A Summer of Cicadas

I was supposed to smile, bow my head, and follow the plan everyone else had already written for me. Senior Sunday proved it-my name printed beside Michael's in the bulletin, our futures inked together like a promise. To the congregation, it was scripture. To me, it was suffocation.

Leaving the fellowship hall wasn't a choice so much as a reflex. One moment, his little sister perched on my lap, his aunts nodding about what a fine mother I'd make. The next, I was in my Bronco, the smell of gas and honeysuckle filling my lungs for the first time in years. Freedom hummed in the tires, though I had no map and no plan-only the pull of River Road, of the swamps and moss where secrets lingered thicker than the heat.

On that drive, with cicadas buzzing loud as hymns, I began to reckon with everything I'd buried: the weight of family expectations, the half-life of obedience, the ache for something larger than casseroles and choir practice. What started as an escape from one Sunday stretched into a reckoning with the whole town, with Michael, with the girl I'd been told I had to be.

But cicadas don't sing forever-they shed their skins, break themselves open to survive. And so would I.

A Summer of Cicadas is the story of one young woman's awakening against the backdrop of a Southern town that clings too tightly to its traditions. It's about love that stifles, roots that bind, and the unbearable, necessary act of choosing your own voice before it is silenced for good.