During my 9th grade year, I split my time in English class between Honors 9th and what would amount to be Honors 10th. The next year, I skipped my sophomore year and into AP Language and Composition. I’ll be adding some of my older pieces of graded writing (mistakes and all!) as a way to show growth over the last four years. Here’s a piece from my 9th grade year, responding to some prompt I have no way of remembering.
WN Entry #12: Story Starter 16/1/18
The phone rang. “Hello,” I said, “Hello”. No one was there. I hung up. All the lights went out as the phone clocked back into the receiver. I should have known not to take the call. I glance at the old grandfather clock mounted on the wall next to me, squinting into the enveloping nothingness. The clock’s pendulum is ornately crafter. It looks like a lyre, I think. Lyre’s used to be stringed instruments that musicians plucked with their hands. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a stringed instrument.
I know I shouldn’t have taken that call. I know I shouldn’t have answered, but I did. I just wanted so badly to hear the sound of another human being, to listen to someone else’s voice again. These four walls surrounding me are so suffocating, intoxicating. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I remember that in books, they used to say things like, ‘it could have been a minute, or it could have been an hour’. I’d like to think that it’s been more than an hour, more than a year. Maybe I was born in this room. Maybe the threads that I cling onto, my memories, are nothing more than something I’ve created for myself. I heard once that time was relative. I never appreciated that until I realized time doesn’t matter. Not like it used to.
You must be wondering why I knew not to answer the call. It’s mostly an innate knowing. I can’t put my finger on it: I’ve tried. I have tried to receive a call before, no one is ever on the other end, not that I can distinguish. I think that you used to be able to hear the other person even when they didn’t speak. When the phone was next to their mouth you could hear them breathe. It was a very intimate thing, a phone call. I don’t really remember intimacy; it’s one of the things that has started to slip away.
There’s no windows in my room, no door. Only four solid walls or the same dimensions and dull [dreary] grey color. (I’ve gone very pale without the sun, or, I think I have. I was never much good at science, but I think that’s how this works.) Now, in the darkness, I can’t even distinguish object’s general location. I can still feel where things should be, see them in my mind’s eye. That’s how memories feel. Back when there was music, I recall a song. I can’t discern who sang it, but I was never good at that. Not even in the time before. I think there was a line right before the chorus began that went, “I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee”. I can picture a cloud, drifting with the wind through a clear blue sky, or menacing and ominous before a storm. I’m not sure why a cloud would be in someone’s coffee. I wish I could remember.
Sometimes, the lights go out, leaving me in complete darkness. Maybe in the time before, this would have bothered me. I’m not bothered by most things now, and this is not one of them. I see nothing but the four walls surrounding me when the lights are on. So, when the lights go out, I can still feel the presence of everything surrounding me.
Being left alone with your thoughts leads to a lot of thinking. There’s not much else to do in this room. I have no books, been given no paper. My bed in the corner serves no purpose outside of sitting or sleeping, my chair across the room is no better. I don’t have a table, but I don’t have any use for one I suppose. I have already memorized the pattern on the rug below my feet, I can produce it in my mind. I remember that prisoners used to count the days that passed in tally’s, scratching the walls behind their beds. I must have seen that in a movie once.
Days. Days used to designate the passage of time. Time has only seemed obsolete ever since I found myself in this room. As I’ve said, I may have been here forever, I may not even be here now. When my self-existence is reduced to 36 square feet, concepts like time can be nothing but obsolete.
I’ve never experienced human compassion: I experience it all the time. Sometimes, I feel the presence of others in the room, the room is electrified. A ghostly presence. I have manufactured this feeling for myself in the presence of communal human spirit. When the phone rings, I am given hope- this is what is worst.
The phone rings.
What she could not remember was that there was something before- there was an entire life that she had lived before she was in that room. However, there would be no after. The woman’s reality had been reduced to a single room; a drab existence. The woman used to be a teacher, a kindergarten teacher. Everyday she would interact with children, and she often expressed that her life was full. However, her superficial level of fulfillment in her mortal life was not enough to guarantee her anything at the end of it. Now, and never, and always, she will remain in that room. The phone will ring, no one will answer. Her craving for a human connection will never be satisfied.
The phone rings.
Emily 17/9/20
Your Local Biblio 
Who is on the phone?
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