Serendipity // Camren

Chapter 28

Pranking is a time-honored tradition on sets where hours are long and tempers inevitably grow short. It helps keep things lively, it keeps the actors and crew laughing, and it builds a sense of camaraderie amongst everybody working on the film. It is an unavoidable aspect of acting and one that Lauren Jauregui had, to this point, accepted with open arms. Her years spent under Sue Sylvester's tutelage had taught her plenty of ways to attack, and she rarely if ever hesitated to put her skills to good use.

"No fucking way," Lauren swore softly.

It was one thing for her to be pranked. She expected it. She could take it. She knew how to retaliate. But they had pranked Camila. Her Camila. Sweet, innocent, beautiful, loving Camila. Of course, she had to admit that it was a good one, there was no denying that – it had to have cost a mint to pull off and it was done spectacularly – but still. Going after Camila was incredibly uncalled for, so far as she was concerned.

"Seriously. No fucking way," she muttered, hands on her hips, as she surveyed Camila's trailer that had been covered in one of those plastic wrap things that businesses put on cars to make them mobile billboards. But this one was a picture of her kissing Camila on the pier. It was impressive, if not more than a little excessive, and she groaned as she stepped forward to inspect the trailer and realized that whoever had wrapped the trailer had also applied the wrap over the door handle so that Camila couldn't even get inside. "How in the hell..."

Camila smiled at their larger-than-life likenesses and dug in her purse for her phone so she could take a picture of it. "That really is a good picture, though. I wonder if whoever did this will be able to get me an eight-by-ten."

Lauren smiled in spite of herself. Of course, Camila's first thought would be to try and get a copy of the picture. "I'll have Jack try and hunt one down for you, okay?"

Camila beamed. "Thanks. I guess I'm using your trailer today," she said, a soft smile tweaking her lips as she snapped a picture of the prankster's handiwork. Stuff like this didn't happen in the theatre, too many divas and attitudes floating around. If anything like this had been done on Broadway... well, suffice to say the tantrum would have been epic. But here, in the more laid back atmosphere of a movie set, it was, well, there was really no other word for it but fun.

Lauren looked over at her trailer, which was, by all outward appearances, completely untouched, and groaned. If the guys got Camila, who they didn't even really know, she was fucked. Because it was almost the same exact crew like the one that worked on Stolen Thunder and she had gotten most of them pretty good while they'd been shooting that one. Thunder was filmed during the monsoon season in Mexico because the movie was about modern-day pirates who utilized the weather to their advantage while hijacking private yachts, which was all well and good, but the daily storms were sometimes fierce enough to force them to put a halt to their filming and seek shelter. Too much downtime meant that there was more than enough time to come up with creatively over-the-top pranks to fill their days, and she had embraced the opportunity for a little fun with open arms.

She approached her trailer slowly, carefully, with measured steps much like somebody walking through a minefield who was anticipating their next step to be the one that blows them off the face of the earth. She tentatively touched the door handle and quickly pulled her hand back in case it had been electrified because, yes, that had been a prank somebody pulled on the Thunder set. No, she wasn't the one who had pulled it. She did, however, make the propmaster who had set it up to teach her all about it so that she would be able to replicate the shocking surprise – pun intended – if ever given the opportunity. "Thank god."

"What?" Camila asked, completely oblivious to the level of pranking she'd just been thrown into.

"Nothing," Lauren muttered as she opened the door. She peeked inside the dark trailer, somebody had closed the blinds that she normally kept open, and counted to ten, waiting for something to move or make a sound.