners opens her phone and shows me the tweets. This isn’t the time to lie, so I shake my head yes. Mr. Conners takes a deep breath.

“I don’t understand. I’ve never had anything happen like this in my eleven years of working here. Girls, this has got to stop. There have been way too many incidents happening lately and it’s hurting not only yourselves but the rest of the company as well, considering what’s happened today. I don’t know what else to do but this, and I hate to do it, but you’ve broken my trust. I have no other choice.” He looks at both of us before turning his eyes onto me. I can tell he’s straining to say what he needs to say, but he musters up the courage and the words tumble out of his mouth.

“I’m very sorry, Leila. You’re fired.”

Notes

PLOT TWIST! I've been planning this since the very beginning and I'M HAPPY WE FINALLY GOT HERE!

Rachel :)