57 pages • 1 hour read
Jess LoureyThe Quarry Girls: A Thriller
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 34-43 SummaryChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 34 Summary
Heather struggles to decide what to do with the Polaroids and how to prove she found them in Sheriff Nillson’s basement. At a loss, she realizes she hasn’t played drums in a long time. She decides to walk to Maureen’s to see how Gloria is doing and see if she’ll let her play in the garage. Worried about Junie, she plans to take her to Claude’s house because she doesn’t know whether her mother can take care of her. She packs some food for Gloria like she’s seen her neighbors do in times of trouble, and she makes her way to the Hansen house.
Before she gets there, Ed stops her while he’s driving by. He takes the food Heather made and asks about Maureen. He also asks if Junie wants to join him for a double date with her and Ant. This catches Heather off-guard, and she replies that her father is the DA. Ed tells her to think about it and drives off. When Heather gets to Mrs. Hansen’s, she notices the house is less cluttered. Gloria tells her that she’s moving and that she has to get out of Pantown. She then states that she really should have left town when she had an affair with Gary Cash.
Chapter 35 Summary
Heather, still reeling from Gloria’s revelation that she had an affair with her father, listens while Gloria shares details. She tells Heather to take anything she sees since she’s moving anyway. Heather uses the restroom and steals medication—the same medication Sheriff Nillson claims Maureen stole. Though she isn’t clear why she does this, she stuffs it into her pocket and leaves.
Chapter 36 Summary
When Heather gets home, she hides the pills she stole in an almost empty Anacin bottle under her bed. She realizes Claude could still be a reliable friend and resolves to tell him the next day about the affair, Maureen, and the Polaroids. Heather thinks back and realizes how much fighting there had been in her house over the years and how much changed because of her father’s affair. This includes the accident, which followed a barbecue at Mrs. Hansen’s, and Heather realizes her father is the reason her parents’ relationship fell apart.
When she gets to work, Ricky invites Heather to another party at the quarries. Heather asks whether he’s dating Brenda, and he tells her they aren’t dating. When Claude shows up, he seems off to Heather. Once they finally get a chance to talk, he says he needs to tell Heather something, but Brenda appears over the counter. Heather notices she is wearing the same gold earrings Maureen was wearing the night she went missing.
Chapter 37 Summary
Heather asks Brenda where she got the earrings, and she says Ed got them for her. When Heather asks why she hangs out with him, Brenda remarks that he makes her feel less alone. Brenda asks whether Heather is going to Ricky’s party, and Heather asks her to come over to her house instead. Brenda agrees. Later that night, Heather falls asleep waiting for her.
Chapter 38 Summary
Heather awakes to the sound of a loud banging at her door. Sheriff Nillson screams for Gary to wake up before storming in and asking if Brenda is there. When Heather tells him she isn’t, Sheriff Nillson reveals that she’s missing. They ask Heather if she knows where Ed is staying, and she tells them about the cabin—apparently belonging to his friend—close to Dead Man’s quarry where Maureen’s body was found. He asks Heather about the ring toss operator, and she tells him the last time she saw him was in Sheriff Nillson’s part of town. He then tells Heather he knows she saw Maureen in his basement, but she didn’t see whatever it is she thinks she did. He tells her rumors corrode the fabric of society, and he refuses to let her and her friends destroy his career. Heather can’t believe her father told Sheriff Nillson what she shared with him.
Interlude 11 Summary: “Beth”
Beth hears what sounds like policemen above her and wishes she could scream. She can’t because Ed taped her mouth shut before the men came. She wishes she could beg for help and wants to give up because help is so close and she can’t do anything about it. She strengthens her resolve and begins trying to rub the duct tape off her wrists with the sharp metal object she has now unearthed: a five-inch spike Ed still hasn’t found.
Chapter 39 Summary
Heather, frozen with fear about Brenda’s disappearance and everything else she’s discovered, begs her father to stay home. He suggests a board game, and Junie and Heather agree to play. Gary asks Heather to comfort him, stating he feels bad about the way his marriage to Constance ended up. Constance eventually joins them, and Heather feels a strange sense of comfort coming from her parents’ attention, although she does not trust them.
Chapter 40 Summary
The next day, the Cash family attends church. While they wait for Gary to go inside, Heather talks to Claude. He asks about Ant, and Heather feels shame because she realizes Ant showed Claude the picture. When Gary is ready to go inside the church, he calls in his family. During the service, Father Adolpho asks the congregation to pray for all of the missing and dead young women in the community. While the congregation’s heads are bowed, Constance moves to the aisle and begins shouting at the community, telling them they are to blame for these circumstances.
Gary rushes Constance out of the church and to the hospital, and Heather makes Junie come with her to Ant’s. Heather demands that he give her the picture he took. He refuses and forces her to kiss him. She kicks him in his groin and runs away, crying and screaming at him to give the picture back.
Chapter 41 Summary
Gary is at the hospital with Constance and tells Heather not to wait for him. Heather, having a hard time sitting at home worrying about Brenda, takes Junie to a friend’s house and rides her bike to the North Side Diner, where Beth McCain was abducted.
Chapter 42 Summary
Heather talks with a waitress named Lisa about Beth. She asks whether she had any regulars, and Lisa tells her she did—a guy dressed in a leather jacket with slicked-back hair who regularly took Anacin and drank cola. She also told Heather that Jerome Nillson was one of Beth’s regulars, too.
Chapter 43 Summary
On her way home, Heather reels with this new information. Sirens interrupt her thoughts, and when she follows them, she sees a body on the ground that she recognizes as Brenda’s, even if she’s dressed in clothes that aren’t hers. Heather screams.
Chapters 34-43 Analysis
Heather begins to see beyond not only the social expectations of Pantown but also the cultural notions that she’s been adhering to most of her life as a girl. For example, when she sees Ed on her way to Mrs. Hansen’s, she worries about her appearance when he catcalls her. She narrates, “I’m ashamed that my knee-jerk response was to make sure my ear was covered so that he didn’t have to retract the ‘pretty’ part” (199). Heather begins to see the learned responses she’s been conditioned to exhibit over time—that her beauty is her worth, and that when men catcall her, she should respond with gratitude. Brenda experiences the same conflict in her relationship with Ed, telling Heather, “I don’t think Ed even likes me. He gave me these earrings, but he doesn’t pay much attention to me anymore” and that “He makes everything seem like it matters, at least when I’m with him. As soon as he’s gone, I feel like a fool” (215-16). Though Brenda doesn’t like Ed and doesn’t feel he likes her, she is swayed by his manipulation anyway. Men like Gary Cash and Jerome Nillson use similar tactics to force women into submission, highlighting The Impact of Violence and Misogyny on Coming-of-Age.
The Role of Suppression in Perpetuating Violence is also explored in these chapters. For example, when Constance speaks out against the violent acts in which the Pantown community is complicit, Gary immediately hospitalizes her. Sheriff Nillson responds to her outburst by taking charge of the situation, saying to everyone, “It’s a trying time to be a mother, no doubt about it. Father, get back to your flock. Gary will take care of his family” (232). Nillson commands the dominant men to take charge, pretending alongside everyone else that Constance does not speak the truth. Even Heather, who is beginning to see her neighborhood’s secrecy and sickness, thinks, “It was mortifying, thinking of her breaking down in public. We tried so hard to hide it, Dad and me. Now everyone would know, not just the neighbors who’d helped us out when Junie and I were little” (238). The community uses Constance and her illness to avoid taking responsibility for the ways they perpetuate harm, and she ends up hospitalized so she cannot say any more. Such manipulation runs rampant through the narrative, in service of the story’s men.
Heather realizes just how much she’s being groomed to take care of the men in her life, including her father, after Brenda’s disappearance. Even though both of her parents try to inhabit their roles as caretakers the night Brenda goes missing—Gary telling Heather that he needs her to “remember that [he’s] head of this household” and Constance telling Gary that “comforting a child is a mother’s duty”—Heather spends most of her time comforting for herself, Junie, and her father (225-27). While her parents attempt to model what parents should be, they continue to demand more of her than she should have to give as their child. Heather realizes this when she starts to question things like why she has to wait to enter the church until her father goes inside and realizes how much of her family’s problems are his fault alone. This unraveling begins to help Heather because only by getting to the truth of what’s happening in Pantown will she understand what is happening to her friends.
