Quotes from Megan Abbott

Everyone remembers that feeling,- Dara thought. The tortuous waiting of childhood. Waiting for parents, forever, waiting while adults do their adult things. Wanting to understand, the doors always closed. Until the adults finally decide to open them and then there's no shutting the door again.

The very things that first draw you to a person will eventually be the very things that drive you away.

You spend a long time waiting for life to start-- her past year or two filled with all these firsts, everything new and terrifying and significant-- and then it does start and you realize it isn't what you'd expected, or asked for.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. The

blood slips down her chin, and I start to feel dizzy. I look

and everything that's been seen and everything that's hidden.

All these years later, the story of their parents' end, passed down like lore, still seemed unbearably romantic to their students—less so to Marie, who, after sobbing violently next to her sister, Dara, through the funeral, insisted, I never saw them hold hands once.

Charlie in the back office listening to parents bemoan their child's lack of discipline, the exorbitant cost of pointe shoes, the holiday schedule, Charlie nodding patiently as mothers spoke in hushed tones about their own long-ago ballet aspirations, of the mad fantasy of tutus and rosin, satin and tulle, floodlights and beaming faces, leaping endlessly into a lover's waiting arms.

So striking, everyone would say. E-theeeer-real, some would even venture. The littlest girls, padding in in their ballet pinks, would stare up at the photo mounted in the lobby, fingers in their mouths. Like fairy princesses.

I'm starting to get the feeling you don't like me," he said, smiling again, this time almost as though embarrassed, or something. "But there's no reason we can't be friends. And your sister …" "I don't have to like you," Dara said, moving past him, a blast of the leather scent in her face. "You'll be gone soon.

I don't care. I don't care. I have no shame. He ate away all my shame." "No wonder he's getting tired of you," Dara said. "I'm tired of you.

But this thing, this desire to be bossed around, dominated—such a cliché. Such an old, dusty woman thing she'd never understand. She'd never felt it herself.

Never cry over pain, their mother told them. Those are wasted tears.

Their mother, that swan neck, those elegant arms. Her dark hair gathered up tightly with her grandmother's dragonfly combs. So dignified, so refined, carrying so much inside all the time. Surrounded all day by mirrors and never letting anyone see.

But she couldn't. They never talked about when Marie moved out, or why. It had been a strained time for all of them and there was no need to stir it all up again. That's what was so enraging about it all, about that contractor bringing it up. About Marie having told him things.

The true terrorism of girls is the accuracy of their aim.

You looked like you knew a thing or two, she told me later. But were ready to learn a lot more.

The place was hissing with stories told behind hands as she walked into the place.

Who needs her here anyway, Dara thought, walking through the front door, that familiar scent of mildew, paste, old perfume. Who needed Marie's buzzy, antic energy, her nighttime pacing and her bad dreams, the way she used all Dara's tampons and ate all the sardines?

It all unfurled like a mink from a femme fatale's shoulders in an old film noir. All those tales of a taloned beauty with expensive tastes, her callow lover, the unwitting husband, a staged accident for a big insurance payout. They never ended well. Suddenly, Dara felt a coldness inside. It was all so tacky, so déclassé, a voice inside said. It was all so cheap. So unbearably sad.

They all played it so straight, as if they were just girls, girls with gentle smiles and simple needs. But the truth was they all lived in a gasp of tension.

guess you're right," the woman said. "You blame everything on that one person. You think if that one person is gone, everything will be perfect and good." She slid her sunglasses back on. "But in the end, that person is you.

Some people liked to make everything dirty. Some people liked to ruin everything.

Don't take this personally, Kit, but your hands are really big. Did you hassle steer?" "No steer," I say. "Only small-handed men.