Maddie

“Skye said when she looked at Lise, she saw a black mark, an aura. Just like the mark on Lise’s thigh, it was a warming. Deenie thought of it now, of Lise and the stretch mark on her thigh. And how the fevered mind of her fevered friend might believe anything. But also, somewhere inside, it felt the smallest bit true. That the stretch mark was a kind of witch’s mark, the blot of Lise’s body that reminded you of what she had been -a plump, awkward girl- before the lithesome beauty took her place.

It was a kind of witchcraft, that transformation.”
― Megan Abbott

“I could do it. I could rip your life out like a fury, like a beast.
I could stand over you with my red hands
and lap the heart out of your hollow chest.
I'm a wolf, I'm a woman, I'm a building hurricane.
I'm whole-way sharp teeth, soul-sick wet claws.
I say "love me," and you say, "you're killing me."
I say, "i'd die for you," and you say," You'd kill for me—that's not the same thing.”
― Elisabeth Hewer, Wishing for Birds

“We create monsters of a sort, but we need them, and we need them to be vile and heartless at times because it’s them, boys and rogues all, that stand between us and the monsters we didn’t create.”
― Chris Evans, A Darkness Forged in Fire

“Walking past all the cops, all the detectives, I raise my runner’s shirt a few inches, like I’m shaking it loose form my damp skin. I let them all see my stomach, its tautness. I let everyone see I’m not afraid, and that I’m not anything but a silly cheerleader, a feather-bodied sixteen-year-old with no more sense than a marshmellow peep. I let them see I’m not anything. least of all what I am.”
― Megan Abbott, Dare Me