Chapter Two Mia
Chapter Two
Mia
ATTN: Campus Crush Cancellation Notice.
Due to insufficient talent interest in the program, this show will be canceled by the Student Production Center. You are welcome
to submit revisions to the proposal by October 15th or retry in the spring semester.
When Mia read the SPC’s email, she rolled out of bed and called her oldest sister, Jeannette.
“Yeah?” Jeannette said. “Mia, I’m driving to school right now so I can’t talk long. What’s up?”
Guilt and gratitude twisted together in Mia’s gut, like it always did whenever she thought about Jeannette commuting to school
every day from home. Two years ago, Jeannette had gotten into all her dream schools on the East Coast but had opted to go
to the local state school fifteen minutes away from their house instead.
“Someone needs to stay behind and help Mom and Dad take care of y’all,” she’d said when Mia had asked why. “It’s also way
more affordable!”
Besides Jeannette, Mia had three other sisters: Marie, Cara, and Lola.
As the oldest, Jeannette really could have left them all to fend for themselves.
But no. She had stayed so Mia, the second oldest, could move thousands of miles away instead.
Her sister had sacrificed so much for her.
And yet here Mia was, already a failure just two months into the semester.
She’d called Jeannette out of habit, because they always told one another about everything. But now she regretted it.
“Hello?” Jeannette said. “Mia, are you still there? If you are, talk now or call me back later. I’m seven minutes away from
school.”
Looking out at her sparsely decorated side of the dorm room, Mia sighed. She condensed the mini-rant in her head to one sentence,
so she could be as small of a burden on her sister as possible. “My show is going to get canceled if I don’t figure out a
way to save it by next week.”
“The dating show? How come? It was such a cool idea!”
“It’s more of a documentary, but yeah. Not enough people signed up to be on it.”
“That sucks. Why do you think that happened?”
“If I had to guess . . .” Mia pursed her lips. “I don’t know enough people. No one wants to be on a show led by a freshman
who is brand-new to campus.”
“Aw, well, you just got there. Maybe you can try again later!”
Mia bit her lip. One of the biggest differences between her and her sister was how they saw the world.
For Jeannette, the glass was always half-full.
While for Mia, it wasn’t a simple matter of the glass being half-full or half-empty.
It was a question of why it was half-empty in the first place and what she could do to fill that glass back up.
Campus Crush may have started as something she’d invented to distract herself from her crush on Noah, but over the last couple of months, it’d become more
than that. Thanks to the show—well, technically, the SPC—Mia had met Kallie, Damien, and Alex, her only friends so far at
Marlon. And the four of them had sacrificed sleep—and a little bit of their sanity—to plan out the show and submit the proposal.
Their producer, Damien, was a senior, while Kallie, their cinematographer, was a junior. Both, like most upper-level film
students at Marlon, already juggled an intensive schedule of working on studio lots and going to class. They’d barely managed
to fit the show into their schedules as it was, and they would have even less time as they approached graduation. They didn’t
have a “later.”
Mia was going to disappoint everyone.
“How about we take a few calming breaths together,” Jeannette continued when Mia didn’t respond. “Would that help?”
Take a few calming breaths was Jeannette’s number-one mantra, the one that she told all her younger sisters.
Those words had—admittedly—gotten Mia through the years she’d worked her butt off to get a full ride to Marlon, a fancy private school that their parents would never have let her go to otherwise.
But this time, Mia’s throat felt too tight.
She wasn’t sure if a few calming breaths would help with her current predicament.
“Mia?”
“Sorry, I have to go,” Mia managed to say out loud.
There was silence on the other end. Mia didn’t have to see her to know Jeannette was chewing her lip, a habit that both sisters
shared when they had a lot on their minds.
“Sure,” Jeannette said finally, her voice falsely bright. “I’m at school now so I’ll talk to you later. Hope you figure things
out!”
“Thanks, J. I’ll keep you updated.”
After they’d hung up, Mia opened the group chat she had with her friends and started typing.
Hey, y’all. Sorry but . . . She hit the backspace button. Already, her message sounded pathetic.
Some bad news. But not all hope is lost!
She groaned. She sounded like someone from a Shakespearean play.
Finally, she screenshotted the cancellation notice and shared it without any message.
Their responses were instantaneous.
KALLIE MARTIN (she/her): WTF??????
DAMIEN CARTER (he/him): Is this a joke?
ALEX DOMINGUEZ (they/them): What are we going to do now?
DAMIEN CARTER (he/him): Pray, I guess.
Mia watched as her friends’ confusion and despair filled her phone screen, her own fingers frozen with dread. She stared at
the blinking cursor but couldn’t figure out what to say. What were they going to do now?
KALLIE MARTIN (she/her): We should just go indie. We don’t need the SPC! We can make our own show!
DAMIEN CARTER (he/him): With what money?
ALEX DOMINGUEZ (they/them): Maybe we can try resubmitting next semester?
Mia went to her desk drawer and got out her four-year planner. It was obnoxiously heavy, practically a novel in its 140 pages
of 48 monthly spreads and other helpful pages.
In the summer, after she’d registered for her fall-semester classes, she’d gone on the school website and found the previous spring’s course catalog to make a list of the classes she’d have to take next.
They were mostly GE classes like biology and math that were overly intensive but unfortunately required for her to graduate.
She’d been planning on loading her spring semester up with such classes so she could focus on stuff for her actual major the rest of college.
MIA YOON (she/her): I can’t do next semester, sorry. And I know Damien and Kallie can’t do next year. I’ll try to think of a solution. Will keep
you updated.
Could we independently produce the show like Kallie suggested? Mia thought. Set up a GoFundMe? Crowdfund on social media?
The door to their dorm opened, and Mia jerked her head up to see Celine, her roommate, coming back into the room with a big
box. It was 7 a.m. on a Monday, but she was already in full makeup. The only time of day Mia consistently saw Celine in their
room was in the morning, since that was when she made her makeup haul posts or recorded her videos.
“Oh good, you’re awake!” Celine said. “Good morning! I just got a new shipment of makeup, so I have to record a video. Hope
that’s okay!”
Mia collapsed back onto the bed and tried to match Celine’s friendly and polite tone. “Yeah, you’re totally fine. Thanks for
the heads-up!”
Mia and Celine weren’t exactly friends, but they were friendly enough that Celine knew about Mia’s show, and Mia knew Celine was a beauty influencer who specialized in Asian makeup products.
Other than that, they had virtually no overlap, since Celine hardly ever watched movies and Mia never went to parties.
Well, besides the Alpha Tau one they went to during the first week of school.
Although Mia hardly ever wore makeup, she listened in as Celine recorded her latest video. Not only did her roommate give
the best tips, but her voice was incredibly soothing, too.
Since she still had a couple hours until her first class, Mia rolled over until her face smooshed against her pillow. She
must have dozed off, because when she next opened her eyes, Celine was back in her own bed, hugging her pillow close to her
chest as she stared down at her phone.
“Ugh, he left me on seen again!” she whispered.
And that’s when Mia got an idea. It most likely wouldn’t work, but at this point, Mia was desperate to try anything.
“Hey, Celine?” Mia asked. “Do you have a crush on anyone? Ideally someone who goes to our school?”
It was a leading question, since Mia had heard Celine grumble to herself about this mysterious “he” several times in the past
month, ever since she’d broken up with the guy she’d met at the Alpha Tau party.
Celine slowly blinked up at her. “Um, yeah?”
She sounded wary, and Mia didn’t blame her.
Just to be polite, Mia usually pretended she couldn’t hear Celine whenever she talked to herself in their room.
The actual conversations they had together rarely went beyond small talk.
If Mia weren’t so desperate, she wouldn’t be talking to Celine about this in the first place.
“Great,” Mia continued. “How would you like to be on my dating show? We’re looking for more people to be on it, since it’s
in danger of being canceled.”
“Wait, what?”
Celine dropped her phone into her lap and burst out laughing.
When Mia stared at her, completely serious, her giggles faltered.
“Oh, you’re not kidding. Look, I’d love to, but I doubt my crush would ever appear on the show with me. He has over a million
followers, so I’m sure a lot of girls are interested in him. Plus, he almost never replies to my messages.”
An uneasy feeling spread throughout Mia, settling like a rock in her stomach.
Even though she already knew the answer, she forced out the words: “Who’s your crush?”
“Noah Jang? He’s a senior from South Korea.”
Of course, it’s Noah.
Mia scowled. “Ew.”
Celine let out a pseudo-indignant gasp. “Wait, what? What’s wrong with Noah?”
“Nothing. I just . . . know him, that’s all.”
Celine gasped for real this time. “And you’re only telling me this now?”
“He’s in one of my production classes. It’s a lower-division course, but apparently, he procrastinated on taking it, so he’s in it now as a senior. Noah’s a classic example of what not to do in college.”
But instead of looking horrified at Noah’s failings, Celine only asked, “Is he as hot in real life as he is in his videos?
Have you ever talked to him?”
Mia sat up. “Plenty of times. He’s super annoying. He always debates things with me, like he can’t stay quiet and let my opinion
be heard. And he constantly tries to one-up me in class.”
“Wait, this is perfect!” Celine enthused. “Well, not the one-upping part. But the situation in general. Mia, don’t you see?
I have to go on your show. And we have to convince Noah to be on it as well.”
Mia nearly fell out of her bed. “What? Why?”
“Think about it,” Celine replied. “Noah’s a senior, and one of the most famous people on campus. I have a decent following
as well. If we both appear on the show, with him as my crush, it’s bound to get a lot of attention. Maybe it’ll be enough
for the campus TV station to un-cancel your show! And I’ll finally get a chance to meet him and talk to him in person. A win-win!”
Making a show about other people’s crushes was supposed to distract her from her own, not bring her into even closer proximity to him. And having to watch Celine potentially date Noah? It didn’t sound like a win
for Mia, at all.
She had no idea what her face was doing, but apparently her expression was concerning enough for Celine to say, “Um, you okay, Mia? Maybe you better lie down. Sorry, was my idea too unhinged?”
“No, you’re fine. Sorry, let me think for a second.”
Mia took a few deep breaths that would have made Jeannette proud.
Her thoughts whirled. But the more she wrapped her head around Celine’s idea, the more she knew her roommate was right. If
Noah and Celine couldn’t bring more attention to her show, then no one could.
This was her and her friends’ one and only chance to make this TV show. She had to take one for the team and try her best
not to let her weird, complicated feelings about Noah get in the way.
Mia gritted her teeth, steeling herself against what she had to do next.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll ask him.”