Sasha Wallace was the only other girl and the only person I recognized—just three years my senior, she’d already featured in a few made-for-TV Marlowe adaptations that we’d studied in class. I took an immediate liking to her from the momentshe’d clasped my hands (her skin was soft, her fingers long and slender, but it was her perfume, pomelo and violets, that made me take note of her, reminding me of something I couldn’t quite place) and said: “Dear god,twogirls in a horror? But which of us will die first? And will we be shagging in a car when the blade strikes to punish us for our harlotry?”
And, of course, there was Oisín. Who’d set all this in motion, his eyes pinning me in place as he begged for my company.
He was here, as committed to the film as I was, but so utterly carefree regardless. In the car rides to Vienna, he’d turn the radio up and sing along badly and loudly, straining his voice like it was funny, and it wasn’t until suddenly it was, and then I couldn’t breathe for laughter. He went to the gym before work, turning up still damp from the shower, those curls plastered to his forehead in little flicks that he’d shake at me, the icy drops spraying onto my skin as I shrieked. One day the rain called off our shoot, and he insisted we make the most of it, taking us to Salzburg, where we got immediately lost before wandering into a tiny little pub where the only space was at the corner of the bar. I hopped onto its counter as he pressed against my legs, and I wanted to keep the weight of him there forever.
I’ll admit I was attracted to him from the moment I met him. But I didn’t trulywantanything until weeks into filming, when I fell in love with the person I became around him: I danced on tables, I skinny-dipped in the Danube, and I saidyesagain and again and again.
And I was giving the best performance of my life, all at the same time.
If the students of CADS could have seen me, they wouldn’t have recognized me.
I’m not sure when we crossed that line from teasing mischievousness to a palpableuseveryone else on set seemed to see before we did. I thought maybe Oisín was like this with everyone: the complete undivided attention when I spoke, the offers to run lines late, the compliments on my performance—and god, he was always so good at that. The right words, the heavy weight. He was a leading man, and he could deliver a line like a woodsman might levy an ax: a single blow, an assured buckle.
On the night we filmed my death scene, he filled my hotel room with roses and left a note:I’m sorry I killed you today. Let me make it up to you?And I realized there was no going back from this.
“You seem happy here,” Ivan commented the day before Oisín finally kissed me in a hazy sort of rain beneath the lamplight of a Viennese café. “It looks good on you.”
I was. So very happy.
And we all knew we were making something special.
Ivan had provided a brilliant script, but together it came alive. We sparked. We soared. We created the sort of chemistry that could transform a low-rate movie into a hit. And with a brilliant one, well, our hopes were high.
There was a publicist on board already. There was talk of whether Sundance or Cannes would be better for the film’sdebut. They were not even discussing if theycouldget it into those festivals,just which one to pick.
Dreadbasewouldn’t just be the horror movie of the year, it might bethemovie of the decade.
But then the rain fell harder. Equipment was damaged. Sets closed. Filming was delayed. Extended. First only by a week, but then there were retakes and new arcs Ivan wanted to add, and finally I had a decision to make.
“I can prioritize your scenes,” Ivan told me. “I can even rewrite some things. We can fly you out at weekends. We’ll make it work, Nadine.”
“No, I’m in this. All of this.”
My decision was so instantaneous I didn’t even need to think about it. Here was where I belonged—not the lonely house of my childhood or the green-gray hills surrounding it, not the school I was pushing myself so desperately to feel I deserved, not with girls like Zoe and Maisie to tell me I didn’t and Harper to make me believe it—I belonged here. Sat before the screen in my grandfather’s cellar, inching across a theater stage, andherein front of these lenses, on this set.
Ivan bit his lip, hesitating. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“You didn’t. You asked me to be Adeline. Now I’m asking you to let me be Adeline.”
CADS began its new term in September, and I was on a set in Austria making the film that was going to change my life.
It was a risk, but that’s what the industry was.
And I was finally bold enough to take it.
A FATAL FEUD
A CADS production ofThe Glass Menagerie, Harper Moore stepping into the light, her eyes wide as she holds a shawl tight around herself. She seems fevered. Hopeful. The camera catches the edges of the stage, and this time there is no shadow lurking in the wings.
Lewis Stamper:Maisie wasn’t invited back to CADS for a second year, and Zoe and I had started dating that summer. But Harper seemed unbothered by all that. She easily found new people to hang out with—it was Nadine she could never seem to replace.
Zoe Holland:It was nearly Christmas by the time Harper stopped jumping every time the door opened, like she thought Nadine might walk through and make it interesting for her again.
Nadine Heywood stands next to Ivan as he shows her script changes. She runs and leaps past a quicklyswiveling camera. She leans against a wall, in that infamous jumpsuit, covered in blood as another man closes in.
Casper Short:Nadine on that set was a sight to behold. Outside of the set? It was like watching someone come into themselves. She was a little naive, a little nervous, but by the end of filming I couldn’t remember where I’d even got that impression from. Some teenagers take gap years to find themselves; Nadine Heywood shot an award-winning film.
Oisín Connellan:Nadine and I had been dating for maybe two weeks when she dropped out of school. I think I was the only one begging her not to. Everyone else took it in their stride. A few weeks later, when I found out more about Harper, I wondered if that was the real reason why. If maybe Nadine was so shaken from being bullied by that girl she didn’t want to go back.
