It started snowing on Friday when I was in fourth period, and by sixth, the snow was still falling- big, fat flakes blowing by on the wind, collecting on the ground. My chemistry classroom overlooks a courtyard in the middle of my school, and my friends and I gathered at the window to watch the snow fall. We get snow maybe once a year in the part of Texas where I live, so there’s always a collective feeling of excitement and awe among my classmates when it starts to fall. It’s a magical, surreal moment, and we all get to experience it together.

The bell rang, we went to our seats, and our teacher gave us our assignment. It was a worksheet that we could do with a friend if we wanted, so I moved my desk next to one of my friends. She was listening to music, and I got my phone and earbuds to do the same. I opened my phone up to turn on Pandora and saw a few email notifications. Frowning, I opened my email. PSAT scores released a few days before that, so most people in my class have been getting college emails pretty frequently. I was expecting that there would be more. I can’t stand the red bubbles showing notifications, so I was just going to click on the emails to get them to go away and read them later.

I stopped.

There was an email in my writing account.

Internally, I groaned. It was definitely Twitter. I got a writing Twitter at some point last year, and I honestly never use it, but it sends me emails nonstop. And even though I’ve tried to unsuscribe from the emails about five times, they still send! It annoys me to no end. So I was just going to go delete it.

But instead of seeing recommendations of people to follow or highlights I just had to see, the subject line said Query.

My heart stopped.

I opened the email.

It was a response.

A response.

Quickly, I skimmed through. At the bottom of the first paragraph, I saw that it was a rejection.

I think I was more nervous than surprised. My heart wouldn’t stop racing, the nerves accelerating after I’d found out the results. And my hands were shaking. I pushed my phone to my friend to see.

I didn’t get much of my worksheet done that class.

I just couldn’t get over the fact that I actually got a response. Yes, it was a no- but I’d honestly expected that. I was amazed that the agent took the time to reply! If you don’t know much about querying yet, usually what they’ll do is tell you, either on the agency’s website or in an auto-reply email, that if you don’t recieve a response in 6-8 weeks, they’ve decided not to request more. Most agents just get a lot of emails and simply can’t respond to all of them. But this agent wrote out a response to me! And it was very kind, too. She told me that she was impressed by my “drive and professionalism,” especially since I’m a teen writer, and encouraged me to keep querying. She said she wasn’t taking on too many new projects right now, but that I should keep trying to get my work published.

It was very nice of her to say that, and it made me really happy. I wasn’t upset about the rejection- quite the opposite. This proved that an agent had found my book interesting, and though she didn’t want to take on my project, she thought that it had the potential for someone else to.

She thought I had potential.

So in chemistry class on a snowy Friday, I got my first response from an agent, and I started to dream.