Read Online Winter Jacket: Finding Home by Eliza Lentzski - Free Book Online Page A

They’re an invisible minority. But it works,” Troian shrugged. “And actually, it adds another level of intrigue with mutants trying to pass as human because humans are higher up on the food chain.”
    “Like the movie Pinky .”
    “The what?”
    “Seriously? You’ve never heard of Pinky? Starring Jeanne Crain as a light-skinned African American woman trying to pass as white in a pre-civil rights America?”
    “Nope.”
    I shook my head in disapproval. “For people who work in Hollywood, you and your cohort know very little about the movies.”
    Troian patted my knee. “I guess it’s a good thing you’re here to educate us.”
    “Quiet on the set!” someone yelled.
    Troian leaned closer to me. “Okay, so I want you to listen to how the dialogue plays out; we may have to rework the cadence of the scenes,” she quietly instructed. “You should also be observing the chemistry between the actors; think about their strengths and weaknesses that we can highlight or hide in later episodes.”
    I nodded. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was determined to do a good job at it.
    “Marker. Scene four, Take two. Rolling.”
    Jackson, the director, peered into the monitor that showed what the camera was shooting. “Action!” he called out.
    I tried to follow the scene as it played out for us on set. Paige was at school, the one place where humans and mutants co-mingled. Much of the rest of the world resembled the Jim Crow South—a world of “separate but equal” where nothing was actually equal. The schools had been recently desegregated, using the language of an earlier time period, but humans and mutants still sat on different sides of the classroom, used different bathrooms, and drank out of separate drinking fountains at school.
    My mind began to wander as I considered plot points for future episodes. I thought about the symbolic moment when Paige crossed that interspecies line to sit on the side of the classroom with the other mutants.
    “Moving on!” a man with a long beard yelled out, jolting me from my thoughts.
    The other writers and even Troian visibly relaxed at his words.
    “What does that mean?” I whispered.
    “It means we’re one scene closer to going home,” Troian noted. “Hey, do you want to come over for dinner tonight? Nik’s making stuff on the grill.”
    “Do I have a choice?” I would never turn down a free meal, but I liked to give my friend a hard time.
    “Nope. But I thought I’d pretend to be nice.”
    “First time for everything,” I teased back.
     
     
    At the end of the workday, Troian drove us to her apartment, which I had yet to see. The studio had originally hosted Troian and Nikole in a lavish, Beverly Hills mansion when they’d first made the move to California. They’d been able to live on the property rent free, courtesy of the studio, until they’d found something more permanent. I knew Troian had been hoping to buy a house and establish some real roots, but because of the uncertainty of the job, they’d opted for a rental property, also located in the same area as the production lot.
    Even though our apartment complexes weren’t too far away from each other—only a few miles—they might as well have been worlds apart. Unlike my dated, worn apartment village, the high rise where Troian and Nikole lived was sleek and modern and clean.
    A staff member in a crisp polo shirt welcomed us when we entered the ground-level lobby. “Welcome home, Ms. Smith,” he greeted with a pearly veneer smile.
    “Thanks, Robert,” Troian returned.
    I followed my friend deeper into the belly of the building. Warm sunshine poured unfiltered through the floor-to-ceiling glass, fighting with the central air conditioning for dominance, and a water feature trickled down one wall like a built-in waterfall.
    “You basically live in a gated community,” I remarked as we made our way to a bank of elevators.
    “It’s to keep riffraff like you out,” she fired back.
    We