53 I don’t remember receiving the piece back, but that piece didn’t matter to me anymore. It was a discarded piece of me. I didn’t care to remember it, because during that time, whenever I wrote, I thought I was only talking to myself. It felt like that for the next four years. In 2011, I turned 17 and I was a Junior at Central High School. Even though I became the president of the writing club and was considered a good, popular student among the misunderstood, I failed the English class my freshman year. I had to retake it to graduate. I was walking a contradiction back then. I became a role-model for the younger students, who looked up to me to admire their writing. I was considered a good kid, but I wasn’t. I felt like an imposter for being a reckless student. I got bad grades and I skipped class a lot. I tried going into art instead of writing, because I wanted to distance myself frommy peers and teachers. I wanted to be alone, not a good kid. From a lack of connection, I lost my love for art and writing. If I did create anything, it was for myself and for no one else to see. Partly because I didn’t have much confidence in myself as a writer. Partly because nobody was ever going to really get me. So when I came into the roomwhere I was retaking my English class, I was surprised to see my 7th-grade Language Arts teacher standing at her desk, ready to take roll call. I remember thinking, “What is she doing here?” My anxiety rose, yet I was annoyed. I remember fearing her, and I told myself that I wasn’t going to let her get to me like she did when I was 13. She looked at me again, knowing who I was. Yet, we never really acknowledged that we knew each other. The writer and hawk just kept their distance as the semester went by. But one day in class, she told us that we are supposed to write a creative writing piece and it’ll be due Friday morning; it felt familiar. She told us that she was going to read some old pieces students wrote in her past classes so that we could get some ideas. She began reading them, but I didn’t really bother to listen. It wasn’t until I heard her begin reading something about “cherry blossoms.” I thought it was interesting, but I stared down at the ground as usual. Then I heard, “streams with fish,” and “tall blades of grass.” And I thought, “What?” I looked at her, astonished. She was midway through, continuing to read my piece. And I didn’t knowwhat to do. I was shocked, paralyzed, and exposed, but I couldn’t stop looking at her. I couldn’t think. I didn’t think. I just listened to her read the piece I wrote over four years ago, my mouth slightly open, and my eyes completely fixed onto her. When she was done reading it, she looked up from the paper, now on a white sheet, and not the lined paper that I accidently ripped. Her hawkish eyes looked at mine. And in that moment, I felt something powerful. It was a connection. A conversation I never intended to have. I couldn’t believe she kept that crappy piece I wrote about cherry blossoms for over four years. I couldn’t believe she read it out loud. It was so embarrassing. But was it? She never said who wrote it. Only she and I knewwho wrote it and if it was that crappy, she wouldn’t have kept it. The piece inspired something in her in 2007 for her to keep it. Just like how in 2011, as she read it out
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