It was the last lesson of the day.

I was chatting with some mutual friends outside of my English classroom, along with the rest of my class, whilst we waited for our teacher to let us in.

I had this awful habit of being a try-hard in school, so much so that I would always press my head up against the outside glass of the classroom window and peer inside to cheat and read the whiteboard early, to see what we would be learning.

On this particular day, our usual revision notes and pointers had instead been replaced with a large piece of text that I initially thought to be boring. I squinted until I could make out the first line of writing.

My heart fell down the stairs of my ribs and smacked hard against the concrete floor of my stomach. The wind got slightly knocked out of me. People were still talking next to me, but I had no idea what they were saying. I reread the opening line repeatedly to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

To my complete shock, I instantly recognised the start of my own short story that I had written in last week’s lesson, a task we had been set in preparation for our GCSEs.

I was not a confident sixteen-year-old, at all. Any sort of attention directed towards me made me queasy. So, you can imagine how mortified I was when I suddenly noticed that physical copies of my short story were also printed and laid out on everyone’s desks. Within ten minutes of walking in, my entire class had started reading the work that I had initially assumed would barely be read by my teacher. I can remember staring at the paper in front of me but not being able to retain any of it. I couldn't get past the first sentence. The entire room was silent. It was the longest ten minutes of my life. I had this awful reoccurring image of the people next to me turning and laughing their heads off, saying, “Oh my god, you definitely wrote this.”

Strangely, I didn’t care if people liked it or not, I was just terrified that they would find out it was mine.

During the silence, I nervously looked over at my teacher. She wrote something down in her notebook, closed a few tabs on her computer then happened to look over in my direction. I have no idea what I looked like to her, but I remember very clearly the face that she made to me. She was smiling so light-heartedly, so happily, that I was completely floored. She was so excited for me.

Something inside of me became very quiet, and I remember having the urge to suddenly shout out and claim ownership of the story. Everyone did eventually find out it was mine, and I was even told by friends from other classes that they had been given copies by their own teachers. It was extremely surreal.

I’d like to say that I’ve changed since then, that I hand out copies of my work to anyone and everyone who will read it, but the truth is I’m still very much learning how to be that person.

I’ve always found the quietest, furthest-from-the-front seat in the room of aspiring writers. Listening to everyone else’s stories and hoping that my gut is right when it tells me I have a right to be here.

I have so many plots, characters, reasonings, betrayals, and twists swirling around inside of me that I have no choice but to let them out and hope others will find them just as interesting. I can’t wait to see what the future holds.