The Notes in Locker 37
A free B2-level English story for language learners, readable online in 7 languages, with an option to listen via the free Storyteller app.
A new student keeps finding encouraging anonymous notes in her locker and sets out to discover who has been writing them.
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Naomi's first week at her new school passes in a blur of wrong turns and half-remembered names. On Thursday morning, she opens locker 37 and finds a small folded note taped inside the door. "You're doing better than you think," it says, in handwriting she doesn't recognise. There's no name attached.
She assumes it's a mistake at first, meant for whoever had the locker before her. But on Friday, there's another note, about the maths test she'd been dreading: "Nervous is normal. You'll be fine." Nobody could have known about that test, except someone paying closer attention than Naomi realised.
She starts watching the students near locker 37, trying to work out who keeps writing to her. Her suspicion settles on Malik, a quiet boy from her English class. He always seems to be nearby at the right moment, and she's noticed he writes with the same slightly slanted letters as the notes. She spends an awkward lunch deciding whether to say something, and almost does, twice.
By the third week, curiosity finally wins. Naomi asks the school counsellor, Ms. Petrov, whether new students at this school always seem to have a guardian angel. Ms. Petrov smiles in a way that suggests she already knows exactly what Naomi means.
It turns out the notes are part of an unofficial tradition, run by a small group called the Locker Club. Its students volunteer to leave encouraging messages for anyone new that year. Malik isn't part of it at all; his slanted handwriting was a coincidence. His frequent presence near locker 37 was simply because his own locker is right beside it, not because he was watching her.
The real author, a quiet senior Naomi has barely spoken to, admits it a little shyly when Ms. Petrov introduces them. She explains that she remembers exactly how lonely her own first weeks here had felt.
That afternoon, Naomi signs up for the Locker Club herself, printing her name carefully on the sheet by the office door. She doesn't know yet whose locker she'll be assigned. But she already knows what she wants to write, and for the first time since arriving, the empty corridors don't feel quite so unfamiliar.
