HI. I’m from Arkansas, the cantaloupe state. And tonight, I hope you will hold my melons close to your heart and vote me your Miss Teen Dream.

People always fear what they don't understand, Evangeline. History proves that.

- 'Music opens your soul, makes you ready.' - 'Ready for what?' - He smiles big. 'Exactly.

Meraa mitra yahaan aaiye," he murmurs. I understand only a little Hindi, enough to know what he has said: Come here, my friend. I've never known a braver girl," he says.

I’m not interested in being polite. It’s false.

The glow dies down, and she's standing at the end of my bed--the one who's been following me around leaving feather messages. I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny, riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides and a worn Great Temolo decal near the left shoulder. Her wings are a crazy black-and-white-checkered pattern, like they've been spray-painted at a body shop to look like hipster sneakers.

In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice... No one can live in the light all the time.