When I was in middle school, I worked in the school library. Having moved from the city to the suburbs, it was a whole different experience. I didn’t even want to go to school in the city – I can’t even say what the city school’s library looked like or even if they had one. But once we moved to the suburbs, school didn’t seem so horrible. The students, faculty, and librarians were actually NICE!
During our free period in the city school, we were corralled en masse to the giant corridor that also served as our lunch area. It was loud, crazy, there were fights, and yelling, and that was just the teachers! 🙂 We needed to secure a pass to go to the restroom, which was only on the other side of the hall.
At the suburban school, we had choices of where to go or what to do. Sometimes I studied in the library where I met the students who worked there and suggested that I join them. Everyone was nice, so why not? It became one of the first good experiences I had in Academia.
Later – this experience inspired “The Girl I Loved in Middle School.”
Fiction is not a single experience spun into someone else’s story – it’s the product of inspiration. And inspiration is like a seed. It’s a little pod planted serendipitously. A little kernel is sown, and depending on what else is shoved into that space with experience, and compassion, and almost anything can stem from it. This story is not a real experience, it was inspired by something that sprouted during that time.
You can read “The Girl I Loved in Middle School” at Number Eleven Magazine or it’s included in the book of short stories, Here In The Silence.
Noreen Lace 
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