Chapter 2

Thinking about Brittany Hayes made a bitter taste rise in my throat. She wasn't just unprofessional; she was a master of manipulation disguised as "authenticity." The world saw a charming, down-to-earth influencer who wasn't afraid to be "real." I saw a deeply insecure woman who built her career on the backs of others, mine included. Her entire "genuine" persona was a carefully constructed lie.

I remembered the first time she publicly threw me under the bus. It was for a major magazine photoshoot. Brittany was three hours late. When she finally showed up, her face was swollen from a night of partying.

The photographer was furious. The schedule was ruined. I spent those three hours calming everyone down, rearranging schedules, and saving the shoot from being canceled entirely. When she arrived, I pulled her aside, trying to help her fix her makeup and get ready quickly.

The next day, photos of me leaning in close to her, looking stern while she looked teary-eyed and vulnerable, were all over the internet.

She gave an interview claiming I was a bully.

"Sarah is a perfectionist, and I love that about her," Brittany had said, feigning sympathy. "But sometimes it' s too much. I just wanted to be myself, flaws and all, and she was trying to control every little thing. I' m just a real person, you know?"

The narrative was set. She became the relatable, "imperfect" hero. I became the rigid, overbearing villain. Her followers skyrocketed. My reputation took its first major hit.

Her incompetence was breathtaking. On the set of a commercial we worked on, she didn't know what a "blocking rehearsal" was. She couldn't understand the scene numbers on the call sheet. She would interrupt the director mid-sentence to ask questions that had already been answered in the production notes she' d clearly never read.

The director once muttered under his breath, "Did she get dropped on her head as a child?" I thought he was being too kind.

It was the little things, too, the constant, self-centered disruptions.

"Guys, hold on," she'd announce in the middle of a take. "My shoelace is untied."

The entire crew of fifty people would have to stop and wait while she fumbled with her shoes.

Another time, right before a crucial scene, she yelled, "I have to pee! Right now!" and ran off the set, delaying everything by another fifteen minutes.

I watched, completely speechless, as the crew and the director tried to maintain their professionalism. She was a black hole of productivity, sucking the life and energy out of every project.

But the worst was her laziness, and how she'd twist it to hurt me. She was what the industry called a "number queen." Instead of memorizing her lines, she would just recite numbers-"1, 2, 3, 4, 5"-with the right emotion, and the lines would be dubbed in later. It was a lazy, unprofessional shortcut.

When the director finally got fed up and confronted her, she looked at him with wide, innocent eyes.

"But Sarah told me to do this," she said, pointing a finger directly at me. "She said it was a popular acting technique and that it would make my performance more natural."

I felt a rage so pure it almost choked me. I had never said that. I had, in fact, spent hours trying to help her run lines the night before, a session she cut short to go to a party.

But the damage was done. The director shot me a look of pure disdain.

From that day on, I knew she was dangerous. She wasn't just a clumsy fool. She was a predator who used her feigned incompetence as a weapon.

In my past life, I couldn't escape her. It felt like she was stuck to me, a constant, draining presence that I couldn't shake off no matter how hard I tried. Every time I tried to distance myself, she would find a new way to pull me into her orbit of chaos and blame. This time, things would be different.