Page 16 of Shadowing Her Stalker

“And all this time you were in school?”

She nodded. “I booked a few local ads, but never a national campaign. I was too generic for most casting directors.”

He blinked, taken aback. The woman had to know she was a knockout, but her unflinchingly harsh assessment of her looks sounded too clinical to be false modesty.

“You’re hardly a generic anything.”

The words he intended as a compliment came out awkward, stilted by his desire not to cross any professional boundaries. When he chanced a peek at her, he found her wearing the serene half smile she wore on the app’s welcome screen.

“Not only is he a protector, but also he’s a poet,” she mocked, eyes crinkling with humor.

Heat prickled his neck. Determined to brazen out his embarrassment, he shot her a quelling look. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. And thank you,” she said, sounding thoroughly amused. “But pretty enough by Arkansas standards means I wasn’t even in the ballpark in LA.” Before he could argue the point further, she continued. “I was telling Tom all about this breathing technique I was using to help deal with nerves, and he said something about how it wasn’t only actors who needed coping skills. The next thing I knew, I was cooking up a short script about how I got into meditation and the practical applications.” She shrugged. “We purposefully omitted as much of the new-age terminology as possible and replaced it with some of the corporate catchphrases we were hearing all around us. Soon, we had about ten sessions written up, each focusing on a particular stressor or coping technique we thought would be helpful. I recorded them on my phone sitting in my closet using an earphone mic. And now you know the real LYYF origin story.”

“Why were you sitting in a closet?” he asked, perplexed by this odd little detail.

“Sound absorption,” she explained. “It had this nasty beige carpet left over from the nineties. We hung blankets on the walls and pushed most of the clothes back so they wouldn’t be too close around me, but yeah. It worked.”

“I guess so,” he said, impressed.

“By the time we graduated, the guys were off and running with the life management idea. I was still making the rounds, doing auditions and waiting tables.”

“Where were they getting their money?”

“Chris had money. Trust fund kid. Tom’s parents supported him too. His dad was a surgeon and did well enough, but it wasn’t inherited money like the Sharpes’. But Tom’s parents were the competitive type. They wanted to keep up with the Sharpes, so they pretty much gave him an unlimited line of credit.”

“And your folks...” he trailed off.

“Are rich in land and not much more. You know how it is,” she said with a shrug.

And he did. There were plenty of families like hers around Stuttgart. Rice farmers with large stretches of valuable farmland who scrimped, saved and relied on government subsidies to keep from selling parcels off as the modern world closed in around them.

Cara continued her story. “When those first ten sessions started getting more clicks than some of the other sessions, they asked if I wanted to do more.” She shrugged. “I wrote another ten and people seemed to like those too.”

“And eventually, they asked if you wanted to be their partner?”

Pressing the tip of her tongue to her upper lip, she shook her head hard. “Uh, no,” she said with a sharp little laugh. “They asked me to write and record more. I had two waitressing jobs, was pulling some temp hours doing reception work and still trying to land a part, any part. I told them I didn’t have time.”

“I see.”

“A couple weeks passed, then Chris called me back saying they would pay me.”

“Did they?”

She nodded. “A thousand bucks for another ten sessions. It doesn’t sound like much now, and in context, but at the time it was the difference between making rent or buying a plane ticket home.” She sighed, twisting her fingers together in her lap. “But, naturally, they were always more focused on the technology than the content. When the new sessions dropped and users started asking for more, they didn’t want to spend time and money on developing content to be delivered regularly. Chris was the one who suggested they cut me in as a partner.”

“Sounds like a big leap. For all of you,” he added.

“It was a great deal for them. Particularly if the app didn’t find traction. I was responsible for writing, producing and performing all consumer-facing wellness and lifestyle content. Research, scripting, recording...everything. We used to like to joke about how they made the widgets, I made the rest.”

He let out a low whistle. “I had no idea.”

“Most people don’t.” She gave a short laugh. “At the time, I was still auditioning for my big Hollywood career, so I was happy to let them handle what little press we got for LYYF. Since the only exposure we got in the early days was on tech blogs and forums, the narrative developed from there.”

“Chris and Tom went on to become tech stars and you were cast as the wannabe actress who finagled her way into a very lucrative partnership.”

She nodded, but her smile was self-deprecating. “I can’t complain. It’s been the most celebrated role of my entire acting career.”

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