Off-Script

Evelyn’s POV

I was born Evelyn Elena Herrera, but I’ve hated that last name for as long as I can remember. Herrera—basic, boring, tied to my useless, piece of shit father. The same name slapped on half the buzzers in our Bronx apartment building, where the elevator always smelled like piss, and the walls were paper-thin. It was the kind of name that got lost in the crowd, like background noise. Definitely not the name of someone who was going to matter.

Which is why I changed it. Sort of. I didn’t legally change my name—at eighteen, I had no idea how to do that. But I changed my Instagram handle to @eevelynhugo. Naturally, @evelynhugo was already taken. It felt like a small rebellion, turning myself into someone who sounded glamorous, important. Someone who might get out of this shithole someday.

Life in the Bronx was loud—neighbors screaming at each other, kids running up and down the stairs, my father stomping around like he owned the place. When he was drunk, which was often, he really thought he did. He’d yell in Spanish at my mom for “nagging him,” at me for “wasting his money” on school supplies I barely used. Sometimes he’d throw things, a chair or a plate, but only when he was in a bad mood. And by "bad mood," I mean anything from losing a bet on the Yankees to dinner being a few minutes late.

I learned early to stay out of his way. That didn’t mean I had anywhere better to be. School wasn’t exactly my safe haven. I was a solid C student, coasting on late homework and forgotten tests. Nobody ever told me I was smart, so I stopped trying to be. I figured, why bother when no one gives a damn? The teachers certainly didn’t—they’d given up on me before I even stepped into the classroom.

But my body…my body was impossible to ignore. My tits started growing, seemingly overnight, and wouldn’t stop. I outgrew the bras my mother gave me. By the time I hit fourteen, boys in my neighborhood had started looking at me differently. Whistling as I walked by, calling me names I didn’t understand but knew enough to feel embarrassed about. I was wearing a DD cup by the time I entered high school. My mom told me to cover up, wear baggier clothes, but I didn’t listen. I liked how they looked at me. Not because I wanted them—I didn’t—but because it felt like power. A little piece of control in a world where I didn’t have much.

And then there was social media. Snapchat, Instagram, and even Facebook, occasionally. At first, it was just pictures of my friends and me posing in front of graffiti walls or selfies on the subway. But I figured out pretty quickly what got the most likes. A little more skin, a little more makeup, and suddenly the comments were pouring in. “Gorgeous.” “Marry me.” “🔥🔥🔥.” Strangers were noticing me. People I’d never met thought I was somebody worth looking at.

It was addictive, in a way I didn’t fully understand back then. The attention, the validation—it was like a drug. Every like was a step closer to getting out, to leaving the Bronx, my father, the dirt, the grime. I’d scroll through my feed late at night, planning my escape. How could I find a sexier top without spending more than a few bucks? What pose would get me more DMs? What caption would make me seem just mysterious enough to keep them coming back for more?

The girls in my neighborhood hated me. Whispered about me in corner stores, gave me the side-eye at the bus stop, called me a "slut" or worse when I walked by. I could feel their jealousy sticking to me like humidity on a summer day. But I didn’t care. Why would I? I wasn’t trying to impress anyone from the Bronx. I didn’t want their approval. I wanted something so much bigger.

I wanted out. Out of the cracked sidewalks, out of the crappy bodegas with expired candy bars, out of the suffocating expectation that I’d either marry some guy who couldn’t keep a job or work two shifts at a diner until I dropped. I wasn’t going to be like them—angry and stuck, hating anyone who wanted more.

What I wanted was to be seen. To be known. Not just as the girl with the best tits on Instagram, but as someone who mattered. Someone people wrote about. Someone with a name you couldn’t forget.

So, I leaned into it. Tight dresses, glossy lips, poses that made me look like I had it all figured out. Did I? Hell no. Half the time I was shooting photos in the bathroom with the one decent overhead light we had, tilting my phone just right so you wouldn’t see the water stains on the mirror. But they didn’t need to know that. Online, I wasn’t Evelyn Herrera from Apartment 4B. I was Evelyn Hugo, the girl they couldn’t stop looking at.

And it worked. My follower count started climbing—500, 1,000, 5,000. Brands with names I could barely pronounce slid into my DMs, offering free clothes if I’d tag them. Boys from better neighborhoods were messaging me, asking to take me out. It wasn’t just likes anymore; it was a glimpse of a world I could barely imagine, but desperately wanted to be a part of.

But even with my budding fame, I was still struggling to pull enough money together to leave. The free clothes and cheap attention were nice, but they didn’t pay the rent, and they definitely weren’t getting me out of the Bronx. My followers wanted more than pretty selfies and tight dresses—they wanted me. Or, at least, the version of me I was selling online.

So, I gave it to them.

I started an OnlyFans account one night. I was sitting on the edge of my bed in the dark while my parents argued in the other room. The sign-up process was easy. A username, a profile picture, a bio that made me sound like someone worth paying for. I hesitated before uploading my first photo—nothing wild, just a lacy bra shot I’d already posted on Instagram, cropped a little tighter. Within an hour, I had three subscribers. By the end of the week, I had twenty.

The money wasn’t huge at first, but it was something. More than I’d ever made babysitting or stocking shelves. And it grew fast. The more I posted, the more they paid. And the more they paid, the closer I got to leaving this place behind.

But then my mom found out. Because, of course, she did.

She caught me one afternoon while she was supposed to be at work. I was in my bedroom, lying back on my bed, taking topless selfies. The lighting was good—the kind of soft glow that made my skin look flawless—and I was focused, angling the camera just right to crop out the mess of clothes on the floor.

Then the door slammed open.

“¿Qué carajo es esto?” my mother’s voice cut through the room. I froze, my thumb hovering over the camera button. She stood in the doorway, her round face pale and tight, her eyes darting between me and the screen of my phone. She didn’t even need to ask. She knew exactly what she was looking at.

I pulled a blanket over my naked breasts and sat up slowly, trying to think of something—anything—to say, but my mind was blank. “It’s not what you think” wasn’t just a cliché; it would’ve been a flat-out lie. It was exactly what she thought.

She grabbed my phone out of my hand before I could stop her. Quickly, she rolled through my camera reel. Each picture seemed to hit her like a slap, her lips tightening with every swipe.

“This is what you’re doing now?” she hissed, holding up the screen like it was evidence in a trial. The picture was of me bent over the bathroom counter. My ass was flat as a board, but it looked decent in that photo. “This is what you think your life is worth?”

I snatched the phone back, my pulse pounding in my ears. “You’re damn right,” I shot back. “It’s worth more than this shitty apartment, more than scraping by while Dad drinks away everything we’ve got.”

Her face crumpled for a second, like she wanted to argue but didn’t know how. Then, the anger came rushing back, filling the cracks in her composure. My mother was a small, shy person, but she could burn a whole house down when she got angry. “We didn’t sacrifice everything—move here, work our asses off—for you to—” she gestured toward me, her voice breaking. “For this.”

“And what do you think I’m supposed to do, huh?” My voice was shaking now, too, my chest tight with the weight of everything I wanted to scream. “Get a minimum-wage job and hope for the best? Stay here forever, like you, waiting for things to get better? I’m making money, Mom. Actual money. Enough to get out of this place.”

“Out?” she said, her voice rising. “And what? You think the world out there is going to treat you better? You think they’re going to see you as anything more than some cheap slut? Because that’s all this is, Evelyn. That’s all they’ll see you as if you keep this up!”

I felt shame like I’d never felt it before. Real, pierce-your-skin kind of shame that leaves you breathless and weak, the kind that gnaws at your insides like it’s trying to hollow you out. My mother had always been my only real supporter. In life, in school, in everything. I was her mija. Her girl. The one thing she still believed in when everything else in her life had turned to shit.

And while I loved her dearly, I have to admit—I’d always seen her as somewhat pathetic. Her dead dreams of being a Hollywood star, the way she clung to old magazines with actresses she used to admire, and her desperate hope that I’d somehow do what she couldn’t. It all felt so... small. Especially when it came to my father. She used to tell me she stayed for me, for us, but I knew better. She stayed because she didn’t know how to leave.

And now she was looking at me like I was the pathetic one. Like I was the one throwing my life away.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

She stared at me and narrowed those dark, almost black eyes. “Yo te crié mejor que esto, Evelyn. Mejor que esto.”

I raised you better than this.

Her words were meant to cut me, and they did. But they didn’t make me stop. They couldn’t. Because if she couldn’t see the difference between surviving and living, between staying stuck and doing whatever it took to get out, then what was the point of explaining?

“You don’t understand,” I said. The fire in me was gone, replaced by something colder, heavier. “You don’t understand what it’s like to want more. To know you’re worth more than this.”

She jerked back, a quick, sharp movement like she’d touched a stove she thought was cold. Her face shifted, just for a heartbeat, into something fragile—something I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen before. But then she blinked, and it was gone. Her jaw clenched – a trap snapping shut, locking away whatever had almost slipped through.

“Lárgate,” she said. The word was short and final. “Si quieres esa vida, entonces vete. Pero no vuelvas.”

Don’t come back.

I wanted to tell her she didn’t mean it, that this was just anger talking, but deep down, I knew better. I saw it in her eyes—the disappointment, the shame. The wall going up between us, higher than it had ever been.

I told myself that my mother was from a different era, a different country. A world where suffering was just part of the deal. She’d spent her whole life making excuses for my father, for her own failures, for the life she had but never wanted. And maybe that worked for her. But not for me. I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for life to get better. I was going to make it better, even if it meant breaking the rules she thought were unbreakable.

Still, as I packed my things later that night, shoving clothes and makeup into an old duffel bag, her words stuck to me like burrs. Lárgate. Vete. Her voice played on a loop in my head. The shame was rolling over me and through me, neverending. 

I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. That I didn’t need her. But the lump in my throat told a different story. I was still a child – but at the time I thought I was a woman.

The apartment was dark except for the sticky white glow of the streetlights bleeding through the thin curtains. My father was snoring in the next room, oblivious as always. My mother stayed in the kitchen, probably nursing a cup of tea she wouldn’t drink. She didn’t come out to stop me, didn’t even say goodbye.

I slung the bag over my shoulder and walked out the door. The hallway smelled like it always did—stale beer and mildew—and the elevator groaned as I pressed the button.

When the doors opened, I stepped inside and hit the lobby button. For a second, I stared at my reflection in the scratched metal walls. My face looked calm, but my hands were shaking. It hit me then: I wasn’t just leaving my home. I was leaving my safety net, the last thread of my old life.

I walked to the bus station with my duffel bag banging against my side and my phone buzzing in my pocket. Subscribers. DMs. Notifications that felt like little lifelines floating through space. By the time I sat down on the hard plastic bench, I had already opened my app, scrolling through my feed. There was a man offering me five-hundred dollars to send him a private video.

I tapped the message open. Five hundred for ten seconds, baby. Wanna see those big tits just for me.

It wasn’t exactly romantic. But five hundred dollars could get me somewhere. A motel room for a week, food, maybe even a plane ticket if I wanted to go that far.

I took a deep breath and typed back, Send the details.

•••

Celia’s POV

The lights on set were blinding, as always. They had to be, to keep the Disney magic intact. Everything had to be bigger, brighter, and more sparkly than real life—the pastel-colored costumes, the unnaturally glossy hair, the exaggerated smiles. The illusion was exhausting. I was exhausted.

Like every other episode of Bell of the Ball, this episode ended with an over-the-top group hug. The show had run for six seasons, which was about five too many, in my opinion. The premise was thin to begin with: I played Maddie Bell, a plucky Southern girl from Alabama who moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dreams of being a pop star. Every week, Maddie faced some heartwarming obstacle—a misunderstanding with her best friend, a mean teacher, or a crisis involving her little brother’s lemonade stand—and always managed to solve it in twenty-two minutes, complete with a catchy song at the end.

If you’d told me five years ago that this show would still be on air, I’d have laughed. If you’d told me I’d still be playing Maddie Bell, I might’ve cried.

When the director yelled, “Cut!” I dropped the smile like it was burning me. It was my last day on Bell of the Ball. My contract was finally over. Freedom had been dangling in front of me for years, and now I could almost taste it.

My mother was waiting in my dressing room. She always was. She’d made a whole second life for herself here in LA, buying a second house in Beverly Hills so I could work. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice—she loved the parties, the networking, the constant hum of proximity to fame. If anything, she thrived on it more than I did.

“There you are,” she said as I walked in. She didn’t look up, her eyes glued to her phone. “Your posture during the group hug was terrible. You’ll look hunched over on camera. Back straight, sweetie. Always. Back straight.”

“I’ll be better next time,” I said flatly, knowing full well there wouldn’t be a next time.

I sat down and started yanking out the bobby pins that had held Maddie Bell’s curls in place. Her signature look—a crown of shiny red ringlets—was torture. My scalp throbbed from hours of pulling and pinning. Maddie Bell, perfect pop princess and queen of lemonade-stand songs, was a toddler’s idea of a debutante. And I’d been stuck as her since I was thirteen.

Now I was eighteen, and the tabloids had already made their predictions about me. They called me “Disney’s Southern Belle,” but not in the flattering way. To them, I was another child star on the verge of obscurity. A washed-up has-been before I’d even had a real shot. Some gossip sites had bets running about whether I’d “go wild,” like some of the other girls. I hadn’t given them anything to latch onto yet—no public breakdowns, no messy relationships. I hadn’t even had a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend, for that matter.

“You could at least act like this job has meant something to you, Cecelia,” my mother said, breaking into my thoughts.

Cecelia. She only called me by my full name when she was particularly disappointed. Great.

I glanced at her in the mirror, my fingers still working through the mess of my hair. “It’s not that it hasn’t meant anything, Mom. It’s that I’m done with it. I’ve been done for years. You’re the one who wanted me to stick it out.”

Her face tightened, and she moved closer. Her heels – impossibly tall and pointed – made this nauseating click-clack as they moved her across the floor. “You’ve built a career. A real career. Do you know how many girls would kill to be where you are?”

I let out a sharp breath, not bothering to hide the edge of frustration creeping into my voice. “Mom, I’ve been playing the same character since I was thirteen. The same sparkly, one-dimensional cartoon of a human being. I’m eighteen now. I can’t be Maddie Bell forever.”

She pressed her lips together, her fingers twitching against the strap of her bag. “You think you’re too good for this?” she asked, a flicker of hurt sneaking through her usual wall of composure. “You think you can just waltz into Hollywood and people will take you seriously? Because they won’t.”

Before I could answer, she reached into her bag. When she pulled out a pack of papers and threw it onto my vanity, the impact sent my lipsticks wobbling dangerously.

“What’s this?”

“A contract. For a Bell of the Ball movie.”

I stared at the papers like they were radioactive. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I had it drafted up yesterday,” she continued. “The studio is interested. Everyone is interested.”

I picked up the papers, flipping through the glossy, official-looking pages with their neat legalese and studio logos. My hands shook as I skimmed phrases like retained for the role of Maddie Bell and box office projections.

“A Bell of the Ball movie? I just finished telling you I’m done, and you went and signed me up for a movie?”

“It’s not signed yet,” she said quickly, like that made it better. “But Celia, this is everything we’ve been working for! You think people in Hollywood are going to take you seriously without something like this? A movie is your ticket to transitioning into—”

“Into what?” I cut her off, my voice rising. “Into more Maddie Bell crap? More sparkly dresses and fake accents and songs about friendship? Jesus, Mom, have you even been listening to me?”

Her face flushed, and she took a step closer, her voice dropping into something almost pleading. “I am listening. But you don’t know how this business works. You can’t just walk away from a character like Maddie. You need to leverage her, grow from her. A movie like this sets you up for bigger things.”

I laughed bitterly, shaking my head. “Bigger things? For who? For you? Because I don’t want this. I’ve never wanted this.”

She flinched, her mouth opening and closing, searching for the right words. Then, quieter, she said, “Honey, please. I’m trying to help you.”

“No,” I said firmly, shoving the papers back toward her. “You’re trying to help yourself. To keep Maddie Bell alive so you can parade me around at country clubs and galas like some kind of trophy. But I’m not her. I’m not your perfect little Southern debutante.”

Her eyes narrowed, the softness replaced by something colder. “You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m not,” I snapped. I was flushed, red up to my ears. The words rushed out before I could stop them. “I’m gay, Mom.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Her face didn’t move at first, as if her brain hadn’t fully processed what I’d just said.

Finally, she let out a breathy laugh, shaking her head. “Celia, don’t start with this nonsense. You’re not gay.”

“Yes, I am,” I said. I swear, my chest felt tight enough to burst. I’d never been honest with her before about my feelings – even though, by eighteen, I’d been feeling them for quite a while.

She shook her head again, harder this time. “You’re confused. You’ve spent too much time in LA, around people who—who fill your head with ideas.”

“It’s not an idea. It’s who I am.”

She stared at me, her jaw tight. Her eyes, the same shade of blue as mine, looked glassy and wet. “No,” she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper. “I won’t let you throw your life away over this.”

I stepped back. “Throw my life away? Or stop living the one you planned for me?”

She didn’t answer me. Her hands moved like startled birds, snatching up the papers, crumpling their edges as she shoved them back into her bag. “You’ll regret this,” she said, her voice trembling, thin as a cracked plate. “One day, you’ll regret it.”

And then she turned and walked out, her heels clicking a staccato rhythm that echoed long after the door shut behind her.

I stood there, staring at the door like it might open again, like she might come back and say something else, something close to an apology. But the room was quiet now, save for the faint hum of the vanity lights and the low buzz of a crew member’s laughter somewhere down the hall.

My eyes drifted to the mirror, and for a second, I didn’t recognize the person staring back. My makeup was smeared at the edges, my curls hanging limp, and the sparkly dress I’d been wearing all day felt like it had fused to my skin. 

And then it hit me. Not the relief I’d expected, not the sense of freedom I thought I’d feel the moment Maddie Bell was gone, but something messier.

The first tear slipped down my cheek before I even realized I was crying. And then another. Soon, I was sitting there, head in my hands, crying these big, seismic sobs. 

I wanted to scream at myself to stop. Maddie Bell didn’t cry like this. Maddie Bell didn’t cry at all. She solved every problem with a song and a hug and a glittering smile. And that’s why the world loved her, isn’t it? Because she was simple. Easy to love.

But me?

I wanted to be more. I’d always wanted to be more.

Ever since I was a little girl, sitting cross-legged on the floor of our living room in Savannah, watching old black-and-white movies with my dad, I’d wanted to be someone who made people feel. Not the kind of fake feelings Disney bimbos inspired, but real, deep, messy emotions that stuck to you like smoke in your hair. I wanted people to walk out of a theater thinking about me, my performance, long after the credits rolled. 

But now, staring at my reflection, all I could see was a girl whose biggest accomplishment was playing dress-up on a shitty TV show. A girl who’d never had a real chance to show the world what she could do.

The tabloids are probably right about me. Disney’s Southern Belle. The golden child whose glow was already fading. And maybe they were right. Maybe all I’d ever be was Maddie Bell. Maybe this was as far as I’d get.

The thought made my whole body shake. My mom had always told me I was meant to shine, but now I wondered if she’d only ever meant the kind of shine you could package and sell—cheap glitter that washed off in the first rain.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, smudging my mascara further, and peeled off the dress, letting it fall to the floor in a heap of sequins and polyester. The cold air hit my skin and sparked trails of goosebumps down my arms and stomach.

I stood there, naked, aside from my plain white bra and panties. This time, no one was going to hold my hand. I was eighteen – an adult. If I wanted to make myself into the actress I wanted to be – the actress that fit the name Celia St. James – I’d need to do it myself.

I gave the mirror a half-hearted smile. Let’s get to work.