Heavenly Arrest by Tess (17, Arizona)

​I walk through the halls of school, the smell of secrets hanging above our heads in a thick smog. It doesn’t bother most of us; occasionally a freshman will get stuck in a cloud for too long and choke on their own lies, but the rest of us are used to the suffocation. Whispers are the only things that echo off the concrete walls, carrying the seed of hatred to ears willing to sow and let it blossom into truth-muffling roses. ​

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Even if they were uprooted, the blooms would leave scars on every ear canal with its thorns, making its host even more susceptible to roses of all colors, all purposes. The only real cure is kindness extended to one another, but no matter how painful the prick of the thorns are, no one puts up a fight against the toxic pollen. They lose any hope of a cure after their first gardening season.
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Is it a crime to be kind? Is it a crime to not say every single word skittering across your brain in a twisted dance of human nature? So many people speak without knowing the whole story. He did this. She does that. Everything we do makes us all terrible people. The judge’s gavel comes down without the defense ever making a peep. The prosecution’s done their work. They’ve done their damage. The rest of the jury will never know the whole story. I do, but it’s not for them to know. The weight of my knowledge crushes me when the gavel delivers its final blow. Watching how easily you could declare a mistrial, had the defendant not thrown the key to your locked lips away.

I can’t take it.

Even after the final bell of the day tolls throughout the campus, the pollution is tracked to places I once thought were a safe haven. But the whispers never stop. They infect every relationship, telling freshman girls their senior boyfriend loves them for her personality and definitely not because she’ll do anything he tells her. It tells boys they should never be caught dead showing compassion or affection, and if they do they are not worthy of manhood. It tells people who don’t know who they are that even if they were exactly who others wanted them to be, no one would accept them. Everyone is stuck in their own cycle of gossip and crimes against their own god. Hatred slipping in through the cracks of their moral shields, slaying every shred of compassion for others one at a time.

Everyone is hated during the car ride home. I’ve heard it. The slimy liars going on and on about the people they hate. I’ve seen the prosecution speak to the hated as if they haven’t just condemned them to a life in purgatory. Glances are slipped to one another in a telepathic taunt as the prosecution slowly turn their entire firm against each other. Their hate is theirs, but it’s not mine. I don’t hate them. Stop pushing your hate onto me- it’s not mine.

I won’t take it.

What if for one day, the whole world wasn’t out to get one another. Everyone going about their day simply speaking kindly to one another. It’s wishful thinking, I know, but is that really so hard? To live a life unaltered by those around us who only speak to put us down? To go about a single day without worrying what everyone is whispering?

What an incredibly boring day for the court.

I sit at home, hidden away in my own cocoon of life like each one of my family members. The hate follows me even still. My phone spills out toxic black roots as I stare at the bright glow of people telling me I need to be thinner and pages dedicated to the downfall of celebrities. The roots and vines crawl up my arms and into my eyes and ears, overtaking me until everything around me is shrouded in darkness. A small voice screams at me as it’s cornered by the vile roses, smothering it in their thorns. My ears ring in the silence. The void of sound is the loudest thing in the room. My phone illuminates the darkness ever so slightly, but the longer it’s on, the darker it gets.

One click of a button saves me.

The light on my phone goes off. For a moment, the world doesn’t exist. I don’t exist. But the darkness and roots soon recede back into my phone, cut off from their life force and crippled by their loss of power over me. The voice in my head gasps for air, finally relieved.

I don’t want to ever experience that again.

If being a decent human being is a crime, then by god arrest me. Arrest the people who take care of the kids who are not their own blood. Arrest the students that cry with their friends and the teachers that embrace differences and blaze a pathway for struggling students. Arrest the animals, the trees, the earth for sustaining us and giving us life. Arrest that little voice in the back of my head telling me to do the right thing. Arrest me for trying to listen to it. Prison will be an oasis for the hurting; a sanctuary for damaged, bruised, and broken. A beacon of light for anyone stuck in the sticky darkness of self hatred.

I vow to be a criminal to the day I die. Standing when the perfect citizens raise a deriding hammer to bring down hell on my fellow felons. Tending to the battered when they turn on one another. Being the Angel of the Battlefield like criminals before me.

So answer me. Is it a crime? Condemn me to a social death row. I will fight it. I will uproot as many thorny roses as I can, speak out in any trial, shine a light on the dark for as long as I live. It may make me a criminal but I assure you...
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I can take it.

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Tess is a High School student from Gilbert, Arizona. At seventeen, she had held onto her love for writing for five years, but has grown so much in that time. She is excited to share her work for the first time, and hopes you enjoy