Passion

Control Is a Survival Instinct

Survival

In the high-stakes ecosystem of Bay View Elementary, Janet Rotham performs the role of “Competent Mother” with military precision. For Janet, organization is not a hobby; it is a fortress built to keep judgment out and the chaos of her divorce from seeping in. She moves through the world as a series of checklists and defensive maneuvers, viewing her own emotions as liabilities to be managed and her vulnerability as a structural flaw. Her life is a closed loop of drop-offs, permission slips, and silence, designed to prove to the world—and to herself—that she is not broken.

She believes that if she stops moving, she will dissolve. She believes that love is a liability that leaves a paper trail.

The Crash

Then, Eve Rodrigues looks up from a file folder.

Eve is a teacher who treats empathy as a contact sport. She does not see the ironed shirt or the organic snacks; she sees the panic vibrating beneath Janet’s skin. Eve breaks the social contract of the schoolyard not with aggression, but with a terrifying, gentle observation: Are you okay?

It is a question that threatens to collapse Janet’s entire curated reality. Eve refuses to let Janet exist as a prop. She offers tea that spills, silence that speaks, and a “thirteen-day” timeline that serves as both a boundary and a promise. What begins as a hesitant connection in the fluorescent aisles of a grocery store spirals into a collision that neither of them can control—a reckoning with the fact that you cannot protect yourself from being loved.

The Two Main Characters

• Janet: A woman who has weaponized competence to survive trauma. Haunted by the failure of her marriage and the scrutiny of the community, she has locked her true self behind a wall of “organized panic.” Her journey is the terrifying process of unlocking the door and realizing the fortress was a cage.
• Eve: A third-grade teacher whose stillness is a gravitational force. Grounded, messy, and “dangerously human,” she navigates the politics of her job with a weary grace. She is the catalyst who challenges Janet not to fix her life, but to actually live it.

The Setting: Concrete and Coastline

The story unfolds in the sun-bleached, traffic-choked sprawl of San Diego, where the beauty of the coast clashes with the rigid social hierarchy of the suburbs.

• Bay View Elementary: A battlefield of judgment, fundraisers, and surveillance where Janet performs her daily penance.
• The Aquarium: A blue-lit underworld where the noise fades and the truth is visible through the glass.
• The Subaru: A rain-fogged capsule of intimacy, the only place where the rules of the outside world don’t apply.
• North Park: A domestic space of garlic, jet noise, and the messy, imperfect reality of starting over.

Passion is a story about the devastating risk of letting someone else drive. It explores the optics of morality, the heavy weight of being a “good mother,” and the courage it takes to stop running and finally crash the car.