Final draft

18-year-old Laila Piedra doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and doesn't sneak into the over-21s club on Canal Street.

The only sort of risk Laila enjoys is the peril she writes for the characters in her stories: epic sci-fi worlds full of quests, forbidden love, and robots.

Her creative writing teacher has always told her she has a special talent.

But three months before her graduation, he dies suddenly - and is replaced by Nadiya Nazarenko, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who sees nothing at all special about Laila's writing.

Sadistically critical and perpetually unimpressed, Dr. Nazarenko thinks that to write anything worthwhile requires suffering.

At first, Nazarenko's eccentric assignments seem absurd.

But before long, Laila grows obsessed with gaining the woman's approval.

Dr. Nazarenko has led Laila to believe that she must choose between perfection and sanity.