Delirium

Just make sure to pull all the plugs before you go, the hostess said. Early morning, the party was winding down, she was leaving the old barn to go to sleep. We weren't ready. We turned up the music, ignored the rising sun, and danced until our legs gave out underneath us.

Hours later, the sun warm across the wheat fields, we stumbled giddily to our tents. The remains of the party lay scattered around us, bales of hay upended on the floor, empty liquor bottles strewn across the tables. We felt 15, as though the whole world had stopped for a while and there were only these bodies, our bodies, beating steadily into the night and laughing. My tent-mate said she had never seen me look so awful as when I crawled, limp and expended like a ragged balloon, into the tent that morning.

The day after passed in a cocoon of agony and manic laughter. I lay in the grass for hours bemoaning my existence and the shame of my frivolity. But in every painstaking breath, I knew. Madness is always worth the aftermath to come.