THE YEAR I PROMISED TO BE EXTRAORDINARY

The last time I slept in this room, I was seventeen and certain my life was about to become impressive.

Now I’m twenty-three, sitting cross-legged on the carpet while my mother sells the house around me.

Dust drifts through a stripe of afternoon light. The walls are still lavender — a color I once chose because I thought it meant calm and mature, instead of what it really meant: I was trying to paint certainty onto something that felt unstable.

Downstairs, Mom’s voice floats up through the vents. Realtor voice. Polite. Bright. Just a little too cheerful.

“Yes, Thursday works,” she says. “We’ll be ready for photos.”

Photos.

As if the house needs to look less like it remembers us.

I stand and turn slowly, trying to see the room the way a stranger would: twin bed, empty desk, faint outlines where posters once hung. The sun preserved their ghosts.

Near the closet is a pile I haven’t touched since college. A shoebox. Old notebooks. A cracked mug shaped like a cat.

And on top of it, a blue USB drive.

A label in thick black Sharpie reads:

OPEN WHEN YOU’RE FAMOUS.

There’s a heart over the I.

Of course there is.

A laugh escapes me — soft, startled. Almost defensive.

I could throw it away. Let sixteen-year-old me dissolve into landfill anonymity. That would be clean. Adult.

Instead, I plug it into my laptop.

A folder opens.

EXTRAORDINARY.

Inside: documents labeled FINALFINAL3, interview prep lists, and an audio file titled:

LISTEN WHEN YOU’RE BRAVE ENOUGH.

My pulse shifts.

I click.

The recording opens with the soft whir of my old bedroom fan. Then a voice.

My voice — but lighter. Untouched by apology.

“Hi,” she says. “If you’re listening to this, it means you did it.”

My throat tightens.

“You’re famous,” she continues. “Okay, maybe not Taylor Swift famous. I’m realistic. But you’re published. You’re in bookstores. People spell your name right.”

She laughs — breathless, certain.

“I’m recording this because I need you to remember how this feels. Like my chest is too small for my dreams.”

I close my eyes.

At sixteen, I had just finished the first draft of my novel. Twelve chaotic chapters about a girl who cracked the sky open because she was tired of pretending thunder was normal.

“It’s not perfect,” she says. “But it’s mine. And I think it might make someone feel less alone.”

No irony. No hedging.

“If you’re not famous,” she adds carefully, “if you’re just cleaning out this room or something… I hope you’re happy.”

The word lands harder than famous ever did.

“I hope you didn’t turn into someone who hates me,” she says softly. “I’m doing my best.”

The recording ends.

The silence that follows feels deliberate.

It isn’t that I failed her exactly.

It’s that I shrank her.

I learned to call her embarrassing. Dramatic. Naïve. I replaced hunger with practicality and told myself that was growth.

Downstairs, the front door closes. Mom moves into the kitchen.

I open another file.

AUTHOR BIO (FOR BOOK JACKET).

It’s written in third person, because sixteen-year-olds believe they are already mythology.

Mara Ellis lives in a small town where she spends most of her time writing and staring dramatically out windows. Her debut novel, The Glass Meridian, is the first in a trilogy.

Below it:

GOALS:

Publish by 20.

Win something important.

Go to BookCon.

Have normal fans.

Publish by 20.

At twenty, I opened an email that began with Unfortunately. Then another. Then ten more. Each one polite. Each one precise.

I told myself rejection was part of the process.

Then came the open mic reading.

I read a chapter aloud in a bookstore café, my voice shaking halfway through a sentence. I looked up and saw someone checking their phone. Someone yawning. A whisper behind a hand.

No one booed.

It was worse than that.

It was forgettable.

Something inside me mistook that for proof.

After that, writing felt like speaking into a room already bored.

So I stopped.

Not dramatically.

Just gradually.

The second recording is labeled:

IF YOU’RE SAD, LISTEN.

I press play.

“Mrs. Turner wrote ‘too ambitious’ in the margin of my essay,” she says indignantly. “Like that’s a flaw.”

A sniff.

“I don’t want to shrink,” she says. “I don’t want to live a life where I keep my head down.”

I stare at the wall where my posters used to hang.

“I’m scared I’ll give up,” she admits. “But if I do… I hope I forgive myself.”

A pause.

“I hope you forgive me.”

The recording clicks off.

It isn’t the failed book that hurts most.

It’s that I decided bravery had an expiration date.

There’s a knock at my doorframe.

Mom stands there with two mugs of tea and a face that has practiced calm.

“Found something?” she asks.

“A USB drive,” I say. “From high school.”

Her smile is immediate. “Oh no.”

“It says ‘Open when you’re famous.’”

She winces with fond recognition.

“You wrote on the fridge once,” she says, stepping in. “FUTURE BESTSELLER LIVES HERE.”

“I did?”

“You did. Your father hated it. Said it looked tacky.”

We let that settle.

“I left it,” she says quietly. “I thought it might be important.”

I nod.

“I feel like I let her down,” I admit.

Mom sets her mug down and sits beside me.

“You don’t owe your sixteen-year-old self a specific outcome,” she says. “You owed her honesty. You owed her effort. You gave both.”

“I stopped.”

“You paused,” she corrects gently. “There’s a difference.”

I stare at my hands.

“I don’t want to be ordinary,” I whisper.

Mom’s expression softens into something almost fierce.

“Ordinary is just another word for alive,” she says. “Ordinary people love each other. They show up. They keep going. That’s not small.”

Tears blur the room.

“I thought being extraordinary meant being seen,” I say.

“Maybe,” she replies, “it means seeing yourself.”

After she leaves, I open the draft of my old novel.

The night the meridian cracked, everyone pretended it was thunder.

I don’t hate it.

I don’t love it.

But I recognize it.

It feels like shaking hands with someone I once knew well.

I open a new document.

The blank page doesn’t look like judgment this time. It looks like possibility without witnesses.

I type:

Hi. I found your USB drive.

A pause.

I’m not famous.

The words feel factual. Not devastating.

I delete what I almost write next — I’m sorry.

Because I’m not sorry I’m not famous.

I’m sorry I believed that was the only way to matter.

So instead, I type:

You were brave.

My hands steady.

And I’m not going to delete you.

I unplug the USB drive and hold it in my palm.

It’s small. The past usually is, once you stop letting it loom.

For a second, I imagine throwing it away. Letting go by erasing.

But erasing isn’t the same as releasing.

I open the empty desk drawer and set the USB drive inside.

Not as a promise.

Not as a burden.

As a witness.

Then I carry the box labeled BOOKS downstairs.

Mom is wrapping plates in newspaper.

“How’s it going?” she asks.

“It’s going,” I say.

Not triumphant. Not tragic.

Honest.

I grab the Sharpie and write beneath BOOKS:

STORIES (DO NOT THROW AWAY).

Mom reads it and smiles.

And something inside me settles — not into certainty, but into permission.

I may never be extraordinary the way I once defined it.

But I was brave.

I am here.

And here is enough to begin again.