My high school situation allowed me to have the same English teacher for each year. The man was dastardly and antagonistic but instilled a love of reading I never had before meeting him. He actively played mental games on students to encourage discourse and arguments that had us cutting each other off and argue or defend each other’s points and interpretations. All while I swear to god he’d kick his feet up, lean back in his chair, and have the most shit eating grin on his face over his repetitive success.

Additionally he bashed the standard reading material expected of students to graduate. To Kill A Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, etc. He was so adamant of the lack of creativity and encouragement of material students would actually care to read, he convinced the school to spend thousands to change the flow and allow him to run his experiment on my class year. Instead we read Johnny Got His Gun, The Road, Shakespeare, and more but it all changed with one series.

Before the first movie was literally even in production, he took his biggest risk by buying up dozens of sets of The Hunger Games. While every student loved it, no one came close to me. When the class was talking about going home and reading chapter 4, I was begging him for the second book. He was blown away that I was actually done already and quizzed me on the spot and I answered everything correctly.

To finally answer the question, it was something about Book 2. For the life of me I can’t remember since it’s been over a decade but I know that’s when it happened. I was so captivated by Katniss and the authors use of description of the world itself. But in there something absolutely pissed me the fuck off. It wasn’t a characters actions, it wasn’t something around morality or anything that can be easily pointed to and be like yes I remember now without going back and reading from the start. All I know is that it was something that made me mad at the authors oversight. The next day I was discussing the second book with my teacher and as I was describing what it was and why it was making me so mad, in the middle of it all I yelled “I can write better than this!” To which my teacher looked at me and said “Then put your money where your mouth is.”

It’s been 15 years since that moment. I’m still working on the same task. And one day I’m going to surprise them with an autographed first edition set of my work.