Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
LENA
“I need you to appear more terrified,” Elliott demands, circling me like a vulture eyeing its next meal. “Remember, you’re about to watch Carlos get swept away to his death.”
“Except he didn’t die.” I cross my arms, struggling to balance on my good ankle. “He’s sitting right there, eating beef jerky, and cataloging which memory cards survived.”
The morning sun beats down on our makeshift camp beside the still-swollen creek. After yesterday’s rescue drama, I’d hoped for a quiet recovery day. Instead, I’m being asked to recreate my “emotional journey” during Carlos’s near-drowning—with more panic and less competence.
“The audience needs to feel the stakes,” Elliott insists. “The network specifically requested more vulnerability in your journey.”
“I tied a proper rescue harness and helped save a man’s life,” I say, my patience, already frayed, having snapped. “How is that not vulnerable enough?”
Elliott’s expression shifts to the condescending smirk I recognize from countless Hollywood meetings. “Listen, we appreciate your quick thinking yesterday. Impressive. But it doesn’t fit our established narrative arc.”
“What narrative arc?”
“You know ... fish out of water, struggling city girl slowly learning wilderness skills.” He gestures. “The audience is invested in watching you overcome your helplessness.”
“I’m not helpless.” The word grates, a throwback to a version of me I’m rapidly shedding. Or maybe, a version that was never me at all.
“Of course not.” His patronizing tone makes my skin crawl. “But your character arc?—”
“My character arc?” I repeat, heat rising to my face. “This isn’t a scripted drama, Elliott. Carlos nearly drowned. I used skills I possess to help save him. That’s the reality.”
“Reality needs reshaping sometimes to fit audience expectations,” he says with reasonableness. “Give me thirty seconds of looking terrified, perhaps call for Finn to help you, and we’ll move on.”
My fingers curl into fists at my sides. I take a deep breath, trying to contain the anger building in my chest. “No.”
Elliott blinks, surprised. “No?”
“No reshoot. No pretending I was helpless when I wasn’t.” I straighten my spine, ignoring the throbbing in my ankle. “Use the footage you have or none at all.”
A shadow falls across us. Finn stands nearby, arms crossed over his chest, observing our confrontation. I hadn’t registered his approach, but judging by the tight set of his jaw, he’s heard enough.
Elliott sees him too and pivots. “Finn! Perfect timing. Perhaps you can help explain to Lena why this reshoot is so important for the show’s continuity.”
Finn’s expression doesn’t change. “Sounds like she understands. ”
“Then you can explain why it’s in her best interest to cooperate,” Elliott tries again. “The network?—”
“The network isn’t here,” Finn interrupts. “Lena made a choice. Respect it or don’t, but we’re not spending the morning staging fake distress when we have a real creek crossing to figure out.”
Elliott’s face reddens. “I need to remind both of you that you signed contracts. I have production requirements to meet.”
“And I have safety requirements that take priority,” Finn counters. “The water’s still rising. We need to scout an alternative route, not waste time with theatrical performances.”
Elliott shifts his eyes between us, aware he’s outnumbered. “Fine. We’ll use what we have.” He stalks away, muttering into his satellite phone.
When he’s out of earshot, I turn to Finn. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he says. “He’ll find another angle.”
“Why did you stand up for me?” I ask. “It would have been easier to let me handle it alone.”
His eyes meet mine, clear and direct. “Because you were right.”
The simple statement catches me off guard. In my world, people rarely take sides based on principle alone. There’s always an agenda, an angle, a favor to be repaid later.
“And because we have bigger problems,” he continues, pointing to the creek with a nod. “That water won’t be crossable today, perhaps not tomorrow either. We need a new plan.”
Predictably, Elliott slips his producer’s mask back into place.
“Slight change of plans. Since we can’t move forward today, we’ll use the time to capture some background footage of camp life.
Lena, I want to film you trying to start a fire, perhaps struggling with setting up your tent again.
” I open my mouth to refuse, but he’s already moving on, directing the camera operators into position.
Something about his sudden shift in focus raises my suspicions. “I thought he’d push harder about the reshoot,” I say to Finn.
“He’s planning something,” Finn agrees. “Stay sharp.”
Throughout the morning, cameras follow my every move around camp, focusing on moments when my injured ankle causes me to stumble.
Elliott directs with exaggerated patience, asking me to repeat simple tasks until exhaustion makes mistakes inevitable.
By midday, frustration has me wound so tight I think I’ll break.
I retreat to a fallen log at the edge of camp, elevating my throbbing ankle while the crew breaks for lunch.
Carlos approaches, looking uncomfortable. “How’s the ankle?” he asks, clutching his camera equipment.
“Been better,” I admit. “How’s the gear?”
“The memory cards survived.” He checked over his shoulder, then lowers his voice. “But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I need to show you something.” He seems so nervous that alarm bells immediately ring in my head.
“What is it?”
He sits beside me, opening his camera’s viewing screen. “Elliott had me compile footage for a rough-cut last night. I thought you should see what he’s planning to show the network.”
The small screen flickers to life. Me, trudging through mud, face a mask of pain.
My pain, yes, but amplified, isolated. Cut to me fumbling with the tent.
He left out the part where I figured it out.
Cut—dropping the pot. Once, after hours of exhaustion.
Cut—slipping on a log. It’s a carefully crafted ballet of my misery and incompetence.
“I don’t remember being that bad,” I say, frowning.
“You weren’t,” Carlos confirms. “He’s cherry- picking moments, editing them together out of sequence.” He scrolls through more footage. “And this is how he’s cutting yesterday’s rescue.”
The screen shows me looking panicked as Carlos falls into the water.
Then Finn rushing forward, taking charge, directing me to hold the rope while he performs the actual rescue.
The footage has been manipulated to make it look like I was a helpless bystander following Finn’s instructions, not the person who created the rescue system.
“That’s not what happened,” I say, anger building.
“I know.” Carlos looks miserable. “I was there. You saved me. But Elliott wants the narrative of you being helpless so your transformation later will seem more dramatic.”
“Let me guess—the transformation happens when we reach the final filming location?”
He nods. “Where you’ll become capable after Finn’s expert guidance. Elliott calls it your ‘wilderness awakening’ moment.”
“It’s all a lie,” I say, the realization sinking in like a lead weight. “This whole show is built on making me seem incompetent and then ‘fixing’ me.”
“That’s reality TV,” Carlos says with a shrug. “They hired you for your name recognition and your recent reputation problems. It was never about showing the real you.”
The words hit like a physical blow. In my desperation to salvage my career, I’ve allowed myself to become a caricature—the helpless city girl who needs a rugged mountain man to rescue her from herself.
It’s not only manipulative, it’s insulting to everything my grandmother taught me, everything I’ve worked to become despite my constructed Hollywood image.
“I’m sorry,” Carlos adds. “I shouldn’t have shown you, but it didn’t seem right. ”
“No, I needed to see this.” I hand back his camera. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
He nods, then returns to the main camp area.
I remain on my log, watching the crew through fresh eyes.
The cameras that have followed me aren’t documenting my journey.
They’re manufacturing a story at my expense.
I lift my eyes to the mountains beyond camp.
My grandmother would be ashamed of me now—not for being caught in this situation, but for allowing others to erase who I am.
For forgetting the strength she tried to instill in me.
The sound of approaching footsteps gets my attention. Finn appears, carrying a steaming mug that smells of herbs. “Willow bark tea,” he says, offering it to me. “For the ankle.”
I accept it, the bitter aroma triggering memories I’ve spent years suppressing. “Carlos showed me what Elliott’s been doing with the footage.”
Finn’s expression darkens. “How bad?”
“Bad enough.” I take a sip of the tea, grimacing at the taste. “They’re making me look completely helpless. Even yesterday’s rescue is being rewritten so it seems I stood there while you did everything.”
He sits beside me, his presence solid and reassuring. “Does that surprise you?”
“It shouldn’t,” I admit. “But I thought this was supposed to help my image, not destroy the last shreds of my dignity.”
“Reality TV has never been about reality.”
“No, it’s always been about creating whatever story sells best.” My focus is on my tea. “And apparently, the story that sells is me being an incompetent princess who needs a big strong mountain man to save her.”
Finn says nothing, but his silence feels supportive rather than judgmental.
“You know what’s ironic?” I continue. “They’re working so hard to create this narrative of me being helpless in the wilderness, and meanwhile, they’re completely missing the real story.”
“Which is?”
“That every summer growing up, I learned from my abuela —my dad’s mother.
She moved to Tennessee from the mountains of northern Mexico.
Taught me how to find edible plants, how to treat a fever, how to read the wind.
She was proud of who she was, even when I wasn’t.
” I pause, the words catching at the back of my throat.
“For a long time, I was ashamed of that part of me. Her accent. Her remedies. The way she made something from nothing. I wanted to fit in, to be shiny and smooth. So, I let Hollywood gut me and rewrite the rest.”
My eyes lift to his. “But out here ... with no one watching, I keep hearing her voice again. And I think—I think you can try to bury who you are, but it doesn’t stay buried. Not forever.”
The admission hangs between us. I’ve told no one in Hollywood about those summers, about the knowledge I deliberately buried to fit the image my agents created.
“Why hide it?” Finn asks, his voice low.
“Because no one sees it,” I say, my voice soft.
“I’ve got blonde hair, blue eyes—on paper, I’m exactly what they want.
Marketable. Safe. No one questions my background because I don’t look like someone with roots that stretch deep into a different culture.
” My attention returns to my tea, willing the words to come out right.
“But inside? I’m not simple. I’m not polished.
I’m a girl who learned to crush herbs in a stone bowl and tie knots that hold through a storm.
I’m half a world no one sees—and sometimes I wonder if I buried it so well that I forgot how to claim it. ”
Finn is silent for a long moment. “So what are you going to do about it?”
His simple question hits me with unexpected force. What am I going to do? Keep fading into the version of me that sells—or finally show the one who survived?
“I don’t know yet,” I answer, my voice honest. “But I’m done letting them manipulate me.”
His expression shifts—just a trace of a grin. “Good.”
That night, long after the camp has fallen silent, I lie awake in my tent, thinking about choices and consequences.
The satellite phone is with Elliott—I could ask to use it, call my agent, demand extraction from this disaster, fight the narrative he’s building.
But running away solves nothing. It only confirms what they already believe—that I’m a diva who can’t handle challenges.
Sleep eventually claims me, pulling me into dreams filled with my grandmother’s voice.
We’re in her small garden behind the house in Tennessee, her hands guiding mine as we crush herbs in a stone mortar.
Estas plantas son tu herencia, Magdalena.
These plants are your heritage. Knowledge passed from mother to daughter for generations. Never forget who you are.
I wake to shouting. For a disorienting moment, I think I’m still in my grandmother’s garden, but the voices outside my tent are urgent, panicked. Nothing like the peaceful morning I’d expected.
“The water’s rising too fast!” someone yells—Carlos, I think.
“Get everything to higher ground now!” Finn’s voice cuts through the chaos, commanding and tense in a way I haven’t heard before.
I scramble out of my sleeping bag, wincing as pain shoots through my ankle.
When I unzip my tent, the scene that greets me steals my breath.
Where our camp had been is now a churning pool of muddy water.
The creek has swollen during the night, breaking its banks and advancing toward our tents with frightening speed.
The crew scrambles to save equipment, their movements frantic in the dim pre-dawn light.
And then I see it—hear it first, a low rumble like an approaching freight train—the massive wall of muddy water and debris tearing its way downstream toward us.
Tree trunks, branches, what looks like shattered pieces of a bridge, all churning in a surge that will obliterate everything. My blood runs cold.
“Flash flood!” Finn shouts, his eyes finding mine across the chaos, stark with urgency. “Get to the ridge!”
I have seconds to decide—my pack is still in the tent, and the water is already lapping at the entrance.
The debris wall is maybe thirty seconds from hitting camp.
My ankle screams in protest as I turn to grab my pack.
Knowledge is heritage. Identity is power.
And sometimes, survival depends on knowing what to leave behind.