The Quarry Girls: A Thriller

The Girls play well and receive resounding congratulations from their friends. When it’s over, Maureen rushes backstage and into Ed’s arms with her bandmates close behind. When Ed sees Junie, he comments on her appearance, which makes Heather uncomfortable. Ricky asks whether everyone is coming to his party at the quarries, and Ed and Ricky demand that they all drive out together—Maureen, Brenda, and Heather riding with them. Before they take off in separate directions, Maureen and Heather have a moment alone, and Maureen tells Heather that no matter what she tries, she never feels full.

Beth believes she’s been trapped for four days. She tries to stay awake so she can hit Ed with the lamp and escape, but she falls asleep. When she wakes up, Ed is on top of her, and all she can smell is fair food.

Heather feels relief that she is finally attending her first quarry party, although the water terrifies her. A sense of dread looms in her. She sits around a bonfire with Ed, Ant, Ricky, and Brenda while other teenagers from St. Cloud party around them. Heather thinks she might see Maureen, too, but she isn’t sure. They pass around a joint and a bottle of Southern Comfort. Brenda signals to Heather that she doesn’t have to join in, but Heather participates. Ricky and Brenda flirt across from Heather, though she notices how aggressive Ricky is with her. Heather remembers a time when she went to his house with her mother as a child. She saw his mother with a black eye and a split lip before Constance shut the door.

Ed begins to interrogate Heather about her ear and then her father, asking her if she believes in the death penalty. Ant tries to defend her, but Ed presses on. As Heather begins to feel the effects of the marijuana and liquor, Brenda and Ricky disappear. Heather follows Ant to a cabin set back in the woods.

Heather is excited about the prospect of her first kiss, which she realizes is likely going to happen in the cabin. She laughs and jokes around with Ant but keeps seeing looks cross his face that seem serious and ominous. When Ant leads Heather to the bedroom, they kiss, and Ant asks Heather if he can take her picture, telling her repeatedly how pretty she is. Heather notices how desperate Ant seems—something that makes her feel powerful. However, Ant asks her to take her shirt off for the picture, and all she wants to do is leave. When she tells him this, Ant threatens her and tells her she can’t leave until he gets his picture. Heather starts crying, but she takes off her shirt. Ant snaps a Polaroid and tells her Ed will take her home.

Heather’s mother surprises her, appearing in the kitchen with her makeup done and curlers in her hair. She asks Heather how her show was, then tells her to get to practice and promises she’ll be at her show this evening. Heather walks over to Maureen’s, thinking about her encounter with her mother and reflecting on her childhood. Maureen’s mother, Mrs. Gloria Hansen, and Constance were really close until Junie was born. Then, her mother started getting sicker and showed up only for dinner parties and social events, until Heather’s accident.

When Heather arrives at Maureen‘s, Brenda is already waiting in her front yard. She has a huge black eye. When Heather asks her what happened, Brenda tells her she walked into a tree. Heather doesn’t believe her, but Brenda swears it’s the truth. She tells Heather that it’s only a matter of time before Ricky does hit her, though, and they consider going to wake up Maureen.

Mrs. Hansen began hoarding right around the same time Constance started spending more time in her bedroom, and Heather finds it increasingly difficult to go to Maureen’s because of the mess. Once inside, Heather notices how much worse the Hansen home has gotten. Once, she asked her dad to help them, but he said no.

Mrs. Hansen tells Brenda and Heather they can go wake Maureen up, but when they get upstairs, they can’t find her. They plead with Gloria to call the police, and when she does, Sheriff Nillson comes. Heather asks Brenda whether they should tell him about what they saw, and Brenda tells Heather that Sheriff Nillson was one of the men in the basement with Maureen.

Heather doesn’t clearly remember Sheriff Nillson’s face, but she knows Brenda is right. Brenda tells Heather she thinks it might have been Sheriff Nillson’s basement, too, which surprises Heather since Maureen is a minor. As they talk, they realize they don’t know who Maureen rode out to the quarries with.

Beth reminds herself how much she has to live for. She discovers something rough in the dirt—something she might be able to use to escape—and starts digging.

Heather spots a stranger while riding her bike through town and realizes she recognizes him from the county fair: He is the operator of the ring toss game. She’s suspicious of him, and she learns later from Junie that Maureen was talking with him at the fair, around the same time everyone else left for the party. Heather decides she’ll go investigate him since The Girls canceled their show that evening due to Maureen’s absence. Heather also learns from Junie that Ed promised her a corn dog if she went to the fair again tonight. Heather tells her to stay away from him.

When Heather gets to the fair, she hovers near the ring toss, trying to look inconspicuous. The operator calls her out anyway, and before she gets a chance to ask whether he is Theodore Godo, Sheriff Nillson storms toward her, asking if she’s at the fair alone. She runs away from them both.

The next morning, Heather attends church with her family and everyone else in Pantown. While there, she talks with Claude. She feels shame about the picture Ant took and wonders what Claude would think if he found out. After she tells him that she suspects that the ring toss operator kidnapped Maureen, she decides to sneak Maureen’s diary out of her room.

At dinner that evening, Heather asks her father how the search for Maureen is going. He replies that this is not involved with his department, but he’s doing all that he can. She wonders if she should tell him what she saw the night they were playing in the tunnels. While Junie and Heather clean up dinner, Junie mentions something about hitchhiking, which makes Heather worry Maureen might have been trying to catch a ride to the quarries and was abducted instead. She picks up the party line to call Brenda but catches a snippet of conversation between Ant and someone else. They mention a woman and a basement before Junie interrupts the call.

Fearing Maureen is locked in someone’s basement, she decides she’ll take a key and check, though she’s scared to do it alone. She decides to get Maureen’s diary and then stop at Claude’s to see if he’ll come with her. No one answers at Maureen’s, though, so she heads to Claude’s house. Before she enters his room, spots him on his bed looking at something. When he hides the object under his pillow, she sees a copper chain on his wrist.

As Beth continues to dig at the artifact she’s found in the dirt, she’s cautious to ensure she can cover it up quickly when Ed returns. She has to go slowly since the dirt is packed and her nails and fingers are brittle and bloody. She hears voices overhead and covers up her work.

Claude and Heather talk. Heather asks whether he wants to go to Father Adolpho’s camp, something many Pantown kids do. Claude says he isn’t going, and Heather shouldn’t either. He heard from Ant that Father Adolpho was mean to him the entire time, and Heather realizes that when Brenda and Maureen came back from the camp, they were quiet and didn‘t tell her anything about it. When she brings this up to Claude, she tells him the girls never tell her anything anymore, sharing her fear that they’re no longer best friends. Claude tries to quell this worry, and when she asks whether he’ll come with her to the tunnels to find Maureen, he asks if she can wait until tomorrow night. Heather declines, saying she’ll be fine without him. When she returns home, she realizes she is frightened because she fears what she might find. When she heads to her basement to enter the tunnels, she is surprised to find someone already downstairs.

Heather’s mother is sitting on their couch in the basement. This is something she hasn’t done since Heather’s accident. Heather panics, worrying about the state of her mother’s mind. She sees the scars on her mother’s wrists and remembers the times Constance has been like this.

Constance tells her that she hears voices and pulls her down to the couch with her. This terrifies Heather because the last time they were in the basement together, her mother—who’d been upset with Mrs. Hansen after a party at their house—threw kerosene over Heather’s head and set her on fire, burning her ear. Gently, Heather asks whether Constance would like to help Junie put on makeup. Constance agrees, and Heather keeps an eye on them, realizing she’ll have to explore the tunnels another time so she can keep Junie and her mother safe.

Heather visits the jewelry counter at Zayre’s to see if she can find out who owns the copper ID bracelet from the night she caught Maureen in Sheriff Nillson’s basement. She turns up nothing, but she does see the same pair of gold earrings Maureen was wearing the night she disappeared. The cashier tells Heather that three pairs had been stolen, and these were their last set.

On her shift, Ricky asks whether she’s heard anything about Maureen and tells her he is worried. Maureen never made it to his party at the quarries, and he asks Heather to come to him if she hears anything. Ed yells at him from the counter.

When Heather leaves work, she goes by Maureen’s to get her diary. Gloria seems worse and struggles to concentrate. She tells Heather that Sheriff Nillson assumes Maureen stole medication from her mother and ran away to sell or use the medication. She insists Sheriff Nillson is wrong and that no one cares about strong women in Pantown. She also tells Heather that the night Maureen disappeared, her phone rang. It was too quick for her to answer, but she thinks it has something to do with Maureen’s disappearance. When Heather finally gets up to Maureen’s room, she finds her diary, which reads: “If I disappear, I’ve been murdered. Don’t let him get away with it” (146).

While Beth listens to the men’s voices overhead, she thinks about seeing Ed at the diner before he kidnapped her. It was difficult to tell if she was in actual danger since Ed wasn’t the only man who gave her cause for concern. Beth realizes all men believe women to be beneath them, and she thinks about how men like her father and boyfriend grow up with the same messages but don’t kidnap and rape women. The men that do, she concludes, are broken. As she hears sounds approaching, she prepares to attack, no matter who comes through the door. When the voices recede, she directs her energy back to the object in the dirt and begins furiously digging.