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The Detectives
Jackie is a girl from Angelus who becomes Boner McPharlin’s moll. An average high school girl, Boner’s bad-boy persona captivates her, and she begins to take rides with him, despite the damage to her reputation. Jackie’s friendship with Erin disintegrates, but she is unable to fit in with the “rough chicks” people group her with. Instead, she becomes largely solitary, only spending time studying or with Boner. A gifted student, Jackie drifts away from Boner as she concentrates on her studies, and he becomes more involved in crime. Jackie feels the effects of Boner’s lifestyle herself, as both the detectives and Bob Lang question her about him. She attempts to comfort and support Boner, going on fishing trips with them, but they drift apart over time. Jackie leaves for university and Jackie’s father and Jackie’s mother die, severing her ties to Angelus, and to Boner. She lives abroad, dates a woman named Ethna, and feels completely disconnected from Boner and Angelus until the detectives call her down following Boner’s father’s death to ask her to accompany Boner to the mental hospital. While Boner’s homemade pornography of her deeply disturbs her, she agrees, and she continues to visit Boner in the hospital, hearing his cryptic ranting and raving. Along with the detectives, she is the only guest at his funeral. She realizes too late that she too was manipulated against him to get him out of the way.
Jackie Quotes in The Turning
The The Turning quotes below are all either spoken by Jackie or refer to Jackie . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Commission
Quotes
Drugs, I spose. Never really understood it. Just that he’d fallen foul of em. And any question, any witness account died on the vine, didn’t matter who it came to. Felt like, whatever was going on I was the only bloke not in on it. And the city blokes were in on it; it was bigger than that little town, that’s for sure. So who do you talk to? Even if you’ve got the balls, who can you trust? It ate me alive. Ulcers, everything. I should have quit but I didn’t even have the courage to do that. Would have saved us all a lot of pain. But it’s all I ever wanted to do, you see, be a cop. And I hung on till there was nothing left of me, nothing left of any of us. Cowardice, it’s a way of life. It’s not natural, you learn it.
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Boner McPharlin’s Moll
Quotes
The bedrails jingled as he shook.
But I’m solid, he said. Solid as a brick shithouse. Unreliable be fucked. Why they keep callin me unreliable? I drive and drive. I don’t say a word. They know, they know. Don’t say a fuckin word. Don’t leave me out, don’t let me go, I’m solid. I’m solid!
He began to cry then. A nurse came in and said maybe I should go.
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All I knew was this, that I hadn’t been Boner’s friend at all. Hadn’t been for years. A friend paid attention, showed a modicum of curiosity, made a bit of an effort. A friend didn’t believe the worst without checking. A friend didn’t keep her eyes shut and walk away. Just the outline now, but I was beginning to see.
They’d turned me. They played with me, set me against him to isolate him completely. Boner was their creature. All that driving, the silence, the leeway, it had to be drugs. He was driving their smack. Or something. Whatever it was he was their creature and they broke him.
I sat in the car beneath the lighthouse and thought of how I’d looked on and seen nothing. I was no different to my parents. Yet I always believed I’d come so far, surpassed so much. At fifteen I would have annihilated myself for love, but over the years something had happened, something I hadn’t bothered to notice, as though in all that leaving, in the rush to outgrow the small-town girl I was, I’d left more of myself behind than the journey required.
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Jackie Quotes in The Turning
The The Turning quotes below are all either spoken by Jackie or refer to Jackie . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Commission
Quotes
Drugs, I spose. Never really understood it. Just that he’d fallen foul of em. And any question, any witness account died on the vine, didn’t matter who it came to. Felt like, whatever was going on I was the only bloke not in on it. And the city blokes were in on it; it was bigger than that little town, that’s for sure. So who do you talk to? Even if you’ve got the balls, who can you trust? It ate me alive. Ulcers, everything. I should have quit but I didn’t even have the courage to do that. Would have saved us all a lot of pain. But it’s all I ever wanted to do, you see, be a cop. And I hung on till there was nothing left of me, nothing left of any of us. Cowardice, it’s a way of life. It’s not natural, you learn it.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Boner McPharlin’s Moll
Quotes
The bedrails jingled as he shook.
But I’m solid, he said. Solid as a brick shithouse. Unreliable be fucked. Why they keep callin me unreliable? I drive and drive. I don’t say a word. They know, they know. Don’t say a fuckin word. Don’t leave me out, don’t let me go, I’m solid. I’m solid!
He began to cry then. A nurse came in and said maybe I should go.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
All I knew was this, that I hadn’t been Boner’s friend at all. Hadn’t been for years. A friend paid attention, showed a modicum of curiosity, made a bit of an effort. A friend didn’t believe the worst without checking. A friend didn’t keep her eyes shut and walk away. Just the outline now, but I was beginning to see.
They’d turned me. They played with me, set me against him to isolate him completely. Boner was their creature. All that driving, the silence, the leeway, it had to be drugs. He was driving their smack. Or something. Whatever it was he was their creature and they broke him.
I sat in the car beneath the lighthouse and thought of how I’d looked on and seen nothing. I was no different to my parents. Yet I always believed I’d come so far, surpassed so much. At fifteen I would have annihilated myself for love, but over the years something had happened, something I hadn’t bothered to notice, as though in all that leaving, in the rush to outgrow the small-town girl I was, I’d left more of myself behind than the journey required.
