Quotes from Jess Lourey

father died, to help her adjust to her new reality. He was making the best of his current life—working at the nursery, teaching Community Ed gardening classes, and playing around with

Mom had gotten herself so gorgeous she nearly broke the mirror

closed doors of the gym into which Gabriel and then Mr. Connelly had disappeared.

In walked a woman whose attitude was certainly in its fifties if she was not.

The woman rolled her eyes so loud I could hear it.

His quarry parties were the stuff of legend—trash cans brimming with wapatuli, music that was cool on the coasts but wouldn't reach Midwest airwaves for another six months, daring leaps from the highest granite cliffs into the inky pools below, some more than a hundred feet straight down. No gradual decline, just a fathomless, aching cavity scooped out of the earth, a wound that cold water seeped in to fill like blood.

Only his eyes changed. His pupils dilated, big liquid pools cracking like black yolks, spilling into his irises.

Hazel eyes a little too close together, like bowling ball holes.

They're all blackface caricatures.

It must be important. I tiptoe back outside.

In my experience, the more aggressive a woman is, the less guilty she seems. Or maybe it's the guiltier an aggressive woman is, the less rational she becomes. That's a hard thing to judge from the inside.

And a tape recorder, spinning slow like taffy, taking down every word.

world tasting like hope and blue sky. Turn it up! Your hips can't help but wiggle. Man, it feels like that song was written for you, like you're gorgeous and loved and the entire planet is in order.

My head was just circling things, so I had to pull out all those squirming thoughts and nail 'em to the paper.

I checked my underwear for a spot of blood like I always did. Nothing but the shadow of a good old-fashioned skid mark toward the rear.

Paulie Aandeg disappeared on September 5. September 5 is my due date.

Summer was coming.

That's the thing about small-town boys. All they had to do was come up with that one shtick, a crack at just the right time, or a Hail Mary touchdown, or nail the part of Romeo in the class play, and they were set. They never had to try again. Here's the thing about small-town girls: we let them get away with it.

we all just do the best we can. And that's enough.

Heather Cawl and I hadn't acknowledged

The air felt like warm soup.

the moon's incurious eye.

This brought a fresh wave of giggling. I couldn't be mad, though. I was too grateful I hadn't lost three kids to Satan on my first night babysitting them.

According to my dad, there were three perfect smells in this world: Fresh-cut grass. A campfire at the edge of a redwood forest. The jubilance of rich black dirt after a thunderstorm.