“She bestowed the blessing of a wild girl's lips.”

“Mary Lou wore the ring faithfully. She studied the coy girls the ones who pretended not to get the dirty joke that made Mary Lou stifle a laugh. The ones who practiced the shy downward glance who pretended giggly outrage when a boy made a suggestive remark who waited to be seen and never made the first move. The ones who called other girls sluts and judged with ease. The good girls.Occasionally from the school bus windows she would see other wild girls on the edges of cornfields running without shoes hair unkempt. Their short skirts rode up flashing warning lights of flesh: backs of knees the curve of a calf a smooth plain of thigh. Sometimes it was just a girl waiting for a bus but in her eyes Mary Lou recognized the feral quality. That was a girl who wanted to race trains under a full moon a girl who liked the feel of silk stockings against her skin the whisper promise of a boy's neck under her lips who did not wait for life to choose her but wished to do the choosing herself. It made Mary Lou ache with everything she held back.”

“That's totally their interpreter," a girl with a lip ring informs us. "Even though they totally record their music in English, they totally speak in Inuktitut. Totally.”

“She holds up a finger. "I'm getting to it. Don't rush a girl in the middle of her exposition.”

“I’m a wild girl from a cursed line of women. I paw at the ground and run under the moon. I like the feel of my own body. I’m not a slut or a nympho or someone who’s just asking for it. And if I talk too loud it’s just that I’m trying to be heard.”

“I want to ask him if it’s possible that a girl can be born unlovable, or does she just become that way?”

“She smiled as sweetly as a show poster for the glorified, all-American Ziegfeld girl just before dumping her second cigarette into Wally’s fresh cup of coffee.”