"Cecilia, the youngest, only thirteen, had gone first, slitting her wrists like a Stoic while taking a bath, and when they found her, afloat in her pink pool, with the yellow eyes of someone possessed and her small body giving off the odor of a mature woman, the paramedics had been so frightened by her tranquility that they had stood mesmerized." Chap. 1, p. 3

"'It's sad to think about those girls,' he said. 'What a waste of life.'" Chap. 1, p. 19

"Mr. Libson kept trying to lift her off, gently, but even in our ignorance we knew it was hopeless and that despite Cecilia's open eyes and the way her mouth kept contracting like that of a fish on a stringer it was just nerves and she had succeeded, on the second try, in hurling herself out of the world." Chap. 1, p. 31

"The man lashed the fence, in...