The Quarry Girls

by Jess Lourey

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.

In our neighborhood, the problem wasn’t the person who made the mistake; it was the person who acknowledged the truth.

weren’t misguided, these men who couldn’t take a hint, who kept at a woman who was clearly uninterested. They were broken. Few

of them would go so far as kidnapping, sure, but every one of them was after someone they could make feel less than, someone they imagined was beneath them, and they believed every woman was beneath them.