Trophy Girl Quotes

I. Those of us born by water are never afraid enough of drowning. Bruises used to trophy my knees from my death-defying tree climb jumps. Growing up, my backyard was a forest of blackberry bushes. I learned early nothing sweet will come to you unthorned. II. At twelve your body becomes a currency. So Jenny and I sat down and cut up all our clothes into nothing. That year I failed math class but knew the exact number of calories in a carrot stick. I learned early being desired goes hand in hand with hunger. III. The last time I tried to scream I felt my father climbing up through my throat and into my mouth. IV. There is a certain kind of girl who reads Lolita at fourteen and finds religion. I painted my eyes black and sucked barroom cherries to red my tongue. There was a boy who promised Judas really did love Jesus. I learned early every kiss and betrayal are up for interpretation. V. I think he must have conferenced with my nightmares on exactly how to hurt me. VI. He never broke my heart. He only turned it into a compass that always points me back to him.

To have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and her self respect - well, that’s a trophy enough for a guy’s ego, huh?

A garter. You’re supposed to take it off and keep it as a memento. K-k-kinda like a trophy for going far sexually with a girl. It’s stupid, really. And kind of d-d-degrading if I think about it too m-m-much.” “I know what it is,” he says, amusement evident in his voice. “I just wanted to hear your explanation.

When you love, dear girl, you give another the power to hurt you. If you love deeply enough, you give another the power to destroy you.

And so I'm me again, Leo. Thanks to the example of a five-year-old. I'm hoping you wouldn't want it any other way. Not that you weren't flattered, right? I mean, to have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and self-respect - well, that's trophy enough for any guy's ego, huh?

Girls and women sense this. We want to be liked. We want to be trusted. So we downplay our strengths to avoid threatening anyone and invoking disdain. We do not mention our accomplishments. We do not accept compliments. We temper, qualify, and discount our opinions. We walk without swagger, and we yield incessantly. We step out of the way. We say, “I feel like” instead of “I know.” We ask if our ideas make sense instead of assuming they do. We apologize for…everything. Conversations among brilliant women often devolve into competitions for who wins the trophy for hottest mess. We want to be respected, but we want to be loved and accepted even more.

I am just a broken girl to them, a bleeding trophy from another land they've conquered," I say. "they don't see me as a threat

Because predators tend to eat the weakest of a species, they keep the remaining population strong. Without predators, herds become weak and disabled. In contrast, when humans hunt animals for trophies, they kill the strongest of the species, thereby weakening the herd.

Girls like Caroline and Lily are constantly performing, as much for the Good Girl they think they should be as for the adults and peers who look on. They have spent their lives growing internally dependent on external rewards: pats on the back A's, club presidencies, Most Valuable Player trophies. They become more concerned with how they appear and should be than who they are What other think and feel replaces what is true for them.

Each morning fog rolls over the bay and caresses the Golden Gate, the most picturesque bridge in the world. In the evenings night descends from heaven like some mystical force of nature, alerting hearts that something wonderful is about to happen. The City by the Bay becomes a moonlit paradise of sounds and sensations. It teems with lights, music, ocean, and pretty girls ready to dance and have fun. San Francisco stretches out her romantic hand, beckoning you to join in all the living going on, all the love being found. And for this reason, night is the loneliest time for those of us who have no one. Oh, we try for love, desperately we make the attempt, gallantly we forge on. But inevitably we fall into a seductive whirlpool of night and garter belts, lipstick and alluring lingerie, darkened hotel rooms and passion devoid of love. Love is the trophy others raise high in happiness, leaving the rest to seek momentary solace in sex bereft of tenderness and meaning, pretending for a few moments, perhaps even a few hours, that it is something more. A hollow consolation prize for losing the romance contest.

You can’t fix who you are on your own, but God is in the business of transforming broken girls into beautiful trophies of His grace.

Why do boys think they can fight over someone like she's some kind of trophy?

He’s not going to applaud us for becoming famous during our lifetimes; He’s going to ask us how we used our spotlight to bring Him glory. He’s not going to ask us how many trophies and awards we received; He’s going to ask us how we used our gifts to build the body of Christ.

There was death at the beginning as there would be death again at its end. Though whether it was some fleeting shadow of this that passed across the girl’s dreams and woke her on that least likely of mornings she would never know. All she knew, when she opened her eyes, was that the world was somehow altered. The red glow of her alarm showed it was yet a half hour till the time she had set it to wake her and she lay quite still, not lifting her head, trying to configure the change. It was dark but not as dark as it should be. Across the bedroom, she could clearly make out the dull glint of her riding trophies on cluttered shelves and above them the looming faces of rock stars she had once thought she should care about. She listened. The silence that filled the house was different too, expectant, like the pause between the intake of breath and the uttering of words. Soon there would be the muted roar of the furnace coming alive in the basement and the old farmhouse floorboards would start their ritual creaking complaint. She slipped out from the bedclothes and went to the window. There was snow. The first fall of winter. And from the laterals of the fence up by the pond she could tell there must be almost a foot of it. With no deflecting wind, it was perfect and driftless, heaped in comical proportion on the branches of the six small cherry trees her father had planted last year. A single star shone in a wedge of deep blue above the woods. The girl looked down and saw a lace of frost had formed on the lower part of the window and she placed a finger on it, melting a small hole. She shivered, not from the cold, but from the thrill that this transformed world was for the moment entirely hers. And she turned and hurried to get dressed.

You get all these different cuts of meat cooking at once' he said. 'You've got your sausage, which cooks fast. You've got your big steak, which is your best cut, which takes some time, right? You got to talk to all these girls at once just like you take care of all that meat at once' After he made this analogy, I presented Ajay with a trophy that said 'Most Sexist Food Analogy of All Time: Meat and BBQ division'.

The need to win, is less about the trophies than about beating the other girls. I can get fancy and sweet about it, but at bottom my motivation is simple: I want to beat everyone. It’s not just the winning. It’s the not being beaten. Ribbons and trophies get old, but losing lasts. I hate it. Fear of defeat is what really drives many of us. I say “us” because I can’t possibly be the only person who feels this way.

While Alpha Males are often gifted with superior physical attributes—size, strength, speed, good looks—selected by evolution over the eons by the strongest surviving and, essentially, getting all the girls, the Beta Male gene has survived not by meeting and overcoming adversity, but by anticipating and avoiding it. That is, when the Alpha Males were out charging after mastodons, the Beta Males could imagine in advance that attacking what was essentially an angry, woolly bulldozer with a pointy stick might be a losing proposition, so they hung back at camp to console the grieving widows. When Alpha Males set out to conquer neighboring tribes, to count coups and take heads, Beta Males could see in advance that in the event of a victory, the influx of female slaves was going to leave a surplus of mateless women cast out for younger trophy models, with nothing to do but salt down the heads and file the uncounted coups, and some would find solace in the arms of any Beta Male smart enough to survive. In the case of defeat, well, there was that widows thing again. The Beta Male is seldom the strongest or the fastest, but because he can anticipate danger, he far outnumbers his Alpha Male competition. The world is led by Alpha Males, but the machinery of the world turns on the bearings of the Beta Male.

This cape had become Stella. Bold, Bright, Daring, Red! It was a girl in a story-book. Stella was a star on the red carpet, in Hollywood. What a bright smile she had! That photograph! That trophy! And that red hair that flowed like a mane in the wind!

I don't define success by how much money someone makes. I don't define success by how many trophies or plaques or awards someone has. I don't define it by membership in exclusive clubs or the ability to name-drop about someone's famous friends. I don't define it by how many luxury cars or opulent homes someone might own or how many sumptuous vacations they might taken in exotic locales all over the globe. I don't define success...oh, hell, I'm just kidding. Actually, all that stuff is fantastic!

Specifically, according to Vronsky, while all American soldiers who fought in WWII were trained to kill, a small contingent used the cover of state-sanctioned violence to also rape, torture, and collect human body parts as trophies. Though most returning GIs successfully reintegrated into society, some brought the brutality of war into their homes, abusing their families behind closed doors. That abuse, occurring as it did in a culture openly promoting war, created the fertile ground from which the first major crop of American serial killers would spring.

Hey Pete. So why the leave from social media? You are an activist, right? It seems like this decision is counterproductive to your message and work." A: The short answer is I’m tired of the endless narcissism inherent to the medium. In the commercial society we have, coupled with the consequential sense of insecurity people feel, as they impulsively “package themselves” for public consumption, the expression most dominant in all of this - is vanity. And I find that disheartening, annoying and dangerous. It is a form of cultural violence in many respects. However, please note the difference - that I work to promote just that – a message/idea – not myself… and I honestly loath people who today just promote themselves for the sake of themselves. A sea of humans who have been conditioned into viewing who they are – as how they are seen online. Think about that for a moment. Social identity theory run amok. People have been conditioned to think “they are” how “others see them”. We live in an increasing fictional reality where people are now not only people – they are digital symbols. And those symbols become more important as a matter of “marketing” than people’s true personality. Now, one could argue that social perception has always had a communicative symbolism, even before the computer age. But nooooooothing like today. Social media has become a social prison and a strong means of social control, in fact. Beyond that, as most know, social media is literally designed like a drug. And it acts like it as people get more and more addicted to being seen and addicted to molding the way they want the world to view them – no matter how false the image (If there is any word that defines peoples’ behavior here – it is pretention). Dopamine fires upon recognition and, coupled with cell phone culture, we now have a sea of people in zombie like trances looking at their phones (literally) thousands of times a day, merging their direct, true interpersonal social reality with a virtual “social media” one. No one can read anymore... they just swipe a stream of 200 character headlines/posts/tweets. understanding the world as an aggregate of those fragmented sentences. Massive loss of comprehension happening, replaced by usually agreeable, "in-bubble" views - hence an actual loss of variety. So again, this isn’t to say non-commercial focused social media doesn’t have positive purposes, such as with activism at times. But, on the whole, it merely amplifies a general value system disorder of a “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT HOW GREAT I AM!” – rooted in systemic insecurity. People lying to themselves, drawing meaningless satisfaction from superficial responses from a sea of avatars. And it’s no surprise. Market economics demands people self promote shamelessly, coupled with the arbitrary constructs of beauty and success that have also resulted. People see status in certain things and, directly or pathologically, use those things for their own narcissistic advantage. Think of those endless status pics of people rock climbing, or hanging out on a stunning beach or showing off their new trophy girl-friend, etc. It goes on and on and worse the general public generally likes it, seeking to imitate those images/symbols to amplify their own false status. Hence the endless feedback loop of superficiality. And people wonder why youth suicides have risen… a young woman looking at a model of perfection set by her peers, without proper knowledge of the medium, can be made to feel inferior far more dramatically than the typical body image problems associated to traditional advertising. That is just one example of the cultural violence inherent. The entire industry of social media is BASED on narcissistic status promotion and narrow self-interest. That is the emotion/intent that creates the billions and billions in revenue these platforms experience, as they in turn sell off people’s personal data to advertisers and governments. You are the product, of course.

Orion never appreciated the wild places for what they are. Wild things need to be left free to preserve what makes them special. He saw everything in the world around him as a trophy to collect. As something to possess. Even me. I am wild, untamed, unattached, unfettered. To love me is to appreciate that. And I am fortunate indeed to have many who love me. Sometimes, to best tell your own story, you need it to be told by another. I am the protector of women and the friend of young girls. The helper of childbirth, she who soothes. I am the caretaker of the wild places, the mountains, marshes, the pastures and wetlands. I am Artemis, goddess of the wild hunt.

I remember thinking that when it came to dating there was a thin line between becoming a trophy buck hanging out in a woman’s living room for life and being just another dead deer carcass in a ditch run over by a woman driver. Trophy bucks do not come easily, and my pride, which some girls viewed as arrogance, actually helped me stay pure.

We’re going to kick butt at the competition, Tessie, and when we win I promise I’ll let you bash my brother’s head in with the trophy.” I chuckle at his enthusiasm and shake my head. “It’s not a wrestling match, Stone, it’s a beauty pageant, and my trophy will most likely be a plastic tiara.” “Well don’t those things have sharp pointy combs? You can dig them into his eye or something.” “You have a really twisted mind, you know that?” “Thank you, shortcake.

WHERE 'S Polly?" asked Fan one snowy afternoon, as she came into the dining-room where Tom was reposing on the sofa with his boots in the air, absorbed in one of those delightful books in which boys are cast away on desert islands, where every known fruit, vegetable and flower is in its prime all the year round; or, lost in boundless forests, where the young heroes have thrilling adventures, kill impossible beasts, and, when the author's invention gives out, suddenly find their way home, laden with tiger skins, tame buffaloes and other pleasing trophies of their prowess.

Historian Peter Vronsky hypothesizes that while several factors must align to make a murderer (genetics and frontal lobe injuries being two common ones), World War II was responsible for this golden age of serial killers a generation later. Specifically, according to Vronsky, while all American soldiers who fought in WWII were trained to kill, a small contingent used the cover of state-sanctioned violence to also rape, torture, and collect human body parts as trophies. Though most returning GIs successfully reintegrated into society, some brought the brutality of war into their homes, abusing their families behind closed doors. That abuse, occurring as it did in a culture openly promoting war, created the fertile ground from which the first major crop of American serial killers would spring.

When corporate security squads were sent on punitive raids, they were told not to waste ammunition—one bullet, one kill. They were not supposed to use company ammunition hunting big game for sport. As proof of their frugality, they were expected to bring back one severed human hand for every bullet expended.4 One eyewitness described soldiers returning from a raid: On the bow of the canoe is a pole, and a bundle of something on it. These are the hands (right hands) of sixteen warriors they have slain. “Warriors?” Don’t you see among them the hands of little children and girls? I have seen them. I have seen where the trophy has been cut off, while the poor heart beat strongly enough to shoot the blood from the cut arteries at a distance of fully four feet.5 Severed hands became a kind of currency—proof that orders were being obeyed. A basket of smoked hands covered any shortfall in production, and if there was no rubber to be had, the Free State’s security forces, the Force Publique, would go out to collect a quota of hands instead. Natives quickly learned that willingly sacrificing a hand might save their life. And not just hands. After one commander grumbled that his men were shooting only women and children, his soldiers returned from the next raid with a basket of penises.

Barca became my team in 1994 on a winter trip through the city. My visit coincided with the annual gratis opening of Barca’s museum. It is the most visited museum in the city, even ahead of a massive collection of Picasso canvases. With no admission fee, lines crawled across the stadium parking lot, filled with eight-year-old boys and their mothers, silver-haired men paying a visit to old friends in the trophy case, and teenage girls apparently brushing up on team history. The transcendent enthusiasm for a bunch of artifacts and sepia photos moved me. I felt like a nonbeliever watching a religious pilgrimage. And the sheer depth of their faith made me a believer, too.

I took out my karambit and crouched low. I was too close to him to move without him hearing the leaves crunch under my feet, so I would need to wait for him to make a move to mask the sound. Once again the thought of this douchebag touching my girls floated through my mind, and I had to control my breathing before I went into full rage mode and cut this asshole’s balls off to set on Tara’s piano as a trophy.

Give him a trophy for it, but don’t marry a man just because he’s nice. And try not to make a habit of getting engaged in the first place, Vivvie. It can lead to marriage if you’re not careful.

Y'all know that little gal Kelly Crawford that works down at Tuckers?" Tuckers Jiffy Lube was the only gas station and mechanical shop in town. Jena Lynn's face contorted in disapproval. "You referring to that scantily clad girl who runs the register?" I asked as Jena Lynn hopped up to retrieve the coffeepot. "That's the one." Betsy curled up her lip in disgust. "That girl is barely legal!" I was outraged. "I know! I'm going to tell her granny. She'll take a hickory switch to the girl when she finds out what she's been up to. She was all over Darnell." Betsy wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She was right about that. Her granny wasn't the type to spare the rod; she parented old-school style. Jena Lynn's tone rose as she stirred raw sugar into her coffee. "You caught them?" "Well, I called him after what happened with poor Mr. Ledbetter---" We shook our heads. "---told him I was going to be late 'cause I was taking that extra shift. Guess he thought late meant real late 'cause when I got home, they we're rootin' around on my couch, the one my meemaw gave me last spring when she had her house redecorated." We sat in stunned silence. "I threw his junk out last night. And when he still didn't budge from the TV"---she paused for effect---"I set it all on fire, right there in the front yard." She leaned back and crossed her arms over her expansive chest. "That's harsh." Sam stacked his empty plates. "Maybe it wasn't Darnell's fault." Jena Lynn and I gave him a disapproving glare. He appeared oblivious to his offense, and the moron had the audacity to reach into the container for a cream cheese Danish. "Sam, if you value that scrawny hand of yours, I'd pull it out real slow or you'll be drawing back a nub," Betsy warned. "Sheesh!" Sam jerked backward. It was obvious he didn't doubt her for a second. He marched toward the kitchen and dropped the plates in the bus tub with a loud thud. "He should know better. You don't touch a gal's comfort food in a time of crisis," I said, and my sister nodded in agreement. Jena Lynn patted Betsy on the arm. "Ignore him, Bets. He's a man." I stood. "And if I may be so bold as to speak for all the women of the world who have been unfortunate enough to be in your shoes, we applaud you." A satisfied smile spread across Betsy's lips. "Thank you." She took a little bow. "That's why my eyes look like they do. Smoke got to me." She leaned in closer. "I threw all his high school football trophies into the blaze while he was hollering at me. The whole neighborhood came out to watch." I chuckled. The thought of Darnell Fryer running around watching all his belongings go up in smoke was hilarious. I wished I'd been there. "Did anyone try to step in and help Darnell?" "Hell nah. He owes his buddies so much money from borrowing to pay his gambling debts, the ones that came out brought their camping chairs and watched the show while tossing back a few cold ones." She got up from the counter to scoop a glass full of ice and filled it with Diet Coke from the fountain. "Y'all, I gotta lose this weight now I'm back on the market." Betsy was one of a kind.

You watch football and build cars, while taking care of a ranch. Why do I get the feeling I’m the girl in this relationship?” “That’s because you’ve bought into the lies about what a woman is. We’re not trophies and we’re not princesses.

A trophy isn't special if it wasn't hard to get.

Ida dragged her nails along the lockers. They'd been mud brown in my day but had since been painted red, the color dry and faded. A whole generation had come and gone since I'd last been here. The remnants of whom we'd been lingered in the old brick walls and dusty trophy cases.

Aren't rituals for serial killers?" Rose raised an eyebrow. "Is that a serious question?" When I didn't say anything, she pointed between us. Two of the three girls he'd already killsed, on the same ground where he was grooming the fourth. He didn't even need to take a bone or a piece of jewelry to tuck away in a dark corner. He'd made us into living trophies.

Numerous members of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade had engaged in similar displays before. They’d stand on top of the building, wave a flag, shout slogans through megaphones, and scatter flyers at the attackers below. Every time, the courageous man or woman had been able to retreat safely from the hailstorm of bullets and earn glory for their valor. The new girl clearly thought she’d be just as lucky. She waved the battle banner as though brandishing her burning youth, trusting that the enemy would be burnt to ashes in the revolutionary flames, imagining that an ideal world would be born tomorrow from the ardor and zeal coursing through her blood.… She was intoxicated by her brilliant, crimson dream until a bullet pierced her chest. Her fifteen-year-old body was so soft that the bullet hardly slowed down as it passed through it and whistled in the air behind her. The young Red Guard tumbled down along with her flag, her light form descending even more slowly than the piece of red fabric, like a little bird unwilling to leave the sky. The Red Union warriors shouted in joy. A few rushed to the foot of the building, tore away the battle banner of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade, and seized the slender, lifeless body. They raised their trophy overhead and flaunted it for a while before tossing it toward the top of the metal gate of the compound. Most of the gate’s metal bars, capped with sharp tips, had been pulled down at the beginning of the factional civil wars to be used as spears, but two still remained. As their sharp tips caught the girl, life seemed to return momentarily to her body. The Red Guards backed up some distance and began to use the impaled body for target practice. For her, the dense storm of bullets was now no different from a gentle rain, as she could no longer feel anything. From time to time, her vinelike arms jerked across her body softly, as though she were flicking off drops of rain.

And so I'm me again, Leo. Thanks to the example of a 5 year old. I'm hoping you wouldn't wish it any other way. Not that you weren't flattered, right? I mean, to have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and her self-respect - well, that's trophy enough for any guy's ego, huh? You occupied my space. But because you were not in my present, when I looked into my future I saw ... nothing. Isn't that sad? And stupid? Well, I hope you enjoyed your smuggies while they lasted because it's over now. Oh sure, I'll still be missing you as much as ever. I'll still smile at the memory of you. I'll still be - okay, I'll say it again, - loving you, but I won't abandon myself for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself. I've reclaimed my future. If we are destined to be together again, be happy to know you'll be getting the real me, not some blubbering half me.

little junior in her charge when it was well known that Teeny had no little friends to play with. But Teeny certainly had friends now! thought Elizabeth, with a smile. It had been wonderful to watch her at lunch-time, surrounded by the other members of the Dare Club. In clean clothes, after a hot shower, she had sat between Duncan and Kitty, in the place of honour at one of the junior tables. She was a member of the club at last, her collar worn turned up, like the rest of them, her green ear of corn displayed like a trophy in her top buttonhole. Having no idea of the danger she had been through, Duncan and Kitty were simply pleased that Teeny had finally proved that she was not a ‘coward’. She was still sitting with her new friends now, chattering happily in the front row, a child transformed. Since arriving at Whyteleafe, the shy, nervous

She doesn’t look like the type of girl who has a hot pink vibrator stashed next to the bed; then again, I don’t look like the type of dude who has to jerk off a few times a week because he cannot get laid. Looks can be deceiving.

The only pussy I will have is your pussy.” His eyes pop open again and he sits forward, grabbing me beneath the arms and whirling me around so that I’m the one in the chair and he’s the one on his knees. “The only mouth that will come near my cock is your mouth.” He bunches my dress up around my waist. “The only girl who will sit on my lap like a pretty little trophy is you.” He hooks a finger in my panties and yanks them aside, baring me. “The only girl I will treat like my personal whore is you.

every piece of fairy-tale cake we’ve choked down that rewards a girl—for her kindness, her wit, her courage—with a wedding. As though a wedding is a marriage, as though marriage is itself a trophy.

The girl is nine and narrow-faced like a sleek hunting dog. Electra, the eldest of Sevro’s three daughters, is taller than my son and twice as thin. But while Pax radiates an inner joy that makes adults’ eyes twinkle, there’s a deep grimness to the girl. Her eyes are dusky gold and hidden behind heavy lids. Sometimes when they look at me, I feel them judging with an aloofness that reminds me of her mother. Sevro leans forward eagerly. “I’ll wager Aja’s razor against Apollonius’s helm that my wee monster beats the piss out of your boy.” “I’m not going to bet on our children,” I whisper in indignation. “I’ll throw Aja’s Institute ring in as well.” “Have some decency, Sevro. They’re our children.” “And Octavia’s cape.” “I want the Falthe Ivory Tree.” Sevro gasps. “I love the Ivory Tree. Where else will I hang my trophies?” I shrug. “No Ivory Tree, no bet.” “Bloodydamn savage,” he says, sticking out a hand to shake. “You have a deal.

LOLLIPOP DOLLS IS like some weird little girl's hunting lodge. The heads and faces of every Japanese cartoon character and monster are hung on the walls like trophies. Their plastic guts are in model kits on the shelves and their skins are draped on padded hangers in long rows of animal prints and Little Bo Peep frills. When I turn around, there's a platoon of twelve-year-old Cutie Honey types staring up at me, letting me know that I'm extremely not welcome. It's Village of the Damned with ankle socks.

Mia was the type of woman that he wanted to have outside with him so that he could show her off to the world. She was officially his trophy girl. “I’m

I was greenly jealous of my peers’ moms with their bleach-blonde hair, tanning-bed arms, toothpick waists, and closets full of brand-new clothes: blouses and skirts and pants and designer jeans that some of the mothers let their daughters borrow. I didn’t know whether Mom’s lack of interest in all things fashionable came from being an immigrant from Scotland—where the media-saturated and commodity-rich beauty industry didn’t take over until the end of the twentieth century—or because she was a reader, a writer, and a teacher: mind over matter. All I knew was that, while she would buy me any book I asked for or take me to any play I might want to see, she couldn’t explain how to contour eye shadow or tell me whether my sweater complemented my complexion. She didn’t diet, she didn’t read women’s magazines, and she refused to buy me the enormous gold earrings or the pair of spiky red shoes I coveted, stilettos sharp enough to skewer fi sh. And even though her disinterest meant I didn’t have to participate in a daily beauty competition—one with a trophy mom sacrifi cing her body on the altar of loveliness—I also didn’t have a beauty mentor that I could trust. So I was left to try to copy the popular girls at school, tv and movie icons, or the breathtaking stars in magazines. Even the curling iron was a purchase I had to negotiate on my own.

Love is so different here In another hemisphere All I can do is sit and stare at your lovely, Stare at your lovely face We've been out every night You're mine without a fight Holding on to you is simple and new, I'm dying for you Living away from you is killing and bleeding My lungs are receding Something about you just makes me whole Come down for a drink or two And sit beside the window's view Make room for the looks we'll share As I focus on you And you comb through your hair I know that I'm not your choice But the girl I was wasn't who you loved And so I'm gonna sit outside And think of you Is that alright? You cannot flee from love Knicks and bruises are just trophy cups I've got your scent embroidered, and stuck in my senses Latched onto my front brain Call me never; leave no voicemails How can I be sure you're still around? It's not addiction, I'm just affixed to you And your open wounds Living away from you is killing and bleeding My lungs are receding Something about you just quits me cold Come down for a drink or two And sit beside the window's view Make room for the looks we'll share As I focus on you And you comb through your hair I know that I'm not your choice But the boy I was wasn't who you loved And so I'm gonna sit outside And think of you Is that alright? He can't afford what I give you Love that is truly eternal His ring can't mean what you mean to me It's not touch I need Just for you to know me But you'll never know me 'Cause you're just a fantasy Come down for a drink or two And sit beside the window's view Make room for the looks we'll share As I focus on you And you comb through your hair I know that I'm not your choice But the boy I was wasn't who you loved And so I'm gonna sit outside And think of you Is that alright?

He was a nice man,” I said lamely. “Good for him. Give him a trophy for it, but don’t marry a man just because he’s nice. And try not to make a habit of getting engaged in the first place, Vivvie. It can lead to marriage if you’re not careful.

Son, pick yourself up,” he’s saying in an authoritative tone, mouth set in a straight line. “Roger, he might be hurt,” Mom tells him, worried. “He’s fine. Anyone can see the girl tossed him on his rear.” He’s eyeballing Chandler with a healthy dose of respect. “Don’t say I blame her.

Really. You read romance novels?” I bite into my first hard shell taco and moan. “What trope?” Trope. Another mental pat and I smile to myself when her eyes get soft. “Um.” She brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Mostly the usual stuff. Uh, cowboy romance and…sports romance.” What’s this now? Sports romance? I sit up straighter in my chair. “That’s a thing?” “Yes.” “What kind of sports are you reading about?” She ignores me for a couple beats, choosing that moment to bite into her taco—on purpose, probably!—chewing thoughtfully and not answering the question. Swallows. Takes another bite. I swear to god she’s doing that to torture me. “Baseball.” “Like, baseball baseball? College or what?” “No, professional baseball.” “You’re reading a romance about baseball players?” “I mean—the guy is a baseball player. The girl works as the nanny.” The nanny? What the hell kind of book is this? “He hooks up with the nanny?! Is he married? Where’s the wife?

Having an involved father is a strong predictor of a child’s eventual level of empathy. Optimally this involvement should begin when children are starting elementary school. Moving from preschool to elementary school is a big transition for kids. Dads, who often take the lead on making the outside world enticing, appear to grease the wheels and make this transition easier. This effect is equally marked for young girls and boys alike.

You-ins. The even more hillbilly adaptation of “y’all.” I never used it. You know I always was a “y’all” girl.

As far as Alistair was concerned, the supposed civilized people of the west had their priorities wrong. They raised meek girls, but he saw something more, something greater in Ana than a trophy piece.

What are you saying, Argus?” Jason came out of the darkness like a murdered man’s ghost. “I heard you mention my name.” “Only telling Atalanta here about your own exploits as a hunter,” Argus said as naturally as if it were true. “You ought to show her that leopard-skin trophy of yours. It’s a beauty.” “There’ll be time enough to show her that later.” Jason tried to look annoyed, but I could tell that Argus’s smooth talk had flattered him. “When I choose to do it, not when you try to send me off on an errand. I still lead this venture, not you.” I hated his arrogant attitude toward Argus, to whom he owed so much, but there was little I could do about it. The best I could manage was a ruse to divert him. “A leopard skin?” I put the proper note of awe into my voice. “You should wear it when Lord Aetes summons us to his hall. One look at such a prize and he’ll know who our leader is without asking!” “You think that will be necessary?” Jason growled, giving Argus a hard, resentful stare. I pretended I hadn’t heard that. “A leopard! Not even Herakles could boast such a kill. He wore a lion’s pelt, but brute strength’s all you need to slay one of those beasts. You need strength and brains to overcome a leopard.” “Would you really like to see the pelt?” Jason asked eagerly. I nodded. “For you, then, honored huntress,” he said in a low, honeyed voice. He leaped back aboard the Argo with so much vigor that Argus had to bite his lips to hold back the laughter. “I’ll never call you ‘girl’ again,” Argus said to me. “A woman twice your age would envy your cunning!” “If I were still ‘Glaucus,’ you’d say I was smart or clever, not cunning,” I chided him. “Pfff! What does one little word matter?” “So you won’t mind if I call the Argo a ferryboat?” I replied sweetly.

He looks up and notices the Plexiglas box on the rickety shelf above the toilet and his eyes grow two sizes bigger. He looks at me and back at the trophy. "Is that a fucking Stanley Cup ring?" "Yeah. Jude's first," I explain. "He gave it to my dad. Dad used to keep it here. It was a prized possession in his favorite place." "In the shitter?" Holden is both stunned and horrified as he rises to his feet and leans forward to admire it. "He kept it on his dresser, where he could see it first thing in the morning and last thing at night." I say and I almost smile as I explain the rest. "But Sadie, Dixie and I always move it to the bathroom. At first, Jude actually thought Dad kept it there, but then he realized it was our way of keeping him humble. Reminding him rings and trophies mean shit to us. He still has to be a good person." Holden chuckles and I'm surprised by how good it feels to make him laugh. "You girls sure know how to keep a guy in place ... and dishonor a symbol of the hardest trophy to win in sports.

My bedroom looked very different the morning of my eighteenth birthday. It looked lonely. I opened my eyes just as the sun started creeping through the window, and I stared at the white chest of drawers that had greeted me every morning since I could remember. Maybe it’s stupid to think that a piece of furniture had feelings, but then again, I’m the same girl who kept my tattered old baby doll dressed in a sweater and knitted cap so she wouldn’t get cold sitting on the top shelf of my closet. And this morning that chest of drawers was looking sad. All the photographs and trophies and silly knickknacks that had blanketed the top and told my life story better than any words ever could were gone, packed in brown cardboard boxes and neatly stacked in the cellar. Even my pretty pink walls were bare. Mama picked that color after I was born, and I’ve never wanted to change it. Ruthis Morgan used to try to convince me that my walls should be painted some other color. ‘Pink’s just not your color, Catherine Grace. You know as well as I do that there’s not a speck of pink on the football field.’ There was nothing she could say that was going to change my mind of the color on my walls. If I had I would have lost another piece of my mama. And I wasn’t letting go of any piece of her, pink or not. Daddy insisted on replacing my tired, worn curtains a while back, but I threw such a fit that he spent a good seven weeks looking for the very same fabric, little bitsy pink flowers on a white -and-pink-checkered background. He finally found a few yards in some textile mill down in South Carolina. I told him there were a few things in life that should never be allowed to change, and my curtains were one of them. So many other things were never going to stay the same, and this morning was one of them. I’d been praying for this day for as long as I could remember, and now that it was here, all I wanted to do was crawl under my covers and pretend it was any other day. . . . I know that this would be the last morning I would wake up in this bed as a Sunday-school-going, dishwashing, tomato-watering member of this family. I knew this would be the last morning I would wake up in the same bed where I had calculated God only knows how many algebra problems, the same bed I had hid under playing hide-and-seek with Martha Ann, and the same bed I had lain on and cried myself to sleep too many nights after Mama died. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through the day considering I was having such a hard time just saying good-bye to my bed.

The only pussy I will have is your pussy.” His eyes pop open again and he sits forward, grabbing me beneath the arms and whirling me around so that I’m the one in the chair and he’s the one on his knees. “The only mouth that will come near my cock is your mouth.” He bunches my dress up around my waist. “The only girl who will sit on my lap like a pretty little trophy is you.” He hooks a finger in my panties and yanks them aside, baring me. “The only girl I will treat like my personal whore is you.” He