9. Jasmine
JASMINE
Jasmine had been to this studio lot a hundred times.
Callbacks, table reads, shoots. But the casting building tucked at the far edge of it still made her stomach turn over, the way it had the first time she’d walked into one at twenty-two, broke and hungry and hoping to be seen.
A decade of work hadn’t killed that nerve. She suspected nothing would.
She gave her name to the woman at the front desk, took a bottle of water she didn’t drink, and sat in the small waiting area with three other actresses.
They all pretended not to study each other.
She knew two of them by face. They’d all been at the same callbacks for years, and one of them had just come off a popular TV show.
There was a courtesy among actresses at this level, a smile, a brief warm hello, and beneath it the same knowledge that only one of them would be walking out with this part.
The role was Taylor Hartner. A captain. The hard-edged anchor of a superhero film that, if it worked, would run three sequels deep and shape the next ten years of her career.
She’d read the script in one sitting and known, all the way down, that she could play this woman.
That kind of certainty arrived maybe twice a decade, if you were lucky.
She also knew the part was a body. Action sequences. Wirework. Months of training. The breakdown had been clear: no one was getting cast on charisma alone.
She pushed away that reality. Thinking too hard about her health limitations would make her freeze up, and she was actually feeling pretty good today. Despite Nate’s house not feeling like a home, the bed was extremely comfortable, and she’d spent her first few nights in it sleeping like the dead.
An assistant appeared in the doorway and called her name, and Jasmine stood, smoothed her dark jeans, and followed him into the room where the casting team was waiting.
The room itself was nothing special. It had a long table, four chairs facing one, and a pitcher of water.
But the people behind the table were not nothing, and her pulse picked up despite herself.
There was the director, a woman whose last film Jasmine had watched three times.
Two producers she’d known by name since film school.
And the casting director, whose smile was the only easy one in the room.
“Jasmine. Thanks for coming in. Sit, sit.”
She sat.
They talked first. They always did, at this level. About the world of the film, the bones of the character, whether Jasmine had questions about the arc. She answered carefully and listened harder than she spoke. The director said something about Taylor’s grief.
Then they read.
She did three scenes. The first one she played clean and controlled, the way she’d rehearsed it with her coach.
For the second, the director asked her to try smaller, quieter, and Jasmine took the note and went almost to a whisper, and when she looked up at the end, one of the producers had set down his pen.
The third was the one she’d been afraid of, a fight, dialogue cut between blocking, the kind of writing that lived or died on physical presence. She did it standing.
When she finished, the room was quiet for a beat. One of the producers glanced sideways at the director. The director didn’t glance back. She was still looking at Jasmine, head slightly tilted, like she’d just heard a piece of music she hadn’t expected. Then she smiled.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Okay.”
It wasn’t a yes. Nothing was ever a yes in the room.
But her chest filled up so fast she had to remember to breathe.
They thanked her warmly. The casting director walked her out herself, which was a thing they didn’t bother to do for actresses they weren’t seriously considering.
Jasmine thanked them all by name on the way, kept her voice steady and her hands loose, and didn’t let her face show anything until she was past the front desk, past the waiting actresses, out the door, and walking down the row of palms toward her car.
Then she let herself smile.
It was a stupid grin, the kind she hadn’t worn in months.
She walked the long way across the lot just to keep it on her face.
The sun was high and flat, the soundstages enormous on either side of her, golf carts whirring past with crew in headsets and cables coiled at their feet.
Somewhere a horse whinnied. Somewhere else a hammer rang against metal.
She loved all of it. She’d loved all of it from the first time she’d ever set foot on a working lot.
And the thing she hadn’t let herself think about, through all the months of doctors and tests and quiet bad news, was how much she would miss this if her body finally gave out.
She didn’t need this part. That was the strange truth she’d been carrying around since the boardroom. In a year she’d have a hundred million dollars. She could afford to lose every audition for the rest of her life and still keep the lights on for her mother and herself. She didn’t need it.
But she wanted it. She wanted it so badly her chest hurt.
She reached her car, and her phone buzzed.
Marco. Her agent. He never called this fast unless something had happened.
She stopped beside the driver’s door and answered. “Tell me.”
“They love you.” His voice was bright and clipped, the way it always was when he was trying not to oversell. “They want to shortlist you. Final two. The director’s already told the producers it’s you.”
For a moment she couldn’t breathe right. She gripped the hot door handle.
“Marco. Marco, are you serious?”
“I am serious.”
“Oh my God.”
“There’s one thing.”
She heard the small change in his voice and her stomach moved.
“Tell me.”
“It’s a required physical. And a fitness test. Stamina, strength, agility — they’ve been clear that the lead has to clear it before they finalize.
Insurance and the stunt load. Everyone does it.
It’s nothing personal. They want you in next Thursday.
A doctor of their choosing and a trainer they’ve hired to run the test.”
Jasmine’s smile slid off her face. Marco didn’t know about her diagnosis. No one she worked with did, and she wasn’t sure yet if she would share it with him.
“Okay,” she said through tight teeth.
“It’s nothing. You’ll fly through it.” He was already past it, already on to the rest of the call. “I just wanted to tell you the second I knew. Champagne when it’s official, sweetheart. This is the one.”
She made some sound back at him. She agreed to the time. She told him she’d be there. She hung up, and she got into her car.
Stamina. Strength. Agility.
She’d had a flare two weeks ago so bad she hadn’t been able to stand long enough to wash her own hair. At the time, she hadn’t known what it was, but now she did.
She’d put off meeting with a physical therapist because she didn’t want it in any file anywhere. She had no idea, from one day to the next, what her body would give her. Some mornings she was fine. Some mornings her hips and her shoulders ached so deeply that nothing touched the pain.
A doctor of their choosing. A trainer they had hired. People who would be looking for the exact kind of weakness she’d spent years learning to hide.
She thought about calling Marco back. Asking what would happen if she had to disclose a condition. But she knew what would happen. Disclosure meant insurance complications, which meant a different actress, which meant a quiet, polite no. There was no path that ran through telling them the truth.
She put her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. How cruel it was that the universe had finally given her the role of her life when she was the least equipped, in her whole career, to take it.
She would do the test. Of course she would. She would prepare for it, she would manage her symptoms, she would walk in next Thursday and lie to a doctor and a trainer with her whole body. She would pass it, or she wouldn’t, and there was nothing else to do.
Jasmine started the car and tried her hardest not to cry.