The Quarry Girls

You’ll recognize those men, the ones inclined to their dark side, because they’ll expect you to carry their load. They’ll smother your anger with their pain, they’ll make you doubt yourself, and they’ll tell you they love you the whole time. Some do it big, like Ed, but most do it in quiet steps, like your father.

Men in packs can do terrible things, things they wouldn’t have the hate to do alone. It’s no excuse, just something you should know.

The law might not recognize it, but fifteen’s a girl and sixteen a woman, and you get no map from one land to the next. They air-drop you in, booting a bag of Kissing Potion lip gloss and off-the-shoulder blouses after you. As you’re plummeting, trying to release your parachute and grab for that bag at the same time, they holler out you’re pretty, like they’re giving you some sort of gift, some vital key, but really, it’s meant to distract you from yanking your cord. Girls who land broken are easy prey.

in the future, you might not want to wear so much makeup. You don’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention.” Maureen’s shoulders tightened. “Why don’t you tell them to stop looking instead of us to stop shining?

There’s also the truth that 70 percent of serial killer victims are female. You better believe that knowing you’re prey heightens your interest in the predator. You find yourself desperate to make sense of largely random acts of serial murder, believing that if you can understand motivation and hunting patterns, you can protect yourself.

In our neighborhood, the problem wasn’t the person who made the mistake; it was the person who acknowledged the truth.

I stared across the crackling fire at Brenda, the glow lighting up her heart-shaped face. My love for her was carved into my bones.

She stared up at him, at this man-she-knew-who-was-a-stranger, this person who’d risked everything in his world to kidnap another human so he could thrust away like a zoo monkey whenever he wanted. This loser had made a biological act so imperative that he was willing to go to prison to feel the same relief he could get with his own hand.

Was it contagious, the emptiness I felt? Was he worried he’d catch it?

Smile girls, you'll look so much prettier. So I'll damn well decide for myself when I'm ready to smile.

Historian Peter Vronsky hypothesizes that while several factors must align to make a murderer (genetics and frontal lobe injuries being two common ones), World War II was responsible for this golden age of serial killers a generation later.

Their family and friends are the only ones who can understand the depths of their grief, the life’s work of creating meaning in loss, of having their world shaped by violence they couldn’t see coming and did not deserve.

As far as she could tell, men didn’t have close friendships, not like women did, but they still had that human need for connection. Every movie and TV show and magazine article told them it was their job to go out and grab what they wanted at the same time it told them that women were theirs for the taking.

Her raw fear, and even more so how desperately she was working to hide it, made me want to weep.

That’s when I understood the raw truth of it: the men in charge were looking out for themselves.

She’d cracked like a mirror after, and her pieces were so sharp, none of us could get close enough to put her back together again.

Women always try, but men like that are born bad.

Maureen was more alive than any of us. She protected kids from bullies. When men catcalled her, she’d catcall back. She’d demanded we pierce her ears first because she was Maureen.

The applause felt like it was injected straight into my veins.

A hole that probably hid prehistoric water monsters, slithering, sharp-toothed creatures that needed immense depths to survive but that sometimes, only every few years or so, would unfurl a tentacle and wrap it around your ankle and suck you down down down.

(I recommend researching Gilles de Rais if you’re low on nightmare fuel),

The law might not recognize it, but fifteen‘s a girl and sixteen a woman, and you get no map from one land to the next. They air-drop you in, booting a bag of Kissing Potion lip gloss and off-the-shoulder blouses after you. As you‘re plummering, trying to release your parachute and grab for that bag at the same time, they holler out "your are pretty", like they‘re giving you some sort of gift, some vital key, but really, it‘s meant to distract you from yanking your cord. Girls who land broken are easy prey. If you‘re lucky enough to come down on your feet, your instincts scream to bolt straight for the trees. You drop your parachute, pluck that bag from the ground (surely it contains something you need), and run like hell, breath tight and blood pounding because boys-who-are-men are being air-droped here, too. Lord only knows what got loaded into their bags, but it does not matter because they do terrible things in packs, boys-who-are-men, things they‘d never have the hate to do alone...we were racing to survive the open-field sprint from girl to woman.

Belief is a powerful lens; it can shape the world world to it.

With Mom, what went up must come down, and it was a mystery what exact combination would make life too much for her.

That terrible awareness that life could twist on you in a blink wasn’t something a person could forget.

Every waitress had a group of guys who mistook professional courtesy for a personal relationship. She’d never liked it, but she’d thought she understood it. As far as she could tell, men didn’t have close friendships, not like women did, but they still had that human need for connection. Every movie and TV show and magazine article told them it was their job to go out and grab what they wanted at the same time it told them that women were theirs for the taking.

After that, Mrs. Hansen stopped visiting. Mom receded from a lot of my memories and Dad came in clearer focus, making breakfast in Mom’s place, driving me to school on the days it rained. When Mom showed up, she was a force, sparkling at dinner parties, running around the kitchen cooking four-course dinners, but it seemed to cost her. She stayed at that level—50 percent of her—for a couple months.

I hadn’t meant to tell her the last bit. Sometimes Mom was fine taking in that much information. But then there were the other times. I could see her tumblers working. Her face had gone slack. The back of my neck grew cold waiting to see which version was going to erupt. But finally, happily, the correct words dropped into place, and out rolled a perfectly normal sentence. “Wonderful! Your dad and I will come see you girls play.” Did she know she was lying?