The Paper Palace

At the Back Woods in June of 1981, Elle gets her period for the first time. While she goes to the bathroom to put a tampon in, Conrad knocks on the door. Elle tells him not to come in and locks it. Then, Elle hears something and sees Conrad’s face pushed against the upper window, staring at Elle between her legs. She screams, and Conrad runs off. She decides to get as far away as possible from him and paddles a canoe far from the shore, deciding that the simplest option to avoid being humiliated further is to kill herself. When she heads toward a swamp side of the pond, she hears a voice, and it is Jonas.

Jonas is working on catching a snapping turtle so notorious for its size that everyone refers to it as “The Big One” in the Back Woods. Jonas tells Elle not to move and then he uses her paddle to lure the snapping turtle. It’s biting at Elle’s paddle as Jonas captures it. When he does, Elle sees the turtle look “back at me with a dead-eyed anger—humiliation at being caught; fury at having been exposed to the world, stripped of his dignity [.