The Return of Ellie Black

by Emiko Jean

Regarding girls in Ellie’s age group, sixteen to twenty-one, they do come back eighty-one percent of the time. She didn’t add that the odds decreased to half a percent after twenty-four hours.

Half a percent!!???

That the truth is these people are not strangers. They are the men who you sleep with, the men you work with, the men you raise. I wish this wasn’t what it means to be female—it is not a matter of if something bad will happen, but when.

And here are some tips for all the parents of girls out there: Make sure your daughters know there are bigger things to worry about than how much body hair they have, or who is taking whom to prom, or how many friends they have online. Teach them never to pull over onto the side of the road when someone flashes their lights. Or to walk into an alley next to a nightclub. Or ride their bike down the street in broad daylight. Or leave a motel room to find an unoccupied bathroom…

When you study what you’ve been through, what happened to you, it loses its power, and then you have a choice: stay or move on.

He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Smile. You should be happy. That’s the problem with women today. Never happy.”

🖕🏼

“What makes a man a monster?” she whispers. “Didn’t cry enough as a kid,” Noah says. It’s a joke but not a joke. Research correlates a man’s inability to show emotion to violent behavior.

For every one thousand cases of reported rape only seven lead to felony convictions.

That’s horrific

Why do women do this? Why are they conditioned to give and give and give?

Why did no one ever tell Lydia that the most dangerous thing in the world isn’t natural disasters or wars or weapons? It is unremarkable men with beautiful smiles and even bigger promises.