More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Being there, you couldn’t know what the kids watching the livestream had picked up immediately, down in the comments: OH SHIT, that girl is dead.
Main Street seemed to be not just the main road, but the only way out of Kettle Springs, giving the impression that the Missouri town was more a glorified cul-de-sac.
The corn itself could have been waving hello, or it could have been breathing. Missouri itself a sleeping giant under their new home.
I'm honestly triggered. My Missoura is more like hills have eyes than children of the corn.
There, painted on the side of the factory, was a clown. An old-timey clown with a porkpie hat and red, bulbous nose.
Philly ate its rot, was constantly demolishing the old to make way for the new. Looking at these houses, Quinn was struck with the feeling that Kettle Springs had left its best days behind. The town had given up.
“They shipped their product out all across the country. You probably had our syrup and didn’t even know.” He said that last part with a weird amount of pride, like it was his corn syrup.
As Quinn scrutinized the decorations, she noticed that, oddly enough, nothing seemed to date beyond the early 2000s. It was like time had stopped for the Eatery just after the turn of the century.
A fresh start was exactly what they needed; even if it was not what she wanted.
“What I personally think is that we are looking at a situation where what’s legal and what’s right are two separate things. And I’ve expressed this to some of you, but I think that there may soon come a time when the powers of law don’t go far enough to keep Kettle Springs the town we know and love.
People needed to stop popping out of the crowd; it was putting Quinn on edge. Especially people who Quinn knew had been banned from attending this event.
oh, get over it
“That’s the story the town tells. That Frendo was a real guy, performed for the town’s kids back during the Depression. When everyone was eating dirt or whatever. Frendo was around, helping to keep spirits up.”
There were more pops and hisses as the last few fireworks shot off down the street, a delayed reaction in the We’re no longer having fun chaos.
“When does the corn get, uh”—Quinn looked out the window and searched for the right word—“harvested?” “Never,” Janet said, smirking. “Not anymore.” “What she means is,” Cole started, “not these fields. There’s a subsidy for corn farmers. The government pays the rebate when you plant, not when you harvest.”
He tried again and found that he could flex his knees a bit, under the corn. Like a neon sign, the answer broke through Glenn Maybrook’s fogged mind: those are not your knees!
Years later, in middle school, she’d spread a rumor that he was the reason they were being screened for lice. Because Janet Murray might not have been from around here, but she knew where she was going and she never forgot what they said to her along the way.
“What I realized was that you and all your little friends who’d been out there that night, even the ones not directly responsible, are bad. Whether you was born bad, or made bad by your phones, by the internet, by the music, by social media, I dunno.” Dunne said the last phrase with complete disgust. “But I’m not blaming those things, because what does the cause matter? It’s the result that matters. “Way I like to explain it . . . you and your friends are a blighted crop.”
“Stop actin’ like you’re children. You fight and fuck and drink. You are not children. You grew up too fast.” He paused. “Maybe that’s the cause.”
You can’t say it all yourself. It has to seem like their idea.
If Matt thought the damage to his car was bad, wait until he saw what Quinn had done to his girlfriend.
“Sorry I made us move here” was the first thing her dad said. “Please get me a doctor that’s not me.”
Quinn took comfort in that. The fact that history bent toward progress, no matter how hard the assholes tried pushing back.
not how history works
