Delaney
The elevator doors slide shut, encasing me in a box of brushed steel and silence. The sterile quiet is a stark contrast to the storm I left behind in Arthur Sterling’s office. I lean my head against the cool metal, the faint vibration a grounding force. I expect to feel a tremor in my hands, a wild thumping in my chest. Instead, there is only a strange, cold calm. The calm of a survivor standing in the wreckage, breathing in the dust.
Three hundred and twelve dollars. That’s what my bank account holds. Enough for a week’s worth of groceries and maybe a bus pass. Not enough to build an empire. But it’s a start.
An hour later, I’m standing in a dingy apartment in Koreatown. The air smells like dust and old kimchi. The landlord, a stooped man named Mr. Kim with eyes that have seen too many broken leases, watches me with weary suspicion.
“One year lease only,” he says, his voice raspy. “No pets. No loud parties.”
“I’ll take it,” I say, pulling the wad of cash from my purse. It’s almost everything I have. “First and last month’s rent. Right now.”
He blinks, surprised by the speed of it. He takes the money, counts it twice, and slides a key across the peeling laminate countertop. “Apartment 2B. Don’t lose it. Costs twenty dollars to replace.”
I don’t bother with the tour. I know what it looks like. Four walls, a window that looks out onto a brick wall, and a stain on the carpet that’s probably a permanent resident. It’s a cage, but it’s one I chose. It’s a fortress.
Inside 2B, I drop my purse on the floor. The sound echoes in the empty space. I have no furniture, no food, nothing but the clothes on my back and a future that feels like a blank page. The panic I was expecting finally tries to claw its way up my throat.
I choke it down. Panic is a luxury I can’t afford.
I walk to a payphone on the corner, the receiver sticky against my ear. I have one more call to make for the day. I dial the number for a bottom-feeder talent agency, one I remember from my first life as a place where dreams went to die. I ask for the junior agent division.
“Leo Valdez,” a tired voice answers on the third ring.
My breath catches. Leo. In my past life, he was a legend. A kingmaker who built his own agency from the ground up, famous for his loyalty and his ruthless business acumen. But now, at twenty-two, he’s just a kid in a bad suit, fetching coffee for a hack who will fire him in six months for being too ambitious.
“You don’t know me,” I say, my voice steady, practiced. I’ve had fifteen years to rehearse my lines. “My name is Delaney Walsh, and I’m going to be your most important client.”
There’s a pause. I can hear the clatter of keyboards in the background. “I’m sorry, who did you say this was?”
“Delaney Walsh. And I’m not looking for representation. I’m looking for a partner.”
He scoffs, a dry, humorless sound. “Listen, kid, I get a dozen calls a day from girls who think they’re the next big thing. I’m an assistant to a junior agent. I can’t even sign my own lunch orders. What makes you think you’re so special?”
“Because I’m not the next big thing,” I say, letting the cold certainty of my past life bleed into my tone. “I’m the only thing that’s going to matter on your client list a year from now. Let me ask you something, Leo. Are you happy working for Mark Tobin?”
The line goes completely silent. The background noise seems to fade away. I’ve hit a nerve.
“How do you know that name?” he asks, his voice low and sharp.
“I know he takes credit for the clients you find. I know you brought him that kid from the soap opera, and he passed it off as his own discovery at the weekly meeting. I know you’re wasting your time there.”
“Who is this?” he demands. “Are you from a rival agency? Is this some kind of prank?”
“This isn’t a prank, Leo. This is an opportunity. Your one and only opportunity to get out before Tobin blacklists you for being smarter than him.”
He’s quiet for a long time. I let him think. I picture him in his tiny cubicle, his ambition warring with his disbelief. “Okay, Delaney Walsh. You have my attention. For about thirty more seconds. What do you want?”
“I want you to be my personal manager,” I say. “Not my agent. My manager. We build this together, just us. Fifty-fifty split until we’re big enough to renegotiate.”
This time he laughs, but there’s an edge of hysteria to it. “You’re insane. You have no credits, no headshots on my desk, nothing. You’re a voice on a phone offering me half of a career that doesn’t exist.”
“It exists. You just can’t see it yet. Tomorrow morning, at ten a.m., I’m auditioning for a low-budget independent film. It’s called ‘Echo Creek’.”
“Never heard of it,” he says dismissively.
“No one has. That’s the point. It’s a small film with a brilliant script that everyone is ignoring. The director is an unknown. The budget is nonexistent. But it’s going to get into Sundance. It’s going to be the talk of the festival. The lead actress is going to get an Oscar nomination for her performance.”
“And let me guess,” he says, dripping with sarcasm. “That’s going to be you.”
“Yes,” I say, with no sarcasm at all. “That’s going to be me. And you are going to be the manager who had the foresight to sign me when I was a nobody. The one who saw what no one else could.”
I can almost hear the gears turning in his head. The skepticism fighting the flicker of greed, of ambition. “Even if I believed this fantasy, why me? You could walk into any agency in town with that kind of confidence.”
“Because they wouldn’t believe me. They’d see a naive twenty-year-old girl. They’d try to package me, change me, and stick me in the same box as everyone else. I don’t need an agent, Leo. I need a bulldog. A partner. I need someone as hungry as I am. In my first life… in my research… I learned you were the best.”
I catch my slip of the tongue. He doesn’t seem to notice. The flattery, however, lands perfectly.
“My research,” he repeats slowly, tasting the words. “You’ve done a lot of research.”
“I’m meticulous.”
“Where is this audition?”
“A small casting office on Burbank. The sides are available online. I suggest you read them. Read the whole script if you can get your hands on it. Then you’ll understand.”
“I’m not promising anything,” he says, his voice tight with caution. But he hasn’t hung up. That’s a win.
“I’m not asking for a promise. I’m asking you to do your homework. Read the script for ‘Echo Creek’. Call me back when you’ve finished.”
I give him the number for the payphone on the corner and tell him I’ll be near it for the next hour. Then I hang up before he can argue.
I spend my last few dollars on a copy of the script from a 24-hour print shop. Back in my empty apartment, I sit on the floor under the bare bulb, the pages spread out before me.
The script is just as raw and beautiful as I remember. The character, Anya, is a young woman hollowed out by grief after a tragic accident steals her family. In my first life, I’d read these lines and tried to imagine the pain. I’d tried to act it.
Now, I don’t have to act.
I close my eyes. I remember the hospital room. The beeping monitor. The smell of antiseptic. The crushing weight of a life filled with wrong turns and stolen chances. I let the regret wash over me, the thirty-five years of quiet desperation, of smiling at parties while my soul was screaming.
Anya’s grief isn’t for a family she lost in an accident. It’s for a life she lost. A future that was taken from her. The lines on the page are no longer just words. They are my biography.
I don’t memorize the dialogue. I absorb it. I let the ghost of my other self speak through me. The pain, the bitterness, the tiny, stubborn flicker of hope that refuses to be extinguished. It’s all there, waiting.
An hour passes. Then another. The city outside my window hums with a life I’m not a part of yet. The payphone on the corner remains silent. Doubt, cold and sharp, finally finds a crack in my armor.
Maybe he laughed and hung up. Maybe he told his boss about the crazy girl on the phone and they had a good chuckle at my expense. Maybe this was all a mistake.
Then, a new thought. He’s not calling because he’s reading. He’s a fast reader, I remember that. He’s seeing what I see. He’s feeling the hook.
My phone, a cheap flip phone from years ago, buzzes in my purse. Not the payphone. He must have done a search for my name, found my number on an old casting profile. He’s already digging.
I take a deep breath before answering. “Hello?”
“Delaney Walsh.” It’s Leo. His voice is different. The exhaustion is gone. In its place is a thrum of energy, a coiled intensity I recognize all too well.
“Leo,” I say calmly.
“I read the sides. Then I called in a favor and got the full script from a friend in development. This is… this is not what I expected.”
“I know,” I say.
“The dialogue is incredible. The character arc for Anya is a goddamn masterpiece. It’s a monster of a role.”
“I know.”
There’s another pause. I can hear him breathing. “You walk in there tomorrow and you give them the performance of your life. You give them a performance that makes them forget every other actress who reads for the part.”
“I will,” I say. It’s not a boast. It’s a fact.
“I made some calls. The director, Marcus Rylan, he’s a nobody, but he got his last short film into Cannes. The casting director is solid. She has a reputation for finding new talent. This isn’t the amateur-hour production I thought it was.”
“It’s the real deal,” I confirm.
“Okay,” he says, the single word loaded with a dozen different emotions. Skepticism. Fear. Hope. “Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m not your manager. Not yet. I’m an interested party. I’m going to do my research. And I’m going to be watching. You get a callback, you call me. You get the part… you call me immediately.”
“Fair enough,” I say. He’s intrigued. He’s hooked. The foundation is laid.
“And Delaney?” he adds, just before hanging up.
“Yes?”
“Don’t screw this up.”
He hangs up. I snap my own phone shut and look around the empty room. It doesn’t feel like a cage anymore. It feels like a stage, waiting for the show to begin. Tomorrow, the audition. Today, the first pillar of my new life is set. It’s shaky, uncertain, but it’s there.
I am twenty years old. I am nearly broke. I am utterly alone.
And I have a map.
