How to Hide in Plain Sight

by Emma Noyes

Our town was just large enough for me to run free on the weekend, but just small enough to come home with nothing worse than a skinned knee. Our school district liberal enough to preach universal love, but so white that I didn’t discover racism until we reached the chapter on slavery in our fifth grade history textbook.

massabesic core if we were pretending it was slightly liberal

My mind runs in circles, circles, circles. I don’t understand what’s happening. Soon, it isn’t even about whether I cried at Henry’s funeral anymore. Soon, I’m just worrying about how much I’m worrying. Then I start worrying about the fact that I’m worrying about worrying. Then I start worrying about worrying about worrying about worrying, and suddenly my mind feels so crowded, as if my thoughts aren’t filtering out in the way most thoughts do. As if something is blocking the exit. As if, rather than in and out of my mind in an orderly line, one thought replacing another, they linger. All of them. Half sound like me; they speak with the internal voice I’ve always recognized as my own. The other half do not. The other half—they have their own voice. They’re loud. So loud. They’re a living thing. They’re hundreds of blind moths in search of a flame, flying chaotically about my mind, crashing into each other, knocking things over. I cringe as glass shatters in places I can’t