Chapter 3: Sunset Pictures
Little Red Wagon sat in the middle of West Hollywood like a secret. Despite the location — bars and boutiques a block away, traffic humming constantly on the boulevard — the school itself was remarkably quiet. Mature jacaranda and magnolia trees ringed the property, their canopies thick enough to muffle the city, and from Jason's third-floor balcony the view was almost entirely green, the street beyond invisible behind the leaves.
Jason lay on his back in the dark for a while, staring at the ceiling, letting his thoughts run.
Some of them were from before. Some of them were from now.
He decided overthinking was a waste of time and went to sleep.
He was woken up by birds.
A big old magnolia grew just outside his window, its branches close enough to touch the glass, and something had decided to hold a full choir rehearsal in it at seven in the morning. Jason lay there for a moment, listening, then got up and stepped out onto the balcony.
The air was dry and warm, already carrying that particular LA smell — jasmine, car exhaust, possibility. Through the trees he could see the upper floors of a glass office tower a few blocks over. If he listened he could just make out the low wash of traffic on the boulevard. But standing here, in this pocket of green, the city felt far away.
Good place, he thought.
The school was quiet during the day — the evening program didn't start until five-thirty. Jason laced up his sneakers and jogged slow laps around the courtyard, shaking the rust off. His body wasn't in terrible shape, but it wasn't in great shape either, and he could feel four years of bad decisions in his joints.
He was on his tenth lap when Ms. Carol appeared at the gate carrying a paper bag.
"Morning." She held it out. "Brought you breakfast."
Jason slowed to a stop, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and looked in the bag. Foil-wrapped breakfast burritos, still warm, and a container of fresh fruit.
He smiled. "You remembered."
"Your grandmother used to make them for you every Saturday. Her recipe, green chile and potato." Ms. Carol looked briefly nostalgic. "I used to come over and eat half of them."
They walked back inside together, still talking. Jason showered, ate on his balcony, then came back down to Ms. Carol's office, where the air smelled like fresh coffee and she'd already poured two cups.
She walked him through the school's finances without sugarcoating it.
Little Red Wagon was running at a loss. Expenses consistently outpaced tuition income. The account balance was low and getting lower.
The conversion to an evening program three years ago had cut enrollment by more than half. And the fee structure — weekly billing, no semester commitments, no deposits — kept things accessible for working families but made the revenue unpredictable.
"How many kids are enrolled right now?" Jason asked, wrapping both hands around his mug.
"Thirty. Stays pretty close to that. There's natural turnover — families have a stretch of night shifts, enroll for a few weeks, then pull back when their schedule changes. We don't have the consistent semester-to-semester base that a regular preschool would."
Jason nodded. The model made sense once you understood what it was for. It wasn't really a school — it was a lifeline. Parents working nights, no family nearby, no other options. You paid by the week because you didn't know what next month looked like.
He thought about his grandparents. They'd converted a thriving licensed preschool into this, knowing it would hemorrhage money. He'd never asked them why. He was starting to understand the answer without needing to.
"How much is left in the account?" he asked.
Ms. Carol handed him a printed ledger. "Just over eighty thousand."
She let him read through it, then added quietly: "Six months, maybe seven if we're careful."
Jason closed the folder, finished his coffee, and stood up. "Don't stress about it. I'll make sure the money's there when it needs to be."
He said it calmly, like it was already decided, and headed upstairs.
Back in his room, he sat at the desk, opened the window, and pulled up his laptop.
He had almost nothing in his bank account. He'd checked on the train — less than eight thousand dollars. What he'd just told Ms. Carol was reassurance, not fact. He needed income, and he needed it soon.
He opened a job search site and typed: screenwriter.
He knew this world now — had spent the train ride putting it together. Same country, same city, same streets. But the entire cultural output of the world he'd come from didn't exist here. Every film he'd ever loved, every script he'd admired, every story he knew inside and out — none of it had been made. It was a blank slate the size of cinema history.
The temptation was obvious. He could reconstruct any screenplay he remembered and submit it as his own. The problem was execution. Even if he rewrote Chinatown from memory word-for-word and cold-submitted it to a production company, it would sit in a pile and collect dust. That wasn't cynicism — that was the industry. He'd spent a decade learning exactly how difficult it was to get the right material in front of the right people, even when you had relationships. Without them, a brilliant script was just a document on someone's hard drive.
He needed to get inside somewhere first.
A listing caught his eye.
Sunset Pictures — Seeking 2 Story Developers / Screenwriters. Competitive salary, full benefits. Submit résumé and sample outline.
Jason sat back.
Sunset Pictures.
The name brought something up in him that wasn't his — it was Jake's memory, warm and specific. Saturday mornings on the living room carpet. His grandfather in the armchair behind him, reading the paper. His grandmother on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, watching him watch the screen. Sunset Pictures animation. The logo — a stylized sun dipping behind the Hollywood Hills — meant something's good is about to happen.
In LA, Sunset Pictures was the gold standard. A studio with nearly a century of history, built on animated features, beloved across generations. Nationally, maybe two or three studios could claim the same legacy. Internationally, the name still opened doors.
Please include a brief story outline with your application, the listing said.
Jason drummed his fingers on the desk.
Sunset's bread and butter was animation — original features, award-winning, the kind of movies that got quoted at dinner tables for thirty years. His background was in live-action drama. Different world. But story structure was story structure. The bones were the same.
He thought about what he knew. What he'd seen. What had lodged itself in his memory the way only great concepts do.
There was an anime he'd been obsessed with in the months before everything changed — The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious. He barely remembered the plot. But the idea had never left him: a protagonist who was genuinely, absurdly powerful — and also completely, paralyzingly careful. The comedy and the tension both lived in that gap. Strength without recklessness. Caution without weakness. Two traits that shouldn't coexist, producing something you'd never seen before.
That was the thing about great concepts. You didn't need to remember every scene. You needed to understand why it worked — and then you could build something new on the same foundation.
Jason opened a blank document.
He started the way he always started. Eight columns across the top of a story grid: Character. Desire. Action. Core Problem. Resistance. Outcome. Positive Value. Negative Value. Then ten sequences, each one built around those elements, sketched out in the classic four-movement structure — setup, confrontation, turn, resolution.
It was a formula. Most good things were, underneath. The formula wasn't the story — it was the scaffolding. The story came from what you put on top of it.
The sun moved while he worked. By the time he looked up, it was low and orange behind him, throwing long light across the desk and his notes. He had a ten-thousand-word outline for an animated feature — a comedy-adventure built on a hero whose greatest power and greatest flaw were inseparable.
He attached it to his résumé and sent it to Sunset Pictures' recruitment address.
Then he sat still for a moment. Saved the document. Closed the laptop.
He changed into clean clothes, went downstairs, and nodded to Earl at the gate.
"Heading out, Mr. Jason?"
"Going to visit my grandparents," Jason said. "The cemetery."
Earl straightened slightly, the way people do when something solemn passes through a conversation.
"That's right where you should be going," he said quietly. "That's exactly right."