Midnight sun in Alaska works like this - the closer you are to the Arctic Circle, the more hours (or days or weeks) you get of straight sunlight. On Finnick Island, which was about 300 miles south of the northernmost town in Alaska, we get anywhere from 18 to 20 hours of sunlight a day, from June to September.

Even during the few hours that the sun dipped below the mountains on the horizon, twilight was still bright. Bright enough that streetlights barely flickered on at night, and bright enough that it crept through the cracks in the blinds on my windows and kept me awake until 4 am. I had gotten so used to normal hours of day and night living in California, but I didn't expect the adjustment home to be so difficult, especially considering I had lived under the midnight sun my first 18 years of life.

I groaned and grabbed my phone on my bedside table. No notifications and no messages - just 4:15 AM blinking bright in my face. I had to be at least marginally awake in another three hours to open Beans. My mother took the mid shift on Mondays when our mornings were slow, and Delilah couldn't come in until noon.

Luckily after my nauseating run-in with Grey at The Net and my thinly veiled threats, he stopped coming to the coffee shop. A week went by without seeing his smug, attractive face pop in at lunch for his Americano, and I finally felt like I could breathe again at work without constantly ducking behind counters or running to the back office every time I thought he'd come waltzing in.

I laid in bed and watched my ceiling fan spin and send faint shadows dancing across my walls. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Leah's face. Fair skin, high cheekbones, dark hair, and a glint in her blue eyes that always made her look like she was up to something - just like her brother.

I met Leah at a cheer camp the summer before 6th grade. She was a year younger than everyone else but got bumped up in the group squads because she was such a good flyer. Tiny, compact, and flexible - everything you wanted in a cheerleader. By the end of camp we were inseparable.

I couldn't pinpoint an exact time when Grey and I became friends. It sort of just happened, on late nights drinking iced tea in the Fischer's backyard at 11 PM under midnight sun. Leah would wedge herself between us if we got too close, or if our knees brushed up against one another's, or if we looked at each other too long without saying anything.

I stopped cheering when I got to high school, but Leah came soaring in and ran the show. We never stopped being friends even though we ran with different social circles. Hers of course being the loud, obnoxious, high ponytail wearing cheerleaders, and mine being...well, just Grey and the kids in the Honor society. That was at least until I met Jayden at one of Marcela's parties sophomore year.

White teeth, tan skin, floppy chestnut hair, and towered over everyone else in the room, literally and figuratively. Jayden Calhoun's energy and ego took up so much space it was impossible to not notice him. But the weird thing was, he noticed me, wedged in a corner of the kitchen nursing a lukewarm beer. He catapulted me into popularity before I had a chance to change my socks, and for almost two years we were the "it couple." The couple that got invited to every party, got put on every committee for every event, and won every spring fling/prom/homecoming king and queen title. I used to think it was all too good to be true. I didn't realize until much later that when you're 16, everything is too good to be true.

I checked my phone again. 4:42 AM. The sun was awake now. I put a pillow over my head and rolled over away from my window.

I kept thinking back to that night I left with Grey during that first party our senior year. That maybe if I hadn't left, Leah wouldn't have met Marcela's lunatic older sister. Maybe she wouldn't have started hanging out with the wrong people. Maybe she wouldn't have overdosed right in front of my eyes.

At 6:15, the alarm clock on my phone sang loudly in my ear. I had fallen asleep with it on my pillow after I had lulled myself to sleep reading articles about megalohydrothalassophobia* and why I definitely had it.

I hit snooze twice before hauling myself out of bed at 6:30, running a comb through my tangled mass of black hair, and throwing on a bright blue UCLA hoodie over a pair of leggings before darting to the car at 6:50. Since I didn't have the time (or the money, really) to go looking for a car for myself, Mom and I shared the rickety old Ford Expedition she had been driving since I was in high school. When I turned the key, the engine sputtered.

"Oh no," I muttered. Dread welled up inside my chest. I turned the key again, and another coughing sputter rattled the engine. I turned it again and again expecting some kind of different outcome, but the sputtering continued.

"Fuck!" I hit the steering wheel hard with my hand, feeling the sting of the impact rattle my bones. 

I checked the clock on the dashboard. 6:55. Getting to Beans was an easy walk, but a 20 minute one, and in my half-awake, half-murky state it would be more like 30. I jumped out of the car and ran back into the house, darting up the stairs two at a time until I reached my mom's bedroom. I frantically knocked on the door until she popped her head out, still with curlers in her hair and her bathrobe on.

"Mom..." I didn't realize how out of breath I was until I went to speak. "The car...won't start... engine...bad..."

My mom gave me a light chuckle and patted my cheek with her hand. "Don't get your curls in a tizzy. I'll call us a tow truck. The caffeine-addicted masses will just have to wait a little while longer until I can get these things out of my hair and put my eyelashes on."

I rolled my eyes as she gave me another cheeky smile and closed the door. I heard the hairdryer switch on. My mother used to joke that I didn't inherit her "free spirit" or "sense of self." The urgency and franticness came from my father apparently.

I sat slumped on my front steps until the tow truck arrived. 7:15. No new messages, no new notifications, just a reflection of my tired eyes and blotchy cheeks staring back at me. 

When the tow truck finally pulled up to our house at 7:35, my heart dropped into my stomach. Emblazoned on the side of the truck in bold, black letters said Fischer Mechanical.

"Oh fuck me." 

*megalohydrothalassophobia is fear of large things (mostly creatures) in deep dark water. I totally have it it's a real thing.