Ned Hollins ran his finger down the list of auditions. Some of the names on the list he thought he recognized, others he most definitely recognized, others he thought he maybe recognized, and still others he didn’t know at all.

“Him? Really?” He pointed at one of the names on the list.

Jack Wallace, his director, glanced over at the list. “Yes, him.”

“You know there’s no way he’s saying yes.” This was a well-written horror film, with snappy dialogue, sharp social commentary, and a fun twist in the mysterious masked serial killer bit, but still. It was a low-budget horror film. Action stars did not audition for those.

“You never know until you ask,” Jack replied.

Ned sighed, but didn’t mark the name in red pen the way he had many others on the list. As Jack’s assistant, it was his job to do everything from writing coverage on scripts and drafting letters, to making phone calls and acting as liaison between the director and producer. His official title was Director’s Assistant, which was a similar title to Assistant Director, and so people often got them mixed up. Ned, however, was not the one trying to keep everyone on schedule or yelling “quiet on set,” thank God. He wasn’t assertive at all.

He was, however, good at wrangling just one person, which was his college roommate, Jack. Considered an up-and-coming indie director, the common opinion was that Jack Wallace would soon be a person to contend with, a heavy hitter. Both Jack and Ned were hoping that with this new horror film, they’d finally be able to score some big independent film awards like the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Jack might have been the creative one with the Hollywood connections, but Ned was the one with logic and a flair for making lists and actually sticking to schedules, so he’d been helping Jack out since they were making student films on campus.

One of the first decisions that a director had to make was who to cast in the various roles. While casting directors could do a lot of the heavy lifting, the final decision belonged to the director, and every director had a wish list. The wish list was sort of a guideline for the casting director, so that even if they couldn’t get, say, Brad Pitt, they knew that a Brad Pitt-type was what the director wanted.

Ned was currently going through Jack’s wish list and eliminating all the unsuitable actors—the ones who he’d heard were too difficult to work with, the ones who would ask for more than they could afford to pay, the ones who would laugh and slam the door in their faces if they asked, and the ones who were too busy or had prior commitments. Ned made a habit of keeping track of these things. For instance, Jack wanted this one actor who starred as a high schooler on a popular network teen drama show. Ned sent a quick text to one of his friends who was a PA for the show, and got back a response: yup, that actor would be filming season three when Jack was shooting their horror film, so the actor wouldn’t be available. Ned drew a red line through that actor’s name.

“Who are all of these people?” he asked, indicating the names he didn’t recognize.

“Oh, those are all acting students from our college. Professor Thomas gave them to me. She said they’re all top notch. I figured I would let them audition.”

“For the lead role?”

“Yeah, why not?” Jack asked. “Horror movies are famous for casting unknowns.”

“Not if they’re a still relatively unknown director and they need to bolster their cast to get attention, they don’t,” Ned pointed out. “We need someone who audiences will at least recognize, someone who we know has experience, and can handle such a psychologically taxing role.”

The main character was a guy who struggled with schizophrenia, who had to battle the masked murderer while struggling to deal with his own distorted experiences with reality. There was a bit of tense work at one point involving trying to get the character’s much-needed medication, which Ned thought was particularly well-written. But then, Jack was his best friend, and Jack had written the script, so he was biased.

“This is Thomas we’re talking about,” Jack replied. “She’s not going to send us half-assed guys, she’s going to send us her best.”

“They’re still just students, Jack. Remember some of your first films compared to your last one? We want someone that we know will be able to handle this with the maturity that it deserves. If we don’t have a good actor for the character of Tyler, then we have nothing.”

Jack pouted. He was very good at that, and Ned was very, very glad that he wasn’t at all attracted to Jack, because otherwise Jack’s pouting would have gotten him whatever he wanted. Fortunately, Jack was short, skinny, and dark-haired, not at all Ned’s type. Ned was short, skinny, and dark-haired himself and maybe it was something about his genetics, something in his DNA yelling hey, don’t mate with someone who has the same genes and create a bunch of inbred babies, but he tended to go for broad, blonde-haired, jock-type men. Which had been a problem in high school seeing as all the classmates who had fit that bill had been straight, but now he was in the blessed land of Los Angeles where if he tossed a balled-up piece of script out the window it would hit ten gay men on the way down.

You’d think it would have improved his chances of getting a boyfriend, but nope.

The point was that Jack’s pouting got him nowhere.

“I’ve narrowed it down to five guys for you.”

“Can we at least audition the students?” Jack asked. “Some of them are seniors. Who knows what other projects they might have under their belts by the time they graduate and we start filming?”

Ned bit down hard on his lip to hold in his sigh. He looked at the list again. He crossed out all the names except for the five actors who had open schedules, were not too expensive, had experience, and who might have enough of a fanbase to help generate interest. The student names, the ones he hadn’t recognized, numbered only six.

Eleven guys. That wasn’t too bad at all. He could make phone calls to the five heavier hitters and see about getting through to their agents, work those auditions out around their schedules, and cram the other six into one audition day with the casting director. “Fine. But I still say we need someone with more experience.”

“I knew you’d come around,” Jack said, clapping Ned on the shoulder. “Hey, who knows, maybe one of them will be single.”

Ned glared at him. “If you try to set me up with an actor again, I will rip your arm off and beat you to death with it.”

He’d learned quickly that while he enjoyed balancing out the more creative personality of a director with his own logic, setting up the parameters, so to speak, actors were another breed entirely. Jack had set him up on a few dates with actor friends and they had all gone horribly. They were overly emotional, narcissistic, attention seeking, and annoying as fuck. No way was Ned dealing with another date like those. He’d stick to seeing if maybe there was a nice bartender or PA who also happened to have movie star looks that he could bang instead.

“I won’t, I promise!” Jack said, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Really, you should just go down to The Abbey or something one Friday night.”

“If I was looking for a one-night-stand, maybe,” Ned said, inwardly shuddering at the thought of trying to navigate the gay bars of West Hollywood. He was an introvert, which meant being around a lot of people quickly drained his energy, and the loud music tended to give him a headache. “But you know how well those tend to go.”

“I don’t, actually,” Jack joked. This was true: the few times Ned had tried to pick up a one-night-stand were in college, and Jack was a notorious lightweight who was usually passed out in someone’s bathtub by that point.

Jack grabbed the list from Ned and looked at it. Ned thanked God or whoever else was listening that Jack tended to jump from subject to subject without warning, and they could now leave the painful subject of Ned’s nonexistent love life behind and focus on the task at hand: casting their lead. “Thanks for narrowing this down.”

“Someday you’ll be a big-time director with hundreds of famous actors just dying for a chance to audition for you,” Ned said reassuringly. “Until then, this is what we’ve got, and it’s a pretty good list.”

“Set up a time and date for the auditions,” Jack said. “Mary’s already working on casting the smaller parts, so we’ll just need to talk to her about what she thinks would be best for our lead actress.”

Mary, their casting director, was an incredibly sweet woman who still managed to terrify Ned for some reason. It was like she could rip his heart out if she wanted to, but had simply decided that it wasn’t worth the effort.

“You need to leave in ten minutes to make your meeting with the producers.”

“Crap.” Jack scrambled to get his stuff together. Ned handed him the manila folder with all of the documents in it.

“These have everything you need.”

“I don’t know how I’d survive without you,” Jack admitted. “Wish me luck!”

“You don’t need it, you have talent.”

Jack pulled a face but hurried out the door of their shared apartment, leaving Ned to organize the auditions. Out of curiosity, he decided to look up the six students that their former acting professor had suggested to Jack. They’d provide headshots the day of, but Ned liked to know as much as possible in advance. His college administrators were lazy, and he could still use his login to get into the student registry database. A quick search of the names revealed the six students. Three of them still looked too young for the roll, either not yet filled out or with baby fat still clinging to them, a lack of lines on their faces, an unmarked map of their lives. One of them just didn’t look right, far too…preppy, was the word. The fifth one was not only good-looking but had the right sort of vibe, although it was hard to tell with student I.D. pictures. The sixth…

Jesus Christ. This was an I.D. picture? Wasn’t everyone supposed to look horrible in those? How did this guy manage to look like he was auditioning to be on the cover of a magazine? He looked like a fucking linebacker, too, or something, like he should be out on the football field running drills rather than in a theatre. All the theatre guys that Ned had known in school were on the skinnier side, even though many of them were good-looking. Shit, this guy looked like he could bench press Ned if he felt like it.

Ned checked the name again. James Novak. It was a good acting name, unlike, say, Daniel Huckabee, one of the other guys on the list. Not that actors necessarily needed to change their names, as had been the tradition in the Golden Age of Hollywood, but if a name didn’t roll off the tongue with ease, actors would still use their middle name as their last name or some such nonsense. This guy wouldn’t have to do that. And he had the looks. Damn, did he have the looks.

Right. Student. Although, he looked a little old for a twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old. Now Ned was seriously wondering how old the guy was? Jesus, Ned himself was twenty-eight; if he wanted to sleep with a twenty-three-year-old, then that was his own business, five years wasn’t that big of a difference. But why was he thinking about a guy when he was just staring at his picture!?

Taking a deep, steadying breath, Ned stood up, closed the internet window, and set about calling people to set up the auditions. This was ridiculous.