Repressed Sexuality

The repressed sexuality of the novel’s three main female characters leads to two separate deaths in the woods, which seems to suggest that repressing the sexuality of teenage girls is a dangerous game.

The first death in Battle Creek is Craig’s, which is at first assumed to be a suicide. As we later learn, however, he was killed while playing a sexual game in the woods with Lacey and Nikki. Nikki and Lacey meet in the woods and begin a whirlwind romance. Nikki is a lesbian, and she falls in love with Lacey, but she is unable to face the prospect of living her life openly gay in a society that does not tolerate homosexuality. So she forces herself to remain Craig’s girlfriend because it is the proper thing to do, although she resents him because she feels no attraction toward him...