Take the Risk (For The Arena #2)

Chapter 1

ZARIAH

NOT WITH YOUR SKILL SET

The day I scored the summer scholarship to attend screenwriting classes in Atlanta, I blubbered like a baby. Barely any incoming juniors were selected; it was a one-in-a-million shot. I was so grateful for the chance.

As soon as my spring semester at Marrs ended, I left for Georgia. It’d been a long time since I was away from my family, especially Elijah. And I was so nervous to leave him behind.

My brother is a six-foot-one hurricane who shatters everything in his path.

Traveling to Atlanta offered something new—three states between us for my mental well-being and his physical health.

I love him, I’d do anything for him, but sometimes he pissed me off so bad I wanted to push him into traffic.

For three months, I didn’t have to worry about my brother. No frantic calls from our parents demanding to know if their precious baby boy was okay. No racing to pick him up whenever he’d inevitably landed himself in trouble. Just time to focus on me and my future.

I spent the summer working on a short film for one of my classes.

The winning film would be selected to intern for a big TV writer, Winter Arkapaw.

I had no chance against the senior scriptwriters, but I didn’t care.

I poured everything I had into the short horror film anyway.

It was a real opportunity to work on my craft in a professional environment. I wasn’t going to waste it.

Our final week was dedicated to watching everyone’s work, and my film was scheduled for the last day of class. I waited with bated breath, watching my professor’s reaction when the unveiling commenced.

She stared, arms crossed. For a few minutes, she didn’t budge, then she returned to her desk to write something down.

Every minute crawled by, an eternity sitting in that dark classroom. When it ended, my classmates leaned over to congratulate me, all smiles, while Professor Wright stayed silent. Our rubrics were passed out, mine was the only one that arrived folded in half.

I failed.

Everybody congratulated each other filing out of class, while I stared at the piece of paper, numb.

When the class emptied, I approached her desk, pleading. “I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

She fanned herself, the room hot and humid with the windows open. “I didn’t feel anything.”

“Feel anything?” I repeated.

“The purpose of art is to feel. I didn’t feel anything, so you didn’t pass.”

“I spent twenty hours animating the exploding alien title sequence—”

“I didn’t feel anything.” She shrugged. “And I don’t think you did either.”

The classes were compounded into a transferable group. With a single failing grade, I couldn’t count any of them. My summer in Atlanta would be for nothing.

“Art isn’t something magical,” she explained, unperturbed by my devastated silence.

“Horror’s no different. We don’t care about the nameless aliens or monsters or demons—that’s the flourish.

We care about the characters in dire peril, the fear, the anxiety, the monsters with something to lose. The feelings.”

I gripped my binders. “How do I pass this class?”

“You can’t. Not at your skill level.”

Oh my god, this woman was sent to this planet to destroy me. Disappointment was a punch to my gut.

My sneakers squealed against the floor as I left her office. I’d cry on my two-hour flight back to Houston.

Fuck Atlanta, I wanted to go home.

Angry tears slipped down. I wiped them away, shoving open the door to leave the building. This was it, wasn’t it? Was it? I stalled in the stifling Georgia heat, anger gripping me as tight as I gripped my binders.

Cursing under my breath, I hauled ass back to the classroom.

Professor Wright watched me storm to her desk. “Yes?”

“How do I get people to feel things?” I demanded.

“You really want to learn?”

“Yes.”

“Go back to the fundamentals. You’re not ready for exploding aliens; it won’t touch the audience. Start at square one.”

“Which is…?”

“The most popular genre." She clasped her hands together. "Romance.”

I thought she was joking and waited for the punchline. There was none. “Romance?”

“You get better at drawing by learning anatomy, you get better at writing with romance. It forces you to feel—”

“I—I like romance movies, but I can’t write something like that.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“No.” I hesitated, letting my answer linger. “No.”

“You said no twice.”

My cheeks heated, a traitorous, unforgivable thing for them to do, and I struggled to remain nonchalant.

“It wasn’t love,” I finally answered. “We were fifteen. Teenagers are hormonal and so lonely. We were saying ‘I love you’ so fast—we barely knew each other.” I picked at the plastic lining of my binder. “It wasn’t love. It was messy and toxic and—and not a happy story.”

Professor Wright snapped her fingers. “There it is.”

“What?”

“I’m feeling something. Feeling a lot of things actually. So are you.”

“It wasn’t Romeo and Juliet—”

“No, but you were a child. I bet you weren’t prepared for any of it.” She motioned to me. “This is what you give the audience, something for them to experience with you. Without that, say goodbye to being a screenwriter.”

I gave her a long look. “I can’t pass the class?”

“You can reapply next year.”

“But for this class. There’s nothing I can do?”

Professor Wright was quiet for a moment, reaching for her purse. “Tell you what. I’ll give you an incomplete for the grade. Send me a script before next summer’s internship, that’s next May, and if it wows me, you’ll pass.”

For a moment, relief flooded my senses. My professor achieved the impossible—she grew a heart!

Yet the longer I stood there, the more I thought about the task ahead. I’d have to write a script to make her feel something when I had failed to do so in a class where I had access to her help three days a week.

Oh, god.

There was a very real possibility I could fail this class all over again.