Free Blonde Ambition by Zoey Dean

“Leslie N.” Sam tipped the deliveryman ten bucks. He gave her ten bucks’ worth of thanks and left.
    Sam opened the bag and extracted two plastic-plate-shaped containers, a bottle of red juice, and utensils. “Power Eating,” she confided to Anna. “Don’t tell
anyone.
”
    “What’s Power Eating?” So often Anna—who’d traveled all over the world—felt like Los Angeles was an alien universe, where she needed a full-time cultural guide in order to understand the natives.
    Sam took the plastic top off one of the containers and sniffed it. “Ugh. Rabbit food. It’s like the Zone, but better. They cook all the food you eat and deliver it to you four times a day. You never have to shop and you never have to cook. But the best part is they deliver it in bags from fake restaurants so no one would suspect you’re on it.” She forked into an already cut-up chicken breast, put it to her lips, and tasted it. “God, that sucks.”
    “Why don’t you just eat regular food?” Anna asked. “I woke up today, I looked in the mirror, and I almost barfed,” Sam said. She held up a hand quickly. “And please don’t start with the ‘you look fine’ bullshit. I’m a cow. So I had my dad’s assistant call Power Eating for me, and I told her to register me under the name Leslie Newsom. Whoever she is.” She took a bite of green salad. “Bleech! This tastes like ass.”
    Anna had to laugh. She really did like the girl, even if Sam did keep some strange company sometimes. “One more question. How’d the school paper get its name? The
Well
? That’s kind of strange.”
    Sam speared another cube of chicken and forked it into her mouth. “There’s crude oil under our high school. And a working oil well. Up behind the maintenance yards. That big building, covered with paintings of flowers?”
    Anna’s jaw fell open. “You’re kidding.”
    “Nope. Turns out Jed Clampett could have done his hunting out here.”
    “Jed Clampett?” For the umpteenth time since she’d arrived in L.A., Anna felt like an idiot.
    “
Beverly Hillbillies?
Sixties sitcom? Mirror image to Paris Hilton’s
The Simple Life
?”
    “I am totally lost,” Anna admitted.
    “And you’re going to work in TV?” Sam smiled sadly. “Nothing makes any sense in this town. Welcome to Hollywood.”
    The character of Mike walked across the desert floor—the sound was good enough to pick up the rhythmic
crunch-crunch
of his steps. Then he turned, crossed his arms, and addressed the camera.
    “People can call it passion. Or lust. Or obsession. I don’t really care. When I’m with her, touching her, is the only time I feel completely alive. If you’ve never felt the power of that, then I feel sorry for you.”
    He held his gaze steady, focused on something in the distance. Then he turned and walked out of the frame, so that the camera took in the expanse of the Palm Springs desert—the lifeless landscape and the soaring sandstone mountain. Sam had made a last-minute edit at Anna’s suggestion: rather than ending with another long shot of Veronique’s spa, the last image was the glorious expanse of the desert itself. The Segovia music came up and mixed with the song of the desert mockingbird until the mockingbird overwhelmed the guitar entirely.
    Then the credits started to roll:
Directed by: Samantha Sharpe. Written by: Anna Percy.
And a huge, rolling wave of applause and whoops swept through Mrs. Breckner’s English class.
    As the lights came up, Anna could see that even Mrs. Breckner and Dee were clapping. In fact, the only person who wasn’t was Cammie.
    Mrs. Breckner nodded at Sam, then at Anna. “Really fine work on
Gatsby.
Maybe this is the start of something great for the two of you.”
    “We’re already on to our next project,” Sam said. “This one’s a feature called
Three-Way.
Anna’s in the middle of the screenplay. My dad’s financing, and we’ll be shooting in the spring.”
    Electric excitement swept through the