Anonymous

My back was hunched over the desk, a ballpoint pen in my left hand, the words from my mind flowing onto the page without an effort. I didn’t have to think about what was being written on the notebook paper in front of me; the story just happened. It wrote itself, fueled by Ed Sheeran’s beautiful music, which was blaring in my ears through my iPod ear buds.

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed as I bumped into a figure quite a few inches taller than my short stature, sending the books in my hands scattered in different directions.

“I’m so sorry,” the boy rushed, getting on his hands and knees to help me pick up the books.

“No, it was my fault.” I sighed as I gathered up the books on my half of the spill. “I should have been watching where I was going.”

The boy didn’t answer as we got to our feet. He handed over the books that I’d been trying to put back in the massive cases that lined our school library.

“I bumped into you from behind,” he laughed, his blue eyes sparkling with humor. “There’s nothing you could have done.”

I blushed a violent red and tucked a lock of blonde hair behind my ear. “Alright, you win. It was your fault.”

He grinned and stuck out a hand. “Louis Tomlinson. Nice to meet you.”

“Really, Jess? Another fan-fiction?” a voice broke through my concentration.

I jumped, gasping, my heart racing in my chest. My iPod fell from the table and skipped as the CD re-shuffled from the jolt.

“God, Elena. Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”

My best friend grinned as she pulled up a chair to sit next to me. Once she settled in her seat, she leaned back to put up her long, curly black hair into a ponytail. “It’s not my fault. If you had turned off that shit you call music, then you would have heard me coming, and you wouldn’t have been scared.”

“Hey, I wasn’t even listening to One Direction that time,” I laughed. “It was Ed Sheeran.”

Elena’s bright blue-green eyes grew wide. “Oh my God,” she gasped as she slapped a hand over her mouth. “I take back my shit music comment. I’m so sorry, Ed.” Her gaze turned to the ceiling and her hands clasped in a prayer position as she screamed, “Forgive me, Ed!”

I chuckled and shoved her shoulder. “I don’t think he can hear you, love.”

“You never know,” she snuffed. “But you’re changing the subject from my original issue. Are you seriously writing another story about that boy band?”

I felt my cheeks turn a light pink as I nodded. “Yeah.”

Elena rolled her eyes, but I cut her off before she could say anything. “But I couldn’t help it! I was sitting in maths, and I just…this idea popped into my head. The words were just dying to get out of me. And it’s my free period, anyway. I can spend it how I like.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Elena patronized, having heard these same explanations before. “How many different stories are you going to write at once?”

“This is only my sixth,” I argued. “There are some people on the site that update ten stories a day.”

“Those people don’t go to school and don’t have friends and don’t have lives,” she told me pointedly.

I opened my mouth to protest that her statement wasn’t necessarily true, that some people can just write really quickly, but she was already getting to her feet, completely done with the conversation.

“Alright, I’ll stop bugging you and let you write. I was just coming over to ask about a chemistry problem, but I’ll figure it out myself.”

“Or you can ask Brian,” I teased, putting one of my iPod ear buds back into my ear as I smirked at her.

She drew in a fast, shocked breath and slapped me off the back of the head. “Oh my God, Jess, what if someone hears you?!”

“Elena, there’s no one in here…” I trailed off, looking around. “Who’s going to hear me? A spider?”

“Are there really spiders in here?” she squealed, ripping her purse off the back of the seat. “Alright, that’s it. Goodbye. I’ll text you after school if I still can’t figure out the chem problem.”

“Okay, sounds good,” I agreed, but she was already almost to the door, thoroughly freaked out by the possibility of bugs.

I bit my lip and started to play Ed Sheeran’s newest CD again, staring at the words written on the page in front of me.

After reading them for the fifth time, I shook my head and ripped out the page. I had missed essential details, hadn’t drawn out the encounter long enough. A couple of sentences sounded choppy.

I ran my hand through my dark brown hair and let out a loud sigh, starting over from square one, letting the soft sounds of Kiss Me entice the words out of my brain and onto the page.

By the time the bell rang to signal the end of the class period, I had a solid chapter that I could type up and post when I went home.

I just hoped my readers would like having another story to read on top of all the other ones they already had to follow.