Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

by Ashley Winstead

So instead of friendships, I cultivated quiet rebellions. Most came in the form of books.

the library was tightly controlled by the church elders. It contained no suggestive books, no books that glorified sins like rebelling against one’s parents or sex before marriage. But most of all, it contained no occult. No boy or girl wizards or tales of monsters or werewolf love stories.

It’s amazing how closely women are watched in Bottom Springs. It makes me think once again that my invisibility has been a protection.

woman’s place is one step behind her husband, serving as his most faithful lieutenant, and as such, public contradiction is betrayal. “‘Let your women keep their silence,’” he likes to say, which is a line from Timothy.

“Pain is how you know you’re alive, Ruth. It’s not something you should bury.”

“Well, look at you. It seems James has a ticking time bomb on his hands. I do admire a learned woman, Miss Ruth. They’re as rare as those exotic birds at the zoo.”

Zoos are places we hold creatures that are better off caged. Kept contained, you hear?”

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.