Chapter Six Mia
Chapter Six
Mia
Mia stared, transfixed, at the video playing on Alex’s phone.
Since Noah had told her he’d “get started,” she’d just assumed he’d have some kind of update for her by their next production
meeting at Carlisle. What she didn’t think would happen was . . . whatever was happening on the phone screen right now.
Noah danced to a cute, poppy girl-group song, swaying his hips and making heart signs with his fingers. Instead of smirking
or playing it cool like he usually did in his videos, Noah smiled, so brightly that Mia sat back down in her conference room
chair. And immediately got back up again. Because her friends could not find out about her crush on Noah.
When they started working together, when The Cuffing Game was still Campus Crush, she didn’t tell any of her friends about her feelings because they simply seemed irrelevant.
But now, this was all just embarrassing.
What kind of showrunner would they think she was if they knew she had a crush on one of their contestants?
Mia willed herself to calm down. She glanced around the room, but luckily her friends hadn’t noticed her overreaction. In
fact, they were too busy reacting to Noah themselves.
“This is the first time Noah has ever smiled like that in his content before,” Alex said in an awestruck voice. “Even in the
funny videos, he always keeps a straight face. Wow, I’m in love.”
“He’s not that great.” Damien rolled his eyes.
“Agreed,” Kallie replied. “And judging by the comments, this video is rather polarizing. But I think that’s intentional. Given
the over-a-million view count.”
“Posting a video that’s so shocking and out of character that people debate about it in the comments,” Mia said, trying her
best to keep her voice flat and sound only mildly interested. “That’s a smart way to make sure your content gets pushed onto
a lot of people’s feeds.”
As the music continued in the background, Noah stopped dancing to say, “Hi, everyone. Have you ever wanted to be on a dating
show? Or see your friends on one?
“Or maybe you want a chance to date me, Noah Jang. Well, if you’re a Marlon University student, your chance has finally come.
Nominate your friend—and their secret crush—to be on The Cuffing Game, the hottest dating show created by Marlon University students, for Marlon University students.
More details coming real soon, but I promise you, it’s going to be good.
Before we start officially casting anyone else, though, we need your help to make this show happen. You know where to go for
more info.”
Alex turned off their phone screen before the video could replay.
“He’s made several more of these,” they said. “With various hooks and formats. But that’s the most popular one so far.”
For a moment, no one else said anything. Kallie sank further into her chair. Alex stared off into space like they were a TV
show character breaking the fourth wall. Damien glanced at Alex and shook his head, running a hand over his cropped Afro.
“Was this his idea or yours?” he asked Mia.
Mia raised her hands up in a sign of innocence. “Entirely his. I just told him that the SPC gave us the okay to start crowdfunding.”
Kallie pushed her laptop across the conference table so they could all see the screen. “I have to hand it to him. He knows
what he’s doing.”
On her computer was an email from the SPC that was cc’d to all four of them.
It read:
Congrats, TCG team! We are happy to inform you that you’ve received a record number of applicants.
You have also officially met the recommended production budget for the show, so consider yourselves officially greenlit!
Please see below for the link to the shared drive that contains the suggested production timeline and all the entries so far.
We’re so excited for this project. Thank you!
Until now, Mia had assumed all the emails from the SPC were copy-and-paste form letters, impersonal and devoid of any feeling
whatsoever. Or at least, that’s all she’d been getting from them until now. The difference between failure and success was
jarring, and it’d just taken a few videos by a popular influencer. By Noah, no less.
You did what you needed to do to save the show, she reminded herself. But she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she’d made a deal with the devil.
On her own laptop, Mia opened the shared drive from the SPC in one window and the text conversation she had with Jeannette
in another. After glancing at the suggested timeline, she sighed and sent her sister a text.
MIA: Hey, J. Can you do me a favor? I’ll owe you big-time when I get home for break.
Jeannette’s response was instantaneous.
JEANNETTE: Sure! What is it?
MIA: Can you tell Mom and everyone else that I won’t be coming home until Christmas Eve? They’ll take it better coming from you.
Due to their parents’ infamous love for Christmas, Mia’s family started their festivities on December 1, opening Advent calendars
and putting up decorations all around the house. Although Christmas Eve would be a perfectly reasonable time to go back home
for the holidays to some households, it was considered late for hers.
MIA: And don’t tell Mom or Dad that this is for my TV show.
JEANNETTE: Wait, did you get it approved? Congratulations!
MIA: Thanks. And yeah, it’s looking like we’ll wrap on the 23rd, which means I won’t be able to fly home until the morning of
the 24th.
JEANNETTE: Well, I guess that can’t be helped. I’ll tell them you failed math and have to stay behind to do remedial classes.
MIA: Kind of scary how fast you came up with that lie but sounds good. Thanks.
It was bad enough that their mom already thought Mia had “abandoned” everyone by moving thousands of miles away to study film, something that would “only make her a starving artist in the end.” Mia didn’t need to add any more wood to that fire.
In some families, Mia, who had gotten a full-ride scholarship to one of the best film schools in the country, might
have been a favorite. But to the Yoons, she was the black sheep while Jeannette was the golden child who had stayed close
to home and majored in accounting, something perfectly practical.
“Okay, so we have two hundred entries and counting,” Alex said, pushing their boxy green glasses up their nose. “How many
people are we thinking in total here? Five? Ten?”
Everyone turned to Mia. She immediately switched to the other window on her computer.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was telling my family I have to stay in LA a bit longer for break.”
“You’re fine,” Damien replied to Mia before looking at the others. “Most of the cabins I found seem to cap at around fifteen
people, and there’s four of us. So around ten contestants, but make it an odd number so we can eliminate one person on the
first night.”
“That’s something else we need to figure out,” Kallie said. “The structure of the show and how we’re going to keep eliminating
them after that.”
Mia’s head whirled. She hadn’t even thought of eliminating people, but if this was a dating show—with all the drama—then they’d need to contrive ways to bump people off. Even the idea made her slightly queasy.
“We’re doing six days, right?” Damien asked. “Why not just make it simple and do an elimination every other night? We can
have challenges and random events here and there that’ll also change things up, but the gist will be that whoever can’t pair
up—or cuff, if you will—with someone else gets eliminated until we’re down to the last remaining couple. We can change some things later
on, too.”
An elimination every other night? Mia took a deep breath to settle her stomach. Making Campus Crush into a zesty reality TV dating show called The Cuffing Game had already been a huge shift. But it seemed like with every new idea, it was becoming more and more a totally unrecognizable
show to the one she’d first envisioned.
“You’ll learn quickly that the industry revolves around collaboration,” one of her professors had said in the first week of
classes. “Sure, we have auteur directors like Christopher Nolan, but even they still work with crews of other talented people.
And for TV, we have writing rooms, where a team of writers work on scripts for shows. Not just one person.”
Mia knew all of that in theory, but it was harder in practice, especially since she’d spent the last ten years coming up with
ideas for shows alone in her room.
“Mia?” Kallie asked. “Are you feeling okay?”
Mia blinked and looked around. All three of her friends were staring at her now, various looks of concern on their faces.
“Yeah!” Mia exclaimed, putting some extra energy into her voice. “Sorry, some part of me is still reeling from all the changes
we’re making to the show.”
Kallie frowned in understanding. “Yeah, we are making a lot of changes. Are you okay with them?”
“It may be our show, but it’s still your original idea, Mia,” Damien said, matter-of-factly. “You’re allowed to say if you don’t like something. Trust me when I say that Hollywood
can be a dog-eat-dog world. If you don’t speak up, people can walk all over you.”
Mia shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t like it per se. It’s just a lot. You know I don’t like surprises. Or change.”
Damien nodded. “Even so, please don’t hesitate to speak up if I, Kallie, or Alex say anything you don’t like, okay? We’re not in Hollywood yet. And we’re
all in this together. If you’re not comfortable with any of the changes we’re making, we don’t have to do them.”
A burst of warmth and gratitude loosened the knot in Mia’s chest.
“Right,” she said, looking around the room. “I’ll probably want to make a few adjustments here and there, but let’s discuss
and plan out the details some other time, since we should pick the contestants ASAP. There is one thing from our original idea I’d like to for sure bring in, though. If everyone else is okay with it.”
“Yeah of course,” Kallie replied. “What is it?”
“You know how, with Campus Crush, we planned to have interviews of the people with crushes? It’d be cool if we kept that part. Sort of a confessional interview
at the beginning of each episode.”
Damien nodded approvingly. So did Kallie and Alex.
“That sounds cool,” Alex said. “How about you and I handle that part, since Kallie and Damien will already have a lot on their
hands?”
“Yeah, that’s perfect.” Mia smiled. “And, going back to the entries, how about we divide them so we each review fifty? Unless
that’s too much.”
Damien stretched out his fingers and moved his head from side to side, getting into full producer mode.
“It is a lot,” he said. “But we should sort through them all by tonight since we have so many other things to take care of. We only
have a month left until the first day of shooting.”
“Sounds good,” Mia said, trying to settle her nerves. At least they had a plan. “Let’s get started then.”
Through the glass walls separating the different conference rooms, Mia could see other student groups working on their own
individual projects, burning the midnight oil as many often did in Carlisle.
This is going to be the first of many sleepless nights, Mia thought.
But instead of feeling weary, Mia felt almost giddy as she started flipping through the entries.
After months of planning something that they weren’t even sure could be a real show, here she and her friends were, one step closer to making their dreams into a reality. Her fingers tingled with excitement.
They hadn’t reached Hollywood yet, but they were getting there.