Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

by Ashley Winstead

So instead of friendships, I cultivated quiet rebellions.

That had to be the worst kind of prison—the one whose bars were buried under your skin, invisible cages around your heart and mind.

It was the brightest, clearest day of summer—so naturally, Everett and I were spending it reading.

Maybe after it burned through me and I was transfigured, the world would look at me and be afraid. Wouldn’t that be something? The prayer of every teenage girl.

He’d been more than my best friend—sometimes a person was bigger than that. Sometimes they were your freedom.

The truth breaks wide open. I belong here on this good green earth. I’m part of it. Not a sinner or a saint—just another creature. Mud and pollen and teeth and sinew. If there is a God, some higher power, it’s here in these woods. In the beautiful strangeness of being a human, an animal wandering the world with soul-deep yearning. I belong here, and nothing can take that away from me.

“You think I need you to swoop in and shield me, take me to the hospital and chain me up for my own good? Listen to me, Barry, and listen well: I am the one you aren’t safe from. You better hurry up and run from me.”

“we are the weirdos, mister.”

“All right, kid,” he says. “You go raise some hell.”

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.

I give in to my desire and lay my head back on her shoulder. “Thank you for being such a good friend.” “Oh, honey.” Nissa strokes my hair. “Don’t thank me. Loving you’s easy.”