Drama
Chapter 43: Tell Me Something I Don't Know
Leila's P.O.V.
This was definitely not part of our plans...
"What are you all doing in here?" Mr. Conners repeats.
"They are with me," a voice replies from behind him, and Mr. Conners steps aside as Uncle Charlie walks in.
"Mr. Horan, I apologize," Mr. Conners nods. He appears to be trembling and I can tell he's very nervous with Uncle Charlie in the room. I have never seen him like this and to be honest, I'm silently laughing.
"I will just...go, then," Mr. Conners adds, turning around.
"Wait, Brian," Uncle Charlie calls. "You walked in at the right time. These kids have something to say to you, am I right?"
Mr. Conners flips back around and faces us, his expression clearly confused and scared at the same time. I have no idea what to do next and I'm relieved when Niall takes over.
"Yes, we do. Mr. Conners, before you decide to ban Leila again for sneaking in, even though it technically wasn't because we were under my uncle's watch, we have a few things to show you. You see, Leila's not the type of girl who would try to sabotage someone else, even if she has a good reason to. You've been blaming the wrong girl this entire time because Leila's completely innocent," Niall begins.
"Where is this going?" Mr. Conners asks.
"You fired Leila for no reason. She wasn't the one starting all of this drama on your show. Now, before you ask me who it was and before I accuse someone, I would like you to turn your attention to the screens, preferrably to the girls' dressing room. Leila, you know the story more than I do," Niall informs.
Swallowing, I continue where he left off. "What you see on the screen is last Friday, the day you fired me. I'm pretty sure you remember that I came out on set wearing a completely horrendous outfit that you didn't approve. We've never had a problem with the stylists, so why would they have done something like this? Well, if you look at the time, it's about 6:30 am. The people you see on the screen in the dressing room are obviously all of our stylists, as you can tell, but there's one girl with her back to us. Do you recognize her?"
"Yeah, that's Spencer," Mr. Conners answers.
"Madison, playback," I instruct. Madison presses the play button and the figures begin to move again. "Okay, you see them all interacting with each other, but usually at this time Spencer would probably be getting ready, you know, changing, getting her hair and makeup done, ect. So why are they all standing there talking?"
Britanny now heads into the wardrobe department and she comes back with the ugly shirt I ended up wearing. She shows it to Spencer and Spencer gives her a thumbs up. Britanny disappears again and Sam is now talking to Spencer. Sam uses Spencer as a model and she lifts up her hair to try and figure out the wierdest hairstyle to give me. Once Spencer agrees to what Sam had in mind, Bella shows Spencer some very colorful makeup, the same makeup Bella used on me.
"You see all that? Spencer basically told the stylists to give me another look, something completely ridiculous. Spencer had told them that you said to change my look, but it was really Spencer all this time."
"Okay, then why did she do that?" Mr. Conners questions. "And what about all of those other times?"
"That's a very long story and we have all of the proof," I reply. "Madison, go to August 6th."
Madison hits the buttons on the remote and clicks on August 6th. 12:00 am appears in the corner and I tell her to fast forward to about 5:30 pm. She does and lets it play. I find the right monitor to watch and I instruct everyone to look at that one.
"Now, this is the day where you thought I had stolen that woman's engagement ring. If you watch closely, you'll see that there's a girl who looks like me who sneaks into that woman's office and steals the ring on her desk."
Freaky how that just happened on the screen when I said that. We keep watching and the girl heads out into the hallway and meets Spencer, who has a small box with her. The girl puts the ring into the box and takes it from Spencer, walking past her to the hallway I was in.
"See? There I am, waiting for Niall to come out of the bathroom when the girl walks up to me and hands me the box. So that girl isn't me. But she looks a lot like me. So who could it be? Obviously, it's my stunt double. But she just did the dirty work. Did you see when she was talking to Spencer? Exactly, it was Spencer's trick but she did it so Spencer wouldn't get in
trouble for it," I explain.
"So Spencer set all of that up?" Mr. Conners asks.
"Yup. And I have one more. Madison, go to July 17th," I say. Madison does and we go through the process again of finding where and what time the incident happened.
"This is the day where Spencer blamed me for stealing her necklace. Madison, rewind it until you get to the morning, around 8:00." I pause and let Madison do that. "Alright, well, Alexa and I just left the dressing room to go to the set, as you can see, and Spencer's still there finishing up. The stylists just headed out and now it's just her."
We watch as Spencer takes off her necklace and sets it on the counter, checking herself out in the mirror to make sure she looks okay. She backs away and spots my bag on the chair by my section of the counter. Spencer lifts up her necklace, walks over to my bag, and buries it deep in there. She pretends to dust herself off as if she's done something really dirty and exits the dressing room.
"Did you just see that? Spencer purposely slipped her necklace in my bag so she could set me up and get me in trouble. Fast forward until 12:15, please," I inform. Madison does and we see us heading out to lunch. I grab my bag and exit the dressing room with Alexa, Spencer just sitting there. She waits until we're completely gone and rushes out to Mr. Conners' office. They run back in the dressing room and search the entire room for the necklace, not finding a thing.
"Okay, okay, I know what happens next," Mr. Conners sighs. "You've proven to me that Leila's innocent and that Spencer is the one who did all of the things I blamed you for and I'm sorry." He takes a deep breath and we wait for his next reply. "So, what do you want me to do?"
"I think it's pretty obvious what they want, Brian," Uncle Charlie speaks up. Woah, I totally forgot he was even in this room.
"I have no idea how we're going to get this show on the road if we keep having casting issues like this," Mr. Conners announces. "I have to talk to Robert and tell him about this before I fire Spencer because he will not be happy with me if I don't have a legit reason with proof, which we actually have. But, because we lost Sierra, even though she was only here for about 2 days, Leila, you're rehired."
"Oh, my God, thank you!" I breathe.
"But, I don't want anything like this to happen ever again, do you understand me?" Mr. Conners demands.
"I promise, I swear," I confirm, holding up my hands.
"Then welcome back," Mr. Conners says, smiling. He wipes it off of his face and inhales another deep breath. "Okay, why don't you all come back tomorrow around noon? I will talk with all of the other directors so we can all have the same lunch and I'm going to give a speech to the entire company about this. So far I haven't heard of any other casts as catty as ours, but you never know, so I want to make sure all of us are being fair at this company."
"I agree with you, Brian," Uncle Charlie declares.
"Alright, well, I have some business to take care of now. Thank you for showing me this. I'll be back in a few with Robert, hopefully," Mr. Conners waves as he exits the monitor room.
"Yes!" Madison screams, throwing her fists in the air. Yeah, I'm just as excited as her, but all of this is too much and my vision becomes blurry with fresh hot tears. Niall comes around and hugs me and I cry into his chest. I can't believe it worked. We did it. All of it.
.
Mr. Conners' P.O.V.
I feel horrible for what I've done. Leila is a very nice girl, how did I ever think she would do those things? I could tell from the second she walked onto the Deep Secrets set that she was nervous and had no idea what to do. Then again, these are all actors and they can pretend to be innocent when they're devious inside.
Like Spencer. Now, I've known Spencer for quite some time and I'm finally putting all of the pieces together. She's a diva, a very bratty diva, and I'm surprised in myself that I didn't see it before. I still remember that time when she fired the makeup guy or whatever he did and he just made one tiny mistake, not enough to get fired for. I wasn't the director for the show they were on but knowing how Spencer works now, it's easier to give her what she wants rather than going through tantrums and complaints and now drama in the cast. But that's all going to change.
Walking through the halls of "Red Light Studios," I have a million things running through my brain. I have a feeling Robert, Spencer's father, isn't going to like the news, but it has to be done. I'm tired of all of these games Spencer's been playing, even though I wasn't the target, but she messed with my cast, my show, and the entire company. That's not okay.
I reach Robert's office and knock on his door, swallowing hard. We've met several times but he's a tough guy and I'm slightly frightened at what's to come. The door unlocks and opens to reveal his smiling face.
"Brian! So nice of you to visit! How may I help you?" Robert greets, gesturing for me to enter. At least he's in a good mood.
"Robert, I have some...interesting news for you and I'm not sure how you'll take it," I begin.
"Okay, and what is it?" he asks, his face twisting.
"If you'll follow me, it's easier to show you than explain it," I tell him.
He agrees and locks up his office, trailing behind me to the monitor room. Thankfully, all of the kids and Charlie Horan are still in the room and it looks as if I interrupted them, based on their expressions as they're all facing me. I notice Robert acknowledge Charlie and he nods back.
"So sorry to intrude again, but I have Robert here with me. He is one of the managers here and he is also known as Spencer's dad," I explain. As I expected, the kids' faces turn to shock. "No need to worry, but we'll just have to retell the story to him, with the proof, if you don't mind."
"What is this all about?" Robert questions while the kids shuffle around.
"I know you're not going to like this, but your daughter has been creating, shall we say, drama amongst my cast," I confirm.
"What?" he exclaims, looking at me. "But Spencer's never been in any trouble before!"
"I'm very sorry, but the proof is all here," I say. "Kids?"
For the next couple of minutes, the kids show Robert exactly what they revealed to me, the three incidents. I'm pretty sure there were more, but I'm guessing this is all the proof they could find and to be honest, it's good proof. Robert's expression is completely flabbergasted once they are finished.
"Oh, my God," he voices, taking in deep breaths. "I had no idea."
"None of us did, well, except the kids," I reply.
"So what does all of this mean?" he asks. I look at him knowingly and he glances to the floor. "She's let go, isn't she?"
"I'm sorry, Robert, but I can't have this happening anymore. It's disrupted my cast, caused me to fire one of my leads, well, now two, and she may have disturbed the company as well. She's a talented young actress and I'd like to keep her, but because of this and how she works...I can't deal with it," I explain.
"Wow," Robert breathes. "I feel like a horrible father. I really don't get to spend much time with her because we're both working a lot and now that I think about it, this has been like this for the past ten years. I feel like I've failed at being a father because I don't think she would have been this way if I was there for her." He pauses before continuing, "I'll have a talk with her tomorrow and show her this proof, if that's okay."
"Yeah, go ahead. And you're not a terrible father," I assure him. He grins at me and I return it.
"Alright, well, thank you for showing me this and thank you Brian for bringing it to my attention. Have a nice day," he ends, and exits the room. I turn to the kids and they're silent, but I can see the happiness in their faces.
"I've got a lot of work to do, don't I?" I say, lightening the mood. They just smile at me and I take that as my cue. "I'm off to do a lot of rearranging. I'll see you all tomorrow." With that, I walk back to my own office to figure everything out.
This was definitely not part of our plans...
"What are you all doing in here?" Mr. Conners repeats.
"They are with me," a voice replies from behind him, and Mr. Conners steps aside as Uncle Charlie walks in.
"Mr. Horan, I apologize," Mr. Conners nods. He appears to be trembling and I can tell he's very nervous with Uncle Charlie in the room. I have never seen him like this and to be honest, I'm silently laughing.
"I will just...go, then," Mr. Conners adds, turning around.
"Wait, Brian," Uncle Charlie calls. "You walked in at the right time. These kids have something to say to you, am I right?"
Mr. Conners flips back around and faces us, his expression clearly confused and scared at the same time. I have no idea what to do next and I'm relieved when Niall takes over.
"Yes, we do. Mr. Conners, before you decide to ban Leila again for sneaking in, even though it technically wasn't because we were under my uncle's watch, we have a few things to show you. You see, Leila's not the type of girl who would try to sabotage someone else, even if she has a good reason to. You've been blaming the wrong girl this entire time because Leila's completely innocent," Niall begins.
"Where is this going?" Mr. Conners asks.
"You fired Leila for no reason. She wasn't the one starting all of this drama on your show. Now, before you ask me who it was and before I accuse someone, I would like you to turn your attention to the screens, preferrably to the girls' dressing room. Leila, you know the story more than I do," Niall informs.
Swallowing, I continue where he left off. "What you see on the screen is last Friday, the day you fired me. I'm pretty sure you remember that I came out on set wearing a completely horrendous outfit that you didn't approve. We've never had a problem with the stylists, so why would they have done something like this? Well, if you look at the time, it's about 6:30 am. The people you see on the screen in the dressing room are obviously all of our stylists, as you can tell, but there's one girl with her back to us. Do you recognize her?"
"Yeah, that's Spencer," Mr. Conners answers.
"Madison, playback," I instruct. Madison presses the play button and the figures begin to move again. "Okay, you see them all interacting with each other, but usually at this time Spencer would probably be getting ready, you know, changing, getting her hair and makeup done, ect. So why are they all standing there talking?"
Britanny now heads into the wardrobe department and she comes back with the ugly shirt I ended up wearing. She shows it to Spencer and Spencer gives her a thumbs up. Britanny disappears again and Sam is now talking to Spencer. Sam uses Spencer as a model and she lifts up her hair to try and figure out the wierdest hairstyle to give me. Once Spencer agrees to what Sam had in mind, Bella shows Spencer some very colorful makeup, the same makeup Bella used on me.
"You see all that? Spencer basically told the stylists to give me another look, something completely ridiculous. Spencer had told them that you said to change my look, but it was really Spencer all this time."
"Okay, then why did she do that?" Mr. Conners questions. "And what about all of those other times?"
"That's a very long story and we have all of the proof," I reply. "Madison, go to August 6th."
Madison hits the buttons on the remote and clicks on August 6th. 12:00 am appears in the corner and I tell her to fast forward to about 5:30 pm. She does and lets it play. I find the right monitor to watch and I instruct everyone to look at that one.
"Now, this is the day where you thought I had stolen that woman's engagement ring. If you watch closely, you'll see that there's a girl who looks like me who sneaks into that woman's office and steals the ring on her desk."
Freaky how that just happened on the screen when I said that. We keep watching and the girl heads out into the hallway and meets Spencer, who has a small box with her. The girl puts the ring into the box and takes it from Spencer, walking past her to the hallway I was in.
"See? There I am, waiting for Niall to come out of the bathroom when the girl walks up to me and hands me the box. So that girl isn't me. But she looks a lot like me. So who could it be? Obviously, it's my stunt double. But she just did the dirty work. Did you see when she was talking to Spencer? Exactly, it was Spencer's trick but she did it so Spencer wouldn't get in
trouble for it," I explain.
"So Spencer set all of that up?" Mr. Conners asks.
"Yup. And I have one more. Madison, go to July 17th," I say. Madison does and we go through the process again of finding where and what time the incident happened.
"This is the day where Spencer blamed me for stealing her necklace. Madison, rewind it until you get to the morning, around 8:00." I pause and let Madison do that. "Alright, well, Alexa and I just left the dressing room to go to the set, as you can see, and Spencer's still there finishing up. The stylists just headed out and now it's just her."
We watch as Spencer takes off her necklace and sets it on the counter, checking herself out in the mirror to make sure she looks okay. She backs away and spots my bag on the chair by my section of the counter. Spencer lifts up her necklace, walks over to my bag, and buries it deep in there. She pretends to dust herself off as if she's done something really dirty and exits the dressing room.
"Did you just see that? Spencer purposely slipped her necklace in my bag so she could set me up and get me in trouble. Fast forward until 12:15, please," I inform. Madison does and we see us heading out to lunch. I grab my bag and exit the dressing room with Alexa, Spencer just sitting there. She waits until we're completely gone and rushes out to Mr. Conners' office. They run back in the dressing room and search the entire room for the necklace, not finding a thing.
"Okay, okay, I know what happens next," Mr. Conners sighs. "You've proven to me that Leila's innocent and that Spencer is the one who did all of the things I blamed you for and I'm sorry." He takes a deep breath and we wait for his next reply. "So, what do you want me to do?"
"I think it's pretty obvious what they want, Brian," Uncle Charlie speaks up. Woah, I totally forgot he was even in this room.
"I have no idea how we're going to get this show on the road if we keep having casting issues like this," Mr. Conners announces. "I have to talk to Robert and tell him about this before I fire Spencer because he will not be happy with me if I don't have a legit reason with proof, which we actually have. But, because we lost Sierra, even though she was only here for about 2 days, Leila, you're rehired."
"Oh, my God, thank you!" I breathe.
"But, I don't want anything like this to happen ever again, do you understand me?" Mr. Conners demands.
"I promise, I swear," I confirm, holding up my hands.
"Then welcome back," Mr. Conners says, smiling. He wipes it off of his face and inhales another deep breath. "Okay, why don't you all come back tomorrow around noon? I will talk with all of the other directors so we can all have the same lunch and I'm going to give a speech to the entire company about this. So far I haven't heard of any other casts as catty as ours, but you never know, so I want to make sure all of us are being fair at this company."
"I agree with you, Brian," Uncle Charlie declares.
"Alright, well, I have some business to take care of now. Thank you for showing me this. I'll be back in a few with Robert, hopefully," Mr. Conners waves as he exits the monitor room.
"Yes!" Madison screams, throwing her fists in the air. Yeah, I'm just as excited as her, but all of this is too much and my vision becomes blurry with fresh hot tears. Niall comes around and hugs me and I cry into his chest. I can't believe it worked. We did it. All of it.
.
Mr. Conners' P.O.V.
I feel horrible for what I've done. Leila is a very nice girl, how did I ever think she would do those things? I could tell from the second she walked onto the Deep Secrets set that she was nervous and had no idea what to do. Then again, these are all actors and they can pretend to be innocent when they're devious inside.
Like Spencer. Now, I've known Spencer for quite some time and I'm finally putting all of the pieces together. She's a diva, a very bratty diva, and I'm surprised in myself that I didn't see it before. I still remember that time when she fired the makeup guy or whatever he did and he just made one tiny mistake, not enough to get fired for. I wasn't the director for the show they were on but knowing how Spencer works now, it's easier to give her what she wants rather than going through tantrums and complaints and now drama in the cast. But that's all going to change.
Walking through the halls of "Red Light Studios," I have a million things running through my brain. I have a feeling Robert, Spencer's father, isn't going to like the news, but it has to be done. I'm tired of all of these games Spencer's been playing, even though I wasn't the target, but she messed with my cast, my show, and the entire company. That's not okay.
I reach Robert's office and knock on his door, swallowing hard. We've met several times but he's a tough guy and I'm slightly frightened at what's to come. The door unlocks and opens to reveal his smiling face.
"Brian! So nice of you to visit! How may I help you?" Robert greets, gesturing for me to enter. At least he's in a good mood.
"Robert, I have some...interesting news for you and I'm not sure how you'll take it," I begin.
"Okay, and what is it?" he asks, his face twisting.
"If you'll follow me, it's easier to show you than explain it," I tell him.
He agrees and locks up his office, trailing behind me to the monitor room. Thankfully, all of the kids and Charlie Horan are still in the room and it looks as if I interrupted them, based on their expressions as they're all facing me. I notice Robert acknowledge Charlie and he nods back.
"So sorry to intrude again, but I have Robert here with me. He is one of the managers here and he is also known as Spencer's dad," I explain. As I expected, the kids' faces turn to shock. "No need to worry, but we'll just have to retell the story to him, with the proof, if you don't mind."
"What is this all about?" Robert questions while the kids shuffle around.
"I know you're not going to like this, but your daughter has been creating, shall we say, drama amongst my cast," I confirm.
"What?" he exclaims, looking at me. "But Spencer's never been in any trouble before!"
"I'm very sorry, but the proof is all here," I say. "Kids?"
For the next couple of minutes, the kids show Robert exactly what they revealed to me, the three incidents. I'm pretty sure there were more, but I'm guessing this is all the proof they could find and to be honest, it's good proof. Robert's expression is completely flabbergasted once they are finished.
"Oh, my God," he voices, taking in deep breaths. "I had no idea."
"None of us did, well, except the kids," I reply.
"So what does all of this mean?" he asks. I look at him knowingly and he glances to the floor. "She's let go, isn't she?"
"I'm sorry, Robert, but I can't have this happening anymore. It's disrupted my cast, caused me to fire one of my leads, well, now two, and she may have disturbed the company as well. She's a talented young actress and I'd like to keep her, but because of this and how she works...I can't deal with it," I explain.
"Wow," Robert breathes. "I feel like a horrible father. I really don't get to spend much time with her because we're both working a lot and now that I think about it, this has been like this for the past ten years. I feel like I've failed at being a father because I don't think she would have been this way if I was there for her." He pauses before continuing, "I'll have a talk with her tomorrow and show her this proof, if that's okay."
"Yeah, go ahead. And you're not a terrible father," I assure him. He grins at me and I return it.
"Alright, well, thank you for showing me this and thank you Brian for bringing it to my attention. Have a nice day," he ends, and exits the room. I turn to the kids and they're silent, but I can see the happiness in their faces.
"I've got a lot of work to do, don't I?" I say, lightening the mood. They just smile at me and I take that as my cue. "I'm off to do a lot of rearranging. I'll see you all tomorrow." With that, I walk back to my own office to figure everything out.
Notes
I don't have much to say...this was kind of pointless...Rachel :)
Make a Sequel please.
9/13/14