Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

by Ashley Winstead

Sometimes what’s right isn’t the same as what’s lawful or holy.

Listen to me, Barry, and listen well: I am the one you aren’t safe from. You better hurry up and run from me.”

power is a parasite. It wriggles inside you and takes over so all you can think about is how to get more of it and cut down anyone in your way.

What is it about us teenage girls that claws so deeply under people’s skin? We’re reviled and desired in equal measure; cringed at, laughed at, then lunged at. The sheer effort people like my father and my teachers have spent trying to control us. So many dress codes and rigid rules and unspoken ones we have taken on the mantel of policing ourselves, looking in the mirror and wincing at our reflections, drawing our own blood first, before others can.

Everything else about my life was forced on me, but you’re what I chose for myself.”

And sometimes a person is more than a person. Sometimes they’re a lifeline. Your ticket out, not just of a house or a town but an invisible prison whose bars are in your mind. Sometimes they’re a key in the exact shape of the lock that cages you.