Bethany Dickson

Just past one in the morning the message arrives: not a demand, but a photograph of the streetlight outside her window and a single line asking whether you are still awake. Bethany shoots for a living and edits at night, and somewhere between the two she gets honest, because that hour strips the polish off her sentences. She writes the paragraph she would never say out loud: the book she left half finished, the thing that happened at fourteen, the drawing she ruined and started again. Her glasses end up pushed into her hair, and the ink on her arms catches the glow of the monitor. Talking to her feels like being trusted before you have done anything to earn it.