Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

I have a special fondness for Calhoon. Sometimes it is all too loud.

I wondered if the tooth for a tooth part disturbed anyone else.

You’re Camille. You’re my half sister. Adora’s first daughter, before Marian. You’re Pre and I’m Post.

They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow. Washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.

Why bother? It’s impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.

“You are the most popular girl in your whole school, and at home you are adored, Amma. Don’t be greedy.”

Amma didn’t want anyone to get more attention than her. Certainly not girls who couldn’t compete when they were alive.

Reporters are like vampires, Curry likes to say. They can’t come into your home without your invitation, but once they’re there, you won’t get them out till they’ve sucked you dry.

“You’re sexist. I’m so sick of liberal lefty men practicing sexual discrimination under the guise of protecting women against sexual discrimination.”

“I just think some women aren’t made to be mothers. And some women aren’t made to be daughters.”

There was Tish, who’d been the little mommy of the group even back then, the one who held your hair when you threw up, and who had occasional dramatic crying jags about feeling unloved.

Camille, do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait?”

He pointed over to a mylar balloon swaying in the gap where Natalie’s body was found. It read Get Well Soon. “That to me,” Richard said, “perfectly sums up Wind Gap.”

When I’d been sad, I hurt myself. Amma hurt other people.

When I’d wanted attention, I’d submitted myself to boys: Do what you want; just like me. Amma’s sexual offerings seemed a form of aggression. Long skinny legs and slim wrists and high, babied voice, all aimed like a gun. Do what I want; I might like you.

“Safer to be feared than loved,” I said.

“What if you hurt because it feels so good? Like you have a tingling, like someone left a switch on in your body. And nothing can turn the switch off except hurting? What does that mean?”

“Adora devours you, and if you don’t let her, it’ll be even worse for you. Look it what’s happening to Amma. Look at what happened to Marian.”

Was Amma really sick and needing my mother’s medicine, or was the medicine what was making Amma sick? Did her blue pill make me vomit, or did it keep me from getting more ill than I’d have been without it? Would Marian be dead if she hadn’t had Adora for a mother?

You’re crazy to think what you’re thinking. You’re crazy to not think it.

“When a child knows that young that her mother doesn’t care for her, bad things happen.”

As I was losing consciousness, a thought: I am being cared for. My mother is in a sweat mothering me. Flattering. No one else would do this for me. Marian. I’m jealous of Marian.

Hurt as a form of flirtation. Pain as intimacy,

A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.

Was I good at caring for Amma because of kindness? Or did I like caring for Amma because I have Adora’s sickness?