Reality Star

Chapter 1: Welcome to La La Land

"Welcome to La La Land!" My English professor smiled at the beginning of class, greeting us all with a shout. Today was my first day at UCLA. I was twenty, so a late bloomer for college. Out of high school I didn't know what I wanted to be, so I took two years off and was just now starting college and decided to major in business. Maybe one day I would own my own business, I wasn't sure yet. I was born and raised in Virginia, so coming all the way out to California was a huge deal. I didn't know anyone out here, except now for my roommate who I had barely seen for the past week that I had been moved into my dorm due to her constantly leaving to go party.

"Is this seat taken?" A low whisper pulled me out of my thoughts as I looked up to see a guy trying to quietly sneak in. He had brown hair and dark brown eyes that looked friendly.

I smiled, "Late on your first day?" I joked, matching his whispering tone as I nodded and motioned for him to sit. 

He quickly obliged, seeming relieved to not have been noticed by the professor who was rambling off about the syllabus for this semester.

"I'm Tyler," He smiled at me.

I returned the grin, "I'm Olivia."

.....

After that, the rest of us becoming friends was history. We quickly stuck to each other like glue throughout the first few weeks of college. Tyler was a chemistry major who had just moved to California all the way from Maine. He didn't really know anyone or have any friends either, our friendship was a match made in heaven: two loners find each other.

We currently were sitting on the grass in the courtyard, studying for an upcoming American History test we had on Friday. Turns out, even though our majors were different, Tyler and I had a lot of classes together this semester. I was thankful, because pretty much every class I had someone to sit next to so I didn't look like I was alone.  

"Do you want to go grab dinner or something after?" Tyler asked.

I frowned, "I wish, I literally have less than five dollars in my bank account right now."

"Oh come on, I can pay for you," Tyler offered.

"No way," I shook my head. "I would feel bad. We can go grab dinner at the food hall? I get three swipes a day with my meal plan in there."

Tyler laughed and pretended to gag, "Food from the food hall? What do you want food poisoning? I think I'll pass."

I shrugged and shook my head at him teasingly, "I have yet to get sick at all from there, thank you very much."

"Have you thought about getting a part time job to make some extra cash?" Tyler asked.

I huffed, "I have, I just don't know how I'll balance being a full time student while working."

"Let's just look what is available," Tyler offered and opened up his laptop. I watched as his fingers flew across the keyboard of his Mac laptop.

"Available Work Near Me"

He quickly slammed the enter key as the web pages loaded underneath the results.

I couldn't help but laugh as a bunch of open cast call modeling and acting gigs popped up.

"That is the most Californian results page I have ever seen," I continued to laugh.

Tyler joined in, both us being from Maine and Virginia weren't used to seeing open casting calls like this before.