I would love to be able to market this to people out there in the real world, in print format, but I am afraid, as always, that I am not good enough for that. The other problem is that I simply don't feel that it is commercial enough. Regardless of either of those points, I present this story here, to you. As I get more done, I will post it up in two chapter segments, at least until the B reel of the story concludes, which it is likely to do before the end of the story proper.

1. INTERIOR: LUNCHTIME, SCHOOL CAFETERIA.
STUDENTS CAN BE SEEN IN GROUPS AT THE ROUND TABLES SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE SPACE IN A SEEMINGLY RANDOM PATTERN. WHILE IT IS OBVIOUS BY THE CLUMPS IN THE OTHERWISE EVEN DISTRIBUTION THAT CERTAIN GROUPS PREFER TO SIT TOGETHER, LIKE THE JOCKS AND THE CHEERLEADERS IN ONE AREA, THE REST OF THE PEOPLE AT THE SCHOOL SEEM CONTENT TO BE INTERMINGLED. THE SCHOOL UNIFORMS BLUR WHAT WOULD NORMALLY BE EASY DISTINCTIONS OF CLASS, ECONOMIC BACKGROUND, OR PERSONAL STYLE THAT NORMALLY DIVIDE THE CLIQUES AT A HIGH SCHOOL. BRIAN IS SITTING ALONE ATTEMPTING TO WRITE IN A NOTEBOOK. VALERIE APPROACHES FROM THE DIRECTION OF A TABLE SET A LITTLE FURTHER APART THAN THE OTHERS.

“Hey, can I take this?”

I looked up from my contemplation of the fake wood grain on the table and into the bluest eyes I have ever seen. These were not a pale blue like a winter sky. These were not the royal deep blue of a bottomless sea.

No, this blue was that particular shade that you see and all you can say is, ‘Hey, that’s blue.’ Yes, her eyes completely defined the color blue. I had to shake myself to realize that she was talking to me, and not just showing off her sapphires to me.

I looked down where she was pointing, and realized that she was gesturing, not to the sheaf of papers that refused to orient themselves into a proper story, but to the forgotten brownie on the table. When I’d put my lunch together this morning, I’d thought that the brownie would go great with the other foods that I was tossing into the sack that would reside in my bag until that moment, almost thirty minutes ago, that I would draw it forth into the light of day for a moment before consigning it to the empty black pit that I used for a stomach.

“Hello?”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Sorry, I was somewhere else completely. Sure, take it.”

Still trying to get my mind out of the place that it had run off to, I was amazed when she sat down in front of me.

“I thought…”

“As long as you’re sharing a desert with me, I might as well share my company.”

My next thought wasn’t one of appreciation, and my frown accompanied the thought to ask her to leave.

“Look, Brian, before you say anything, my friends did bet me that I couldn’t get you to give me your brownie. I took the bet because…”

“You felt sorry for me?” Disgust filled my voice. I didn’t need people to be sorry for me.

“Yes, actually, you always sit here along in the cafeteria. I mean, no one likes to be alone.”

“Thank you…” I paused, waiting for her to supply her name. It's not that I didn't know it, just that we'd never, officially, met.

“Valerie.”

“Thanks, Valerie, but I sit alone because I am fifteen pages behind and my agent is telling me I’m going to lose my contract if I don’t get these into my producer by the end of the week.” She opened her mouth to speak, but I answered the question before she could voice it, “Last week I sat alone because I had fifteen pages to write, and I had no idea where to take everything. Well, where to take anything really.”

She smirked at me, “And the week before?”

“Well, the week before, I wrote fifteen pages, assuming that it would always be that easy, finished by Tuesday, and spent the rest of the week watching what other high school kids do for fun during lunch.” I smiled at her and she laughed. I only hoped that this time it was someone laughing with me and not at me.

My smile became a bit more genuine, and after a moment or two she composed herself and got up, I assumed, to leave. I turned my attention back to the sordid on-screen lives of my characters when I felt a hand on my arm, drawing me to my feet.

“What are you doing?” I protested.

“It’s Wednesday. If you haven’t even begun by this point, then your writing is a lost cause. And even if it isn’t, two weeks ago you wrote fifteen pages in two days, which means you still have Thursday and Friday before everything falls into the crapper.”

“I really need to get back…”

“Look, what’s so important that you’re writing anyway?”

“Nothing. I’ll go with you.” I shook my head ruefully as I shoved the papers into my backpack unceremoniously. I shoved the papers unceremoniously into my backpack. I unceremoniously shoved the papers…

Now you see the real problem I was having writing the fifteen pages that were due. I simply couldn’t get the feel for the words. I felt as though my entire life were a lie. I was writing about situations I would never be in performed by people who would never give me the time of day.

People like Valerie and her friends.

Well, visiting with them for the rest of the lunch hour might actually give me some food for thought, and help me to add some realism to the oh-so-popular lives of my protagonists.

It wasn’t until I’d walked halfway across the crowded room that I realized who it was exactly that she was leading me toward.

“Oh, shit. You’re a drama geek?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

I simply couldn’t say anything at all. I walked numbly, as if on my way to my own execution, sure that if anyone would figure out the person I was hiding, it would be a group of thespians. No, those aren’t women who are into women and lisp. They are the people who…act, the people who bare their souls to the world for a few coins and fleeting applause.

They’re also the above the stairs nobility to my humble below the stairs writing servitude.

“No, not bad, just I’ve gotta…” I began.

“…go not write something?” She continued for me, and then laughed. No, she more giggled. I really liked it, but I didn’t want to tell her something as inane as that.

“Look who finally decided to join us,” the token Goth girl said from her corner of the round table. No, don’t ask me to explain it any more than that. It was a round table, but the…way…that she sat there suggested to me that she was sitting at the corner of the table. Her makeup, unlike many Goths I had seen, was very Egyptian. You know, the long sharp points that jab out from the top of the eye orbit halfway to her ear? And unless she was wearing makeup on her hands, her pallor wasn’t caused by anything other than her porcelain skin.

“You know, those contacts aren’t good for your eyes.”

“These are my natural eye color…sweetie” she said with a very toothy smile.

“Nah, your eyes are green. I can see the rings, and your hair is naturally red, even though you are dying it black. Your roots are showing.”

Everyone except of the Egyptian Goth laughed at this, and she just blushed.

“He has you there, Leanne, your roots are showing.” Valerie said coming to my rescue.

“So the reclusive Mr. Hemingway has finally condescended to join the rest of us,” said a boy. I could only see the back of his head, as he had not turned around as we approached.

“Shut up, Aaron,” Leanne said.

It seems I would never outlive the stupid producer’s cruel joke. My hair, before I moved to this school, was untamable without a half ton of gel. I exaggerate, but only a bit. I know this because I go through a bottle of extra hold every two weeks so that my hair didn’t resemble the boy in front of me. It was a passable attempt to create the ordered chaos that had inspired the locks that graced the head of my main character.

When people had begun to ape the character, I had done everything in my power to change my hairstyle, including trapping my hair in a shell made out of styling gel. All I’d used to have to do was get a haircut every two weeks and run my fingers through my hair a couple of times after I got out of the shower. It wasn’t much of a style, but it had been mine.

I also used to be able to go out of the house in a t-shirt and jeans without feeling like I was completely naked.

It suddenly occurred to me that Valerie was inches in front of my face and I hadn’t noticed, I’d been so busy worrying about Aaron’s hair.

I stumbled backward a couple of feet, and got a laugh out of the people around the table.

“Welcome back,” she said with that sweet smile on her face again.

“Thanks, I think.”

“Make way, guys,” she said as she took a seat at the table, dragging me after her. As I was just shy of a foot taller than her, and likely outweighed her by at least fifty pounds, I had to let her drag me to the seat, but right at that moment, I would have let her drag me anywhere.

To tell the truth, I was getting bored with…

“So, I was telling Chelsea, before you came dragging the writer with you, that there’s no way that Whitney will ever sleep with Mark,” said one of the other girls at the table.

“Why not,” I asked innocently, ”Mark is completely in love with her and would be willing…”

Crap. Crap, crap, crap.

“So you watch Murray Heights?”

Watch, that works, I thought to myself as I blushed furiously. Even if I hadn’t watched an episode in almost two years, I’d written three quarters of them on my own, and the remaining quarter in collaboration. I knew the characters inside and out. I knew their motivations, if I would never know the motivations of the people around me. So, I could say that I watched…

…if only the words would come out of my mouth.

“Look, you embarrassed him.”

“I don’t watch the show.” I said looking directly at Valerie. What was I doing? After all of the work coming to a new school, hiding my real hair, sitting alone at lunch, why did I have to tell the truth now?

I realized that I never wanted to lie to the person sitting there at the table next to me, that’s why.

“Come off it, how would you…”

“I’m usually on set, at least a few hours a day, when they are filming.”

“You’re in crew? That’s so cool.” The Egyptian Goth was the one who voiced that. Isn’t a Goth in Tech a little cliché? I know I’d never write one into the series. Before I could deny it, Valerie had snatched my pack and was already opening it. I tried to reach around her to get it, but without actually touching her… and I didn’t feel comfortable doing that… I couldn’t get it away from her. She looked at the printed name on the notebook that I did all of my writing in.

I heard a small intake of breath.

“What is it, Val?”

She said nothing, just quickly shoved the notebook into the backpack and zipped it shut. The entire world fell out from under me. Usually, I had the black cover notebook with me. It had no identifying marks, and I’d be able to spend the time between here and the studio copying into the official notebook, the one with my real name on it. Today, however, I’d brought the official scene notebook with me, hoping that I’d get everything done right the first time.

No, let’s be honest, I didn’t bring the other notebook because I was sure I wasn’t going to get anything written.

“Spill, come on, what does he have in his bag. It’s not like he has Brian Metzner’s notebook…in…”

Valerie blushed and everyone turned to look at me.

The girl who’d asked me about Murray Heights let out a little giggle, “Hi, I’m Angela. That is Chelsea over there,” she pointed at another of the girls at the table, “and Murray Heights is our favorite show.” A number of the other people at the table voiced agreement with this statement and told me their names as well. Aaron was an obvious member of this group, suddenly more interested in getting on my good side than he had been only moments before.

I seriously considered banging my head into the table at that point. As it was I took my bag and calmly left the cafeteria. It was still a good ten minutes before the bell rang, but I figured walking anywhere would be better than staying in that room and might even do me a world of good.
”ƒ

2. INTERIOR: METZNER HOME, BRIAN’S ROOM.
THERE IS A NOTEBOOK COMPUTER OCCUPYING THE LION’S SHARE OF A SMALL DESK. A DESK LAMP IS CLAMPED TO THE LEFT SIDE OF THE DESK. A YOUNGER BRIAN SITS ON THE BED, WRITING IN HIS SPIRAL BOUND NOTEBOOK. THIS ONE LACKS THE BLACK LEATHERETTE COVER OF THE ONE HE WILL BE WRITING IN AT SCHOOL. A MONTAGE OF SCENES FOLLOW THIS INCLUDING A GRADE SCHOOL PLAY, GOING TO THE MOVIES, AND BRIAN TYPING AT HIS COMPUTER. VOICE OVER THROUGHOUT.

I didn’t want to be a writer when I was younger. I wanted to be an actor. If I thought beyond just the moment, the short term, then I thought about being a director, and bringing the best out of my fellow actors. If I ever thought about being a writer, then it was something at the bottom of my list, and then only to write my memoirs at the end of my life. I wanted the spotlight, not the shadows.

I caught the bug, I think, when I was in grade school. My school put on a production of Romeo and Juliette. I’m sure it sucked, but that wasn’t the point. I loved it.

There is something about the world of actors that speaks to me. I love pretending to be something I’m not, to take up someone else’s shoes for a mile or two, and then releasing them and going back to being myself. There is self-discovery for anyone who takes the time to be someone else for a while.

The atmosphere of the stage is addicting. It is non-stop running from place to place so that you can calmly walk onto the stage just at the moment that your cue comes up, and make everything look effortless.

Unfortunately, I never made anything look effortless.

I was the person that they would cast because they needed another guy in a scene to balance out the ratio. The person they begged not to move, or speak. To look interested in the real stars, and not what I really was, bored out of my skull.

When I was fourteen, I got a part with lines. Ok, not lines, line. Actually, it wasn’t even a line. It was a word, one single word that separated me forever from who I was and what I wanted to become.

That word was look, and in five performances in a week and a half I forgot that word, or missed my cue, or came in too early. I…suck as an actor. So, a year and a half later, just after my sixteenth birthday, I hung up my cloak, wiped off the last bit of makeup, and tried to move on with my life.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, become critics.

That is exactly what I did. In this age of easy access to free web service, I simply hung my shingle out amongst all of the others, and began to rip into the attempts of people so much better than myself to present a different face to the audience.

I began small. First I destroyed a school play, and then a symphony orchestra. Before I knew it, I was tearing apart movies, television shows, books, or anything else I could get my hands on, and I was getting downright mean. It was after I watched a television show, which I’ve promised never to mention again, that things began to change. It’s not that the show in any way changed me, as that would be giving too much credit to one of the worst pieces of f…iction it has ever been my misfortune to inflict upon myself, but that I changed because of what I thought about the show.

I know, it’s a paper-thin distinction, but one that I feel is oh so important to my story.

If I am really being truthful, I wasn’t the one who started the change.

My sister loved to read my blog, as usually I destroyed other peoples’ work with wit and humor. I even occasionally praised the truly inspired things that people wrote. It wasn’t something that I did often however.

This time, the offending piece of refuse prompted me to write, ‘This show was so poorly written, that a three year old with a crayon and a lack of imagination, or understanding of the world, could have done a better job. At least there would have been fewer plot holes.’

She stormed into my room as I was listening to my headphones and ripped into me, “Why don’t you do it then, Brian?”

“Come again?” I asked, rather stupidly I might say. I’d written the piece a couple of hours before, and I’d mostly put it out of my head.

“Write the show better. You said a three year old could do it. Why don’t you?”

“Because…”

“You spend so much time ripping on writers, and you never even tried that. Sure, you failed as an actor, but…”

“I’m not a writer, Kat.”

“Really? And what is it you do on your blog?”

“I…critique.”

“Using the written word?”

“Fine, I’ll try it, but not with that show. Anything but that show.”

“Write for Murray Heights, then. Fix the problems with Murray Heights.”

I’d watched the first few episodes with Kat, because she insisted, and it had an actress that I once had a crush on, but the show had quickly shown itself to be poor writing fronted by one or two good actors and a cast of mediocrity.

And in this case, Kat was feeding my words back at me. I’d said things like, “if I were writing this, I would have…” or “they should have done this instead.”

I sat down, and watched all of the episodes I’d missed over the course of a week, and then I started taking apart the storyline. I figured out the plots, sub-plots, side-plots, and alternate plots. That took a week alone. I was a man obsessed.

That is when the germ of an idea came to me. There were three characters in the show that were central to the main plot, and the main plot was the problem. For the main plotline to change, the three characters would have to change. I stopped and considered my options for a moment before inspiration struck.

I began to write.

I’d be lying if I said that it was easy, and nothing about it was really good. My first pass just rehashed more of the same stories, in the same order, with the same bad result.

“Gah!” I yelled out, inches away from throwing my notebook across the room. The sound of the pen scratching across the paper was something that I could never do without. There was simply something about the impersonal nature of the clicking of the keys that didn’t quite feel like real writing to me. So, when I wrote, it was in pen on college ruled paper.

This wouldn’t be the first time that I would have thrown the notebook, listening to the swish of pages flapping in the manmade wind, but this time I stopped and just sat there. I’d be so sure of my ability to write, but when I sat down to do it, it was nothing more than pale imitation of the work that other’s had done before me.

“Not working out as you’d hoped?” Kat said with a smile.

“Every time I try to take Tonya and make her into a real three dimensional character, she defies me and slips back into her old habits, or just sleeps with James, or tries to seduce Mark. I end up with the same arguments and lack of growth that I think the writers should have fixed a season and a half ago. Entropy, thy land is Murray Heights.”

“Nice monologue, Shakespeare.”

I snorted at that.

“Look, Brian, if she’s that bad, kill her off and replace her.”

I’d never considered it, but Tonya…

“Oh, no, get that gleam out of your eyes.”

“Why not? I could just…”

“Just nothing, people like Tonya.”

“Why? She’s a conniving, backstabbing, self-centered…”

“She’s popular and holds onto that popularity with an iron fist. She commands respect.”

“She’s a slut.”

“Brian, you don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t. She’s a train wreck.”

We went on in that vein for over an hour of Katherine telling me how necessary Tonya was for the story, and me becoming certain that Tonya never belonged in the first place. Unfortunately for everything I was trying to accomplish, my sister finally convinced me that she might just be right.

I’d like to say I had the best of intentions, and that I simply thought that Melissa Nollin was a great actress who would fill a role perfectly, but that’s not why I was taking a break to look up images of hot girls.

No, I wasn’t looking at any naked images. I was just looking for new wallpapers. I mean come on, I was sixteen.

And there was Melissa, all blonde hair and blue eyes. I have a thing for blue eyes, ok?

Looking at Melissa, I began to think of a new way to fix the problem. It was becoming clear to me that going from where the show currently was, and trying incremental changes, was what was wrong with my screenplay. The show was about halfway through the second season at the time, and people were unsure if it was even going to finish out that season, let alone get renewed for a third one, so I used that uncertainty to build up my story.

I began to write about a new girl coming to the affluent school. She was there on a scholarship, so she was smart. She’d have to be pretty…I picked the best headshot of Melissa I could find and set her as the wallpaper on my screen and retrieved my notebook. What emerged wasn’t, quite, the season three opener that everyone is familiar with, but it had most of the same elements.

Things had changed in Denver, Colorado and Tonya was in a rehab facility, something I didn’t keep. James was in jail for stabbing Mike, which I did keep, and there was a fresh, but not innocent, Whitney. Her first day as a Junior in the midst of all of the other characters that everyone already knew.

I scanned the pages into my computer because I really didn’t want to type it all in, and then try and get the formatting correct. After I was done with that it took me a little over two hours to find an email address for the producer of the show, and before I could think better of it, I emailed it to him, along with the message, ‘This is where you should take the show for season three.’ I only hoped that Paul Reichen looked at it before deleting it.

I was dozing on my bed, listening to my music, when I realized how stupid I’d just acted not five minutes before and tried to recall the email. Just as I figured out how to do it, I received a reply.

‘Thank you for your interest in the show. I’m looking over your proposal now and will get back to you once I’ve had an opportunity to read it.’

“My what?”

Katherine came running at my shout.

“No, no, no. This can’t be happening.”

“What can’t be happening,” she asked, concerned at my behavior.

I gestured at the screen and she laughed.

“It’s not funny.”

“It’s hilarious. What did you send him?”

I showed her the pages I’d torn from my notebook, and she sat down to read. I’d written about forty pages, in script format. As it was single spaced, and in my cramped style, it would cover most of the forty minute ‘hour’ of a single episode of the show.

It took her about two hours to read through it.

“You killed off Tonya.”

“She’s just in…”

“You might as well have. Whitney is so much more…likeable.”

“She’s not all sugar and spice you know.”

“Oh, I can see that. There is no way she’s as much the good girl that everyone takes her for, not with how quickly, and efficiently, she seized power in a new school.”

“You mean ruthlessly?” I asked.

“No, she obviously has a sense of fair play, something Tonya never had.” Kat replied, not allowing me to pigeonhole Whitney before she’d even been cast.

Kat and I discussed the script that I wrote for a couple of hours before I went to bed. She seemed to like it, but I really had no hope that it would end up as anything more than a whim that I’d once followed.

Kat and I were talking in my room a week later, neither of us even thinking about the aborted attempt at changing the show for the better. I don’t even remember now what we were talking about, but my phone began to ring, and I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, my name is William Price. I’m looking for Brian Metzner?”

The shock of hearing one of the two producers from the show caused my voice to crack at a most inopportune moment. “I’m Brian,” I replied, even as I colored in embarrassment. I’m sure I sounded a lot younger than I was.

“Look, could I speak to your father then?”

“I’m the only Brian Metzner here, but I can get my dad for you if you like.”

“How old are you, Brian?” I could hear the disappointment in his voice, as if all of his hopes and dreams had suddenly been dashed in a single moment.

“I’m sixteen. What is this about?”

“Paul showed me your script proposal.”

“I’m so sorry you had to see that. I thought better of sending it the moment I clicked the button. Just destroy that copy and I’ll act like I never did it.”

“Look, it lacks polish, sure, but apparently it took a sixteen year old to resolve a problem in the story that the rest of us have been beating our heads against the wall trying to resolve for the first half of the current season.”

I was completely shocked. I couldn’t come up with a coherent response, and so my sister took over.

“Hi, I’m Kat… No, I’m his sister, but I am a little more mature than he is…. yes, nineteen… sure, I’ll let my parents know, and thank you again for calling, Mr. Price.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he wants you and our parents to fly out to LA this weekend and talk to his writing staff about your ideas.”

That was probably the last thing I ever expected to happen. My knees buckled and I sat down, hard, on my bed.

“Are you ok?”

“Great… now I have to watch the shows again so I can be absolutely ready for any questions they might have.”

My sister just laughed as she left my room to go find my parents and tell them the good news.