Between 11:43 and Midnight
Between 11:43 and Midnight
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Student D | June 7th, 2026
Fiction: Alexa has been secretly seeing her best friend's husband Miles for three months now. When he suddenly passes away in an accident she is lost with grief and filled with guilt she must hide from her best friend.
After the first ring I immediately picked up my phone. It was Emma, my best friend since the fifth grade, but this time, the tone of her voice sounded different, a scary kind of different. I answered the phone like normal.
“What’s up?” I asked.
For a moment she didn’t answer. All I could hear was her jagged breathing through the phone, and my heart dropped. “Emma?? Hello? Are you okay? You’re scaring me,” I told her. She sniffled loudly before speaking.
“No,” she whispered. “No it’s not okay. It’s Miles…”
Her voice cracked.
“He’s gone.” My stomach plummeted. I tried saying something, but I couldn't; the words wouldn't come out of my mouth. The room suddenly felt too quiet, as I tried to process what she had just said. Gone. The word repeated in my head. People aren't just gone.
“W-what?” I finally managed to say, the word came out quieter than I intended, “What do you mean gone?”
“I mean he got into an accident last night,” she said between breaths, “and they– they couldn’t–” I stopped listening.
My phone nearly slipped out of my hands. Miles is dead. I felt nauseous.
The same Miles who I saw two nights ago, in his car, parked three streets away from Emma's house, who texted me miss you already at 12:43 that night. The same Miles whose blue eyes made me feel safe, made everything else in the world suddenly disappear. The same Miles who married my best friend Emma three years ago. The same Miles, who wasn’t supposed to be mine in the first place.
“Hello? Are you still there?” Emma asked.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah,” I lied. Because I wasn’t there anymore.
“Emma I’m… I’m so sorry,” I told her.
She kept talking, “They said it was around midnight. His parents are a mess. I just, I don’t know what to do.”
Midnight.
At 11:43 PM he texted me.
At 11:48 PM I almost responded.
At 11:52 PM I decided I’d answer tomorrow because I was tired.
Tomorrow.
The accident was right after he texted me. My throat tightened and my head spun with questions. What if I had texted back? What if he had been looking at my message instead of the road? The thoughts came so quickly that I couldn’t stop them. Guilt spread through my chest like something heavy pressed against my ribs, making it harder to breathe. I wasn’t just grieving him; I was grieving the person I was before I got myself into this whole mess. I was grieving every ignored text, secret meeting, and every moment I tried to pretend our relationship wasn’t wrong. Somewhere between 11:43 and midnight, Miles became someone I could never apologize to again.
~
I stood in front of her blue door in the blazing Utah sun, but Emma opened it before I could knock. The second Emma saw me, she wrapped her arms around me so tightly that I almost couldn’t breath. Suddenly the lump in my throat grew larger, and the guilt in my stomach grew even worse.
“He’s gone,” she kept repeating in between sniffles into my shoulder.
“I know.” I hugged her back and I wondered if she could feel how fast my heart was beating.
There was a familiar scent in Emma’s house that felt comforting, as if nothing was wrong. I knew exactly what that scent was. It was Miles. It was a lemony scent that he always had during our secret hangouts, somehow I never noticed it until now. As if I took it for granted.
The entire afternoon blurred together. Her parents brought tissues, his parents brought food and more and more people kept showing up. Everyone kept saying the same things, and every few minutes I wished someone would do the same for me, but then immediately felt guilty for even thinking that way. His death wasn’t my loss. At least, it wasn’t supposed to be.
Nobody stayed for very long. They came in waves, neighbors, classmates, parents I vaguely recognized.
Each person walked through the front door wearing the same expression, said almost the same thing, hugged Emma, then disappeared back outside again. Yet, Emma and I remained glued to the couch, surrounded by balled-up tissues and flowers, attached at the hip like we’ve always been. Emma was my best friend. I had spent nearly half my life sitting beside her during breakups, bad grades, fights with her parents, everything. But suddenly all I could think about was the last time I saw him.
Three nights earlier.
“Your girlfriend is gonna kill me if she finds out you’re here,” I joked as Miles leaned against his car. He laughed.
“You mean our girlfriend.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I know.” But neither of us moved.
Now he was dead.
Every once in a while someone would turn to me and ask,
“You doing okay?”
I would nod immediately because what else was I supposed to do? Actually, I secretly dated your dead husband for the past four months. Actually, I can’t breathe right now.
Hours passed when Emma leaned into me,
“I keep thinking I’m gonna wake up,” she whispered.
You won't, I thought; because I had already tried. Three times. Each time my phone was full of unread messages from him. Each time he was still dead.
~
The funeral was scheduled for Friday at the St. George Utah Temple. For the next three days, everything felt wrong. People reposted old pictures of him online, and I stared at every one. In almost all of them, Emma was standing next to him. Smiling. Holding his hand. Sometimes I even zoomed in just to look at him.
The coffee shop Miles and I always went to felt like a stab to the heart. I missed his surprises, especially the little notes he would leave on my coffees.
The combination of grief and guilt was unbearable. I felt like I was gonna throw up at all times or break down into tears that had to be hidden.
But eventually, after a few minutes, the crying stopped. Not because I felt better, but because my body seemed too tired to keep going.
The church parking lot was already full. Everyone moved slowly, speaking in quiet voices as if being too loud would somehow make everything more real. I spotted Emma immediately. The second she saw me, she walked over and wrapped her arms around me.
“Thank you for coming,” she whispered. I swallowed.
“Of course.” There was no reason I wouldn’t be there. I had to. Even if my mind was thinking of every possible escape route, I was stuck there. Stuck in this horrible situation I had gotten myself into when I decided I was in love with my best friend’s boyfriend.
I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my sweater and looked down at my phone.
Three notifications. Two people posting memorial photos. One from Miles. WHAT? Or at least it looked like it. Then I realized, One year ago today memories. Just an old picture. I almost laughed. Instead, I opened our messages one last time.
miss you already
I’ve stared at those words wondering if I should respond. Wondering if we were going to have an entire conversation. Wondering if apologizing would somehow change anything. Wondering if guilt could somehow bring someone back.
~
After the ceremony, we went back to White Hall for the celebration of life. It felt like every moment was going by so fast, yet every second was too long. I felt bad that after today, Miles was completely gone. I would never see his face again, and was I even allowed to talk about him?
In the bathroom, Emma and I refreshed ourselves and I gave her one last hug as if that would fix everything. As if suddenly the lies I had within me never happened.
“Hey do you have an eyelash curler?” she asked, “my lashes are completely gone from all these tears,” she said with an awkward giggle.
“Oh, of course,” I replied. I quickly rummaged through my purse reaching for my Shiseido eyelash curler and that’s when I ruined everything.
Suddenly a light pink sticky note flew out onto the bathroom floor.
No. No, no, no.
I knew exactly what was on that note. It was the note Miles placed on my coffee order two months ago when he surprised me.
For when the world feels too loud
I love you Alexa :) -Miles
I kept this note folded in my purse ever since. I never took it out of my purse because it was special to me. Somehow throwing it away felt worse. Clearly pretty stupid now, but I cherished that note. Emma naturally bent down to pick it up, and my heart dropped.
For a second I considered grabbing it first. Pretending it wasn’t mine. Pretending I didn’t know what it was. Pretending none of this ever happened. But grief had already exhausted me.
Emma unfolded the note. At first she looked confused. Then she read it again. I watched her eyes move across the words one last time like her brain was refusing to believe what it already saw.
The bathroom suddenly felt too small. Too bright. Too hot. I couldn’t breathe.
Because after days of hiding, days of swallowing grief until it felt like it was killing me from the inside, I finally understood something:
Some secrets survive guilt. Some survive grief. Mine didn’t.
The expression on her face was something I’ve never seen before.
“What’s this?” she asked, with tears forming in her eyes.
Annotated Bibliography
Annotated Bibliography
Thesis
Through research and literary perspectives, grief can be understood as a powerful emotion that affects how people think by changing their memory, focus, and sense of reality, and how they heal by making the grieving process unpredictable. Together, these ideas prove that loss transforms people permanently, but growth is possible through self-awareness. Also, no two grief experiences are alike.
Annotated Bibliography
Dembling, Sophia, “The Infinite Sorrow of Grieving a Spouse” Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/widows-walk/202206/the-infinite-sorrow-of-grieving-a-spouse.
The article, “The Infinite Sorrow of Grieving a Spouse” by Sophia Dembling discusses the emotional and real effects of losing a spouse and how grief truly changes every aspect of a person’s life. Published in Psychology Today, the article was written for people struggling with grief or people trying to better understand loss and healing. Dembling explains that grief for a spouse can create extreme loneliness, vulnerability and emotional emptiness, while also forcing people to adapt to major life changes on their own. She further emphasized that although people eventually adapt to loss, the emotional absence of a partner never fully disappears. This source is credible and useful to my writing because it was published by a well-known psychology magazine and written by an experienced author reflecting on personal grief. It provides a personal perspective on the emotional effects of grief, similar to CM, rather than only scientific explanations. This article focuses more on the daily emotional struggles and long-term adjustments people experience after losing someone close to them.
Fisher, Jennifer MMSc. “5 Stages of Grief: Coping with the Loss of a Loved One.” Harvard Health, 12 Dec. 2023, https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/5-stages-of-grief-coping-with-the-loss-of-a-loved-one
Written by a board certified physician Jennifer Fisher, the Harvard article “5 Stages of Grief: Coping with the Loss of a Loved One” introduces the five stages of grief and how grief can impact someone’s emotional and mental well-being. Written for a general audience seeking to better understand loss and healing, the article stages of grief; consisting of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Fisher explains that each stage involves different emotions and reactions, all as the body’s way of coping from loss. The article also addresses the common belief that grief looks the same for everyone because many people experience similar emotions during loss. This source is credible because it was published by Harvard Health Publishing and written by a medical professional with knowledge of mental health and wellness. The source will also be useful for my writing because it provides a clear psychological framework for understanding grief and its emotional effects while also acknowledging different perspectives on how people experience loss.
Lacey, Catherine. Biography of X. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.
Biography of X is a post-modernism novel that addresses many different issues relevant to today’s society, including grief, identity, truth, and obsession. Written for readers interested in mystery, literary-fiction and social commentary, the novel follows a widow trying to uncover the hidden truths about her late wife, X, after her death. Through this journey, Lacey explores how grief can consume a person and shift their identity and sense of reality. The novel also examines how people cope with loss by searching for meaning and answers, just like CM Lucca. This source is credible because Catherine Lacey is an award-winning author known for her complex literary art and exploration of emotional and theoretical topics. Although the novel is fiction, it is very useful to my essay because it provides insight into the emotional and mental effects of grief through complex characterization and storytelling. Compared to my more scientific sources, Biography of X adds a personal and emotional perspective, helping prove grief impacts relationships, identity and the way people understand themselves.
Shulman M, Lisa. “Healing Your Brain after Loss: How Grief Rewires the Brain.” American Brain Foundation, www.americanbrainfoundation.org/how-tragedy-affects-the-brain/.
Lisa M. Shulman, a neurologist and medical writer, explores the science behind grief and how it impacts the human brain. Sherman writes for readers who want to better understand grief and healing, using research about neuroscience to explain her ideas. She explains that the brain often reacts to grief as if it were trauma, causing symptoms similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and placing the body in survival mode. The article also discusses neuroplasticity, or the brain’s adaptability, while emphasizing that too much emotional stress can cause long-term harmful effects if it is not able to heal. This source is highly reliable because the author is a neurologist with professional knowledge and experience with brain function and mental health. I will discuss this information in one part of my essay in order to provide brief scientific support for my argument. Unlike my other sources that discuss emotional stories or coping methods, this source gives a biological explanation of grief and why recovery is important for overall well-being.
“What Does Grief Feel Like?” Mind.org, December 2023, https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/bereavement/experiences-of-grief/
The Mind website page “Experiences of Grief” explains the emotional, mental and physical effects that grief can have on a person after losing someone important in their life. Written for people experiencing bereavement or trying to better understand grief, the article addresses common reactions like sadness, anger, anxiety, confusion, numbness, and even physical symptoms like sleep problems or appetite changes. The article also emphasizes that grief is highly personal and can look different for every individual depending on their relationship with the person who died, past experiences, and support system. By including this idea, this source challenges the common belief that grief looks the same for everyone. This source is credible because it was published by Mind, a respected mental health organization that provides information and support about mental well being. This article will be useful for my writing because it focuses on a wide range of emotions people experience and highlights how grief impacts everyone differently.
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