Guidance

FADE IN on Jamie, an 18-year-old stunner with haunted eyes, hunched over her kitchen table, scribbling homework notes from a dog-eared textbook. Afternoon light slants through the blinds like prison bars. A screeching car roars into the driveway, brakes slamming like a gunshot. Heart pounding, she snatches her books and bolts upstairs, dodging her father's drunken lurch through the front door. The brute, face twisted in rage, pounds the door shut and bellows for the 'bitch' to drag her ass down and fix his dinner. CUT to Jamie huddled in her room's shadowed corner, knees to chest, breath ragged. The door explodes inward—her father storms in, swigging from a whiskey bottle, eyes bloodshot and feral. He yanks his belt free with a sharp crack, looming over her trembling form. 'Downstairs, now, slut—or I'll make you regret it.' CUT TO TITLE: GUIDANCE Jamie trudges down the cracked sidewalk in her crisp school uniform, books clutched like a shield. Her gaze is vacant, lost in a fog of terror, nearly colliding with a stranger as she drifts onward, a ghost in broad daylight. CUT to the dim teacher's lounge, fluorescent buzz humming like distant thunder. Mr. Harris, the slick guidance counselor played by Tommy Pistol, picks at his solitary lunch when a colleague slides in, tray clattering. They trade banal shop talk—lesson plans, burnout—before the teacher drops his bomb: Jamie Lopez, that sharp-witted homeroom whiz, is unraveling. Straight-A's tanking, her fire snuffed out this term. 'Home life's poisoning her,' he mutters. 'College apps loom—can you probe, Harris? Get her back on track?' The counselor nods, a predatory glint flickering in his eye, already scheming his twisted intervention.