Chapter Six: Between Pages and Auditions
The final year of high school settled in like a storm that wouldn't stop moving. Seniors were buzzing about college applications, SAT scores, and acceptance letters. James, meanwhile, was staring at a very different horizon.
Each night his desk lamp glowed long after his parents went to bed. Notebooks piled high, filled with fragments of dialogue, half-drawn characters, and scribbled notes that only he could decode. For years, he'd carried scraps of ideas, but now he was shaping something bigger. Something that mattered.
His friends noticed.
"Hey, Chicago," Lisa teased during rehearsal one afternoon, waving his leather notebook in the air. "You scribble on this thing more than you practice your lines. What are you writing, a manifesto?"
James lunged for it with a grin. "Give it back, Lisa."
Maya leaned closer, curiosity gleaming. "Come on, just tell us. Is it a play? A novel? A love letter?"
"None of your business," James said, tucking the notebook under his arm. He wasn't ready to share. Not yet.
Eric smirked, patting his shoulder. "Whatever it is, you better finish it. Otherwise you'll end up like me—half a script, zero motivation."
James only smiled faintly. I'll finish it, he thought.
---
Outside the walls of high school, the real world of Hollywood beckoned. Flyers tacked on coffee shop boards, notices in the back pages of the LA Weekly, murmurs in acting class—everywhere James turned, there were open calls.
His first auditions were disasters. Standing in cramped waiting rooms with dozens of other young hopefuls, all with perfect hair and sharp headshots, James felt like a grain of sand on a beach. Casting directors barely glanced up before muttering, "Thank you, next."
Still, he kept going.
One Saturday, Eric tagged along for support.
"Dude, you're insane," Eric said as they sat in a crowded hallway, surrounded by kids rehearsing lines under their breath. "You could be at the beach. Or literally anywhere else."
James shrugged. "This is where I belong."
Eric studied him for a moment, then shook his head. "Yeah. You're crazy. But you're serious. That's what's scary about you."
---
The weight of school, drama rehearsals, workouts, writing, and auditions pressed down like bricks. But James thrived in the chaos.
Each morning, he jogged before sunrise, the cool California air filling his lungs. At school, he rehearsed with the drama club, slipping easily into whatever role he was handed. In the afternoons, he scribbled notes into his screenplay during class when the teachers weren't looking. Nights were spent memorizing audition lines or rewriting scenes.
Helen watched him one evening, her arms crossed as he returned from a jog, sweat dripping from his brow.
"You push yourself too hard," she said softly.
James wiped his face with a towel. "If I don't, someone else will get there first."
Michael, leaning in the doorway with a stack of manuscripts from the publishing house, raised an eyebrow. "Ambition's good, son. But don't burn yourself out before the curtain even rises."
James offered a tired smile. "Don't worry. I've got more fuel than people think."
---
By spring of 1996, whispers reached him—an audition for a horror film called Scream. Another for a Boston-based indie project with two unknown writer-actors attached.
James's pulse raced as he jotted the notices into his notebook. These weren't just scraps anymore. These were real doors.
For the first time, he felt the future pressing close enough to touch.
And with a half-finished script waiting on his desk and auditions piling on the horizon, James Williams knew: the stage was widening.